Homosexuality in Bollywood films

While the Supreme Court has held homosexuality as a criminal offence, Bollywood has been quite open about it and several filmmakers have also depicted such relationships on the big screen.

In 'Bombay Talkies', the anthology that paid tribute to 100 years of Indian cinema, a short film made by director Karan Johar dealt with a love story of two male characters played by Randeep Hooda and Saquib Salem.

Previously, Karan depicted gay relationship in his film 'Dostana', where Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham pretended to be lovers so they could share an apartment with Priyanka Chopra.

In Karan's 'Kal Ho Naa Ho', the characters played by Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan are mistaken as gay lovers by Saif's domestic help. It was portrayed in a fun way.

The 2010 movie 'Dunno Y...Na Jaane Kyon', directed by Sanjay Sharma and written by his brother Kapil Sharma, who also played the lead, was about the life of a gay model forced to compromise on his morals for his career.

The film premiered at India's first mainstream gay film festival, the Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival.

Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar gave a glimpse of gay relationship in his award wining film 'Fashion'. The subject was also shown in his previous film 'Page 3'.

Filmmaker Onir with his films 'I Am' and 'My Brother Nikhil' touched upon the subject.

Actresses Eesha Koppikar and Amrita Arora took everyone by surprise with their film 'Girlfriend', in which they played lesbian lovers.

Filmmaker Deepa Mehta's 'Fire' traced the love story of two unhappily married sisters-in-law — played by talented actresses like Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das.