Narrain - Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics in India

Because I Have a Voice

Queer Politics in India

Arvind Narrain graduated from the National Law School of India University, and did his LLM from Warwick University. He is currently working as a part of a collective of lawyers at the Alternative Law Forum based in Bangalore, a young group working on a critical practice of law. He is the author of Queer: Despised Sexuality, Law and Social Change.

Gautam Bhan is a queer rights activist and writer based in New Delhi who writes extensively on queer issues and social movements. He is a member of PRISM, Voices against Section 377, and the Nigah Media Collective.

SEXUALITIES
General Editor: Gautam Bhan
Other books in the series:

RuthVanita.
Gandhis Tiger and Sitas Smile
Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Culture

Maya Sharma
Loving Women
Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India

Gayatri Reddy
With Respect to Sex
Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India

Rahul Roy
A Little Book on Men

Sunil Gupta
Wish You Were Here Memories of a Gay Life

A. Revathi
Humaari Kahaniyaan, Humaari Baatein Hijron ki Jeevaniyon ka ek Sankalan (Hindi)

A. Revathi
Our Lives Our Words Telling Aravani Lifestories

Arvind Narrain and Alok Gupta (eds) Law Like Love
Queer Perspectives on Law

Arvind Narrain and Vinay Chandran (eds)
Nothing to Fix Medicalisation of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

To Famila

If you had told us,
just one word,
On what was killing you inside,
When we danced that night,
When we smoked that evening,
When we hugged that afternoon,
When we met that morning, just one word

and we would have screamed,
some more like we always do.
Your flesh is gone,
but your strength remains.
Your breath is gone,
but your voice remains.
Well use it well to scream some more. Screamtill our voices
yours, mine, and all ours,

will be heard.

Contents

Introduction 1 Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan
I
conceptual approaches to sexuality as a form of politics 1. How Natural is Normal? 37 Feminism and Compulsory Heterosexuality
Nivedita Menon
2. Challenging the Limits of Law 45 Queer Politics and Legal Reform in India
Gautam Bhan
3. Its not my job to tell you that its okay to be gay 55 Medicalisation of Homosexuality; A Queer Critique Arvind Narrain and Vinay Chandran
4. Crisis in Desire 79 A Queer Reading of Cinema and Desire in Kerala
Muraleedharan T.
5. Beyond Sexuality(?) 100 Akshay Khanna
II
stories of struggle
6. Many People, Many Sexualities 119 A Personal Journey
Elavarthi Manohar
viii | Contents
7. Solitary Cruiser 127 Pawan Dhall
8. Englishpur ki Kothi 136 Class Dynamics in the Queer Movement in India
Alok Gupta
9. The Roads that E/Merged 158 Feminist Activism and Queer Understanding
Chayanika Shah

10. Voicing the Invisible 171 Violence Faced by Lesbian Women in India
Bina Fernandez and Gomathy N.B.

11. Complicating Gender 181 Rights of Transsexuals in India
Ashwini Sukthankar
12. Queering Kerala 193 Reflections on Sahayatrika
Deepa V.N.
13. Fire, Sparks and Smouldering Ashes 218 Gomathy N.B. and Bina Fernandez
14. Queering the Campus 227 Lessons from Indian Universities
Mario DPenha and Tarun
15. Amiti 241 Organising LGBTs in Small-town India
Anis Rai Chowdhury
III
personal narratives
16. A Hijras Own Story 249 Revathi
17. Leaving Home to Go Home 256 Sandip Roy
Contents | ix
18. She Came from the World of the Spirits 259 Maya Sharma
19. Death of the Gay Man 270 Devdutt Pattanaik
20. On Being Gay and Catholic 274 Mario DPenha
21. Islam and Me 279 Ali Potia
22. Is Being Gay about Multiple Sex Partners? 287 Pawan Dhall and Mr A.K.
23. An Indian Christian Kothi Speaks Out! 290 Prathiba Sixer Rani
24. In a Loongi in Chimbhave 294 Satya Rai Nagpaul
25. I am Out and Heres Why 296 Vaibhav Saria
26. Convivial Misgivings 301 Sheba Tejani
27. Sum Total 305 A Matrimonial
Sonali
Notes on Editors and Contributors 306

Introduction

Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan

The rumble of the cars zipping across the flyover directly above the ceiling shook the small room almost continuously, sending tremors through the bodies of the dozen or so people who had gathered there. It was a dusty Friday night, not unlike any other, in the middle of a long Delhi summer, and the sense of excitement in the room almost seemed out of place. At first glance, the reason for the excitement wasnt apparenta mixed group of men and women, both young and old, were seated on chatais on the floor reading to each other, raising their voices to be heard over the cars rumbling overhead. They spoke, they would say later, queer words. Words of desire, of confession, of celebration, of empathy, and of resistance. Words that retold and reclaimed stories, poems, and narratives that had, till that night, excluded their identities, desires, and feelings. Queer words, read by queer people, with and for each other, finally being heard even as the city literally rumbled on its way above their heads.

There is a sense of freedom in the lives of many queer people in India today. It is a hesitant freedom for none of us can afford to forget how fragile the few accepting spaces we inhabit are, or how few of us have access to them. Nevertheless, this new freedom is a heady feeling, and it cradles within it a sense of hope that, even five years ago, seemed distant. New words surround queer lives today and they are words chosen by queer people themselves to be part of a new language that speaks of change just as it steps towards it. This book is written in this new language. It seeks to bear witness to its existence, add to its vocabulary, and teach others how to read it and understand queer politics and queer lives.

In what words does a queer language describe the India that we live in today? The idea of an inclusive and tolerant nation continues to be challenged by brutalities inflicted in the name of maintaining the purity of caste, class, religion and gender. Many of the signposts of postindependence Indiathe Mathura rape case in 1979, the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, or the carnage and continuing injustice in Gujaratare moments of rupture in our history. Yet each of these ruptures has had, as its counterpoint, an emerging moment of assertion. Such a moment may have been the beginning of the contemporary womens movement, the emergence of vocal anti-communal movements, or simply the initial stirrings of ordinary people getting together to work against ideologies of power and oppression. The story of queer people in India has, so far, been written and lived along the fault lines and margins of Indian history, but now the search for our own moment of assertion is gaining momentum. It is within this search that the present anthology is located.

Our effort is to give voice to a concept, an identity and a politics that is only now, and slowly at that, beginning to enter the consciousness of the nation. To speak of sexuality, and of same-sex love in particular, in India today is simultaneously an act of political assertion, of celebration, of defiance and of fear. For far too long, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people have simply been the distant and hypothetical subjects of theories and ideas, looked upon either with pity, curiosity or disdain. At each turn, we are constantly described and defined by other peoples words as they stand codified in religion, medicine, law, and in the silent assumptions that form the reality of our everyday lives. We are told via our faith, our families, our laws, our bodies and our very imagination of ourselves, that weve got the script wrong, and are, in effect, playing the wrong parts.