Homosexuality, despite being represented conservatively and in dichotomous opposition to heterosexuality, is not an entirely unfamiliar territory for Indian popular and independent cinema. Indian cinematic queer representations range from homosocialism and homoeroticism in films like Sholay (Ramesh Sippy 1975), Kal Ho Na Ho (Nikhil Advani 2003), Masti (Indra Kumar 2004), Dostana (Tarun Mansukhani 2008) and Dedh Ishqiya (Abhishek Chaubey 2014) to movies with homosexual characters like Fire (Deepa Mehta 1996), The Pink Mirror (Sridhar Rangayan 2004), My Brother, Nikhil (Onir 2005), Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd (Reema Kagti 2007), I Am (Onir 2010), Bombay Talkies (2013), Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (Shelly Chopra Dhar 2019) and Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhan (Hitesh Kewalya 2020). Despite these diverse representations, homosexuality is culturally so controversial that, for example, cinemas playing Fire were attacked by members of the right-wing Shiv Sena because the film depicts lesbian love scenes between two Hindu women named Radha (Shabana Azmi) and Sita (Nandita Das), and the Indian Censor Board banned The Pink Mirror and Unfreedom (Raj Amit Kumar 2014). Among all of the above described portrayals, Made in Heaven (Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, 2019), a series streaming on Amazon Prime, stands out for its vocal politics, representational nuance and global reach in representing homosexuality in India.

Homosexuality as a category did not exist in the Indian subcontinent until 1861, when the British Colonial Government introduced Section 377 in the Indian Penal Code, which declared ‘unnatural offenses’, like homosexuality, ‘against the order of nature’. Thereby, it made non-procreative sex a crime and encouraged homophobia. Despite the fact that the statute had criminalised both anal and oral sex, Section 377 mostly affected India's reported 2.5 million homosexual individuals. The efforts to repeal Section 377 started in 2001 and the Delhi High Court declared consensual homosexual sex legal in 2009; this decision was overruled by the Supreme Court of India in 2013, deferring the legislative amendment to the Parliament of India. Eventually, in 2018, a five-judge bench of the Indian Supreme Court overturned the 2013 ruling and decriminalised homosexuality.

In its representation of queer sexualities, Bollywood cinema gradually moved from homosocial to homoerotic and then to homosexual in accidental, intentional or political ways, as is evident in the films listed above. Bollywood films started engaging in more political portrayals of queer sexualities only in the last decade, which is the decade of the legalisation of homosexuality.