Sends a strong message of resilience and progress against regression

The organisers of Mumbai Queer Pride 2025 have announced #NoGoingBack as the official theme and hashtag for this year’s Mumbai Queer Pride Parade 2025, reinforcing a message of resilience and progress for the LGBTQ+ community in India and beyond.

The Mumbai Queer Pride Parade 2025 will take place on Saturday, 1 February 2025, at 3:00 p.m. at the historic August Kranti Maidan, a site deeply rooted in India’s struggle for independence. This year’s theme draws attention to the global push backs against LGBTQ+ rights and serves as a powerful call to march forward in solidarity.

Mumbai Queer Pride’s statement underscores the event’s significance in the larger global fight for equality:

The right to exist with dignity and authenticity is a global movement. And the great island of the famously empathetic Mumbai is one major chapter in it.

The organisers have framed the #NoGoingBack campaign as a response to challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals around the world, urging people to come together, as a queer community, as allies, as friends, family, and colleagues, to ensure the protection of absolute and equal rights.

The powerful message behind #NoGoingBack makes it clear that there will be no return to a past of invisibility and discrimination. The organisers affirm:

·        There’s no going back to forced conformity with cisgender norms.

·        There’s no going back into the closets that LGBTQ+ individuals have fought to emerge from.

·        There’s no going back to queerphobia.

·        There’s absolutely #NoGoingBack.

By choosing August Kranti Maidan, the site of the Quit India Movement, as the venue, Mumbai Queer Pride 2025 is making a strong statement about freedom, resistance, and the ongoing fight for equal rights. Just as the Quit India Movement challenged oppression, this year’s Pride Parade stands as a declaration that the LGBTQ+ community will not accept any regression of their rights.

As Mumbai prepares for one of the most anticipated LGBTQ+ events of the year, the organisers have extended a message of unity.

“Wherever you are in India or anywhere in the world, know that we are with you. We are you. And there is #NoGoingBack,” reads their statement.

With thousands expected to march under the rainbow flag, Mumbai Queer Pride 2025 is set to be a vibrant and defiant celebration, a reminder that progress must continue, and that equality is non-negotiable.