When India's Supreme Court punted the question of marriage equality to Parliament in 2023, something shifted. It wasn't just a legal disappointment — it was a reminder that LGBTQ+ rights in India would ultimately be decided by politicians. And yet almost nobody was paying close attention to what those politicians were actually saying.

That's where The Garv Project started.

We wanted to know: which MPs had spoken up on LGBTQ+ issues? Which ones had stayed quiet? And — most importantly — which ones might be persuadable if the right people had the right conversations with them?

We spent two years trying to answer those questions. We reached out cold to Pink List India, who had built the most comprehensive dataset of MPs' public positions on LGBTQ+ issues in the country, and they shared their data with us. We had conversations with organizers, lawyers, and policy practitioners across the LGBTQ+ ecosystem in India. We read parliamentary debates, tracked public statements, and looked for patterns.

What emerged wasn't what we expected. The biggest obstacle to progress on LGBTQ+ rights in India isn't a wall of opposition. It's a fog of ambiguity — politicians who aren't against the community, but who won't stand up for it either. Understanding that distinction, and knowing what to do with it, is what this project is really about.

The Garv Project produced a Political Signaling Framework, a findings memo, and a Strategic Engagement Toolkit — practical tools for the advocates and organisations already doing this work on the ground.

Image from: Al Jazeera, 2023