THE QUEER AND THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGES IN INDIA 9781032282268, 9781032576862, 9781003440536

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The Queer and the Vernacular Languages in India

This book analyses regional expressions of the queer experience in texts available in the Indian vernacular languages. It studies queer autobiographies and literary and cinematic texts written in the vernacular languages on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. The authors outline the specific terms that are popular in the bhashas (languages) to refer to the queer people and discuss any neo coinages/modes of communication invented by the queer people themselves. The volume also addresses the lack of queer representation in certain language communities and the lack of queer interaction in non-metropolitan cities in India. An important contribution to the field of queer studies in India, this timely book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, discrimination and exclusion studies, language studies, political studies, sociology, postcolonial studies and South Asian studies. Kaustav Chakraborty is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Southfield (Loreto) College, Darjeeling, India. He has been a Fellow at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. His areas of interest are Queer Studies, Indigenous Literatures and Cultures, Folklore, Culture of Nationalism, Philosophy of Intimacy and South Asian Literatures. His major publications include Indian Drama in English (edited volume, 2014), Tagore and Nationalism (co-edited with K. L. Tuteja, 2017), Indigeneity, Tales and Alternatives (2017), The Politics of Belonging in Contemporary India: Anxiety and Intimacy (edited volume, 2020), Queering Tribal Folktales from East and Northeast India (2020) and Nations and Nationalisms: A Short Introduction (2021). Anup Shekhar Chakraborty is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Political Studies at Kolkata’s Netaji Institute for Asian Studies and a member of the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG). He received the IPSA National Young Political Scientist Award 2020; the IDRC, DEF, and IDF “India Social Science Research Award 2009”, and the

“C.R. Parekh Fellowship (2011–2012)” at the Asia Research Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published numerous works about the Zo/Mizo people. His most recent works include Braided Entanglements of Identities, Religion, and Politics in Mizoram (2020); Religion and Politics in Mizoram (2019); and Death and Dying in Northeast India: Indigeneity and Afterlife (co-edited with P. Sen, 2023). He serves as one of the Guest Editors for the Special Issue on “LGBTQ+ People in Situations of Forced Displacement”, Oxford Journal of Refugee Studies.

The Queer and the Vernacular Languages in India Studies in Contemporary Texts and Cultures Edited by Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-28226-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-57686-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-44053-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

List of Tables viii List of Contributors ix Preface xii Indian Vernaculars and the Queer: An Introduction

1

KAUSTAV CHAKRABORTY AND ANUP SHEKHAR CHAKRABORTY

PART I

Vernacular Vocabularies and Expressions of the Regional Queer

29

1 Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities in the Present-Day Marathi Language

31

PARESH HATE

2 Queer in Karnataka: Exploring Male Same-Sex Sexualities in the Non-Metropolitan

48

KIRAN BHAIRANNAVAR

3 A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture: Revisiting the Lingua Franca of the Hijra Community

64

SIBSANKAR MAL AND GRACE BAHALEN MUNDU

PART II

LGBTQ+ and the Regional Literature

85

4 Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves: Tirunangai Autobiographies in Tamil

87

KIRAN KESHAVAMURTHY

vi Contents

5 ‘They’ Are Queer: Transgressing Gender Normativity in Vernacular Assamese Literature

105

TONMOYEE RANI NEOG AND RIMPI BORAH

6 Urdu and the Queer Consciousness

115

OMAR GHAZALI

PART III

Performing the Vernacular Queer Offline, Online and On Screen

141

7 Mawngkuahur in the Times of E-Love: Sexualities, Regimentation, Control, Display and the Zo Queer

143

ANUP SHEKHAR CHAKRABORTY

8 The Many Bodies of the Vernacular: Negotiating Queer Identity in the Public and Virtual Domains of Assam

158

AMRITA PRITAM GOGOI

9 Queer Assam on Celluloid: Locating Queer Characters in Bulbul Can Sing and Fireflies–Jonaki Porua 172 ANUPOM KUMAR HAZARIKA

PART IV

Queer Invisibility and the Linguistic Community

185

10 The Many ‘Queer’ Silences: Competing Masculinities in Kashmir

187

HUZAIFA PANDIT

11 In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani: Silence, Slurs and the Spectacular KEVIN FRANK FERNANDES

204

Contents  vii PART V

Making the Queer Visible in the Vernacular Culture

221

12 Exploring Queer Literature in Nepali from the Hills of Darjeeling and Sikkim

223

ANIL PRADHAN AND PEMA GYALCHEN TAMANG

13 Voices of Survival: LGBTQ+ Representations in Literary/ Cinematic/Creative Texts in Bangla

245

HIMADRI ROY

Index 263

Tables

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9

Ciphered words used in Hijra Farsi and Ulti bhasa 74 Specific Farsi nouns 76 Unique Farsi nouns 76 Farsi pronouns 76 Farsi verbs 77 Farsi adjectives 78 Use of Farsi adverbs 78 Farsi determiners 78 Syntactical structure of Farsi sentences 79

Contributors

Kaustav Chakraborty is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Southfield (Loreto) College, Darjeeling, India. His major publications include Indian Drama in English (edited volume, 2014), Tagore and Nationalism (co-edited with K. L. Tuteja, 2017), Indigeneity, Tales and Alternatives (2017), The Politics of Belonging in Contemporary India: Anxiety and Intimacy (edited volume, 2020), Queering Tribal Folktales from East and Northeast India (2020) and Nations and Nationalisms: A Short Introduction (2021). Anup Shekhar Chakraborty is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Political Studies at Kolkata’s Netaji Institute for Asian Studies. His most recent works include Braided Entanglements of Identities, Religion, and Politics in Mizoram (2020); Religion and Politics in Mizoram (2019); and Death and Dying in Northeast India: Indigeneity and Afterlife (co-edited with P. Sen., 2023). He serves as one of the Guest Editors for the Special Issue on “LGBTQ+ People in Situations of Forced Displacement”, Oxford Journal of Refugee Studies. Amrita Pritam Gogoi is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Dibrugarh University, Assam. Her teaching and research focus on war and conflict studies; women militants and combatants; feminist theory and politics, politics of memory and memorialization. Anil Pradhan is a PhD candidate at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. His book of poems titled Flitting Oddments was published in 2020. He was a poet-in-residence at the ‘Language is a Queer Thing’ programme, sponsored by the British Council, and visiting poet at the BBC Contains Strong Language Poetry Festival (2022) in Birmingham, UK. Anupom Kumar Hazarika is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Cotton University, Assam, India. His research interests are Assamese Literature, Indian English Literature and Science Fiction. Hazarika has had poetry published in The Chakkar, The Assam Tribune, Nagaland Page, Terror House Magazine, Spark and CC&D Magazine.

x Contributors Grace Bahalen Mundu is Assistant Professor at the Department of Population Studies at Fakir Mohan University in Odisha. She was a former Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography at Gangadhar Meher University in Sambalpur. She specializes in migration and urbanization, gender issues, public health and tribal studies. Himadri Roy is the Director of the School of Gender and Development Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India. He expertise lies in LGBT Studies, Gender, Cinema, Media, and Literature. He has recently published a book on Film adaptations, titled Author to Auteur: Theories and Film Adaptations. He also has published a book on gay portrayals in Bollywood cinema, titled Reel and the Real: Portrayal of Gay men in Bollywood Film. Huzaifa Pandit works as Assistant Professor, English at Government Degree College Pampore, Kashmir. He is also the author of ‘Green is the Colour of Memory’, which won the first edition of Rhythm Divine Poets Chapbook Contest 2017. Besides he is the winner of several poetry contests like Glass House Poetry Competition and Bound Poetry Contest. Kevin Frank Fernandes is Assistant Professor of English and Assistant Coordinator (UG Programmes) at the Indian Institute of Psychology and Research, Bengaluru. He is the primary collaborator for India’s first museum podcast titled “The Altar of Time: A History India’s Christian Art”, an India Foundation for the Arts—Museum of Christian Art, Goa collaboration project. Kiran Bhairannavar is a sexual geographer based at the Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor. His teaching and research interests include Sexuality and Space, Queer Geographies, and urban social and cultural geography. Kiran Keshavamurthy is Assistant Professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in IIT Guwahati. His research interests include gender and sexuality studies, caste studies and modern Indian literatures with a focus on Tamil literature. His book, published in 2016 by OUP India is entitled Beyond Desire: Sexuality in Modern Tamil Literature. Omar Ghazali is Head and Associate Professor in Post Graduate and Research Department of Urdu, Hooghly Mohsin College, and Associate Professor Of Urdu in the School of Languages, at the Institute of Language Studies & Research (ILSR), Department of Higher Education, Government of West Bengal. He has received various awards like Academy Award, Delhi; West Bengal Urdu Academy Award, Kolkata; Bihar Urdu Academy Award, Patna etc.

Contributors  xi Paresh Hate (they/them) is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Their research work deals with state regulation of undocumented migration, and immigration law/detention in India. They are a member of Hasratein: a queer collective, New Delhi; Right to Nationality and Citizenship Network, India; and Collective Against Detention, India. Pema Gyalchen Tamang is currently working as Assistant Professor of English at Salesian College, Siliguri, India. He has published in national and international journals like Colloquium, Postcolonial Interventions, Himalaya, etc. He has also been actively involved in translating literature written in South Asian languages, particularly Nepali literature. Sibsankar Mal is a lecturer at the Department of Geography at Sukumar Sengupta Mahavidyalaya in West Bengal and currently working on his PhD in transgender migration at the Department of Population Studies at Fakir Mohan University in Odisha. His areas of expertise include transgender studies, migration studies, women’s issues and diverse socio-demographic concerns. Rimpi Borah is currently working as an Assistant Professor of Political Science in Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru, Karnataka. She is also a Doctoral fellow in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interest includes gender and law, ethnicity, identity and citizenship issues. Tonmoyee Rani Neog is Assistant Professor of History at the Jagannath Barooah College, Jorhat, Assam. She has completed her education from Cotton College in Guwahati and Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Her academic interest span across the wider fields of literary and feminist history and more specifically the intellectual traditions, cultural imagination and folklore heritage of Assam.

Preface

Homosexuality is no longer a crime in India—it is rather culturally reinforced as a ‘sin’ and treated as an aberration by the majority of the Indians. The visibility of the queer community is a metro-normative affair. In rural and mofussil areas, non-heterosexual presence is hardly felt, apart from using queer expressions as slang terms. Except for the cities, India is a neo-traditional society where heterosexual conformism is considered to be the only socially sanctioned rule, and LGBTQ+ intimacies become ‘immoral’, ‘sinful’, ‘unruly’ transgressions. The absence of acceptance of the queer experiences is reflected in the paucity of the representations in the bhasha texts: literary and cinematic. This volume wants to bring out a collection of the non ‘mainstream’ unruly, ‘deviant’ expressions, experiences and representations by analysing the cultural domain of the regional states and examining the literary/cinematic/artistic texts available in the Indian vernacular languages. The book has tried to outline the specific terms that are popular in the bhashas to refer to queer people: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, effeminate male, manly female and so on. Any neo coinages/modes of communication invented by queer people themselves or transformation made in the usage of the terms by the queer people has also been delineated. Along with the queer autobiographies that are popular in vernacular languages, literary texts written in the vernacular languages on gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender issues and cinema that have been made in vernacular Indian languages based on queer themes have also been discussed at length. Similarly, the way a language community depicts queerness in both the real world and online has been studied. This book also tries to address the issue of a lack of queer representation in certain language communities, which is an important aspect. It is inevitable that the study of the Indian vernacular languages in a single volume will be incomplete. Moreover, we have tried not to fall into the trap of linguistic hierarchies. Hence, we have not shown any preference for a particular language or region over others. Keeping the word limit in mind, although each chapter has dealt with a particular language or linguistic landscape, as a case in point to show how the multiple queer concerns that are intimately related with a particular language needs detailed analysis, we have

Preface  xiii included more than one chapters related to Assamese. Languages and regions were selected based on a number of factors, including the expertise of the contributors and the accessibility of relevant resources. To all of our contributors, we appreciate your time and effort in contributing to this collective endeavour. We extend gratitude to each of you. For their help, we can’t thank Routledge’s team enough, especially Antara and Anvitaa. Kaustav and Anup Darjeeling and Kolkata

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer An Introduction Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty

The common element that brings the two major themes of this book—queer1 and the vernacular languages2—together, is the aspect of prejudice. Homosexuality has been decriminalized in India, yet non-heterosexuality continues to remain a stigma.3 Any attempt to understand the plight of the queer Indian community demands an engagement with the “sexual subaltern”, struggling “to capture the extraordinary range and diversity of the counter-heteronormative movement” (Kapur 2009: 385). Again, any study of the vernacular, apart from accommodating cultural diversity, “welcomes the neglected into study in order to acknowledge the reality of difference and conflict” (Glassie 2000: 20). This book, thus, tries to bring together the anxieties related with the queer—the stigmatized ‘other’ of Indian hetero-patriarchy—and the vernacular languages and spaces, that remain at the margins of the hegemonistic contest of seeking spaces in the national discourse, due to “the continued pre-eminence of English over all other Indian languages” (Sheth 2018:170). Finally, the focus is on the double marginality of the provincial/vernacular queer—the sexual minorities who feel “the sharp differences between them in socio-cultural terms” (ibid.: 173) with those who use English to “usually supply terms of definition” (ibid.: 187), comment and conclude on “the merit of an issue” (ibid.) and occupy a central role, while the role of their mother-tongues “is at best marginal” (ibid.: 173). Bringing the representations and silences on queer issues in the select vernacular languages of India, this book is aimed at scrutinizing the extent to which queer has remained an untellable subject in the provinces of India or to what extent they are in a process of acquiring the agency of forming a vernacular queer ‘counterpublics’.4 ‘Vernacular’ has multiple connotations: languages of indigenes (desi)/ region/a place, languages that are often perceived to be lesser in scope and power in comparison to the ‘cosmopolitan’ languages (Pollock 2009: 388), languages that are powerful enough to represent subaltern5 voices of powerlessness (Guha 1992), mother tongues that suffer the neocoloniality of the Indian languages that promote majoritarianism, languages that convey the ‘minority’ perspectives, etc. Vernacular, however, does not imply an absence of hegemony. Hegemony of class, caste, gender, sexuality etc. get registered DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-1

2  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty in the domain of the vernacular as well, but what distinguishes the vernacular, according to Shankar, is that “it signals a particular kind of subjection, a particular kind of hierarchy, in which it identifies the dominated element in relation to opposing elements” such as “the universal, the classical, and so on” (2012: 148). A central focus on the vernaculars, may give rise to the anxieties that are related to regionalism—e. g. parochialism, populist exclusion etc. However, vernacular, in this book, has been addressed from the perspective of ‘critical regionalism’ that is contingent upon a process of double mediation. In the first place, it has to ‘deconstruct’ the overall spectrum of world culture which it inevitably inherits; in the second place, it has to achieve, through synthetic contradiction, a manifest critique of universal civilization. (Frampton 1983:21) The culture that we call ‘Indian’ is established on the interculturality of diverse vernacular cultures. Hence, this study of the vernacular Indian cultures has been undertaken not to cherish ‘narrow nationalism’ or glorify a particular/‘local’ queer idea/identity but to celebrate translocal queer ideas and identities that are prevalent in the multicultural India but are often overlooked in academia. Another purpose of this study is to search for alternatives against globalized localisms,6 as Santos has proposed, through the ‘diatopical’ hermeneutical procedure based on the idea that all cultures are incomplete and that the topoi of a given culture, however strong, are as incomplete as the culture to which they belong… The aim of diatopical hermeneutics is to maximize the awareness of the reciprocal incompleteness of cultures by engaging in a dialogue, as it were, with one foot in one culture and the other in another—hence, its diatopical character. (Santos 2016: 148) Inspired by Foucault’s ‘heterotopias’, this critical engagement with vernaculars has also been aimed at providing a critique against the exclusive focus on metronormativity and the capitalist production of a monoculture that is often done under the pretext of universalism/‘world culture’. Contested Classifications Queer identities did find representations in the ancient Indian vernacular cultures (Vanita and Kidwai 2000). Queer expressions are also fairly abundant in the oral traditions of the vernacular folk and fairy tales (Chakraborty 2021). The Indian civilizational domain used to be once upon a time a land of multiple, uncategorized desires (Menon 2018). The colonial abjection of

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  3 the non-straight, and the schematic heterosexualization has resulted in the contemporary invisibility of the non-conformist desires in cultural and textual representations of Indian vernacular languages. The British colonizers stigmatized the celebration of gender-fluid categorical confusion as queer perversion. Moreover, in the postcolonial India, apart from “some factually incorrect Indian-languages works” produced in vernacular languages on queer subjects that “were homophobic” as well, the “lack of authentic literature in Indian languages leads to a higher visibility of books in English, further reinforcing the idea of queerness as an urban phenomenon” (Prabhu 2019). There can be an argument that in India, sexual ambiguity, that gets expressed through the homosocial terms like sakhi (intimate friendship between two women) or jigry dost/yaar (two men as passionate friends), is the best way of sustaining queerness without looking for rigid sexual classification of identities. It is true that despite categories of sexual identities, the lived experiences of non-straight people are often fluid and oblique. Some activists have felt that the oblique expressions like ‘men who have sex with men’ provide a fluid alternative to the Western psychosexual identities (Seabrook 1999), or ‘women who love women’ and ‘single women’ “provide an important choice for women who can quietly take advantage of culturally available spaces of homosociality, or for women who don’t want their other political commitments—like class or anticommunalism—to be overshadowed by their ‘lesbian’ identification” (Dave 2012: 19). The sexual taxonomy is indeed marked by “doubleness where there is a constant tension between the way it is conceptualized and the way it is lived out” (Katyal 2016: 1), yet the categories are not altogether insignificant. First, categories allow the sexual minorities of India to assert their differences, even if in a shifting mode of performing various non-straight identities simultaneously or subsequently. Second, by facilitating people to accept and recognize themselves as differently queer, these alternative sexual identities assist in providing resistance against the trend of wrapping non-heterosexuality as a transgression/passé only to finally fit into the patriarchal framework or use the advantage of the ambiguity of friendship to keep same-sex relationships discrete and appear straight in public. According to Akshay Khanna, sexual ambiguity can be perceived as a mode of empowering the self where the focus on sexuality is replaced with sexualness so that “the erotic flows through us without necessarily constituting us as subjects of Sexuality” (Khanna 2016: 373): the erotic and the sexual need not speak to the sense of self or the definition of the self at all—for instance, men have sex with other men, or are erotic with other men without thinking of themselves as any ‘different’. There is, in other words, a ‘sexualness’ that escapes the frame of sexuality, desire and eroticism that flows through people without constituting them as subjects. (ibid.: 12)

4  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty It is true that sexualness helps us to imagine a decolonized future where the pre-colonial acceptance of sexual and gender non-conformism is restored. Sexualness also helps in an intersectional study of sexuality by raising concerns for correlated issues like caste and class depravities. However, in the present postcolonial Indian scenario where non-metrocentric, non-heterosexual people of vernacular cultures are continuously victimized by the neocoloniality of the hetero-patriarchy only because of differences in sexuality, non-heterosexual categories of sexual identifications have to be made more visible in vernacular languages in order to address the issues related to abuses and discriminations against the sexual minorities. Since the reclaiming of an untabooed celebration of destereotyped sexual orientations that used to prevail in ancient days appears to be a farfetched dream in contemporary India, valorization of sexuality types and acceptance of the non-straight typification as not the sole but a very crucial aspect of subjecthood is the urgent need of the hour. Recognition of non ‘mainstream’ sexual identities, even through endogenous formulation of neologisms in vernacular languages where there seems to be a deficit of queer terms, are important for the sexually otherized subjects before sexuality types are decentred with a broader sexualness. Maya Sharma, while highlighting the difficulty of the rural and semi urban working-class women who are attracted to other women in categorizing themselves apart from delineating their same sex partners as saheli (female friend), has argued that the instant of acquiring an ability to situate oneself in a category that is framed in terms of an alternative sexuality exemplifies the subject’s gaining of an agency: a time when we had begun to come out to ourselves, and amongst our friends had begun to name, affiliate, identify … It became imperative to assert our identity within the women’s movement and assert that we too were valid political subjects entitled to rights, freedoms, protections, benefits. (Sharma 2007: 4) There are words in the ancient Indian literature related to the diversified tritiyaprakriti (people of third nature), along with purush (masculine nature), and prakriti (feminine nature)—e.g. napunkshaka/jankha (incapable of reproduction), kliba (sterile), khoja (castrated), hijra (cross-dressed, male-tofemale transgender who live in a community comprised of a guru (master) and the chelas (disciples), etc. Along with the pan-Indian neo coinages like kothi (an effeminate male who plays passive/bottom role, perhaps based on the term ‘katoey’ (Jenkins 2004)) and panthi/parikh/giriya/dhurani (who plays active/top role with a kothi; the terms are variedly used in different vernacular regions of India) that are self-chosen by the diversified queers of India, there are standard vernacular terms, used in a derogatory manner, like chhakka (transgender), meettha/chikna (homosexual male), laundebaaz and

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  5 gandu (man who is into boys/sodomite), with which the majority of the Indians are familiar. Categories like hijra and kothi are very fluid and correlated but are not identical: kothis do not live the communitarian hijra life that is marked by a distinct hijra ethos. Contrary to the critics like Paul Boyce (2007) and Akshay Khanna (2009) who argue that the vernacular identities like that of the kothis have emerged out of the donor-funded cum state interventions regarding HIV–AIDS, Aniruddha Dutta has illustrated that “there have been locally variegated, yet translocally connected, subcultural formations of gender/sexual variance with different degrees of distinction or overlap between hijra and lesser-known categories such as kothi” (Dutta 2012: 827) in different regions of India. The apparently synonymous terms like hijra, kinnar, zenana and jogin have subtle differences—hijras consider themselves mostly as Muslims while kinnars are Hindus; zenanas are the “men who sometimes dress like women anddance like Hijras but do not select castration” (Cohen 1995: 276) due to which from the perspective of the hijras, zenanas and hijras are “certainly not the same. Zenanas are in just for the dhanda (business)” (Naqvi and Mujtaba 1997: 265); and jogins are also Hindus but they eat halal meat, following the Islamic tradition. Also, based on genital surgery, sexual engagements and professions, hijras are referred toby many names in different vernaculars: e.g., chhibri (castrated), nirvani (castrated and therefore attained nirvana or salvation), akkuva/ akua/ bhabreshi (non-castrated), badhai (not engaged in sexual activities), dhurani/ kandra/ khijrinda-wali (engaged in sex work or keep lover/ husband), challa-wali (hijra who begs in the railways), paan-wali (singing and dancing hijras), etc.(Reddy 2005; Chakraborty 2007). According to Russell, people who are born with congenital deformations are called khasuas (1916: 206–7). The region specific variations of vernacular cultures is manifested through the various queer regional7 terms that are used for the hijra: murat (muratan in plural) in Punjab, aravani or thirunangai in Tamil Nadu, mangalamukhi in Karnataka, jogti in Karnataka and Maharashtra, and shiv-shakthi in Andhra Pradesh. Similarly, kothi as an identity includes several other subidentities like arial kothi (or pakki/pure effeminate kothi), koripeshe kothi (non-effeminate kothi) (Dey et al. 2010) and kada-catla kothis (kothis in male attire) (Reddy 2005b: 52). Ashok Row Kavi, in his conversation with Ira Trivedi, has illustrated some popular vernacular kinky identities: Name it, and you have it. There are su-su ranis [golden shower queens or those who like to urinate on you or vice versa], chutney ranis [ass lickers], dhakka starts [guys who like receptive anal sex] and muscle marys [gym boys for hire]. The nautanki-ranis command big prices [they dress up as brides and you are supposed to rape them]. There are policeman for hire [ghodis] and special married men [pao-bhatas …] who want you in bed with their wives by their side! (Trivedi 2014: 65)

6  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty Despite a plethora of vernacular categories, which are often restricted to some particular vernacular geography, English terms like ‘gay’ or ‘homo’ seem to dominate the sexuality discourse in India, even at the level of wrongly bracketing the bisexual, lesbian and the transgender as gay.8 Nevertheless, a desi word that is derived from an English term illustrates that translation is “always an interpretation of the source text, and as a result a translation is not a faded replica of the original but an expansive transformation of it” (Damrosch 2003: 167). Lesbo, derived from lesbian, is used by majority of the Indians to denote a woman who is in a same-sex relationship. For a bisexual (sometimes known as dupli, which is derived from the English word ‘duplicitous’ or rarely as gupti or closeted in some particular regions) and a versatile (one who penetrates as well as gets penetrated) gay man, the English word double-decker is mostly in use. Underscoring the power dynamics that gets operated in the realm of the ‘local’, the hegemony9 of the languages from North India is evident in the domain of the prevalent pan-Indian words that are used to connote sexual non-conformist identities. Queer Indigenous people, from Sikkim for instance, who may not speak in English, Hindi or Urdu but only in their native tribal languages, seem to be hanging between two worlds—the world of English terms that are insufficient but popular because of their universal usage, and the world of neo coinages and popular slangs that have been mostly derived from the Hindi speaking belt. In this context, ‘vernacularization’ of queerness is necessary so that queer Indian discourse is “extracted from the universal and adapted to national and local communities” (Merry 2006: 39), either through replication—“a process in which the imported institution remains largely unchanged from its transnational prototype” (ibid.: 44)—or through hybridization, “a process that merges imported institutions and symbols with local ones, sometimes uneasily” (ibid.). Both the processes might result in the ushering of a ‘rhizomic culture’ that “is neither rooted nor unrooted. One can never be sure where rhizomes will break new ground” (Taylor and Saarinen 1994: 9). Theorizing through the Vernacular Coined by Houston Baker, vernacular theories, as Thomas McLaughlin explains, refer to “the practices of those who lack cultural power and who speak a critical language grounded in local concerns” (McLaughlin 1996: 5–6) and, thus, can be regarded as “subjugated knowledges”.10 In tune with Doreen Massey’s argument that “region must be constituted as an effect of analysis” (Massey 1978:110), vernacular as the culture of the non-metropolitans/provinces/locales, tries to generate “a localized social, ethnic, communal sense of identity” based on “cultures of practice, ones that develop ways of living in the world and which seek to control onlythose ways of living rather than the world in which they live” (Fiske 1993:19). However, this should not reinforce the polemic myth that the imperial knowledges are universal while the vernaculars deal only with the particular. Rather, vernacular ecologies of

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  7 knowledges, represent the various acts of identifications towards knowing the self and the world, that are often reduced as non-existence by the hegemonic epistemology—vernacular, thus, becomes the epistemology of the absent knowledges and agents. By interpreting queer representations and absences in the linguistic states of India, the aim of the study is to focus on the inter-regional connection of the vernacular knowledges—study of the vernacular queer culture of a particular community of India contributes to the queer regional understanding of the nation as a whole. Study of queer absences is a precondition for the future queer emergences. The first two chapters included under the first section of the book, Vernacular Vocabularies and Expressions of the Regional Queer, while focusing on particular linguistic landscapes, expose translocal queer concerns of India: the lack of queer vocabulary and the lack of queer interaction in non-metropolitan cities. The third chapter of this section exemplifies that the ‘localizing’ vernacular knowledge of sexual minorities can strike back with a codified language, where the spokespersons of the ‘imperializing knowledge’ of the ‘mainstream’/‘dominant’ culture find themselves excluded. “Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities in the Present-Day Marathi Language” by Paresh Hate deals with how queer identities—whether intersex; trans/trans; or pertaining to sexuality—are captured in the present-day Marathi language to allow those identifying with them to adequately articulate their identities. To do this, the author has employed the concept of laingik alpasankhya (लैंगिकअल्पसंख्या), or sexual/gendered minorities, used by LGBTI activist Bindumadhav Khire. Khire’s concept of laingik alpasankhya, which he explicates in his work and speeches, is effectively a triad and allows thinking about each of the three aspects of queerness—identity based on genitalia, identity based on gender phenomenology and identity based on sexual orientation—without reductionistically prioritizing one of them. By looking at this use in the context of different accounts of thinking about queerness in vernacular, Paresh Hate has argued that this concept has the potential to move beyond the debates on decolonization and translatability of ‘Western’ categories in a South Asian/Indian/Marathi context. While other accounts have crucial but nonetheless limited explanatory power, laingik alpasankhya is colloquially descriptive and understandable without much difficulty; it is politically useful to make demands, both policy-related and otherwise; and theoretically it is robust enough to capture a certain understanding of queerness necessary to distinguish it from non-queerness if we wish to retain the specificity and meaningfulness of the term. Further, one may also argue that this framework provides a fertile ground for capturing multiple gendered and sexual, or queer, possibilities that have both emerged and may emerge in any linguistic milieu, including that of Marathi. The intervention made by the author here is to show how queer identities yet untranslated in Marathi language can also be accommodated in this conceptual framework (such as non-binary/genderqueer and asexual/pansexual, etc.). Doing such a theorization of queerness through this concept, according to him, allows us to

8  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty ‘visibilize’ the various self-understandings of queerness into a strategically essential category that helps us in thinking about the present-day Marathi queerness and queerness in the Marathi language. Apart from critically engaging with Khire’s work, an attempt has been made to situate this concept in Marathi queer spaces through conversations with Marathi queer individuals, educators/activists/writers and others, so as to understand its present-day effectiveness (or lack thereof) amidst other terminologies that are deployed to make sense of queerness in Marathi queer spaces today. This chapter echoes the lack that seems to be present in every ‘bhasha’11 and tries to emphasis on the need of neocoinages to represent the diverse queer identities in different mother tongues of the Indians.12 Even if the neocoinages appear to emerge out of translations of categories that are prevalent in the dominant languages like Hindi and English, yet, translations into the vernaculars are necessary because, as Viveiros de Castro has asserted, “To translate is to presume that an equivocation always exists; it is to communicate by differences, instead of silencing the Other by presuming a univocality—the essential similarity— between what the Other and We are saying” (Viveiros de Castro 2004: 10). Moreover, as Sujit Mukherjee has argued, “Rupantar (meaning ‘change in form’) and anuvad (‘speaking after’ or ‘following’) are the commonly understood senses of translation in India, and neither term demands fidelity to the original” (Mukherjee 1994: 80, emphasis in original). Maria Tonini’s study of the middle class young queers of Delhi points out to the fact that, queer people in Delhi, while expressing distress about their inability to live as ‘out’ queers, did not want their sexual difference to stand out; indeed, they seemed caught in the paradox of wanting their sexuality to be recognised in such a way as to be as inconspicuous as that of their heterosexual peers. (Tonini 2016: 60) It also underscores that “they had no clear words to define what they felt” (ibid.: 69). If this is the scenario of the metropolitan city of Delhi, one can easily assume the manifold challenges that are faced by the non-metropolitan queer individuals. Drawing our attention to the non-metropolitan, ‘ordinary’ cities (Brown 2008) of India, Kiran Bhairannavar in the article titled “Queer in Karnataka: Exploring Male Same-Sex Sexualities in the Non-Metropolitan” provides a microcosmic picture of the macro crisis that all the queer people of non-metropolitan India faces in terms of lack of infrastructure and belongingness. Using an ethnographic approach to study men who practise same sex sexualities in cities, towns and rural areas of Karnataka, this chapter by Kiran Bhairannavar aims to bring out the nuances of how men understand, communicate and put into practice queer lives. It is argued that the characteristics of the non-metropolitan put strong limits for men to pursue their sexualities. Nevertheless, men navigate these limitations by materializing sexual practices

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  9 through a constellation of strategies and spatial networks worked through online mediums that run connecting towns, villages and cities. In the process they produce distinct geographies of non-metropolitan sexualities, which can be seen as vernacular ‘tactics’, as De Certeau (1984) calls them while referring to the local methods that individuals of the ‘despised sexuality’ (Fraser 1995) use to resist the systematic ‘strategies’ of otherization. Alvin K. Wong has tried to theorize ‘queer vernacularism’ based on “the material conditions of late modernity, lingering colonial legacy, and illiberal pragmatism” that “produce uneven processes and representations of queer urbanism” (Wong 2020: 4). However, the hijra community of India represents a different kind of queer vernacularism that not only reveals specific cultural traits of a particular region but also seem to have been neither much hybridized by the colonial impact nor easily homogenized by the postcolonial nation building process. Hijra is not only a vernacularized regional variant of the transnational category of transgender, but they have a distinct cultural heritage and a codified language. Vernacularization, as Christian Lee Novetzke has suggested, denotes not only the use of a specific language, but also the effect this use of language has had on a given culture and polity. It is not only language that is available for ‘vernacularization’ but also other expressive idioms, like art, dance, music, and all other spheres of affect (gestures, clothing, etc.). (Novetzke 2016: 6) Hijras, with their unique traditions of culture, religion, kinship and language, along with their distinctive gestures and dressings, can be regarded as embodiments of queer vernacularization. “A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture: Revisiting the Lingua Franca of the Hijra Community” by Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu analyses the strategies of traditional hijra cult of hiding the meaning of language over the conversation with codes. Through original ethnographic work with various hijra communities in different locales of India in a different time span, the study reveals a wide range of culturally embedded structure of the secret language which, linguistically, is a hybrid of Hindi-Urdu grammar and has a unique vocabulary of an unknown source. It is known as Hijra Farsi or Ultibhasa. The analysis demonstrates with contextual politics that despite being unique, hijra language contains various syntactical and morphological elements of sentence similar to other standard languages. It is not only a secret conversation mechanism that marks Hijras as a separate distinct community in India but also shows how this queer vernacularization acts as a mode of counter-exclusion, where the ‘mainstream’ gets excluded from the queer vernacular knowledge. The secret language is not exposed to the people who are not a part of the hijra community. This adds a new dimension to the nature of the hijra subalternity. Unlike the accepted notion of a subaltern who cannot speak or is not heard of, the queer vernacularization of hijra community through which the

10  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty codified language is prohibited from being accessed by the ‘mainstream’, may be seen as a rejoinder to the otherization that the hijras face from the hands of the ‘mainstream’. Queer and the Bhasa Literature Popular outlook towards gender variance in vernacular languages of India has always been an ambivalent one. For example, in Meitei culture of Manipur or Meiteilon, on the one hand, people seem to prefer a puritanist way of indirect reference to things related to sex (for example, instead of saying “Thu nanaba”, meaning “to have sex” or “sex”, people would rather use “haktinnaba” or “sharing one’s entitlements” and “yumban bagi mari”, which means “marital relationship”), yet on the other hand, there has been the traditional theatrical practice of Shumang Lila where the audience accept and enjoy the men performing queerly the female roles. Pratiksha Baxi has suggested that the registration of ‘friendship agreement’ or ‘maitri karar’, quite accepted in Gujarat until it was banned in 1983, was mainly a ‘Companionship contract’ between “a male and a female”; “Yet maîtri karar has also been used as a resource by women in intimate relationships with women.” (Baxi 2008:83). The popularity of Vasudhendra’s Mohanaswamy, which has been originally written in Kannada and thereafter translated into other languages, underscores the growing interest of the vernacular readers towards the queer as a subject. Bindumadhav Khire’s queer Marathi novel Partner, Kishor Kumar’s gay autobiography Randu Purushanmar Chumbikkumbol (When Two Men Kiss),Vijayaraja Mallika and Jayan K. Cherian’s queer poems, all written in Malayalam, are a few examples of how the queer bhasha literature is slowly coming out of the closet. The second section of this book, LGBTQ+ and the Regional Literature, provides a survey of the portrayal of the queer in select vernacular literature. Tamil queer texts like Samutiram’s Vada Malli (Unfading Jasmine), Kutti Revathi’s short stories, Karichan Kunju’s novel Pacittamanitam (Hungry Humanity) and Tanjai Prakash’s novels Kallam (Deception) and Karamuntar Vutu (Karamuntar House) have attempted to negotiate with homophobia and address the fraught intersections between queer sexuality, caste and religion. “Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves: Tirunangai Autobiographies in Tamil” by Kiran Keshavamurthy is a comparative study of autobiographies by two Tamil tirunangai (transwomen) writers and activists: A. Revathi’s The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story and Tanuja Singam’s An Autobiography: Tanuja, an Eezham Tirunangai’s Journey and Struggle. Coined by the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, M. Karunanidhi, tirunangai is a portmanteau word that has been formed by joining thiru, meaning mister, and nangai, meaning woman. The experiences of stigma, discrimination, humiliation, violence, and social and political disenfranchisement constitute the female subjectivities and agency of the tirunangais. The chapter traces the trajectory

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  11 of how both of them emerge as activists who are determined to eradicate stigma and ensure a life of equality and dignity for transgender people. While literary work on the same sex relationships has been less in Assamese language, the works of Pranjal Sharma Baishistha, Gobinda Prasad Sharma, Arup Kumar Nath, Jayanta Saikia, Aruni Kashyap, Geetali Dutta, Moushumi Kandali, Monikuntala Bhattacharya, Dr Akashitara, and Rudrani Sharma in the form of articles, short stories and novels have informed about what being a “queer” person in Assamese society entails—fears, anxieties, uncertainties andrejections. Moushumi Kandali’s Tritiyottor Golpo (A Tale of Thirdness), which came out in 2007, was the first Assamese short story collection to deal with queer issues. Published in 2010, Monikuntala Bhattacharya’s Mukti (Liberation) is considered the first Assamese gay novel. Dr Akashitara released her queer novel Nisiddha (Forbidden) in 2011. Rudrani Sharma published a trans-centric novel titled Tribhooj (Triangle) in 2020. The next chapter, “‘They’ Are Queer: Transgressing Gender Normativity in Vernacular Assamese Literature” by Tonmoyee Rani Neog and Rimpi Borah elaborates on authors like Panchanan Hazarika and his golpos (stories) along with Bipasha Bora’s work ‘Mou Makhir Xomrajya’ (The Kingdom of the Honey Bees) that reveal how different forms of writing and experiencing the self-identified queerness act as a resistance to gender normativity in Assamese literature. This chapter seeks to explore how spaces (public and private) in Hazarika and Bora’s fictions are lived by the characters and the manner in which resistance is understood as constitutive of their agency. In Urdu literature queer people has been used in different specific terms, i.e. Amrad Parast, Aghlam Baaz, Bachha Baaz, Mokhannas, Humjins Parast, Londa, Hijra, Khawaja Sara, Naunehal, Londe Baaz, Shahid Baaz, Zankhawah, Neem Mard, Tiflan Paarizad, Looti, Nisf Nazuk, etc. In Urdu literature one comes across in ‘Rekhti’, various terms like ‘Dugana’, ‘Yagana’, ‘Zankhi’, ‘Begana’, ‘Sakhi’, ‘Ilachi’, ‘Wari’ and ‘Piyari’ used for female beloved. Rangin was the first Urdu writer to write about women Humjins Parasti (lesbianism) in the work titled ‘Angekhta’ (The Aroused). Insha was another writer, who wrote extensively on lesbian love. Ifti Nasim was a gay writer and his best known book, Nirman (Hermaphrodite or half man, half woman), is very famous among Urdu-speaking people. Some female Urdu writers like Ismat Chughtai, Wajda Tabassum, Khadija Mastoor, Hajra Masroor and Fahmida Reyaz have incorporated in their writings various queer issues, especially lesbianism. Ismat Chughtai is well known for her controversial lesbian short story ‘Lihaaf’ (The Quilt). After Ismat, a lot of Urdu novels have focused on queer subjects, i.e. Dil-e-Muztar (‘The Anxious Heart’ by Mehwish Chaudhary), Mujhe Sandal Kardo (‘Turn Me into Sandalwood’ by Nimra Noor), Nazuk Hai Rishta Dil Ka (‘Tender is the Connection of the Heart’ by Asia Saleem Qureshi), Hostel ki Ladkiyan (‘Girls of the Hostel’ by Jawed Khan Afridi), Kuchh Pagal Pagal Se Hum (‘We Are Little Eccentric’ by Farhat Ishtiaq) and so on. The last chapter of this section, “Urdu and the Queer Consciousness” by Omar Ghazali, provides a

12  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty genealogy of the queer consciousness in contemporary Urdu literature along with the gradual transformations in the treatment of queer themes that have been taking place in contemporary Urdu literary domain. Reel, Real and the Virtual The queer people from the villages and mofussils are often compelled to migrate to cities as one hardly has any possibility of a determined queer encounter in their native places. Even in the dislocated land the same sex encounters of the vernacular queer people time and again make them mostly feel not ‘at home’. Seabrook, in his study based on men who come to have sex with men inside a park located in Delhi, has shown that the internal migration of queer people from various provinces of India in search of finding love and relationship mostly ends up in reinforcing a deep sense alienation: “But in India: you cannot think of living together, or making a home, of staying in the same place. …you have to make your life in secret” (Seabrook 1999: 130), says a person, while another visitor grumbles, “I am hungry for love, and I know that such relationships are hard to find in Delhi.” (ibid.: 132). These statements authenticate Anguila’s observation that “While the experience to migration expands the opportunities for sex…migration has the opposite effect: they see their possibilities for developing a romantic relationship or engaging in occasional sex, reduced” (Anguila 2014: 194) that in turn, enhances isolation. The other alternative for the Indian regional queer, in contemporary times, is that of building an intimate interconnected community through the cyber homepages as opposed to being-at-exile in one’s own house. Sometimes the online profiles affirm the actual location of the queer individuals, but out of fear of getting exposed to known people, often the queer people of the small towns and villages set their location at a faraway place from their actual locality on the dating sites. By continuing to change their locations, by opening up multiple profiles in different locations, queer from vernacular locales try to perform a togetherness in the virtual domain, where the web homes of ‘psychical reality’, howsoever temporal, seems to get constructed by these communities of ‘unfreedoms’. The third section of the book, Performing the Vernacular Queer Offline, Online and on Screen, deals with the real and virtual performances of the regional queer along with the depiction of the queer in vernacular cinema. “Mawngkuahur in the times of E-Love: Sexualities, Regimentation, Control, Display and the Zo Queer” by Anup Shekhar Chakraborty offers a critique of the process that has resulted in making the ethnic queer ‘invisible’, and drive forward a patriarchal driven image of the ‘self’, by injecting images of ‘sacred and profane’ into the proselytized Zo/Mizo cosmology. Colonial encounter and the wave of Proselytization had accelerated the process of ‘Localization of the Gospel’. The assimilation and retention of the chauvinistic traditional Zo practices and the Judeo-Christian ‘notions of original sin and sexuality’ went hand in hand. Homosexuality was criminalized in 1909

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  13 through a statute (Order No. 3 of 1909. 10) issued by the superintendent of the then Lushai Hills, H.W.G. Cole. In their zeal to build an Ideal Zo Christian State, the Churches and the nexus of patriarchy have invested vociferously in controlling sexualities, especially the ‘homosexual’ (male: Tuai/female: Patil). The overarching notion of ‘Sin’ and sinful act inherited from the Biblical narratives of Sodom and Gomorrah continues to regulate the social imageries and vernacular slur among the Zohnahthlak. The abominable sin of sodomy (anal penetration) began to define the homosexual man (Tuai) as ‘mawngkuahur’ (lit. Insatiable rectum). Anup Shekhar Chakraborty has delineated how in the era of decriminalizing Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code by the Supreme Court of India, the churches and the nexus of patriarchy began their policing regime in the ‘this worldly’ (lit. khawvel) activities through ethnic prohibition rules (lit. Thiang leh Thiang lo) in both the real and the digitally configured virtual spaces. In this context, cyberspace opens up the possibility of disengaging the constrictions in the physical spaces and appears to set free the Zo Queer towards a khawvel (lit. world) to find survival, anonymity, and collective solidarity hinged on personal experiences of discrimination. The rise of a Pink economy/Pink market enables the Zo Queer to acquire skills and a chance to express choices and perform E-Love without inhibitions. The urban spaces provide avenues for virtual community building and bonding through digital networks. The chapter complicates the limits of the gating of virtual spaces/cyberspaces and the changes in the semantics of the vernacular slur in the Mizo language. Dr Chakraborty has also attempted to chart the negotiations of the Zo Queer in the slippery and knotty realms of thepolitics of sexualities, regimentation and control that operates in the North East Indian state of Mizoram. Amrita Pritam Gogoi’s “The Many Bodies of the Vernacular: Negotiating Queer Identity in the Public and Virtual Domains of Assam”, the next chapter of this section, explores the recent online and offline articulation of queer identities in Assam. Queerscape (2021) published by NEthing, with a foreword by Mayuri Deka, with 23 contributors in three languages (English, Assamese and Hindi) reflects the sincere efforts towards forging in solidarities and bridging barriers of communicating the agony of invisibility, isolation, rejection and depression. Even the social media pages by different collectives working on the area (for example, Dristi: A Queer Collective, Xobdo, Progotoxil, Sage: The Barak Queer Collective) are seen to be actively involved in the mobilization of their experiences, emotions and memories for the assertion of their rights, identities and bodies. To make these lives visible, Dristi: A Queer Collective is particularly seen to have been emphasizing the articulation of ideas and experiences in Assamese in its workshops and conversations. Using materials published and unpublished, resorting also to virtual ethnography (over Facebook and Instagram particularly) and interactions with some of these authors, poets, organizers and publishers this chapter evaluates the manner in which the vernacular is used to problematize established patriarchal norms that govern families, societies and polities in Assam. Amrita Pritam Gogoi has

14  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty tried to identify how elements of misogyny, effemimania, hyper-masculinity and other discriminatory hierarchical cultures are not only addressed but rather contested by the efforts made at inventing alternatives to these norms. Cinema fosters social change and gives positive representations to people who are discriminated against on the grounds of sex, gender and sexuality. “Queer Assam on Celluloid: Locating Queer Characters in Bulbul Can Sing and Fireflies-Jonaki Porua” by Anupom Kumar Hazarika begins with the declaration that for most of the Assamese viewers, alternative sexualities are taboo subjects. The presence of queer characters in Assamese cinema, especially as main protagonists, is a relatively recent phenomenon and has only lately drawn scholarly attention. Contemporary Assamese films such as Bulbul Can Sing (2018) and Jonaki Porua (Fireflies) (2019) seek to give voice to queer characters. Directed by Rima Das, Bulbul Can Sing revolves around three teenagers—Bulbul, Bonny and Sumu—and has the countryside as its setting. Jonaki Porua (Fireflies), directed and written by Prakash Deka, tells the story of Jahnu who lives in a remote village in rural Assam. Drawing on gender and queer theory, this chapter analyses the two films and illustrates how by moving beyond the clichés of metronormativity, these two Assamese films have depicted the queer vernacular lives that exist in the periphery. Deciphering the Dearth The vernacular, as Kunso has proposed, is a relational term that reveals multiple contestations: exclusionary history versus reinvention of it through self-discoveries/identifications, commodification versus preservation of the ecologies of local knowledges, (neo)coloniality of the state versus the state of neotraditional assertions, absence in the everydayness versus presence in the memories, etc. (Kusno 2020: 6). As Navaneetha Mokkil has rightly pointed out, the “vernacular formations of the politics of sexuality” is “marked by mourning and loss, failure and rewriting” which “cannot be contained within scripts of visibility, rights, and recognition” but needs to be traced through “the noncohesive registers of sexuality” that exist in various “linguistic and spatial locations in India” (Mokkil 2019: 5) along with deconstructing of the culture of silences that exist around queerness in the vernacular cultures. Queer Invisibility and the Linguistic Community is the next section of the book that tries to understand the reasons behind the paucity of representation of the regional queer in vernacular languages and cultures. A queer person, as Butler has remarked, is silenced by the language they speak: lesbians and gay men … cannot assume the position of the speaking subject within the linguistic system of compulsory heterosexuality. To speak within the system is to be deprived of the possibility of speech; hence, to speak at all in that context is a performative contradiction, the linguistic assertion of a self that cannot ‘be’ within the language that asserts it. (Butler 1990: 116)

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  15 There are, however, multiple layers of queer silencing in vernacular languages and cultures: Silence itself—the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between speakers—is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within overall strategies … There are not one but many silences.” (Foucault et al. 1978: 27) Apart from Aijaz Ahmad Bund’s Hijras of Kashmir: A Marginalised Form of Personhood, a handful of anonymous narratives on the internet and a clutch of news articles on the pitiable economic condition of Kashmir’s transgender community, no record exists of any queer writing in Kashmir. How must this silence be explained or interpreted? The usual answer is that Kashmir is a ‘conservative’ Muslim society, where queerness is a great taboo, and so queerness is necessary stifled. Huzaifa Pandit’s “The Many ‘Queer’ Silences: Competing Masculinities in Kashmir” argues that such reductive posturing neither does justice to the complexity of the phenomenon of queer ‘silence’, nor takes into consideration that aversion, and hostility to queerness is a pan South-Asian phenomenon. ‘Queer Silence’ in Kashmir, according to the author, can only be understood in the context of the larger project of silencing and erasure undertaken by the state to crush dissent and resistance against ‘military occupation’ aided by an ideological apparatus. With the rise of right wing BJP and its complete domination over the political landscape of Kashmir, the project of silencing has taken an unprecedented urgency, whose inevitable consequence has been the fetishization of the Hindu nationalist reworkings of misogynist notions of gender and heterosexist notions of sexual normativity imposed through colonialism. These effects are manifested in a binary in which qualities of virile, militaristic masculinity combined with obligatory asexuality (for Hindu nationalist leaders) and forced heterosexuality (for Hindu nationalized masses) are valorized and placed in opposition to queerness (assigned to all Others especially Kashmiris). In this scheme, queer gender and sexuality are constructed as already outside the Hindu nation. The masculine ‘jawan’ becomes the embodiment of the Indian state who disciplines the effeminate, and queer Kashmir. In response, the ‘mujahid’, who picks up arms against the state or the stone pelter who become symbols of defiance, is again framed as an ‘alpha male’ and the embodiment of repressed masculinity. Between the two competing discourses of masculinity lies the ordinary Kashmiri who are left with no site of ‘coming out’ as all avenues of expression of desire, including the internet, are policed by the state carefully for erasing dissent, while dissent itself is expressed in strictly ‘heteropatriarchal’ frames. Complicating this idealization of masculinity is the intervention of ‘pink-washing’—the

16  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty claims of Indian state and its ‘queer allies’ that the much despised revocation of Article 370 and further stripping the autonomy of the region by converting into a Union Territory will ensure that the queerness will be decriminalized in Kashmir as in the mainland. The ‘queer’ subject then finds itself in an unenviable tussle of being caught not only between competing frames of hetero-masculinity but also being reviled as an auxiliary of occupation. This chapter, therefore, depicts the ‘queer silences’ in the context of the competing frames of ‘masculinity’ and underscores the fragile ‘queerness’, which emerges as an apt trope to understand the silencing articulation of Kashmiri desire. The next chapter focuses on Konkani. Konkani, as one of the 22 Scheduled Languages in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution and a member of the Indo-Aryan language group, is a minority language in the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat, and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Until it became the State Language of the Indian state of Goa, Konkani has never been the language of power or administration. According to the 1991 Census, as compared to the national average of 19.44% for bilingualism and 7.26% for trilingualism, Konkani speakers scored 74.20% and 44.68% respectively. This makes Konkanis the most multilingual community of India. “In Search of the Queer in (Catholic)Konkani: Silence, Slurs and the Spectacular” by Kevin Frank Fernandes identifies and explores some of the ways in which the Queer is articulated in the Konkani linguistic and socio-cultural universe, specifically focusing on Roman Catholic communities. Being “non-normative” or seen as deviant in the eyes of heteropatriarchal Catholicism, what are the slurs and slang expressions used in the Konkani universe to describe non-normative behaviour surrounding gender and sexuality? Do these words originate in Konkani or as a language that is constantly in conversation with other languages is there borrowing? Does the absence of vocabulary suggest a historical absence of queer identities? What are the ways in which non-heteropatriarchal identities are lived and articulated? Or are they articulated at all? What role does migration to urban centres like Mumbai, Pune or Bangalore, or the Middle East play in realizing queer identities, and if there is silence surrounding them in Konkani, how to individuals think of these identities and articulate them in new contexts? These are the few questions that are critically raised by Kevin Frank Fernandes. Located in his own Konkani Catholic experiences, the author initiates a ‘search’ for the queer in Konkani through interviews with LGBTQ+ individuals located across Mangalore, Goa and Mumbai, scholars of Konkani, and through lived experiences. This oral ethnography becomes very important, particular in the absence of a strong written culture. A textual and discourse analysis has been made of the same. An attempt has also been made to narrativize the Pride de Goa, i.e. the Pride March of Goa, which began in 2017, to understand its impact on the notion of the queer in Konkani.

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  17 Voicing the Regional Queer in Vernacular Underscoring the fact that “The idiom ‘coming out of the closet’ is Eurocentric, as often, the choice for the act of pronouncement is unavailable to Indian gay men” (Mishra 2020: 361), Jayaprakash Mishra has argued that the gay Indian men oscillate between “‘homoromantic’ desire and heteronormative expectations. … The idea of repaying the family by entering into a mixedorientation marriage is internalised by the gay men to such an extent that they often believe it to be their decision” (ibid.: 368). Voicing the unsayable remains central for those who desire to live a life of transformative action. Britzman’s assertion that “the Queer and the theory in Queer Theory signify actions, not actors” (Britzman 1995: 153) is the guiding principle behind the formulation of the concluding section of this volume—Making the Queer Visible in the Vernacular Culture. This section consists of two chapters that scrutinize how the people who live the ‘life of ideas’—especially writers and film makers—have engaged in ‘actions’ in order to uphold the power seen in the shaky relationship between the representational and the ‘real;’ make narrators, readers and narration suspect; celebrate unruly perspectives and discontinuous experiences; disturb simple notions of life; complicate that which is undemanding; explore the politics of (re)membering; posture that seeing is not believing; and allow people to live in the disarray that constitutes much of human existence (Grace et al. 2004: 319) in general and of the provincial queer in particular. In “Exploring Queer Literature in Nepali from the Hills of Darjeeling and Sikkim”, Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang have attempted to bridge the glaring gap that has existed in the field of queer literary and social research in relation to the hills of Darjeeling and Sikkim. Through semi-structured interviews of some self-identified queer individuals who are located in the comparative spatial settings of both urban and rural Darjeeling Himalaya and Sikkim, the research, first, has explored specific ‘queer’ Nepali terms and coinages prevalent in the Hills, their awareness and their attendant linguistic politics that cut across socio-economic classes. Second, the study has also examined contemporary literature and films in the Nepali language that have been produced by queer poets/authors/film makers from the Hills in order to explore the linguistic politics of expression invested in such textual representations. Thus, through a focus on the expression and representation of queerness in Nepali, this study has elicited subjective understanding of queer sexualities specific to the Darjeeling-Sikkim Hills and how queer individuals negotiate heteronormativity. “Voices of Survival: LGBTQ+ Representations in Literary/Cinematic/ Creative Texts in Bangla” by Himadri Roy is the concluding chapter of this

18  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty book. Unlike most of the vernacular literature in India that has hesitated to do justice in expressing the exact voices of the LGBTQ+ community, Bangla bhasha has quite excelled in representing the LGBTQ+ community in its literary, visual and fine arts. The queer gaze in the representation did internalize the arts beyond its surrealism and transformed the objectification into subjectifying the queer identity in Bangla. Whether in literature, like Holde Golap (Yellow Rose), Chhayar Prashad (The Palace of Shadows), or Uttaran (Ascension), or in films, like Arekti Premer Golpo (Just Another Love Story), and Nagarkirtan (Neighbourhood Kirtan), or queer fine artists, like Anup Let, Sawaan Taank, or others—all creative artists have interchangeably used the LGBTQ+ icons, symbols or sub-cultures to create an ambience of acceptance of not only memories, feelings, impressions, perceptions and names; but also formulate a meta-narrative of recognition, reconstruction and renegotiation of queerness that exists in West Bengal. Queering the heteronormative patriarchal mainstream creative art of all forms has always been the main intention of representation, but beyond such representation, queer performativity of inclusion, prototyping personography of the queer people in the socio-cultural structure are also subjectified. This chapter by Prof. Roy has tried to probe into such cartographies of representations of expressions and experiences that question not only the heterosexual conformism, but also criticizes the inclusivity and unified subjectivity of all members of the community within the queer rubric through examination of literary/cinematic/artistic texts available in Bangla, in the context of consuming cultures through post-individual, post-body and post-class of the Bengali society. Methodology and Politics of the Book From the conventional standpoint, the methodology of this book might appear to be flawed as there is no consistency of method—the method deployed by the various authors ranges from the conceptual to the anecdotal, to analysis of literary and cinematic texts. However, this methodological messiness is the fundamental characteristic of the ‘scavenger methodology’: A queer methodology, in a way, is a scavenger methodology that uses different methods to collect and produce information on subjects who have been deliberately or accidentally excluded from traditional studies of human behavior. The queer methodology attempts to combine methods that are often cast as being at odds with each other. (Halberstam 1998:13) In complete agreement with the view that queer issues need to be “addressed through a plethora of methods, and all methods can be put to the task of questioning normativities” (Browne and Nash 2010:12), the individual authors of his volume have used their suitable methodologies so that there is enough safeguard against not to “create orthodoxies, forcing closure around

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  19 multiple socials, methods and the myriad ways of knowing the mess of social life” (ibid.:15)of the queer people as reflected in the vernacular texts and cultures of India. From the point of methodology, this book with its melded methods, thus, “remains multidisciplinary, a promiscuous rogue in a field of focused monogamists.” (Halberstam 2003:362). To highlight the politics of the book by underscoring the ideological positioning seems important, as there can be questions about the overall intention of this work. For instance, like one of our reviewers, it might appear to some of the readers, that the need of the hour is not to create further divides among India’s already marginalized queer community on the basis of Englishspeaking metropolitan and the vernacular, but to come together to press for issues like the legalization of same-sex marriage which are all the more relevant in a post-Covid world. Our politics is not at all divisive but is aimed at indigenization of queer studies in order to reveal how the queers in India perceive themselves as ‘being singular plural’: ‘queer’ identity ‘assembles’ the LGBTQIA+ people of India—who represent dissimilarities that arise out of the differences in class, religion, caste, locale etc—“insofar as it spaces them; they are ‘linked’ insofar as they are not unified” (Nancy 2000:37). Echoing the comments of one of the reviewers, some of the readers might also feel that the book is trying to falsely construct that vernacular queers are at the receiving end from the metropolitan English-speaking queers: The equation of non-English speaking with non-metropolitan and English speaking with metropolitan is an over-simplification and reductive. There are enough non-English speaking gay men and women in India’s metropolitan cities. Likewise, there are gay support groups like Humsafar Trust in metropolitan Bombay, Samapathik Trust in metropolitan Pune and Sangama in metropolitan Bangalore. Hijras like Laxmi Narayan Tripathi speak English fluently. Bilingualism is a universal trait among Indians across the gender and sexuality spectrum. Although it cannot be denied that there is “room for an in-between space that we may tentatively call the Metropolis-in-the-Province” (Rao 2016:199), nevertheless, Maya Sharma’s remarks in her recent book are also very pertinent: As the queer community began to engage legally and the numbers at Pride parades continued to swell, we realised that the interiority of subjects living away from urban societies remained enigmatic, almost invisible. … Whilst working on the ground, we began to gather a sense of these significant differences and disparities: between rural and urban. (Sharma 2022:x, xi) This book is an effort to make the vernacular Indian queer community more visible. The ultimate question, thereafter, is how should this work which

20  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty propagates indigenization make enough provision in order not to end up promoting divisive queer nativism? To answer this, one needs to return to the Indian scholars who have indigenized the notion of nativism itself in the context of India: Nativism or Desivad, according to G.N. Devy, “sees writing as a social act” (Devy 1995:120); and as Satchidanandan has aptly suggested in his essay, “Defining the Premises: Nativism and Its Ambivalences”: “Indian culture is no monolith … they have many tongues and many voices, many hues and many worldviews … [that] have co-existed in the Indian literary landscape for centuries, giving and taking, teaching and learning from one another” (Satchidanandan 1996:15). Based on Sudhir Kumar’s plea for rendering as many Nativisms as possible (Kumar 1996:125), this book about the pluricultures of Indian vernacular queer communities is also an endeavour towards making the continued fight of the non-metropolitan-regional queer communities of India detectable amidst underrepresentation. Limitations and Possibilities To vernacularize, as Grant Farred has suggested, is to “Explore and explicate the links between the popular and the political” (Farred 2003:1). Queering the vernaculars is essential for underscoring the politics of, what Phillipson calls, the ‘linguistic imperialism’ in relation to the rendering of the queer issues. From the standpoint of queer studies, ‘linguistic imperialism’ can be perceived as “a theoretical construct, devised to account for linguistic hierarchisation, to address issues of why some languages come to be used more and others less” in terms of the depiction of the queer, and “what structures and ideologies facilitate such processes” (Phillipson 1997: 238). Representing the vernacular languages in India in a single book is not possible. However, the select vernaculars that have been studied in relation to the cultures of the queer communities would surely inspire others to carry out similar studies in other vernacular languages. Despite our earnest attempts, we have failed to include adequate languages that are yet to be included in the 8th schedule of Indian Constitution. Another limitation of this book is that it does not include the languages that are predominantly oral. Vernacularity indicates the commitment to reject the “accepted, dominant intellectual modality and vocabulary”, along with the urge for the adoption of a new positioning and idiomatic language. It also signals a turning toward, not in a nostalgic but in a considered and deliberate fashion, and (re)connection to an originary—but not necessary umbilical—community: it marks the initiation of that process when the conventionally trained intellectual is ideologically remade through culture—the culture of the subjugated. (Farred 2003: 11)

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  21 Hence, any engagement with vernacularity must deal with the ‘originary’ culture of the oral traditions of the indigenous communities. In order to curtail the dearth, an attempt has been made towards retelling and queering of a folktale13 of the Mising communities—the indigenous people who are originally from the hills of Arunachal Pradesh but have migrated in majority to Assam. The Mising language has emerged out of the Tani subgroup of Tibeto-Burman—specifically, from the Eastern branch of Tani (Doley and Post 2012). The queer representations in the oral traditions of these vernacular languages of the indigenous people are not always explicit, but rather symbolic. However, as Bourdieu has observed, the symbolic representation of the subalterns like the queer people of the vernacular cultures, is crucial for the “truly magical power” that it gives to the group and which is a representation of the group itself and of its relation to other groups. As a representative linked to those he represents by a sort of rational contract, he is also a champion, united by a magical relation of identification with those who, as the saying goes, ‘pin all their hopes on him’. (Bourdieu 1991: 21) How the Horned Owls Originated

The Misings consider the calling of the horned owls as inauspicious. Calling from the horn owls can be heard in a sequence—call from a male or a female one is instantly responded by another one from the opposite sex. There is a sad story popular among the Mising community that tries to reveal the reason behind the origin of the horned owls and the instant correspondence between a male and a female one. Long time back there lived two boys in a village. They were very intimate friends. During the rainy season they used to lay the net in the stream and after early morning would go and collect the fishes. One day an evil spirit, jo-g, began to haunt the stream and ate up all the fishes from the net. Next day at the cockcrow when the two friends came to check the net they were surprised and sad to find the net empty. They planned to return a bit earlier before dawn the very next day so that they could get hold of the thief that might have been stealing the fishes. Having overheard the jo-g became furious. “Tomorrow I will take the form of one boy and bring him here before the other one comes to call”, thought the jo-g. Accordingly the jo-g took the shape of one friend and called the other much earlier than the cockcrow. The other friend took him as his real friend and accompanied him until the jo-g, after reaching the stream, revealed the real identity. The boy began to run. But the jo-g caught hold of him, detached his head from the body and drank his entire blood. The other boy went to call his friend. He was annoyed to find that his friend had left without waiting for him. While he was about to reach the stream,

22  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty he found that a rolling head was approaching him. He became very scared and climbed up a tree. The rolling head stopped by the tree and started calling out: “Friend”. The boy on the top of the tree recognised that it was the head of his friend and he responded immediately: “Friend”. The head replied back. They went on calling each other as friends. Soon the boy was turned into a male horned owl and the head was transformed into a female one. This is how the horned owls were originated and even today if one gives a call, the other responses instantly. The transformation of the two boys into a heterosexual pair of birds reveals the sexual non-conformity that had to be punished by perceiving the nonconformity as transgression. The information that the process of transformation in the indigenous domain through invisibilizing the queer has been brought out by an evil spirit, provides a clue about the neo-colonial intrusion of the non-ethnic ‘mainstream’ that is evil enough to alter the janajati domain of sexual liberty into a replica of the tabooed ‘mainstream’—hence, heteronormativity has to be projected as the sole norm. Coda Shalmalee Palekar’s anxiety on decontextualizing queer concerns that are specific to the various postcolonial societies, underscores the significance of studying the varied representations of the queer in vernacular cultures of India: Queer researchers from postcolonizing societies are increasingly wary of the ways in which US-centric ideas of what constitutes queerness are becoming tools of ‘legitimization’ and in turn, neo-imperialist control. Culturally specific literary practices and communities are often appropriated and decontextualized by researchers in search of proof of a globally legible and transparently translatable queer experience/identity. … When framing/translating queer communities and cultures, then, it is unwise to reject all queer theory as an instrument of imperialistic hegemony on the basis of a crude Western/non-Western binary. Rather, it is vital to construct a hybrid queer theory which is capable of accommodating local specificities and pluralities. (Palekar 2017:8) “Instead of looking for the hybridity in homogeneity, the homogeneity in hybridity”, as Geeta Patel has rightly pointed out, studies on queer often “tend to generate purified sexual subjects” (Patel 1997: 138). Hence, there is a ‘transqueer’ (Baldo 2008: 56) necessity to disseminate, through translation, the ‘narrative construction’ (ibid.) of the diversified queer people in the vernacular languages and cultures of India in order to let the differently queer of various vernaculars recover from the wreckages of invisibility and homogeneity. However, having learnt the lessons from the rise of ‘homonationalism’/‘homopopulism’, queering of the vernacular languages and cultures

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  23 should not end up with the engendering of a populist ‘homoregionalism’, where queer community of a particular vernacular culture would start otherizing queer people from other vernacular traditions. Along with G.N. Devy’s avowal on the merit of ‘nativistic awareness’ (1995: 123), one must also remember Nemade’s delineation of ‘desivad’ (nativism) as a pluralistic understanding of “totality of the geography” of India along with the awareness about “all its castes, ethnic communities, sects, religions, traditions, period and places—with their vertical and horizontal intersections”. (Nemade 2009: 30). Nemade has also made us alert by underscoring that “the excess of nativist narcissism can lead a society to extreme self-­ centeredness and ultimately to its downfall” (ibid.: 32). Hence, any attempt towards vernacularizing the queer studies in India should also ensure that it is free from ‘nativist narcissism’ and, therefore, secure from the danger of a rise of ‘homoregionalism’ where the queer persons and their collective cohort might get appropriated by the spokespersons of populist regional/vernacular nationalism. Notes 1 It is a fact that queer communities are often divided based on the faultiness of caste, class, religion, etc. However, as this book is focusing exclusively on a particular unarticulated divide—obscured queer in non-English culture as opposed to the visible English-speaking queer individuals—the other stratifications are beyond the scope of this volume. Hence, queer has been used here as an umbrella term for LGBTQIA+ people. Underscoring how “India has a diverse, complex and elaborate spectrum of same-sex sexual cultures in which sexual minorities have always performed their identities in a variety of ways, in a variety of social spaces and without the political rhetoric of the West”, Subir K. Kole has rightly pointed out that the categorization of ‘LGBTs’ refers only to “the modern/postmodern context of emerging sexual identity categories, and not to denote any traditional sexually minority groups/identities that predated its existence. By this conceptualization, hijras, kothis, kinnars, panthis, jogtas, dangas, alis, double-deckers, chhakkas, dhuranis and any other indigenous communities who identify and relate themselves by sexual practices would not be considered as LGBTs, though, they are commonly referred to as such in most HIV/AIDS and sexuality discourses in India. To avoid this complexity, “queer” is preferred over other terms (though not commonly used in India) by many activists and individuals since it does not confine sexual identities in fixed LGBT categories and allow for much space and ambiguities for diverse sexualities to be included.” (Kole 2007). 2 In this book, “vernacular refers to all non-English Indian languages as a diffused countervailing reality confronting the pre-eminence of English in India. As such, these languages comprise the constitutionally recognized Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil and so on, which in common parlance are referred to as the ‘regional’ languages” (Sheth 169). Also, as a relational term, vernacular is used to denote all that are perceived as local, non-metropolitan and the subaltern. 3 Pushpesh Kumar has rightly pointed out that the state of stigma and negligence of the sexual minorities continues in contemporary India despite the Supreme Court’s reading down of Section 377 of the IPC in September 2018: “The popular discourse in print and electronic media along with the brand market projected the

24  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty recent legal freedom as emancipation for the whole community of ‘sexual minority’ of LGBTQI+. However, the social media discourse also reflected the conflicting interests between the ‘privileged gay’ constituency and transgender persons, the stigmatized and vulnerable segment of Indian queer, rendering the popular discourse of LGBTQI+ community unity spurious” (2020: 2). 4 “Nancy Fraser, coining the term from Gayatri Spivak’s “subaltern” and Rita Felski’s “counterpublic” argues that counterpublics are formed as a response to the exclusions of the dominant publics and that their existence better promotes the ideal of participatory parity” (Kamprouis, 2016). 5 Highlighting the Latin root of verna meaning slave, Ranajit Guha (1992) has argued that vernacular in Indian context serves as a marker of the supremacist sign of English over other languages. 6 “Hegemonic globalizations are in fact globalized localisms—the new cultural imperialisms. Hegemonic globalization can be defined as the process by which a given local phenomenon—be it the English language, Hollywood, fast food, and so on—succeeds in extending its reach over the globe and, by doing so, develops the capacity to designate a rival social phenomenon as local. The communication and complicity allowed for by hegemonic globalization are based on an unequal exchange that cannibalizes differences instead of facilitating the dialogue among them. They are trapped in silences, manipulations, and exclusions.” (Santos, 2016: 147–148). 7 Gayatri Gopinath has used the term ‘queer region’ to denote “the particularities of gender and sexual logics in spaces that exist in a tangential relation to the nation” (Gopinath 2007: 343). 8 For instance, Gay Icons of India (eds. Hoshang Merchant and Akshaya K Rath, Pan Macmillan India. 2019) uses ‘gay’ to refer to Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people. 9 Katyal’s book reveals how the idioms of same sex desire in India are mostly derived from Hindi and Urdu. 10 According to Michel Foucault, “subjugated knowledges” are the outcome of “autonomous, non-centralized kind of theoretical production” that “have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity” (Foucault 1980: 81–82). 11 Regional languages of India. 12 See “The Absence of a Queer ‘Mother Tongue’” by anonymous. Published on 1 May 2018 in In Plainspeak. www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/the-absence-of-a-queermother-tongue/ Accessed on 16 April 2022. 13 For another version of retelling of this folktale, see “Origin of Horned Owl” in Taid 2013: 49–50.

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26  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty Gopinath, Gayatri. 2007. “Queer Region: Locating Lesbians in Sancharram.” In A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies, edited by George E. Haggerty and Molly McGarry, pp. 341–354. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Grace, André P, Robert J. Hill, Corey W. Johnson, and Jamie B. Lewis. 2004. “In Other Words: Queer Voices/Dissident Subjectivities Impelling Social Change”. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 17:3:301–324. Guha, Ranajit. 1992. “The Authority of Vernacular Pasts”. Meanjin, 51(2): 299–302. Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press. ———. 2003. “Reflections on Queer Studies and Queer Pedagogy”. Journal of Homosexuality, 45(2): 361–364. Jenkins, C. 2004. Male Sexuality, Diversity and Culture: Implications for HIV Prevention and Care. Geneva, Switzerland: UNAID. September. Amnesty International. Kamprouis, Ioannis. 2016. “Nancy Fraser: Subaltern Counterpublics”. Critical Legal Thinking, http://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/11/06/nancy-fraser-subalterncoun terpublics/ (Accessed on 1 March 2022). Kapur, Ratna. 2009. “Out of the Colonial Closet, but Still Thinking inside the Box: Regulating Perversion and the Role of Tolerance in Deradicalising the Rights Claims of Sexual Subalterns”. In National University of Juridical Sciences Law Review, 2: 381–396. Katyal, Akhil. 2016. The Doubleness of Sexuality: Idioms of Same-Sex Desire in Modern India. New Delhi: New Text. Khanna, Akshay. 2016. Sexualness. New Delhi: New Text. ———. 2009. “Taming of the Shrewd Meyeli Chhele: A Political Economy of Development’s Sexual Subject”. Development, 52: 43–51. Kole, S.K. 2007. “Globalizing Queer? AIDS, Homophobia and the Politics of Sexual Identity in India”. Global Health, 3:8. https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-3-8 (Accessed on February 5, 2023) Kumar, Pushpesh. 2020. “Mapping Queer ‘Celebratory Moment’ in India: Necropolitics or Substantive Democracy?” Community Development Journal, 1: 1–18. Kumar, Sudhir. 1996. “Nation versus Nativism”. In Nativism: Essays in Criticism, edited by Makarand Paranjape, pp. 113–128. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Kusno, Abidin. 2020. “Reframing the Vernacular and Other Tales”. In Reframing the Vernacular: Politics, Semiotics, and Representation, edited by Gusti Ayu Made Suartika and Julie Nichols, pp. 1–12. Switzerland AG: Springer. McLaughlin, Thomas. 1996. Street Smarts and Critical Theory: Listening to the Vernacular. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Menon, Madhavi. 2018. Infinite variety: A History of Desire in India. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger. Merry, Sally Engle. 2006. “Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle”. American Anthropologist, 108. 1:38–51. Mishra, Jayaprakash. 2020. “Queering Emotion in South Asia: Biographical Narratives of Gay Men in Odisha, India”. Asian Journal of Social Science, 48: 353–374. Mokkil, Navaneetha. 2019. Unruly Figures: Queerness, Sex Work, and the Politics of Sexuality in Kerala. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Mukherjee, Sujit. 1994. Translation as Discovery. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.

Indian Vernaculars and the Queer  27 Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2000. Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Bryne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Naqvi, N. and H. Mujtaba (1997.) “Two Baluchi Buggas, a Sindhi Zenana, and the status of Hijras in contemporary Pakistan”. In Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History and Literature, edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will, Roscoe, pp. 262– 266. New York University Press. New York and London. Nemade, Bhalchandra. Nativism (Desivad). Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study. 2009. Novetzke, Christian Lee. 2016. The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India. New York: Columbia University Press Palekar, Shalmalee. 2017. “Re-mapping Translation: Queerying the crossroads”. In Queer in Translation, edited by B.J. Epstein and Robert Gillett, pp. 8–24. London and New York: Routledge. Patel, Geeta. 1997. “Home, Homo, Hybrid: Translating Gender”. College Literature, 24(1), Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis (February): 133–150. Phillipson, Robert. 1997. “Realities and Myths of Linguistic Imperialism”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18(3):238–247. Pollock, Sheldon I. 2009. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Prabhu, Ruth Dsouza. 2019. “Queer literature in India: Son, are you Mohanaswamy?” The Hindu. 13 July. www.thehindu.com/books/queer-literature-in-india-son-areyou-mohanaswamy/article28400513.ece (Accessed on 2 March 2022) Rao, R. Raj. 2016. “The Metropolis in the Province: Interrogating the New Postcolonial Literature in India”. In Re-Inventing the Postcolonial (in the) Metropolis, edited by Cecile Sandten and Annika Bauer, pp. 191–211. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Reddy, Gayatri. 2005. “Geographies of Contagion: Hijras, Kothis, and the Politics of Sexual Marginality in Hyderabad”. Anthropology and Medicine, 12(3): 255–270. ———. 2005b. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Russell, R. V. 1916. The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Vol. 3. London: Macmillan. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2016. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge. Satchidanandan, K. 1996. “Defining the Premises: Nativism and its Ambivalences”. In Nativism: Essays in Criticism, edited by Makarand Paranjape, pp. 14–27. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Seabrook, Jeremy. 1999. Love in a Different Climate: Men Who Have Sex with Men in India. New York: Verso. Shankar, S. 2012. Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation, and the Vernacular. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. Sharma, Maya. 2007. Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India. New Delhi: Yoda Press. ———. 2022. Footprints of a Queer History: Life-Stories from Gujarat. New Delhi: Yoda Press.

28  Kaustav Chakraborty and Anup Shekhar Chakraborty Sheth, D.L. 2018. At Home with Democracy: A Theory of Indian Politics. Edited with an Introduction by P.R. de Souza. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Taid, Tabu Ram. 2013. Mising Folk Tales. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Taylor, Mark, and Esa Saarinen. 1994. Imagologies: Media Philosophy. New York: Routledge. Tonini, Maria. 2016. The Ambiguities of Recognition: Young Queer Sexualities in Contemporary India. Lund: Lund University. Trivedi, Ira. 2014. India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century. New Delhi: Aleph. Vanita, Ruth, and Saleem Kidwai. 2000. Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History. New Delhi: Macmillan. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2004. “Perspectival Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Equivocation”. Tipití, 2(1): 3–22. Wong, Alvin K. 2020. “Queer vernacularism: Minor Transnationalism Across Hong Kong and Singapore”. Cultural Dynamics, 32: 1–19.

Part I

Vernacular Vocabularies and Expressions of the Regional Queer

1  Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities in the PresentDay Marathi Language Paresh Hate

Introduction How do we conceptualize queer identities in the vernacular Indian languages? While there is no shortage of scholarly writings on the presence of queer practices in the Indian subcontinent, the issue of identification and categorization remains contentious and full of analytic, empirical and political problems. The critical interpretative strategy1 to focus on practices as a way to articulate queer resistance provides a wide repertoire for understanding gendered and sexual subjectivities but seems insufficient in conceptualizing for purposes of mobilization, sociocultural intervention and sensitization. Neither do such strategies take into account the need for vernacularization in India for queerness to facilitate the conceptual accessibility for the non-­ metropolitan, rural, provincialized queer persons in India or other subaltern groups.2 If our goal is to vernacularize queerness, where do we start? The term ‘queer’ with its radical potential may be used but its connotative capacities in languages such as Marathi, the vernacular language this chapter is concerned with, are both alienating and stigmatizing rather than liberating. The term ‘queer’ translates to the Marathi word vichitra, which literally means weird or strange. Neither is there any known attempt by the Marathi queer public sphere to claim the term or its translation for its own political agenda. Similarly, there is hardly any attempt to reclaim the slurs used for the queer community in Marathi as political concepts for self-­determinative purposes. Two popular examples of such slurs that are absent in reclaimed conceptual terrain would suffice to make the point. The first slur term is the word ‘chakka’, which acts as a referential term for the hijra community in India, across languages, including Marathi. The second term is ‘baylya’, which literally means ‘sissy’, ‘unmanly’, or ‘effeminate man’, which is used to target gay men in particular. Given our predicament, what are the possibilities in articulating a conceptual point of view that has the potential to be inclusive of all gendered and sexual subjectivities queer individuals claim for themselves and also have the in-­built possibility to be continually expansive rather than restricted? The Marathi public sphere is at least now fully familiar with conceptions of homosexuality because of the debates on Section 377 of the Indian Penal DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-3

32  Paresh Hate Code, but Marathi queer activists have used terms in Marathi to talk about other identificatory conceptions, too. This is not a language devoid of a conceptual vocabulary for gender and sexual identities. For example, heterosexual is bhinnalingi; homosexual is samlingi; bisexual is ubhaylingi; third gender is trityapanthi; intersex is dwilingi (Khire 2008).3 The discussion on whether these terms are adequate or not will come at a later point in the essay, but I bring these up here to show that there is a conscious and deliberate attempt amongst Marathi queer activists to give articulation to different identities. In this regard, I introduce the term laingik alpasankhya (लैंगिकअल्पसंख्या), or sexual/gendered minorities, used by LGBTI activist Bindumadhav Khire.4 Khire’s concept of laingik alpasankhya, which he explicates in his speeches and interviews, is effectively a triad and allows thinking about each of the three aspects of queerness—identity based on genitalia, identity based on gender phenomenology; and identity based on sexual orientation—mentioned above without reductionistically prioritizing one of them. My goal in this chapter is specifically politico-­theoretical and normative.5 I look into the conceptual frames at the root of political identity formation in the Marathi queer public sphere in a way that makes my normative claims coterminous, desirable and justified by the presence of on-­the-­ground queer politics itself. Looking at the term laingik alpasankhya as an inclusive and expansive category, I try to provide a retrospective philosophical justification for the same. The Need for Conceptualizing Queerness in the Present-Day Marathi Language There are a few reasons why an attempt to conceptualize queerness in the present-­day Marathi language is useful. First, it is difficult to articulate and interpret one’s experiences without adequate vocabulary. For someone who doesn’t have access to a language such as English, which has an extensive and readily expanding set of terms—terms that also bring about vibrant discourse with them—it is difficult for them to find community or express themselves or their sense of self. This can occur due to the Marathi language being the sole linguistic tool available to them (by virtue of factors including caste, class, region and education). It can also occur when that language most centrally shapes one’s interaction with the familial and other kinship systems which occupy a violently important role in present-­day India. In both these cases, the subjects concerned face what is called ‘hermeneutic injustice’ by philosopher Miranda Fricker. This is a situation where the powerful have an unfair advantage in structuring collective social understandings because of their material, institutional, and cultural dominance in contrast to those without power. Fricker defines hermeneutic injustice as the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to structural identity prejudice in the collective

Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities  33 hermeneutical resource (Fricker 2007: 155). As Kristie Dotson describes in her updated account of epistemic injustice, hermeneutic injustice means “our resources for making sense of our worlds can become discriminatory due to an asymmetrical ability of some groups to affect the ways in which a given society makes sense of the world” (Dotson 2012: 29–31). For Marathi-­ speaking queer individuals, this means an absence of conceptual categories that can allow the various Marathi life worlds to be queer-­sensitive in a way that queerness is an obvious part of the social ontology. The lack of such categories can prove incredibly difficult in negotiating day-­to-­day activities. While English terminologies allow exposure to ideas, they do not saturate the purpose of language. For people whose primary or sole language is Marathi, linguistic developments like these are imperative, for both communication with others, and for self-­conceptualizing. These linguistic developments are also ideal for identificatory and relatability reasons. As Fricker, Dotson and other theorists of epistemic injustice suggest, addressing hermeneutic injustice requires a conceptual revolution where we consciously modify the existing schemas of understanding toward a particular direction. In this case, hermeneutical justice will mean developing and having a conceptual vocabulary at one’s disposal to make sense of one’s experiences, convey it to others and mobilize it for certain political ends.6 While there is already something to this effect in the present-­day Marathi language, my goal through this argument is to provide a retrospective philosophical justification for the existence and future development of such linguistic categories. Second, the idea that LGBTI identities are a part and parcel of Western modernity is very strong in much popular consciousness. Many use this as a motivational reason for rejecting (or even embracing) queerness. The ideas of culture and civilizational discourse are very strong and hegemonic. Cultures and civilizations are bifurcated through rigid boundaries. This kind of cultural essentialism inevitably leads to cultural relativism. Here, the implication is that queers, if at all they exist in different societies, are radically different in some sense. I submit that in providing a landscape to talk about queer identities in the present-­day Marathi language, one is able to dispel such faulty assumptions that operate in the postcolonial condition. The old critique that stigmatization and criminalization of queer practices came from Victorian, British colonial ideas of morality is good enough and has obvious historical and political merit. However, the recent past has seen attempts to implicate these now-­trivial facts and turn them into something that fits the general pattern of nationalist historiography. In this nationalist historiography or the versions with residual nationalism intact, it can take many forms— whether motivation for true decolonization, cultural chauvinism, or something else entirely. For my purposes here, I think the goal of cultivating linguistic tools is something we ought to think about. This is also because by using a term that is linguistically local to a milieu, we are able to effectively sidestep the questions of decolonizing, conceptual imperialism and other such fraught discourses for a more fruitful issue—that of translatability. Of

34  Paresh Hate course, here this question of translatability must be answered adequately. At least, with the categories dealt with here, I believe that there is a sense of retaining the original semantic content and expanding the scope of its applicability. How that happens leads to the final reason for appreciating such linguistic developments. Third, such translative practices are important for pedagogical, social and cultural interventions as well as the growth of a linguistic milieu. Ideas of purity of language, resistance to language change and reluctance to incorporate new vocabulary are not new phenomena. But any language with many living speakers is inevitably a living and a breathing vibrant thing and it is important to not characterize a language as an a priori incapable of liberatory or radical possibilities.7 Such a stance of linguistic rigidity is both philosophically suspect and historically false. The obvious question with translation to ask here is whether we are preserving the original sense of the concept in the translated term. But as noted at the end of the last paragraph, our translations are and can be more directional. We should retain the original semantic content but also expand the scope of the applicability. Anything more limited will be inadequate. If semantic content is preserved without expansion of scope, there is a failure to reference and correspond in diverse and novel contexts. This is politically useless since it does not consider the specificities required for the use of such concepts in these contexts. This is also a case of a reference without a referent. If on the other hand, there is an expansion of scope without any semblanceto the original term, then it is not really a translation. Therefore, given the political stakes, it is necessary to have an effective idea and process of translation. We know that many concepts we use are enmeshed in histories of oppression and their circulation is a result of capitalist globalization, NGOization, state regulation and the methodological moves of using theory from the Global North on the empirical fields of the Global South. Translation of the kind I am suggesting will expand the conceptual wherewithal of terms and, in the process, untie them from their origins and modes of transport. This means both preserving the original sense and expanding its semiotic content to apply in a different context. I would suggest that translating terms that are of liberatory value such as ‘queer’ from one context to another increases their scope in an expansive and radical manner, both conceptually and politico-­ semiotically. Insofar as one does this, it is my submission that we do not end up working in the service of a local linguistic nationalism (regardless of it being exclusionary or appropriative) nor do we unwittingly endorse the myth that some concepts, such as queerness, are an exclusive repository of specific geographical locations or specific temporal periods. While terms for some queer identities are already found in the Marathi language as we saw at the beginning, one might complain that this is not true for all the identifications that we notice in social justice circles today, such as asexual or genderqueer. This is a task best left to someone with better resources in the Marathi language. But I think the experiments in the language so far prove that there is nothing inherently impossible in such an endeavour. As the

Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities  35 Marathi queer public sphere grows more in its political and conceptual capacities with developing a broader community with many stakeholders, it is likely that some new terminologies shall become available to us. Nonetheless, the main thrust of my argument is that specific iterations of identities are not enough. For a politics of queerness to survive, diverse identity categories need to be mobilized under some common identificatory referent. Their internal difference and mutual relationship need not be a barrier to such a thing. The common identificatory referent must allow a sufficient, historically grounded but ever-­expanding conceptual space. This requires analytically bringing them together under some criteria. Since these are not ahistorical identities, it seems to me that they need to be brought together by a commonality that is only oppositional. Oppositionality provides the best definition. By oppositionality, I do not simply mean ‘what it is not’, although there is an element of that here. But I also mean a more antagonistic relation to what it is not. This is not to ground our categories and identificatory referents in some kind of Manichaeism. The reason for such antagonism is the real-­world stakes here. Without prioritizing real-­world stakes, we end up with metaphysics. A metaphysics of this kind is undesirable because there is no ontological sameness or a transcendental essence of queerness that these identities share. For that reason, the commonality that I point to is the oppositionality of cisheteronormativity. By ‘cisheteronormativity’, I mean a pervasive system of belief and practices that naturalizes heterosexuality and a binary system of assigned sex/gender where there are two rigid, distinct ways of being: assigned-­male-­at-­birth masculine man and assigned-­female-­at-­birth feminine woman, both of whom experience exclusively hetero-­sexual/romantic attraction. The implication is that the diverse sexual and gendered categories and associated practices that deviate from this script are the Others of cisheteronormativity. They are all routinely punished, made extinct, suppressed, criminalized, discriminated against, maimed, marginalized and made to forget by the script of cisheteronormativity. This very fact of opposition is reason enough to allow us post-­specific iterations of identity rooted in their commonality. A few caveats. I use the term ‘cisheteronormativity’ to delineate groups disproportionately affected and negatively othered by this structure, belief system and set of practices. As mentioned above, rather than sharing an ontological sameness or some essence of queerness, they come together by the historical conditions that produce queer subjectivities. So in a society where there is no cisheteronormativity or a world that has transcended cisheteronormativity completely, these identificatory categories would no longer make much sense. This is not to say that they are undesirable as analytic frameworks or that one cannot use categories of identities to talk about things in very foreign contexts (with necessary qualifications). But their conceptual capacity and semantic meaningfulness are a result of their historical embeddedness. I want to stress this because the capacity of identities to ontologize is quite concerning for many theorists. The reason why I think this

36  Paresh Hate concern is unfounded is that this ‘ontologizing’ is happening at the level of social, not metaphysical. Identificatory criteria have large pragmatic benefits, but their acceptance need not mean extremely thick commitments.8 And as our ideas about queerness evolve, hopefully so will the language to speak to these new ideas with newer articulations of groups, selves, identities, and subjectivities added to this frame—as I will attempt to show in the latter part of this chapter. This is also to say that some subjectivities can co-­exist across historical periods because historical periods are not rigid temporal boxes.9 Second, a political translation requires that there are prudential reasons to politicize groups we are concerned with. This is why the concept of queer politics discussed below does not include groups such as cis straight women who may accurately be identified as members of a group affected and othered by ‘cisheteropatriarchy’ that defines a different kind of structure, belief system, and set of practices. The practical demands of queer politics in the Marathi public sphere necessitate this kind of delineation.10 Finally, while it is clear that the agents most paradigmatically associated with the oppressor classes or those with the most causal efficacy to carry out the acts of the structure are also affected by the same structure (the way men are affected by patriarchy or Brahmins are affected by Brahminical caste order), there is a need to talk about who is the subject of such a normative politics (the way we might say that Black people are the subject of an anti-­ racist politics or migrants are the subject of an anti-­xenophobia politics). In our case, we are talking about anti-­ cisheteronormativity politics or queer politics.11 Consequently, this does not mean that this politics is not for cis straight subjects. A politics can be for something or someone, without them being the subject of that politics.12 Laingik Alpasankhya—What It Is In the following parts of the essay, I will first discuss the concept of laingik alpasankhya, explicate the concepts of laingaik and alpasankhya one by one and discuss the possible reasons why this concept should be seen as a meaningful political vocabulary for collectively identifying queer politics in the Marathi public sphere. My first acquaintance with the concept of laingik alpasankhya was in the speeches of LGBTI activist Bindumadhav Khire. The concept is not unheard of in other contexts in Indian queer politics; both law and activists have made use of this term in different languages of India. The ingenuity of this articulation for me was that it incorporated three different components of queerness that find presence in the collective term LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex). The three components that Khire describes are these: (1) the queerness associated with the genital/ chromosomal/ morphological/ gonadal deviation from typical ‘male’ and ‘female’ characteristics in a body; (2) the queerness associated with the self-­understood psychological gendered self that deviates

Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities  37 from the assigned gender at birth; (3) the queerness associated with the development of sexual orientation that falls outside the ambit of attraction legible under reproductive logic. These three ideas map out identities based on the material body, gender phenomenology, and sexual orientation respectively.13 I have modified the translated articulation to connect it to the umbrella term of queerness. When Bindumadhav Khire discusses it, he refers to the conceptual triad of laingik alpasankhya as a sexual minority. Since the English language makes a distinction between sex and gender, it seems to me that this would be an inadequate translation. This is because Khire’s own use indicates broader concepts at work. Neither do the poststructuralist interventions arguing that sex itself is gendered seem to adequately capture what Khire has in mind here. While Khire does not refer to queer minorities, queer identities are perhaps the most suitable candidate for what he is referring to, not the least because his concept contains the capacity to signify them. The literal translation I have been using is more specifically ‘sexual and gendered minorities’. However, Marathi, unlike English, does not make a distinction between sex and gender. Both are referred to as ling. While there are multiple meanings embedded in this term, the fact that a concept referring to these three aspects is possible to be drawn etymologically and logically is, I think, one of the most useful aspects of it. Now, the three components that Khire refers to are able to capture the politics of LGBTI. The first component refers to intersex; the second refers to transgender; the third to homosexual (gay and lesbian) and bisexual. A cumulative idea that captures the idea of queerness in a certain, although limited, form and politics premised on the structural harm caused by cisheteronormativity is presented through this triad. The Philosophical Substance of Laingik The contemporary conceptualization of laingik does not foreclose the possibility of incorporating other or new groups, selves, identities, and subjectivities in this frame. In this sense, it allows us to go beyond Khire whose thoughts on the matter are politically restrictive. I will try to show this with two examples, one specific to the South Asian context and one with new subjectivities articulated amongst the global queer movement in the recent past. The first is the case of subjectivities such as hijras or kothis that are seen as either a third gender or a formulation of transgender identity. While it is understood today broadly among scholars that the choice of hijras or kothis to self-­identify as a third-­gender person or as a transgender woman depends on strategic, tactical, contextual reasons in terms of navigating institutions of the society and state and they “may deploy various unruly, changeable practices of identification and citizenship arising from complex strategies of survival and self-­assertion” (Dutta and Roy 2014: 333), at the more philosophical level, the second component of the triad concept is able to subsume such cases. There is a psychological concept of gendered self in this instance that

38  Paresh Hate differs from what has been assigned at birth.14 It can help us to philosophically and politically make sense of these cases. As a norm, when we promote gender self-­determination, we are able to talk adequately about cases where a person in such contexts may want to identify as a transgender woman or a third-­gender person. Similar possibilities are available in different cultural contexts with distinct ideas of genders that are not necessarily of ‘man’ or ‘woman’. By this, I mean that the conceptual space of the term laingik alpasankhya, or whatever its equivalent term, can contain not only possibilities in Marathi or India but other non-­ Anglophone cases, whether indigenous Native American or African regions. The second is the case of the non-­binary genders that encompasses many variants (genderqueer, agender, bigender, etc.) and sexual orientations such as pansexual, asexual and others. The former is an instance again of a psychological concept of gendered (or lack thereof) self that differs from what has been assigned at birth while the latter refers to sexual orientations (or orientations that reject sexual) that fall outside the ambit of attraction legible under reproductive logic. This provides evidence that while Khire’s original conception remains limited in its scope, its internal philosophical criterion is not. It can be deployed for expanding categories.15 I suspect there is a general worry about the flourishing of identities in terms of gender and sexuality, believing it to be a strange and misguided phenomenon. My opinion is that this is an appreciable development. If multiplying categories reduces the importance of gender and sexuality categories that are hegemonic, then so much the better! There is no reason why the present-­day Marathi queer public sphere should be devoid of such linguistic possibilities. This kind of politics can be, and I think is, mutually compatible with the one I am laying out in the rest of the essay. There are different kinds of political reasons to take such realities seriously. Consequently, in a vast number of cases, it is ideal to leave the boundaries fuzzy, particularly as we see new categories emerging. This way, we avoid reifying categories as ontologically guaranteed thereby avoiding a metaphysics of exclusion and disallowing moral policing of a kind not fruitful to liberatory politics. The important question here is this: we know that laingik alpasankhya can be literally translated as gendered and sexual minorities. But what is the semiotically equivalent term to it in liberatory politics? What is the epistemic translation of it? If my indication so far has been that it is something like queerness, then what is the sense of queerness that we are preserving in trying to think about this category in Marathi queer politics? I have already elaborated a little bit on the first term laingik. This is based on the fact that the Marathi language eschews a bifurcation terminologically on the basis of sex and gender. Sexuality, which is intimately tied to sex, is also therefore part of this whole nebulous concept. This is the first step in identifying the semantic content of laingik, which is then politico-­ philosophically made significant by its use in the Marathi queer public sphere. We have identified its capacity to articulate three axes of queerness which are

Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities  39 not reducible to each other and that are not only limited to those identifications currently hegemonic or available in queer discourses of the Marathi language. The axes are expansive and inclusive for more liberatory goals in terms of increasing our conceptual vocabulary, therefore making its use even more warranted in terms of normative political desires. The Philosophical Substance of Alpasankhya The term alpasankhya (literally meaning small in number) is more contentious. Not only because it connotes a kind of implicit deviance and irrelevance but also because there is no way to verify its empirical truth.16 How should alpasankhya take stock of different empirical possibilities of population and yet be analytically and politically rigorous? On this point, I think it is useful to go back to Dr B.R. Ambedkar who philosophically provides an ingenious answer to this puzzle. Ambedkar’s understanding of the minority as a concept and minority rights is not solely based on numbers and demographics but on ‘social discrimination’ and position in the power structure of the larger public sphere. The move I am suggesting here is similar to how Ambedkar defines Scheduled Castes as a minority in his text States and Minorities (1947) despite Scheduled Caste technically not qualifying as a numerical minority. Part of Ambedkar’s motivation to do something like this is based on juridico-­legal reasons and the desire to fit the aspirations of Scheduled Caste individuals into the rights discourse of the new postcolonial state. Despite the fact that our canvas is wider and queer politics generally holds apathy, if not antipathy, to state institutions, I think the fact that Marathi queer activists are still negotiating with the state makes their use of the term intuitively understandable. Perhaps, in a context that does not require dealing with the state, one may think about other conceptual terrains in the Marathi language that can be explored and may end up becoming more widespread in the Marathi queer public sphere. While there are alternate ways to interpret majority–minority relations that pinpoint the locus of exploitation with the small minority and claim majority for oneself (for example, the idea of Bahujan laid out by Kanshi Ram or ‘we are the 99%’ in Occupy Wall Street movement), I think politically and philosophically both majority and minority rule are concepts fraught with problems. And while progressive interpretations of such kind may not necessarily be vulnerable to all such philosophical problems due to their scope and rhetorical value, I think Ambedkar’s idea of majority and minority allows eschewing these problems. In my conversations with a few Marathi-­speaking queer individuals, I have been conveyed an apprehension emerging out of two concerns. The first is the empirical implication of such a term wherein the common sense understanding of alpasankhya is that of a numerical minority. This is a concern that persists because there is no way to verify whether queer persons constitute an actual numerical minority. The second is the unaesthetic clunkiness that

40  Paresh Hate seems to fail in generating a sense of solidarity, community and a call for liberatory politics. I think this is an aesthetic and a temporal problem. If there was more mobilizing around a conceptual term, this worry would be mitigated. A friend, for example, suggested an alternate concept that was Upekshit Laingik Samuday, literally translated as ‘neglected sexual and gendered communities’. Another similar term for queerness was Laingik Bhinnata literally translated as ‘sexual and gendered variation’, which signifies both deviations (from the cisheteronormative script) and diversity. I see a lot of potential in both these categories, including the reason that they do not require the epistemic task of clarifying the philosophical status of the minority that I have done using Ambedkar’s theorizations. Nevertheless, such concepts have only been limitedly used in the Marathi queer public sphere as far as I am aware. We would also require a different genealogy of these categories to probe into their empirical, philosophical and historical import. But any such attempt to create expansively inclusive concepts in the Marathi language is a positive development and would only strengthen the linguistic possibilities in the language as opposed to being a competing theoretical paradigm. Going back to Dotson’s argument, such a feature of being compatible with many potential categories means to begin from and work with a framework of “open conceptual structure” that avoids our own argument from entailing contributory epistemic injustice17 (Dotson 2012: 41–42). My point is not that laingik alpasankhya is the most appropriate candidate of all time in Marathi. But given the politico-­philosophical motivations I have argued to be important, it ticks all the boxes. In other cases and for different purposes in the Marathi language, something else may turn out to be a more ideal concept—and maybe for the same motivations, we may end up finding a better candidate. But overall, except for a few members of the queer community who are Marathi-­speaking, many show appreciation for such developments that have taken place in the language. Their preference for the term differed, agreeing with its theoretical, practical and aesthetic value to a larger or smaller degree. Even the ones who prefer alternate terminologies in Marathi are positive about the translative possibilities such a linguistic move represents. The ones who remain unconvinced are the ones who believe that the Marathi language should just internalize the term ‘queer’ like many Hindi-­speaking queer activists have done. There is no linguistic nationalist reason to oppose this. It may be the case that there are some instances where such a transliterative linguistic move is more fruitful and specific thereby allowing better descriptive and normative capability. Such prospects can co-­exist with translative developments in language overall. Universality by Translative Possibilities Translative possibilities with terms for queerness and specific identities such as the ones explored above allow sidestepping the debate of whether a term is a product of cultural imperialism and the need to decolonize them.

Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities  41 However, they do represent a kind of decolonizing spirit by provincializing claimants of universality (Global North iterations of queerness) who are actually quite parochial. Translations here put specific and distinct spatio-­temporal iterations on par with each other by reversing the asymmetry in power in the conceptual space they occupy. As is clear, this route does not take a necessary focus on culturally specific instantiations of queer subjects as the ground of theorization or reject a universal queer subject that theory can aspire to. Two works focusing on the South Asian context are illustrative here. Aniruddha Datta and Raina Roy question the universalization of ‘transgender’ as a category that fails to interrogate South Asian discourses and practices arguing that its circulation is a result of the development sector, state funding, and due to its implication of hierarchizing transnational and local gender/sexuality subjectivities. While Datta and Roy do not reject the use of ‘transgender’ as a category, they see it as an analytic that can be employed in certain specific situations for particular ends to be achieved. My main contention with their argument is that if cultures are not so rigidly formed and modernity or globalization have already effected changes in the subjectivities of the Indian subcontinent, then we are at a juncture where identities produced by modernity or globalization live side-­by-­side with those who are only seen as local iterations of the same (a transgender woman and a hijra person living in the same society). In this case, a reinterpretation of the social ontology will include a universal category that transcends both such limited frames to make sense of them because it does not reify cultural or geographical contexts and also provides a shared idea of struggle. Here, no matter the language the category is conceived in, what is more important is not the term but the conceptual space it provides. The focus on struggle is useful to flag because it notes that we are discussing social and not metaphysical ontology. The concern that we may unwittingly ontologize is shared by Dutta and Roy and it is an important point to bear in mind. But a universal category that provincializes both erstwhile transnational claimants and those relegated as local to provide a broader category can yet be aspired toward. Similarly, Shraddha Chatterjee provides a critique of a universal queer subject due to its failure to think about lower class, lower caste queer subjects, and queer people of colour (Chatterjee 2018). They discuss specific cases that fail to fit into the usual classificatory paradigm of ‘lesbian suicides’ as they are termed in India by queer activists. The cases that Chatterjee most illustratively discusses reside in the liminal space of female homosociality and lesbian homosexuality and forcing either categorization seems like a misguided task. I suggest that this liminality is not exclusive to cultures of South Asia, or to subjects that are lower class, lower caste or people of colour. Such failures apply equally well to white upper-­class queer subjects in Global North; even sometimes to cisheteronormative subjects. It seems to me that Chatterjee’s example is not a failure of universality defined in queerness, but a failure of our language of love and friendship that is marked as mutually exclusive.18 But since there is a recognition that there is something not quite

42  Paresh Hate cisheteronormative about the case they are discussing, there is no rejection of the scene being ‘queer’. So when Chatterjee critiques the universal queer subject, they rid the theory of the universality but not the queerness of it. I do not think it is controversial to say that there is some similarity to the queer subjects across the world today—whether a Wittgensteinian family resemblance or a strategic essentialism. In the previous sections, I have provided my own way to historically situate them. This required me to define them in terms of their commonality of being oppositional to cisheteronormativity. I believe an articulation of a universal category is possible that rectifies the errors that Chatterjee points out. Whether ‘queer’ is a word suitable for such a task is a different matter (although my opinion is to answer affirmatively), but at least the Marathi translation laingik alpasankhya or anything else with a similar philosophical substance that Marathi queer activists come up with seems to preserve such normative aspirations. By doing the kind of translation that I have been pointing to, the scope of a concept is reframed. This allows us an articulation of universality that is not yet present but is aspired to. By speaking in the name of a concept when the concept fails to register the speaker, we end up in a situation of performative contradiction, as Butler calls it (Butler 1996: 45–52). But it is precisely here and through this very process that the universality is renewed and reshaped. Philosophically, then, there is no reason to give up on such universality and a universal queer subject but only reinterrogate its content, form, scale, and shape. What is the benefit of not giving up universality? I suggest that there are two important benefits. First, it describes and interprets the world accurately. This is in terms of explaining the obviousness of similarities queer persons across the world present us with. Second, it allows a shared idea of politics that neither metaphysically ontologizes nor has in-­built exclusionary criteria. In the absence of such, we perhaps reify cultures as we set out to not reify categories. But let’s say we think about people who are not yet present in the shared space that I talk about where different kinds of subjects live side-­by-­side. These could be cases where the specific person, as the saying goes, has not encountered the Other. The error I see in Datta and Roy is that of not recognizing the nature of the present context. But there are other contexts, both real and hypothetical, where some kind of cultural distinctiveness may seem obvious. For illustrative purposes, think about the Amish people living in Pennsylvania as the Western paradigmatic case and the Sentinelese inhabiting North Sentinel Island as the non-­Western paradigmatic case. Here, people may live through their understanding of the world which may not yet be considered part of a universal by others. The task of our theory should avoid stating that both these subjects live in mutually incommensurable or mutually contradictory realities with each other and the rest of the world and yet exist simultaneously. I am not arguing that different perspectives don’t co-­ exist. What I am suggesting is that we shouldn’t treat the map as the territory, the representations of the world as the world itself. In the case of taking all representations seriously for ethical reasons, we end up in a situation that is

Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities  43 highly philosophically dubious. But more importantly, this argument can be generalized beyond the Amish and the Sentinelese. What provincializing the specific iterations of queerness allows us to realize is that it equally applies to members of all contexts and settings, whether a rural queer person of India or a New York white queer person. And each of these can aspire for universality by challenging the hegemonic and dominant iterations that speak in their name or exclude them from their articulation. And we should hope for these local iterations to succeed depending on how accurately they present the map of the world. The point of theory, then, is to take these understandings of the world from different perspectives, and contexts and say something general about humanity at large19 (Graeber 2015). After all, as Graeber says, “[u]ltimately, human beings are all in the same existential dilemma” (Graeber 2015: 31). This is to say, the theory allows a universal point to be made. Of course, one can theorize at non-­universal scales, and even be accurate and rigorous in analysis. The kind of normative theory I am trying to chart here is avowedly scale-­independent and universalist, however. While there are many ways to live in the world, it does not mean we have different worlds. In Lieu of a Conclusion In queer theory and queer studies, there has always been a general concern about identity-­oriented theorizations because of the worry that such concepts may reify existing paradigms of oppression instead of a move toward eliminating them.20 Similarly, such categories allow legibility to the state and capital that can instrumentalize them for ends of biopolitics and governmentality. Given this context, the move toward focusing on practices as done by a critical interpretive approach is quite popular and seemingly warranted. These practices are recognized as notoriously difficult to schematize because of them being rooted in or guided by notions of ambiguity, epistemic and conceptual vagueness, unpredictability, indescribability, indeterminacy, or illegibility. This is aggravated by the concern that identity-­oriented theorizations will also fail to identify the flux that queerness as a process signifies in the world. I believe the categories of ambiguity, vagueness, indeterminacy, etc. are not normatively morally relevant in and of themselves but only insofar as they avoid capture by technologies of power. Let me speak of illegibility and generalize. Just like legibility, illegibility also has its downsides and is prone to abuse that thrives on denial of clarity of perspective. As David R. MacIver reminds us of legibility/illegibility, the concept [of legibility] is originally [treated] as a property of the system, but it’s not. Legibility is a property of the relationship between the system and some entity. A thing is not legible or illegible in and of itself, it’s legible or illegible to someone (or something—a government, a company, etc). (MacIver 2020b)

44  Paresh Hate Given this, connected to my earlier point, it is “much harder to think about and optimize for illegible marginalizations because they are, by definition, too difficult for you to easily quantify” (MacIver 2020a). Both these arguments can be equally applied to notions listed above apart from illegibility and should make us sceptical of similar arguments employed against articulating specificities. Even though illegibility can act as an impediment to the top-­down systems of control, it can quite easily become an engine of bottom­up creation of barriers to entry, gatekeeping, interpersonal hierarchies, and even gaslighting abuse. But at the end of the day, freedom requires us to have accurate maps of the world. Simultaneously, however, this is not an argument against self-­conceptualized illegibilities which are forcefully articulated by queer persons across the world in the recent past, although the dangers listed above may be something to keep in mind. This is because top-­down projects of categorizations are not remotely equivalent to bottom-­up discursive processes. Not only do they differ in ethical value but to conflate the two is to abandon the prospect of decentring power from our theorizations. More pertinently, this argument seems to overstate the capacity of dinosaur institutions like the state and capital to adequately capture the expansive self-­identifications that queer persons across the world are engaged in. As far as capturing the social reality of queerness is concerned, complexity is ontologically real and there is no doubt that we have an epistemic obligation to reckon with its multifaceted characteristics. This is particularly so because we are now aware of the fact that theories, particularly academic ones, are prone to simplifying or disingenuously presenting complex processes. But lack of conceptual clarity, whether normatively desired or ontologically assumed as a brute fact, is not equivalent to an appreciation of complexity. A theory can, after all, be both complex and analytically rigorous. In looking at laingik alpasankhya as a historically formed, normative category, my goal has been to interpret the circulation of the term in the Marathi queer public sphere as both a move in enriching translative possibilities by creating new linguistic capabilities and as a category that serves liberatory political purposes. As I noted, this move has many epistemic, philosophical, and pragmatic justifications and benefits. I think the kind of social ontological and historical complexity desired by a theory of queerness can remain identity-­based as long as their metaphysics is not assumed to be biological or in some other sense reductionist. One of the popular ideas on the social media discourses where new linguistic possibilities with regard to gender and sexuality are explored is to let a thousand genders/sexualities bloom. Unlike the residual radical second-­ wave feminist focus on abolition which failed to look into the sociology of identity formation and did not consistently apply values of self-­determination leading to effects of trans and queer exclusionary analyses, multiplication actually diverts the signifying power of categories of gender and sexuality and can be a better candidate for what may be termed as an alternate route

Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities  45 to abolition.21 Regardless, whether gender/sexuality abolition is our favoured paradigm to think about these issues through does not concern us so much here. The concern is that such developments in linguistic and conceptual space allow such goals to be seriously posed and see their effects here and now. In providing a category that is universal and yet functioning through vernacular discourses, something like laingik alpasankhya acts as a corrective to exclusionary articulations of queerness by providing a conceptual toolkit to Marathi-­speaking queer individuals and presents itself as a normative identity around which politics is done. Notes 1 I use the term ‘critical interpretative’ to describe an approach contrasted with my own ‘political normative” approach. This is not to say that the critical interpretative methodology does not constitute politics or has no political implications, but rather practices are seen as sufficient to present a novel way to understand queerness and its challenges to dominant structures. In contrast, my own method is influenced by a kind of normative political theory that holds practices as crucial but not sufficient to self-­articulate a political project. I discuss two examples of the former approach later in the chapter. 2 Sometimes this comes with added layers of insistence that people from these walks of life live only through their experience without conceptual wherewithal, do not have a need for such categories, do not care for it, or they are beyond a paradigm that necessitates such conceptual moves. While I believe the first three responses are misguided exoticizations and platitudinous stereotypes, the last one (existence in an alternate paradigm) is an important question that I shall come back to later in the context of this essay. 3 The source of these terms was the glossary of Bindumadhav Khire’s book Indradhanu: Samalaingikateche Vividh Ranga (Marathi) (Different Colors of Homosexuality) and numerous Marathi news articles. 4 It is important to note that Bindumadhav Khire is not an uncontroversial figure in the Indian queer scene. In 2017, as an organizer of the Pune Pride, he had asked people joining to dress in a “decent manner” which he was criticized for. My use of his concept is only citational and does not hinge on his personal problematic morality, and neither is the concept tied to his limited frame. 5 By ‘normative’, I mean ‘what we ought to do’ as understood in philosophy such that the answer we come up with is an ethical and political task to undertake. 6 While Fricker’s theory has certain issues, I think this minimal point about hermeneutical injustice can be appreciated. I cite Kristie Dotson in this chapter who I believe preserves the account of Fricker while updating it and making it more rigorous and expansive. 7 An example of this is the fact that many Marathi speakers use ‘ते’, which is the singular they pronoun to refer to members of the hijra—or the third gender as they are called in specific South Asian articulations—community in different parts of Maharashtra, despite the language being a highly binary gendered language. 8 I am being a little disingenuous here. My point is specifically for the identity discourse-­sceptical progressives who already accept queerness. The reactionary impetus of queerphobes and cisheteronormatives is based on certain very thick metaphysical commitments and for them accepting my conclusions will require substantial revisions. 9 The flipside is the colonial misguided way of thinking, which leads to absurd conclusions such as some groups are stuck in the past, or are primitive, etc.

46  Paresh Hate 10 This can be read as a kind of strategic essentialism but I think my argument can be made compatible with many already existing theories. 11 This, of course, does not mean foreclosing possibilities of solidarity and alliances since that is a different kind of normative and tactical question. 12 This does not mean cis straight persons, for example, are only allies while queer individuals are the real drivers of politics. See ‘Accomplices, not Allies’ by Indigenous Action Media for a critique and transgression of allyship politics. Nonetheless, I think this is a different order of question with similar stakes but largely functioning in the realm of political strategy and political morality whereas the question I am dealing with in this paragraph is that of political epistemology/ ontology. More importantly, certain politics can be for someone without it having to be justified on the very grounds of personal effect. For example, I can endorse a politics of anti-­xenophobia in the European Union without constituting either the oppressor class or the oppressed class. Such binaries do not saturate the existing political landscape. In this case, I can justify such solidarity on more universal grounds of political values such as agency, freedom, equality, justice, etc. Our analysis shows that certain groups are the focus of certain structures, belief systems, and sets of practices in terms of being marginalized, oppressed, and discriminated against. But why one opposes certain structures, belief systems, and sets of practices can be highly personal. These interpretative analyses and motivations for supporting/rejecting certain politics are not at all mutually exclusive. 13 The concept of laingik alpasankhya precedes Khire’s use of the same, but the triad-­ conceptualization that I discuss in this essay was something I first got acquainted with through Khire’s speeches and interviews. I tried to reach out to Mr Khire to ask if he has developed this concept on his own, has come across it through some other source, or if it is a usual part of the Marathi queer scenes that he is part of but due to undisclosed reasons, he rejected a conversation. Nonetheless, the source does not matter for my argument so much as its circulation in the Marathi queer public sphere. 14 This is not an argument about or that implies forcing terms such as transgender (man or woman) upon people who resist such identification. 15 I do not include categories that are part of the queer milieu but not necessarily tied to intersex, trans/trans*, or non-­heterosexual subjectivities such as demisexuality, consensual non-­monogamy, or BDSM because they may sociologically intersect with sexual and gendered minorities but are observed separately, too. I avoid their discussion since there is no consensus across queer movements and subcultures as to the best way to map them in relation to queerness. However, ‘queer’ or laingik alpasankhya are not only descriptive terms but also broad personal identifiers. The question of who is or is not queer is rife with epistemic, moral and conceptual problems and often leads to gatekeeping on arbitrary factors. The standard view to accept the claims of a self-­identifying queer person is the most ideal way to deal with this conundrum. 16 While theories of minority rights such as that of John Stuart Mill provide stability and political value to the concept of minority, its ability to map the sociological reality is a bigger problem. What if the queer population actually is not a minority but a majority? What if we were to say that everyone is queer to a certain degree? 17 Dotson defines contributory injustice, as another kind of epistemic injustice, “caused by an epistemic agent’s situated ignorance, in the form of willful hermeneutical ignorance, in maintaining and utilizing structurally prejudiced hermeneutical resources that result in epistemic harm to the epistemic agency of a knower”. This would mean arguing for a specific category in terms of “conceptual revolution” as scholars of epistemic injustice identify without considering the availability of already existing categories in the public sphere. My argument, I believe, avoids this problem because the very concept is identified from the Marathi queer public sphere and my argument is not claiming exclusivity of use.

Laingik Alpasankhya and Queer Identities  47 18 As an example, many among asexual and aromantic communities talk about something called a ‘queerplatonic relationship’, which articulates their own feelings toward a person that elude and resist easy bifurcation between romantic and platonic. In any case, while this problem is not explicit in the Chatterjee’s text, they try to alert to this in a suicide letter when they translate the word “bhalo basha” as like/love. 19 My argument here is inspired by the anthropological debate between a certain kind of anthropological theory represented by David Graeber who I am drawing from and the proponents of what in anthropology is called “the ontological turn”. 20 Examples of this would be thinkers such as Lee Edelman and Jack Halberstam. 21 “Let a thousand sexes bloom” is also an idea developed by Laboria Cubonicks in their Xenofeminist Manifesto (2015).

References Ambedkar, Bhimrao. 1947. States and Minorities: What are Their Rights and How to Secure Them in the Constitution of Free India? http://drambedkar.co.in/wp-­content/ uploads/books/category2/11states-­and-­minorities.pdf Butler, Judith. 1996. ‘Universality in Culture’, in Joshua Cohen (ed.), For Love of Country?, pp. 45–52. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Chatterjee, Shraddha. 2018. Queer Politics in India: Towards Sexual Subaltern Subjects. London and New York: Routledge. Cubonicks, Laboria. 2015. Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation. URL: https:// laboriacuboniks.net/manifesto/xenofeminism-­a-­politics-­for-­alienation/ Dotson, Kristie. 2012. ‘A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic Oppression’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 33(1): 24–47. Dutta, Aniruddha and Raina Roy. 2014. ‘Decolonizing Transgender in India: Some Reflections’, Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1(3): 320–337. Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. New York: Oxford University Press. Graeber, David. 2015. ‘Radical Alterity Is Just another Way of Saying “Reality”: A Reply to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(2): 1–41. Khire, Bindumadhav. 2008. Indradhanu: Samalaingikateche Vividh Ranga. (Marathi) (Different Colors of Homosexuality). Pune: Mudrak. MacIver, David R. 2020a February 23. ‘Legibility Privileges’, DRMacIver's Notebook. https://notebook.drmaciver.com/posts/2020-­02-­23-­09:37.html MacIver, David R. 2020b March 02. ‘Legibility as a Relationship’, DRMacIver’s Notebook. https://notebook.drmaciver.com/posts/2020-­03-­02-­09:31.html

2 Queer in Karnataka Exploring Male Same-Sex Sexualities in the Non-Metropolitan Kiran Bhairannavar

Introduction Even as I waited for my last contact towards the end of my fieldwork, I stood there on the busy crossroad of Ramdev Hotel, an important landmark in Belagavi city, looking into the cityscape thinking if I had looked for data in the right places. In Gadag, Hubli, Dharwad and Belagavi, I had conversed with a hundred men online yet was unable to get a breakthrough. My doctoral research was on queer men’s relationship to urban space in Delhi. I have also travelled across the world understanding gay spaces in metropolitan cities. And was able to untangle both. However, the fieldwork for this research was challenging. Did I use a proper methodology? Was there any other way I could have done it better? Men in these cities and towns refused to have a conversation, the Community Based Organisation (CBO) working for sexual health and queer community I had tried to connect with (as my last resort in Dharwad) did not exist on the phone numbers provided online, and the generic places where I thought I could potentially find men engaging in sex with other men, were deserted. Yet, their presence on a popular GPS-enabled dating app was significant. It was the only window where I could access and attempt to having conversations with men and build contacts to understand the features of vernacular queer sexualities. However, this too hardly made much progress as the number of men I had a chat with, which translated into a conversation aimed for research was a negligible proportion. More so, the themes I had initially selected as my research focus—vernacular queer terms in Kannada—received scant inputs. As I stood there waiting for my last contact, I looked at the streets, the alleys, the dark corners, the buildings, the hotels, the bus depot, the shops, the parking lot, the restaurants, the running traffic, the waiting men, the moving people … I only wondered what could come out of the field notes and conversations I had made until now. If men refused to talk about their queer lives, if men were blank about queer terms, what does it speak about the sexuality of the non-metropolitan? While the traffic moved at its pace making not much noise and people went on with their business, I began attempting to make sense of same-sex sexualities in small cities and towns of Karnataka. DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-4

Queer in Karnataka  49 This chapter focuses on queer men’s sexualities in the non-metropolitan spaces of northern Karnataka. It looks into how men practising same-sex sexualities contact and connect with other men, perform and live queer lives. It is argued, in a tightly organized heteronormative terrain, vernacular/ non-metropolitan same-sex sexualities seldom unfold in concrete ways like in the metropolitan cities. This chapter brings forth the actions, conversations and absences to make sense of male queer sexualities. The key points that the chapter makes are that the limitations of non-metropolitan spaces—cities, towns and villages—create a restrained life for queer sexual practices to be put into action. Nevertheless, men navigate these limitations by materializing sexual practices through a constellation of strategies and spatial networks worked through online mediums that run connecting towns, villages and cities at the regional scale. With limited opportunities in a neatly arranged heteronormative social space, men choose when, how and whom to be visible to, and tactfully realize sexual desire and fulfilment through various type of mobilities. The chapter is organized in four sections. The second section focuses on field sites and methodology. The third section deals with the conceptualization and characteristics of non-metropolitan space in Karnataka. It is followed by the fourth section, dealing with men’s visibilities. The next section reports evidences on mobilities. This is followed by the conclusion. Field Sites and Methodology The study was conducted in four cities of northern Karnataka, namely Gadag, Hubli, Dharwad and Belagavi. Northern Karnataka forms a distinct region of the state with its history, resources, lifestyles and dialect of Kannada language. Each of the cities are equidistantly placed in a sequence. From east to west, Gadag is 60 km away from Hubli. The distance between Hubli and Dharwad is 18 km and both together are regarded as twin cities. Belagavi is 77 km away from Dharwad. All the four cities are more than 400 km away from their nearest metro city namely, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai. Each of these urban centres are important nodes economically, distinctly placed as per their functions. For example, Dharwad is the district headquarters, houses important government offices and institutions, and is an important seat of learning. It houses the Karnatak University and many other prominent educational institutions of the state. Culturally, it is known for its literary and musical tradition. Hubli, on the other hand, is a commercial centre housing industries and trade. It is highly urbanized and a prominent economic engine of the state, colloquially known as mini-Bombay. Both Hubli and Dharwad together make the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation, the second largest municipal corporation and urban agglomeration in Karnataka with a population of 943,857 persons as per Census of India, 2011, after Bengaluru. Belagavi is comparatively smaller in size with a population of 610,350 persons. It is highly cosmopolitan and urban, known for its educational institutions, medical colleges and hospitals. It has an infantry

50  Kiran Bhairannavar and air force base. It is a gateway to the states of Goa and Maharashtra. Belagavi and Hubli-Dharwad are prominent tier two cities of Karnataka having their own airports. Gadag, much smaller in size, is an important centre for agriculture and commerce, and a district head quarter. The Gadag-Betigeri Municipal Council has a population of 172,813 persons as per Census of India, 2011. All these cities lie in the region once known as the BombayKarnataka (before the unification of the Karnataka state in 1956) under the Bombay Presidency of erstwhile British India, having a distinct cultural– regional–linguistic feature. The ethnographic study was conducted during December 2021. The study involved men who practiced same-sex sexuality, sourcing prominently from a GPS enabled online dating app popular in India. The dating app had a considerable number of active profiles motivating me to believe that it would provide initial hook to recruit participants for the study which could then be snowballed. However, as time went by, I found snowballing was a failed attempt. I began by connecting with men and holding conversations online. However, it was difficult to steer the conversation towards my initial research themes. While the number of men contacted were large, the number of men who agreed to converse either online or face-to-face was much smaller. The conversations were around queer life in the town, queer desires and connections, queer terms in Kannada language and their use both offline and online. Initially my focus was on queer terms in Kannada language. As such, I began my fieldwork in Gadag, Hubli and Dharwad and then extended it to Belagavi, which is much more cosmopolitan with speakers from different languages like Kannada, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Konkani, etc. As the study progressed it was observed that there was not much input to the theme of queer terms in Kannada language. As such, various other themes were identified based on the conversations and inputs received from the men and my own field notes documented during the study. As such, this chapter is about the way men navigate spaces and put their desires into practice. It will be evident from the ethnographic vignettes in the later sections, while I was stationed in these urban centres, the GPS-enabled online dating app provided an opportunity to make sense of a much larger area in the region as it brought men from beyond these cities, namely smaller towns and rural areas, and visitors to these cities and travelers who were passing by, as part of this study. The next section sheds light on the conceptualization of non-metropolitan space to locate the reading of male same-sex sexualities. The Non-Metropolitan Space The non-metropolitan is conceptualized as a space that includes non-metropolitan cities, towns and villages. While each of the components—cities, towns and villages—are distinctly placed in hierarchy as per their functions, population size, characteristics and cultural connectivity between each

Queer in Karnataka  51 other and in relation to the metropolitan, sexually speaking, they do not have the privileges of the metro city especially in terms of opportunities and characteristics like large population size that provides anonymity, identity-based activism, party scenes, pride marches, urban sexual infrastructure and language of rights and liberation. Such a conceptualization helps us to counter the metrocentric hegemony prominently placed in the sexualities literature while theorizing urban sexualities (Myrdahl 2013; Podmore and Bain 2020). It provides a space to conceptually place an array of urban/rural centres of different sizes that lie beyond the metropolitan city and counter its hegemonic discourses. For example, Hubli-Dharwad is the second largest urban area after Bengaluru in Karnataka. Belagavi is a cosmopolitan city. Gadag while having an urban municipal body is much smaller in size and more agriculture based than the former two cities. These are not as big as Bengaluru or Mumbai yet are prominent urban centres distinctly different from metro cities. More so, the smaller towns and villages around these may also be of varying sizes, and express different scales of urbanity/rurality. It is argued that the characteristics of the non-metropolitan dictate the chances that men practising same-sex sexualities have to express their desires and live fulfilling queer lives. A careful reading of the non-metropolitan space provides that not only is heteronormativity neatly arranged on to space but also sexualness (Katyal 2011: 15) of any kind may only be implicit rather than being explicitly expressed. Consider the following ethnographic vignettes from my field notes. I am sitting in a café in Dharwad. It is an open café along a busy road, serving snacks and tea. It is centrally located in the town and the area is a prominent landmark, a junction of roads running to different parts of the city. There are big shopping plazas on either side of the cafe. Men, women, children, families, students, friends, young and old are visiting the café. Each of them comes in, sit at a table, eat and leave. Some others wait for longer, busy in a conversation. There is the usual noise that comes from places where people gather. There seems to be a certain inwardness among the people, with no one bothering of who is sitting around or what are others doing. They plainly go on with their business, without pulling or giving attention. It is 7 in the evening. The streets around Ramdev Hotel in Belagavi are busy. People walk along, some enter the darshini (café) nearby, others drive into the hotel premises. As much crowded the place is, people don’t seem to be interested in looking around. They know where to go. Those waiting by the road side, also seem not interested looking around, be it men or women. No gazes are exchanged. A few steps ahead, people are having a laidback evening in the trendy new age cafe, enjoying their time. Some standing, others seated. Everyone minding their own business. The city seems to have no lust.

52  Kiran Bhairannavar The above ethnographic vignettes provide scenes from two cities where people occupy public spaces. There seems to be a certain connection to place where one is there for a specific reason and is only to do that, while minding their own business. Nobody turns back and looks at you, no eyes hover around anybody, no heads turn back. There are no onlookers, no commenters, nor is anybody using the space to exhibit themselves. Unlike the big city where lust is generated through urban space and the bodily surfaces of those who occupy it, these cities hardly put on that show. The erotic gaze is at best secret or hidden. This is not to say that there is no sex or sexual talk. Consider the following field note: An amateur video is making rounds on social media supposedly originating from Northern Karnataka [identified through the specific accent of Kannada]. It shows a man and woman having sex under a bridge, they are caught by a group of men. On being enquired, the man and woman in question say they are husband and wife. The group of men advise them to carry out such business in their home and not in public like this. It is not good. They let them go without any harm or damage. Sex, as evidenced in the video, is relegated to the bedroom within marriage. Sexual talk is whispered among friends and close groups, and all non-marital sex happens in secrecy in a specific place. Sexually abusive words are taken seriously, which might result in a fight, unlike bigger cities where there is certain kind of casualness around them and where they miss the meaning for the context in which the abuse is delivered. These cities do have their redlight areas, sex workers, eve teasers, “road romeos” and others, labelled neatly among the immoral and socially condemned. Anybody who has lived in these cities and towns knows how gossips, scandals and transgressions are spoken about, remembered and socially condemned to advertise moral self-righteousness. Unlike the big metro city where sexualness is explicit and expressed through urban space, its crowds, its surfaces and liberatory potentials (Hubbard 2013), the non-metropolitan space in northern Karnataka seems to remain morally righteous, devoid of any explicit sexualness. Sexuality is more regulatory than expressed. One can see the visibility of well-guarded heterosexuality among performances of people- the men and the women, the queues in temples, the non-sexual/subdued interactions between men and women (Anna and Akka, addressing unrelated men and women as brother and sister), the recognizable husband and wife, the normative family and the assumptions that people make of social relationships; and the way men and women prefer sitting separately while using public transport. Lastly, consider the following scene from a Police station in Belagavi city, which I had a chance to witness: A woman, along with two her teenage daughters, is waiting for her turn. The police have summoned a young man on the woman’s complaint.

Queer in Karnataka  53 He is almost of the same age as her daughters. When her turn arrives, the woman starts accusing the man of harassing her daughters. It so happened that the daughters run a shop in the same vicinity as the man and a scuffle broke out between them. The woman then approached the police. The woman is speaking assertively and continuously accusing the young man. She questions him of his masculinity [for engaging with women, her daughters, in this way] by referring him to as a Jogappa [a transgendered community in northern Karnataka]. “What business do you have with my daughters? Are they disturbing you? What is your problem? Are you a Jogappa? […] Girls, do not worry, we will cut his penis off, if he comes to bother you again.” The woman taunts the man about cutting his penis off and rendering him emasculated, for his deeds. Here, a visible queer community, the Jogappa, is invoked to shame a man who seems to have transgressed his gender expectations. Jogappa is brought in to be the object of condemnation and shame. Such open and loud shamings are symbolic of the codes of heteronormativity and social conduct. A man should conduct himself in a particular way, otherwise he is socially doomed. Such a code of masculine conduct is also reflected in the conversations I had with men during the fieldwork, where they mentioned laughter and ridicule by classmates, teachers, relatives and neighbours (during their school life) and violence of different kinds by parents over gender-queer expressions and transgressions. It is in this context that the lives of men practising same sex sexuality need to be understood. The non-metropolitan space is characterized by a public space devoid of sexualness, strict gender code enforcement with a neatly fixed heteronormative expectation and social censure. The fear of being known to be homosexual could have serious consequences. As such, men practising same-sex sexualities tread a very narrow path to realize their desires. Through my interactions and observations on the field it was found that men control the knowledge of their desires by remaining silent about it socially, yet act on their immediate desires. With strong social expectations in place, not much is left than to address their immediate sexual needs. The numerous men I spoke to informed that heterosexual marriage was compulsory and not something one could avoid. As such sex was all that was left for them to think and act upon, if opportunities came by. Men used an online dating app to connect to other men and bypass the limitations set by the heteronormative space. The next section provides the ethnographic account from the field. Visibilities, the Internet and the Non-Metropolitan Basavaraj (27) is a ‘room boy’ in a hotel in Belagavi. He belongs to the nearby village, 10 km away from the city. He contacted me online while I was in Hubli. When I arrived in Belagavi, we had a chance to meet. Basavaraj works

54  Kiran Bhairannavar on shifts and commutes to the city daily for work. He discreetly connects with men online, especially travellers ‘who have place’.1 He had lately created his profile on the dating app (after repeatedly deleting it in the past) in the context of the recently held Winter Session of Karnataka Legislative Assembly in Belagavi. I do not meet local men. I used to work in a well-known restaurant before, so I am afraid people may identify me. I have only shifted my workplace recently as a room boy. I am interested to meet middle aged men who travel to the city. The Assembly session brings a lot of visitors. As such I logged in and found you online, sent you a message. I am afraid if anybody from my village comes to know that I am in this line. It would be a big shame. Earlier, before this app, I used to meet men in the passing [in Belagavi] and share my phone number. But, it turned out to be a bit dangerous as those men would further share my phone number to others. Suddenly I found some strangers calling and asking about my details. So, I don’t share number now. I directly chat with men and meet. […] I learnt the language [of the app] slowly. I do not know English. Somebody explained to me what bottom and top mean. That is what people ask here. [On asking if he identified gay or bisexual or has come cross these terms] No, I don’t know these terms. Nobody asked me such terms or I have not come across anybody using them. The Internet has emerged as an important space for men practicing same-sex sexualities. The expansive potentials of the Internet and cyberspace (and new media) have been enabled queer communities in affirming one’s identity, finding persons sharing similar desires, community building and support groups (Hillier and Harrison 2007). While the Internet made its debut in India 25 years ago, it is only recently that affordable smart phones and Internet connections have further democratized the usage and participation with new media technologies.2 If one had logged in to the online dating app from Belagavi ten years ago, one could find not more than two profiles that located in the city or the district. The other profiles would be located in neighbouring Goa, more than 50 km away. Another web-based dating app used to be popular then, but that required access to a desktop or laptop. However, in less than a decade, people in the region are able to afford, access and navigate new media technologies. Men practising same-sex sexualities are much more active and able not only to connect to other men but also control their own visibility, against the hard grain of heteronormative terrains. It has been made easy for men from different walks of life and locations to access and connect. More so, it was observed (and as told by Basavraj) that men learnt the language on the site by interacting with other men online. One can encounter the usage of terms like top and bottom, sucking and fucking during interactions. Those who were not familiar with English used a mix of English and Kannada phrases to navigate. During the study, many men interacted using English words while mainly

Queer in Karnataka  55 chatting in Kannada. While those who did not, used Kannada verbs for sexual acts to convey/ask preferences and likes. Identity labels like gay and bisexual were rarely encountered. Many men, like Basavraj denied using or even encountering such terms or identified as such. They were just men who had desires for other men, while they went on with their everyday heteronormative lives.3 There were numerous profiles online at any given point of time. The app provided a chance for men to connect beyond the physical limitations their homes, cities, towns and villages, express their sexual desires and see each other. However, men often controlled their visibilities strategically. Amit (33) is from Bengaluru and was visiting Gadag for business. He is well versed in English. On enquiring about queer life in Gadag, he informed me, [...] all the profiles here are fake. Not one person is ready to meet. All they do is ask for pic [photograph] and fade away. You better check-out Hubli where the quality of men is better. You will get someone to meet. Having visited Gadag a week later and stationed there for a few days, I had interacted with many men online. However, hardly anybody agreed to meet. As Amit had warned, men asked for details and shied away from further conversation. Even though three of my photographs were exhibited on the profile, many men asked for original pictures. On enquiring about this, I was told that most men do not upload their own photographs. They would upload somebody else’s photographs. More so, men requested photographs but would not share theirs. Many others would request a video call (a feature on the dating app where one can make a video call and see each other for few seconds), see the other person while blocking their own face in the process, so as not to be seen. Only if they liked the other person, would they show their photographs or face on video call. The ‘fake profiles’, using others pictures, refusing to meet and controlling who could see them and when, were strategies used to keep control over their visibility. Most men were either from Gadag or surrounding places. Whom to show oneself and whom not to, depended on who the other person was, how did he look, if he fit in as per their object of desire and the limits, dangers and possibilities of meeting. Furthermore, if the other person was a frequent visitor or resident of Gadag, the controls on visibility were stronger. Andrew Tucker (2009) uses visibilities as a geographical approach in understanding the complicated ways that queer men adhere to in being seen by themselves, their communities and other communities in the urban space. Visibilities for him are mundane everyday acts that may not have positive outcomes of identity politics and recognition as theorized in the Western context. Studying queer communities in Cape Town, he argues that at the heart of such visibilities is the historically racialized heteronormative urban space. Tucker analyses how queer men’s groups have overtime been able to position themselves in relation to their local heteronormative structures in particular

56  Kiran Bhairannavar locations of the city (Tucker 2009: 4). They deploy diverse strategies in making themselves visible depending on the limits and opportunities of expression associated with same-sex desire in different spaces (Tucker 2009:8). Such an everyday act of making oneself visible, as observed in my field, was fraught with tactical positionings depending on one’s social position, geographical location, personal motivations, the larger sexual culture of the place and the opportunities it offered, and the limits of heteronormativity and ability to navigate those limits. Manjunath (35) is a doctor and works in the local medical college as a teacher. He is from Sringeri in South Karnataka and has been living in Dharwad for the past three years. He commutes to Hubli (18 km away) for work. He contacted me online and met for coffee where we had a conversation. He often contacts men online for sex and is active on the dating app at regular intervals in the day. He has no friends or a homosexual group of men to fall back on for support. His timings of meeting men are in between his work- the lunch hour, or an hour after his work, before reaching home. He cannot meet anybody after 7 pm as he is home with his wife. As such the two time windows are very important, the lunch hour and the evening hour where most of his homosexual desires are realized. More so, like many others for him place is an important issue (apart from looks of the person and position in bed) that determines his meeting with men. However, he does cross verify about the person, lest he encounters a student, colleague or his patient from the hospital or somebody known in heterosexual circles. After initial verification and confirming that I had nothing to do with the medical college or the hospital he worked in and that I was a traveller in the city visiting for research, the doctor very reluctantly agreed to meet for coffee in the restaurant below my hotel. It took me great efforts to convince him to meet for non-sexual business in public space. When asked about how men who practise same-sex sexualities speak about desires and practices in Kannada, he was a bit scared, looking around to see if anybody was able to hear this ‘homosexually infested’ conversation. He would stop speaking every time the waiter passed by. He said there were no distinct words that denoted homosexual desire or for that matter words that one used in conversation. There were slangs that the mainstream used to call names, but he did not divulge any of them given the nature of place we occupied. Similarity is seen between Manjunath and Basavaraj (discussed in the opening of this section). Basavraj and I met on a footpath at 7 pm along a busy road in Belagavi where he would start his shift at the hotel an hour later. We spoke for an hour amidst pedestrians and traffic passing by. He chose the location that was a few metres ahead of his workplace. He occasionally positioned himself as if not talking to me. He would not accept the offer of tea or coffee in the nearby darshini (local café) for the fear of encountering someone familiar. He informed me that he rarely meets a person outside like this. His meetings take place only in hotel rooms or places hosted by the sex partner. He further informed me that there were many hotels near the bus stand one

Queer in Karnataka  57 could use for sex, mentioning a few names, the ones he had visited previously for sex. His timings for meeting are either an hour before or after his work hours. Both Manjunath and Basavraj’s examples reflect the way men strategized their visibility to other queer men through meeting at specific times and locations. Desire was expressed and materialized not only with men they preferred but also by cross checking and verifying the person, to avoid the danger of being recognized as homosexual. They subverted their normative routines, finding a suitable time window between work and home to realise their sexual desire. The lunch hour, after work hours, on the way between the two locations, if somebody desirable had place, were the key factors to go ahead. While men remained online and went on contacting other men, the time factor and distance were the key to show one’s photograph and make a connection to meet. Their reluctance to meet for a conversation or bodily discomfort in conversing about homosexual topics in a public displays the strong hold of heteronormative controls over space. While men had the privilege of moving around the city and hiding their intentions of making a change to their routines, they were mindful of where they showed up and what they spoke. Private spaces were more preferred, as fear of being caught by someone in the know was always present in public. Furthermore, meeting other men for non-sexual purposes did not seem to be the norm. Both Manjunath and Basavraj (coming from two different class backgrounds, having access to two different worlds) did not have homosexual friends. Other men I came across too refused friendships. “I do not need friends; I already have many. What will I do making friends from this line?” Investments were made in looking for sexual connections while they depended on their family and (heterosexual) friends for emotional, material and professional support. Most men in non-metropolitan space lived with their families, as such socialization or support were least expected from other homosexual men. Rupesh (55) from Belagavi, a married man with two grown up children, met me in a café with no hesitation. He used to work in Mumbai and Bengaluru and had shifted to Belagavi to manage his family business a decade ago. He has place for sex in his factory and can also afford to take a hotel room. He is comfortable and confident in navigating his desires and undertaking his familial life. He gets messages on the dating app from a lot of younger men but meetings materialize only if sex is offered with an available place. According to him, Men refuse to meet for anything but sex. I keep inviting guys for casual [non-sexual] meet ups as friendships are important for me, but they say, what if somebody identifies me with you? It makes me feel as though I have two horns and people identify me there and then, and everything bad will happen to these guys for associating with me. Can’t two men meet? Look around the number of men sitting in the restaurant. Is anybody being judged?

58  Kiran Bhairannavar Rupesh mentions the possibility of men meeting is almost eradicated by this fear of being known and intention of having sex. As such, men like Rupesh who yearn for support and friendships find themselves lonely. The purpose of men connecting with others was limited to fulfilling sexual needs. This became the primary motivation that men accessed the dating app. Time, social familiarity and purpose were entwined with the availability of place to materializing the meetings. Apart from Manjunath, I had a chance to interact online with two other doctors aged 27 and 30, both practising in the same hospital as Manjunath. Both contacted me online on the same day as Manjunath. One of them lives nearby with his flatmates who were from the same profession, with a separate bedroom to himself. The other commutes from Dharwad and lives in rented accommodation. They too had the same time windows to meet men but were unable to arrange a place. Neither of them, though both had a place, would invite anybody over and depended on the potential partner to host. Queer men’s lives in non-metropolitan cities are often shaped by the minimum threshold of available men and the materiality of the city, including the living arrangements that it provided. The way an urban centre/town/village accommodates its people, the social relations of place, the number of single men living in the city and the residential arrangements play an important part in structuring queer desire. While urban centres like Belagavi, Hubli and Dharwad attracted young single men to the city, the living arrangements played a vital role in the sexual geographies of the place. The doctors mentioned above were both single, both had their bedrooms to themselves but could not materialise into sex. Either they lived with other men and were too familiar with them (like single doctors renting a place together or living as neighbours) or landlords living at the next door. Men’s lives, unlike in the big city, were contextualized within heterosexual norms of being good men. Even though homosociality is very common in the Indian social context, navigating homosexual desire for these men under its rubric was a difficult task. Single homosexual men trapped in family homes, rented accommodation and hostels, limited the possibilities of materializing desire. One had to move out to another’s place to have sex. Second, literature on urban homosexualities focuses on public sex, cruising areas and the wide range of spaces. I personally did not have a chance to look at cruising areas; however, Raghuram, a peer educator and counsellor with an HIV/AIDS NGO in Belagavi informed me about the depopulation of these areas in recent years. Mobilities, Technology and the Regional Geographies of Sex The lack of place, social familiarities and heteronormative terrains were negotiated by moving to meet men from places away from the familiar. Men travelled various distances as it provided them anonymity and greater chances to meet other men. Such movement allowed them to subvert the heteronormativities of their locations and be visible to other men. Enabling such

Queer in Karnataka  59 movements was the GPS-enabled dating app. As discussed in the previous section, Manjunath and Basavraj acted on their desire for other men through commuting to work, subverting their routines. While Manjunath commuted between the twin cities of Dharwad and Hubli, Basavraj commuted to Belagavi from a nearby village. Similar instances were seen, where men made contacts and travelled within their everyday routines, between college/work and home. However, other forms of mobilities were also documented during the study. These movements were primarily for other purposes but sex was carefully wrapped into their folds. Such planning was in response to opportunities that arose from online matches on the dating app. Ramesh (36) is a primary school teacher is Siruguppa, around 150 km from Hubli. He was planning a family trip to Hubli to visit one of his relatives who was admitted to the local hospital, which opened up an opportunity to make the best of it. He contacted me online while looking for a sex date, mainly men with place in Hubli. We exchanged numbers and had a conversation about his plans of coming to Hubli. I live in this small town; I do not display my picture. I am afraid. When I travel to Raichur or Ballari [both are district headquarters and large urban centres near his town] I display my picture. Today my wife and children have left for my native village to attend a function, so I installed this app again to find a mate in Hubli. We shall be visiting for three days during the first week of January. I would love to meet some good trustable man near the hospital where my relative is admitted. I won’t have place. So, looking for a man with place. Shreyas (26) is transiting through Hubli between his hometown in Hosapete (on the eastern borders of Karnataka) and the temple town of Gokarna (on the west coast) 300 km away. His friends plan to join him in Gokarna. I connected with Shreyas in a shopping mall where he was spending time and looking for someone to share a room with for the night. He works in the field of computer applications. Since I happened to be around, I met him in the mall to have dinner. He narrates the stories of the small town Hosapete where the app is the primary way of making contacts with men but with serious limitations for meeting. “It is easy to make connections but not good to meet people there.” He decides to break his journey in between home and his destination with a hope of seeking a partner for the night. At the destination he won’t have a chance to meet anybody and at home he does not have any prospects either. As such, Hubli is an opportunity for him providing choices, anonymity and necessary distance.4 As such he makes use of it and decides to spend a night there with a purpose. While both Ramesh and Shreyas find potential when travelling from smaller towns to bigger places like Hubli, there were others who moved between same-sized cities. Rohan (22) informs me that he once connected with a man of similar age in Dharwad.

60  Kiran Bhairannavar I told my parents I am going to meet a friend. I travelled in bus to Dharwad from Belagavi and met him. He runs a bakery on the ground floor and lives on the first floor of the same bakery. He invited his friend that evening. He had a threesome that night. I returned the next day. I visit him sometimes. The other man had come to Belagavi, where I had a chance to meet him again. Rohan travels to Dharwad on the pretext of meeting a ‘friend’ when in fact he went to meet a stranger he contacted online. Dharwad and Belagavi are well connected by road with a travel time of not more than two hours. Good roads, efficient connectivity and ‘meeting a friend’ provide confidence to the 22-year-old’s parents. Such inter-city movements were also seen happening between states in cases where men travelled from Kolhapur city on the other side of the Karnataka border in Maharashtra to Belagavi (110 km away). One of the men informed me about a male homosexual group in Belagavi who regularly invite good looking model-like men from Kolhapur for their occasional parties. The group also seems to make regular pleasure trips to towns in Goa, another neighbouring state of Karnataka. Further, it was also observed that such movements were not limited to city–city circulation. Shadaf (40) is a farmer. He lives in Hidkal village in Belagavi district, 58 km from Belagavi city. He travels to his field 24 km away daily on his bike. A married man, his daily commuting provides him a chance to meet men for sex. “I have sex with my wife often, but I need a man too. I have place in my field, I make out in the shed.” The men he met belonged to other villages and towns, or those passing through the area. One day he messaged me about an encounter he had that afternoon. He was like a bull. He doesn’t know how to operate the [dating] app. One of my friends who is in this line gave him my number and he came over from Ankalgi [another village, 15 km away from Hidkal]. I enjoyed sex with him in the shed. He was on his way to Hukkeri [a town 40 km north of Belagavi]. Throughout the span of my fieldwork and even beyond, I continued to keep in touch with Shadaf. He keeps informing me of the many men who visit him from various places: nearby villages, towns, travellers passing by; his everyday routine of going to the field to work and the chance encounters with men from time to time. However, unlike Shadaf, Rohan, Shreyas, Manjunath and Basavraj who engaged in mobilities of various vectors and scales, there were many men who did not have opportunities to move. They exchanged numbers and engaged with each other through video calls on WhatsApp. The GPS-enabled online dating app operated on mobile smartphones which men in my study owned has embedded technology into everyday routines and practices, and unchained users from fixities (and limitations) of place. Sexual desire is expressed and fulfilled through technology that is

Queer in Karnataka  61 entwined with geographic space. Mowlabocus calls it ‘cybercarnality’, where gay male culture is manifested through digitally and physically intertwined space (Mowlabocus 2016: 79). Men seek other men through these ‘hybrid spaces’ (De Souza e Silva 2006: 263) and move to meet them when opportunities get generated, wrapped neatly within heteronormative folds. Such movement connects diverse men, places and desires, bringing towns, cities and villages of the non-metropolitan into a regional constellation, producing a distinct sexual geography of male homosexualities. Conclusion The chapter began by conceptualizing the non-metropolitan space as an enmesh of cities, towns and villages. The ethnography presented brings out the queer characteristics of the non-metropolitan space in contemporary Karnataka. While being at a distance from the metropolitan city, the non-metropolitan space builds its own queer personality where men in towns, cities and the rural interact with each other. The limitations posed by their settlement size, threshold populations and tight heteronormative terrains are negotiated by tactfully strategizing their visibility and moving beyond the familiar heterosocial space. Underpinning such strategies is the use of Internet-enabled new media technologies—the GPS-enabled dating app, where men vernacularize the global technological space and navigate it, both linguistically and technologically. Furthermore, the visibilities and lack of place to have sex are further negotiated by putting the dating app to productive uses and moving away from familiar space to distant elsewhere at various scales, both in space and time, where men have an opportunity to realize their sexual desires. Such a movement puts non-metropolitan cities, towns and villages into a constellation producing specific regional/ non-metropolitan geographies of sexuality. This study contributes to the growing area of research which aims to critique the metrocentricity of sexuality and space studies (Gray 2009; Kazyak 2011; Green, 2014; Myrdahl 2013; Dutta 2017; Forstie 2020). Previous studies on the non-metropolitan spaces like smaller towns and rural areas posit key findings based on Western contexts where communities are the focus of studies. This ethnography has focused on men and their everyday lives, where men’s battles are individual struggles against heteronormative structures while actualizing their desires. This study also contributes to the expanding field of mobility studies by highlighting the diverse directions and scales that mobilities take place within the non-metropolitan. The chapter focused on men’s sexual geographies. Men do have a gendered privilege owing to their control over resources, spaces and social position to move (within structural limitations). Due to the paucity of time, I could not cover men who do not have access to smartphones and the Internet. Questions that remain unanswered are how do those men navigate spaces? What about those men who are not in a position to move or negotiate their

62  Kiran Bhairannavar visibility? Furthermore, how do women in non-metropolitan spaces engage with their queer desires? How do they negotiate their double disadvantages of being woman and non-heteronormative? In what ways do trans persons navigate their material realities? These questions could open some directions for future research. I went to the field with an initial idea of understanding queer terms in Kannada language. This has been a huge miss on part of men whom I conversed with. They had no idea. Could there be chances where there is no queer vernacular bhasha in Kannada in the very first place? My initial thoughts were, apart from what heterosexual mainstream name-called non-heteronormative men, men may have cruised and communicated with actions and eye contact (with obvious Kannada verbs for sexual acts). However, much before Samalaingika, Salinga words (modern words to denote homosexuals) were made popular, decades before that, there was a teenage boy in Belagavi who went on to shift his residence from his family home to his best friend’s (family) home. He roamed around with a group of male friends and visited his parents and siblings frequently. He lived with his friend for the next 35 years and died in his friend’s arms in the mid-1990s. A story remains to be unearthed. Possibly that could provide a key to the puzzle. A much deeper and longer ethnographic engagement with the field may provide the answers. Notes 1 Have place refers to having a place to have sex. 2 See Tellis (2007) and Dasgupta (2018) for a critique of the Internet and New Media Technologies in India. 3 See Boyce (2006: 93–94) on formation of Indian sexual subjectivity. 4 See Hubbard (2013).

References Boyce, Paul. “Moral ambivalence and irregular practices: Contextualizing male-tomale sexualities in Calcutta/India.” Feminist review 83, no. 1 (2006): 79–98. Dasgupta, Rohit K. “Online romeos and gay-dia: Exploring queer spaces in digital India.” In McNeil, Elizabeth, Wermers, James E. and Lunn, Joshua O. (eds) Mapping queer space (s) of praxis and pedagogy, pp. 183–200. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. De Souza e Silva, Adriana. “From cyber to hybrid: Mobile technologies as interfaces of hybrid spaces.” Space and Culture 9, no. 3 (2006): 261–278. Dutta, Aniruddha. “Undoing the metronormative: Urban–rural exchange within LGBT communities in Eastern India.” In Dhall, Pawan (ed.) Queer Potli: Memories, imaginations and re-imaginations of urban queer spaces in India, pp. 72–86 Queer Ink, 2017. Forstie, Clare. “Theory making from the middle: Researching LGBTQ communities in small cities.” City & Community 19, no. 1 (2020): 153–168. Gray, Mary L. Out in the country: Youth, media, and queer visibility in rural America. New York University Press, 2009.

Queer in Karnataka  63 Hillier, Lynne, and Lyn Harrison. “Building realities less limited than their own: Young people practising same-sex attraction on the internet.” Sexualities 10, no. 1 (2007): 82–100. Hubbard, Phil. Cities and sexualities. Routledge, 2013. Katyal, Akhil. “Playing a double game: Idioms of same sex desire in India.” PhD diss., SOAS, University of London, 2011. Kazyak, Emily. “Disrupting cultural selves: Constructing gay and lesbian identities in rural locales.” Qualitative Sociology 34, no. 4 (2011): 561–581. Mowlabocus, Sharif. Gaydar culture: Gay men, technology and embodiment in the digital age. Routledge, 2016. Myrdahl, Tiffany Muller. “Ordinary (small) cities and LGBQ lives.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 12, no. 2 (2013): 279–304. Podmore, Julie A., and Alison L. Bain. ““No queers out there”? Metronormativity and the queer suburban.” Geography Compass 14, no. 9 (2020): e12505. Tellis, Ashley. “Cyberpatriarchy: Chat rooms and the construction of ‘man to man’relations in urban India.” In Chan Kwok-Bun (ed.) East-West identities, pp. 361–372. Brill, 2007. Tucker, Andrew. Queer visibilities: Space, identity and interaction in Cape Town. John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

3 A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture Revisiting the Lingua Franca of the Hijra Community Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu Introduction Hijra is a term used in South Asia, notably India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, to refer to transgender people who transiently or persistently identify with a gender other than their assigned gender or sex at birth (Nanda, 1990; Jami, 2005; Mal, 2015a, 2015b, 2018a, 2018b). Transgender is an umbrella term that encompasses the vast diversity of gender identity and gender expression. Hijras have dominated Indian society, culture and class since the Kamasutra and Mughal eras (Hall, 1995; Harvey, 2008, Kalra, 2012; Mal, 2018b). Ancient myths attribute them with special powers that bring good fortune and fertility. Nonetheless, despite this supposedly sanctioned position in Indian culture, hijras face severe harassment and discrimination from all sides (Mal, 2018b; Mal & Mundu, 2018). Recently, transgender has been included in the LGBTQ+ group (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer). Mythological perspective on hijras in India serves as an evidence of tolerance of sexual diversity. In India most of them are male to female transgender people. The English terms that are often associated with them include transgenders, transsexuals, transvestites, hermaphrodites and eunuchs. Their gender identity and outward appearance tend to be feminine. They live together with their own internal system of ordered hierarchical household which is called according to their culture Gharanas (also referred as Mahalla or Dehra) led by Nayaks (topmost leaders) or Gurus (next level leaders). The Nayaks also act as policy makers for the hijra community (Nanda, 1990, 1994) and sometimes may have a number of Gurus under her supervision. In maximum Gharanas one Guru oversees several Chelas (hijra disciples) in their society, regulating their daily lives and teaching them about hijra customs and language (Mal, 2015b, 2015c, 2018b, 2021; Mal & Mundu, 2018). In addition to using their native language or a regional language, they also use a code language. When an outsider is present, they develop their own language by using various code words to communicate. This secret language is called Hijra Farsi, and Ulti bhasa, or Gupti bhasa and is derived from Persian and Hindustani. The hijras value the secrecy of their language because DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-5

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  65 it is the only means by which they can conceal themselves and their stigmatized community from the outside world. Even when speaking Hijra Farsi or Ulti bhasa, they will tell outsiders that they are speaking a regional dialect. In marginalized transgender communities in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal, Hijra Farsi is widely spoken. According to popular belief, the language is related to the Mughal Empire in India, where the hijra identity originated, despite the fact that the name has no linguistic connection to Farsi (Persian). Hijra Farsi resembles Hindi but is unintelligible to speakers of Hindi and lacks a written script. It is considered as a secret language or cant or cryptolect which is devised to confuse, mislead, and exclude others—people who are not from their communities (Hall, 1995, 1997, 2001; Nagar, 2008; Sheeraz & Afsar, 2011; Mal, 2018b). In recent decades, ethnographic and context-­ sensitive analyses have become more prevalent in fieldwork, examining how people use language to construct and project their identities in ways that are locally significant. In other words, macro-­social differences such as age, class, race, gender, and sexual orientation are not universal monoliths that are reflected in linguistic practice in the same ways across communities; rather, social difference may be constructed and performed differently based on the norms of the communities being studied (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005; Hall, 2005). The notion that binary systems for defining gender and sexuality are natural, universal, and unchallengeable is fundamentally challenged by “queer languages,” the name given to this set of perspectives. Consequently, the field must urgently retheorize such a priori dichotomies (Bucholtz & Hall, 2006; Davis et al., 2014). The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the linguistic and paralinguistic properties of the secret language used by the hijras to communicate within their communities in India, which sets them apart from the rest of the world. In order to determine whether or not it should be considered a language, the study also seeks to evaluate its complex nature critically. Critics on the Hijra Lingo The hijra community is extremely protective of its language, Hijra Farsi, and Ulti bhasa or Gupti bhasa, so it has remained a secret language. The first known work on LGBTQ+ language was Gershon Legman’s “The Language of Homosexuality” (1941), which appeared in medical venues, often with explicit warnings that the content was only intended for medical experts (Calder, 2021a). With this discursive turn, queer linguistics emerged as a field of study in the mid-­1990s. Works like William Leap’s Beyond the Lavender Lexicon (1995) and Anna Livia and Kira Hall’s volume Queerly Phrased (1997) responded to and elaborated beyond the bulk of earlier work on the language of queer people. Numerous analytical developments accompanied the establishment of queer linguistics as a field of research (Calder, 2021b). Many well-­researched works have mentioned Farsi as the specific language of hijra community but not one of them has attempted to analyse the speech

66  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu patterns and constructive description from any sort of linguistic perspective. (Rao, 1955; Freeman, 1979; Mukherjee, 1980; Pimpley & Sharma, 1985; Khattak, 2004; Brown, 2005; Khilji, 2008). Although some researchers have tried to identify some of the features of this language but could not fully reveal the content and nature of this language. Lynton and Rajan remark that the Hindi-­speaking hijras they spoke with in Hyderabad “use ‘he’ and ‘she’, ‘him’ and ‘her’, indiscriminately” (Lynton & Rajan, 1974). Similarly, Nanda explained somewhat simplistically from a linguistic as well as an anthropological perspective that “Indian languages have three kinds of gender pronouns: masculine, feminine, and a formal, gender-­neutral form” (Nanda, 1990). She also argued that hijras of India have “a specialized, feminized language, which consists of the use of feminine expressions and intonations” (Nanda, 1990). Similarly, some Pakistani sociologists try to make discussions of language central to their exposure to the hijra lifestyle. Naqvi and Mujtaba, for instance, in their article on Urdu-­ speaking hijras in Pakistan, assert emphatically that “Hijras challenge the very order of language” (Naqvi & Mujtaba, 1992). When referring to individual hijras, the authors arbitrarily switch between femininity and masculinity, emphasizing the inability of both Urdu and English to capture the hijra’s intersexed essence. Later, language researcher Hall revealed that in the case of hijras’ secret language, gender is marked not on pronouns, but on verbs and adjectives (Hall, 1995). Although all of these studies provided an external view of the language, they failed to investigate its hidden nature. In the new millennium, scholars began to challenge the significance of identity in studies of language and sexuality, as a result of a shift away from demographic essentialism. Kulick stated in his review “Gay and Lesbian Language” that language and sexuality study should investigate the relationship between language and desire rather than the relationship between language and identity (Kulick, 2000). In addition, analytical studies of queer speakers of languages have emerged, e.g. the linguistic practices of ‘hijras’ and ‘Kotis’ in India (Hall, 2005), ‘Leitis’ in Tonga (Besnier, 2003), and ‘yandaudu’ in Nigeria (Gaudio, 2009). As research in the fields of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology grew in popularity, studies expanded beyond the lexicon to include other aspects of language such as sound, sentence structure and conversational analysis. On the other hand, Hall (2001, 2005) and Nagar (2008) assert that it is a lexical code and a code language, respectively. Since both of these studies emphasize other aspects of the language, such as how it is intertwined with their identity, ambiguous sexuality and gender expression, but their claims about its lingual clinch are rather deceptive. Hall also stated that the comparatively lower class hijra communities employ a variety they call “Farsi” as a marker of indigenous sexuality. The fact that it is structurally consistent with Hindi yet unintelligible to Hindi speakers, is characterized by distinctive global patterns and an extensive alternative lexicon. Although Hijra Farsi is unrelated to Persian Farsi, its speakers conceptualize it as the

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  67 language of the Mughals, employing it as a basis of the construction of a historically authentic sexual identity (Hall, 2001). Nagar mentioned that being socially ostracized, physically frail, economically poor, psychologically hurt and inwardly vindictive, hijras needed at least one advantage over other communities through their unique Farsi language. So they would keep it confidentially with their lives (Mukherji, 2013; Nagar, 2008). In addition, Hall and Zimman worked on language, embodiment and identity, using the term “third gender” to refer to individuals whose sexual identity does not fall within the categories of men and women and whose actions articulate their thirdness. They demonstrated how body language and paralinguistic characteristics contribute to the development of a relationship between language and gender identity in the third gender group. According to their research, the relationship between the body and language is recursive; language influences the conceptualization of the body, and the body’s actions are an integral component of the body (Zimman & Hall, 2010). Bucholtz (2004) and Livia (2000) have also investigated the discursive performances of hijras that are considered strange by people outside of the hijra community. For instance, clapping with grating voicing is a discursive practice that hijras engage in when they are engaged in a heated argument or need to emphasize a point while interacting with others. Additionally, it is considered the hijras’ signature style. Recent research demonstrates that the visual gendered presence of the body can influence how interlocutors socially interpret gendered language variables emanating from the body and how speakers adjust their linguistic performances based on their own visual presentation (Calder, 2019a, 2019b). Awan and Sheeraz studied the language spoken by Pakistan’s community and observed that it contains a vocabulary that is distinct from other languages. Farsi is “as good a language as any other” despite its unique syntax, which distinguishes it from other major tongues. They believe their secret Farsi language is a combination of Persian, Urdu and Punjabi (Awan & Sheeraz, 2011). According to a separate study by Sheeraz and Afsar, Farsi for hijras is as perfect a natural language as any other. In the study, an effort has been made to demonstrate how Farsi, which has been successfully kept secret, not only plays a variety of unconventional roles for Pakistani hijras but also acts as a driving force for the rise of hijraism, the state of being a hijra (Sheeraz & Afsar, 2011). Ali asserted that hijras created this language as a shield or weapon to defend their community against any intrusion (Ali, 2003). According to Cheshire (2005, 503) “Speakers use syntactic forms to construct discourse, and through discourse, they carry out numerous social activities and construct numerous social meanings.” This is what the hijras appear to be doing through the syntactic forms of the Farsi language that were developed as a result of their perceived social distance and exclusion (Cheshire, 2005). While most studies on queer language in Western contexts have focused on cisgender queer speakers up to this point, transgender speakers have

68  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu received more attention in recent years, with researchers looking into topics like transgender coming out narratives, use of pronouns, and phonetic features in the construction of transgender identity. The importance of phonetic factors in the articulation of trans-­masculine identity, as well as the effect of testosterone on transmen’s voices over time, are explored in Zimman’s ethnographic and longitudinal research of transmen in San Francisco (Zimman, 2012, 2014). More recently, Queen has argued for the importance of considering both identity and desire in linguistic research on queer individuals (Queen, 2014). Mal’s research on Bengali hijras revealed that the hijras’ secret language is influenced by the regional language or dialect of the region to which the hijras belong. Hijras in various parts of West Bengal and India exhibit such linguistic diversity. These differences are only visible in the use of verbs and how they convey the sentence. He also demonstrated that, despite many similarities, there are two kinds of cants in India: Hijra Farsi and Ulti or Gupti bhasa. Hijra Farsi, and Ulti bhasa, is a spoken language with no written form and a vocabulary derived from an unknown source and passed down through generations. Because hijras face social exclusion and marginalization in South Asian society, they regard their secret language as a distinct practice that is entirely theirs, and the majority of them refuse to reveal its existence to non-­hijras. However, in the presence of strangers, they frequently resort to that private tongue (Mal, 2015a, 2015b, 2018a, 2021; Mal & Mundu, 2018). In recent decades, further studies highlighted a broader new wave of sociolinguistic research, with a broader use of ethnographic methodologies to investigate how people’s linguistic performances of queerness are influenced by, and should be interpreted within, specific socio-­historical and geographic settings (Hall, 2005, 2013; Zimman & Hall, 2010; Queen, 2014; Mal, 2015b; Bucholtz & Hall, 2016; Barrett, 2017; Mal & Mundu, 2018; Calder, 2019, 2021b). Geo-space and Methods This research has been conducted at various intervals of time. From March 2013 to December 2015, we conducted research in six towns in West Bengal, India, namely Kharagpur, Midnapore, Halda, Ghatal and Panskura. The study was initiated with a focus on studying various social issues and practices in order to unearth information about hijra communities that was being concealed through the use of purposive sampling. This study was conducted with the consent of 91 hijra participants using a structured questionnaire and interviews at various intervals. From October 2016 to May 2017, we conducted a snowball sampling to learn about their traditional practices of concealing lifestyle and linguistic information in different social contexts. Participants were reached out to based on the suggestions and liaison of our existing participant pool. We interviewed 82 hijra participants from Purulia, Bankura, Birbhum, Maldah, and Coochbehar districts of West Bengal;

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  69 Balasore, Bhubaneswar, and Cuttack of Odisha; Kanpur of Uttar Pradesh; Rajshahi, Khulna, and Dhaka of Bangladesh. We conducted in-­person interviews with 61 hijra individuals in West Bengal but conducted phone and video interviews with hijra respondents outside of the state. We were assisted by an Oriya friend while interviewing the hijras of Odisha. This round of data collection enabled us to explore the various mechanisms of their concealed lifestyle and linguistic strategies. From November 2018 to December 2019, we conducted a final accessory verification interview with 117 hijras in Kolkata, West Bengal to substantiate previous findings. Conjectures and Contemplations Indian hijras tend to identify as a community with its own tradition, initiation rituals and professions (like begging, dancing at weddings, blessing babies or money collection through journey), but, they are, nevertheless, a marginalized community. Hijras have done their best to survive and form a supportive, close-­knit community, perhaps as a result of their marginalization. This closeness has been facilitated by Hijra Farsi and Ulti bhasa, which has a history that is as distinct and enigmatic as its speakers. Despite being divided into four groups predominantly as Khusra (hermaphrodite or intersex), Aqua (cross-­dressers or transvestites and transsexuals), Zananay (impotent male, homosexuals, or bisexuals), and Khoja or Chhinni or Chhibri (castrated hijra) in India, they all have Farsi and Ulti conversations among themselves (Mal, 2015a, 2018b, 2021). Despite this categorization, some earlier studies claimed that in some regions of West Bengal, Chhibri refers to a psychologically and physiologically healthy woman who has assumed false hijra identities (Mal, 2018b; Mal & Mundu, 2018). The major questions that have been addressed by our research are as follows: 1 Nature of Secret Language of the Hijras The secret language of hijra, the Hijra Farsi, is not intelligible to Hindi and Urdu speakers due to distinctive intonation and a large amount of distinctive vocabulary (Hall, 2001, 2003; Sheeraz & Afsar, 2011). Substantially, it’s a coded and a secret language that’s unwritten, purely oral and often gets projected as slang. Hijra Farsi is mainly spoken by Muslim hijras; whereas, Ulti or Gupti bhasa, slightly altered form of Hijra Farsi with regional dialects, is spoken by Hindu hijras (Kundalia, 2013; Mal, 2015b, 2018a). Over time, the secret language has evolved to include words from local languages such as Bengali, Tamil, Oriya, Punjabi, Sindhi, and others. Consequently, although, the influence of Hindi language is largest in Hijra Farsi across India, there is very little variation in this language from place to place in the usage of verbs in sentences (Mukherji, 2013). Ulti or Gupti bhasa has remained an esoteric language till recently, as the hijra community stonewalls any attempts to probe into the lingo (Kundalia, 2013). It is primarily spoken by Bengali hijras in the eastern

70  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu part of India in West Bengal, Tripura, Odisha, and in Bangladesh (Mal, 2015a, 2018a). It is fascinating that the majority of Hindu and Muslim hijras in Bangladesh speak Ulti bhasa rather than Farsi. According to the studied Bengali hijras, Ulti bhasa has its own peculiarities that are quite different from Hijra Farsi, and it has a history dating back to the Vedic age. They believe that their Ulti language is the oldest, and that Hijra Farsi and other hijra-­ languages spoken in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar are derived from it. Ulti bhasa is often understood by the outsiders as a dialect with a unique vocabulary, and for some it is not even a proper dialect. Bengali hijras, however, refer to it as a language used to communicate with other hijras in India and abroad. They, nonetheless, tend to use Ulti bhasa while conversing in their everyday Bengali. Ulti bhasa also includes a variety of sexually loaded lexemes, ranging from sexual organs to many types of sensual behaviours, which are somewhat different from Hijra Farsi. The Ulti system broadens the field of pleasure by eroticizing additional physical, particularly anal, pleasure possibilities. Ulti is thus designed to effectively capture the hijras’ sexual desires, which is otherwise a challenging task to convey with native languages. Emergence of Farsi or Ulti Language 2 According to hijra myth, a royal eunuch named Mai Nandi formed the hijra society during the Mughal India and introduced this secret language. Mai Nandi, is often referred to as Bahuchara Mata and Murgi Mata in Indian society (Nanda, 1986, 1990, 1999; Mal, 2015a; Abbas & Pir, 2016). Hijras’ secret language is named after the Mughal court language, Farsi, because they believe their community originated in mediaeval courts. The Khwaja sera or Eunuchs were the guardians of the royal harems and had access to the court at that time. Many Pakistani hijras still refer to themselves as Khwaja sera or Khwajasira, which is a source of pride for the community (Mal, 2015a; Rehman, 2016; Abbas & Pir, 2016). With the fall of the Mughal Empire and the establishment of British colonial rule, the position of hijras became more marginalized. According to colonial regulations, they were not permitted to wear certain garments or to dance in public on a regular basis. This persecution prompted hijras to become protective of their language, which eventually evolved into a survival tool (Hall, 1995, 2003). The study revealed that, despite the absence of documentary evidence, the majority of Hindu hijras assert that this language has been prevalent since the Ramayana and Mahabharata eras. The majority of Indian and Bangladeshi hijras, on the other hand, believe that the language’s adoption was influenced by the Koovagam festival, the world’s largest transgender event, which has been held in Tamil Nadu since ancient times. Because it contains their own customs, folklore, and rituals, they wish to keep the festival’s myth hidden from outsiders. Therefore, they adopt this coded language to conceal the hijra legacy from the rest of society. Since this

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  71 festival attracts millions of transgender individuals from India and other countries, they converse in this language to avoid the linguistic diversity necessary to forge an alliance between them. 3 Purpose Served by the Usage of Farsi or Ulti Bhasa The hijras’ transgender identity appears to be conveyed and expressed through this language. Despite the fact that the reasons or objectives for using Farsi or Ulti may vary, it may be used more seriously to stabilize their group and foster solidarity among its members across India. This language becomes their common tongue. However, the majority of hijras believe that this language was created by goddess Bahuchara Mata herself, and that they are obligated to learn and speak it to honour her. The Mata (Goddess) will become enraged if they do not learn and speak this language. On the other hand, it could be said that they resorted to the Farsi language in order to conceal the truth about their way of life. Some hijras believe that speaking this language gives them peace of mind and, in some cases, the realization of hijrapan (the feelings of being a hijra), and prevents suicidal tendencies. This language protects their privacy and secrecy by preventing outsiders from understanding their conversations. According to confidential information provided by a number of hijras, this language is used to conceal a variety of illegal and criminal activities from the outside world. Paralinguistic Features of Hijra Farsi or Ulti Bhasa 4 Although many hijras have male sexual partners, their identity is separate from that of the Western transgendered people. There is a specific way of speech associated with hijras, but it is stereotyped and frequently disparaging (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004). Hijras frequently use feminine mannerisms, feminine gender agreement when addressing themselves or other hijras, and pronouns to promote solidarity or distance, depending on the circumstances and their interlocutors (Hall & O’Donovan, 1996; Eckert & McConnell-­Ginet, 2013). They also use terms that are seen as vulgar, to stereotypically enact the maleness. Hijras frequently refer to themselves as men in the past tense and women in the present tense. Their mixing of masculine and feminine in speech and styles of articulation might be interpreted as a reflection of their ambivalent sexual identities, as well as a challenge to prevailing sexuality and gender stratifications (Hall, 1997). As a result, hijras employ anomalistic grammar as a kind of resistance against gender roles (Eckert & McConnell-­Ginet, 2013). The present study has thoroughly focused on the Hijra Farsi as verbal communication style, including vocal elements such as paralanguage, and non-­vocal features such as gestures, facial expression, falsetto voice, and eye contacts. They apply various obsolete words from unknown vocabulary in an aggressive or soft manner for covert communication. Hijras’ language choices are influenced by the audience and context, as well as situational considerations such as the need to demonstrate or conceal hijra identity in a given environment. There are also subtle changes in the beat of the hijra’s clap (Taal) that are utilized for internal codified

72  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu communications in addition to regulating the public attention. With a resounding clap and falsetto vocalization, Hijra Farsi code-­switching or shifting speech patterns can express that particular identity which a hijra person chooses to put forward as primary at a particular time. The study also revealed that in their communication, they use Hijra Farsi alongside their native language in a way that is compatible with the grammar and pronunciation of each vernacular language that they choose. Hijra may use certain Ulti words and gestures that are widely known in their society as a test to see if the interlocutor recognizes them. This permits the hijras to form a bond with a community member they had never met before, or while conversing over phone, without having to disclose their orientation. 5 Hijra Farsi as a Lingua Franca Having a language that creates a sense of a community is a necessity for hijras, who always give up quite a lot when they join the new community. Hijras consider the language as truly their own, and speak about it with pride (Rehman, 2016). Most hijras live with their Gurus in households called Dehras or Gharanas (Nanda, 1986, 1990; Mal, 2015c, 2018b, 2021). They are usually runaways or have been abandoned by their families, and they are in search of a safe haven where they can find a sense of intimacy with belongingness, and peace of mind. Following a new hijra’s introduction, the Guru takes on the role of a parent and teacher, assisting her in learning Hijra Farsi as well as the way of hijra life. Every inductee must adhere to the rules of the language. For the hijra community, it is a lingua franca for forming alliances. They regarded this language as their own fundamental language and a tool for community building which is necessary to sustain an emotional harmony among themselves in the community. The Teaching/Learning of the Language 6 Hijra Farsi is pretty complicated and it has a massive vocabulary system, which includes some borrowed words from other South Asian languages (Sheeraz & Afsar, 2011). Much of the vocabulary centres on trade, money, hijra rituals, cursing, and sexuality (Hall, 1995, 1997; Mal, 2015a). Affricate, retroflex, and fricative can be noticed in their Farsi or Ulti speech (Mallik, 1993). Hijra Farsi or Ulti bhasa, unlike one’s mother tongue, has been taught as a language of the culture in which one chooses to live. Although, research by Dr Sheeraz estimated that Hijra Farsi has a vocabulary of roughly 10,000 words (Rehman, 2016), the present survey did not find any proof regarding that estimation. According to some senior hijras (Gurus), Farsi or Ulti vocabulary has approximately 1000 to 2000 secret words. Some Gurus have written these words in their notebooks for future reference. Young hijras do not know all the words in this language. Hijra Farsi is quite difficult to teach and learn as it is completely different from the mother tongue. Newcomers to the hijra community are taught the

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  73 language as well as the group’s alternative family structure, cultural standards, and other customs through the codified language. Newcomers who are yet to learn Hijra Farsi are frequently teased and mocked by seasoned speakers. With no written script or textbook, the learning process is generally based on oral renditions, helped along by Gurus, who serve as parental figures within hijra households. It takes different time for different hijra apprentices to learn this language; some learn in one month, while others take five or six months. They have a hard time learning unfamiliar words of Farsi or Ulti languages. The style of Farsi word formation is completely different from the recognized languages prevalent in our society. This teaching–learning of the language of the hijras highlights the oral culture of knowledge transmission which has been prevalent in India since antiquity. 7 Farsi or Ulti Language as a Ciphering Key According to some research on hijra people’s vocabulary, they frequently employ inventive strategies to avoid pronouncing precise physical or gender-­specific terms related to the genitals (Zimman & Hall, 2010). The present study has found that the simplest and the most common form of oral ciphering of hijras is done by using strange terminologies that are not found in any dictionary. An interesting feature of ciphering words is that sometimes a particular word takes a different form in Hijra Farsi and Ulti bhasa in terms of word formation and pronunciation, although many ciphered words are used in both the language systems irrevocably. Table 3.1 will illustrate such dynamics which is made based on the conversations with hijras in the study. Besides the use of uncommon secret words, they have used a lot of different words in the same sense to confuse an outsider while constructing this secret language. Morphologic Properties of Hijra Farsi 8 Similar to previous research (Hall, 1995; Awan & Sheeraz, 2011; Sheeraz & Afsar, 2011), the present study has found that Hijra Farsi or Ulti bhasa has nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and determiners of its own. However, it frequently takes adverbs, prepositions, and other words, from the local languages with which it is in contact. 8.1

Farsi Nouns Hijra text contains many distinguished nouns of both masculine and feminine gender, while some nouns denote common gender. However, in the case of Bengali and Oriya hijras, Farsi and Ulti languages are prevalent simultaneously. Although there are many examples in Table 3.1, nevertheless, Table 3.2 highlights the special features of Farsi nouns, which are used differently in the case of masculine, feminine, and common gender, while conveying the same meaning. Additionally, the hijras have used some unique secret words (Table 3.3), Moorath and Chapti, which have no synonyms in any other languages. These words represent traditional peculiarities related to body modification which is unique to the hijra cult.

74  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu Table 3.1  Ciphered words used in Hijra Farsi and Ulti bhasa Ciphered word

Meaning

Hijra Farsi

Ulti bhasa

Hindi/Urdu

English

Body Specific Terms Khombar Chamrri Chamchia Jog Nirkka Nakra Hatmaisi Kanmaisi Bhatal Chamki Nejma

Khomor Chamri Chissa/Chamchia Jogbila/Jogmasi Nirkha Mungdki/Nakmasi Hatmasi Kanmasi Gili/Gilibila/Bhatalbila Chissi/Chamkibila Nejmar

Chehra Aankh Shareer Baal Khoon Naak Hath Kan Koolhon/Koolha Tvacha/Jild Dant

Face Eye Body Hair Blood Nose Hand Ear Hips Skin Tooth

Ulujhulu Nilki Likam Chipti Battu/Batlibila Gilitor/Chhabki/ Chhawa Aanar

Sambhog kreeda Stan/Chhati Ling Yoni Guda Laundebaaz

Flirt/Foreplay Breast Penis Vagina Anus Sodomite

Stan

Boobs

Adhitengri/Dasoli Adhigoj/Adhivadmi

Das rupiya Pachas rupiya

Ten rupees Fifty rupees

Ekgoj/Vadmi

Sow rupiya

Panchvadmi/ Panchvadvi Katka

Panchgoj/Panchvadmi

Panchso rupiya

Barkapatia/Katka

Ek hazar

Nirapatt Konki Akkathappa

Barka das patia Konki/Thopor Akkathappa

Das hazar Paisa Bahut paise

Hundred rupees Five hundred rupees One thousand Ten thousand Pice/Paisa A lot of money

Sexual coinages Ulujhuli Chhalka Leekar Seepo Battu Chhabki Aanar Monetary words Dasola/Dasoli Adhivadmi/ Adhivadvi Vadmi/Vadvi

Words to convey relationships Surmi Tolni pit/Bonki Surma Tolna pit Sudhi Suddi Sudha Sudda Khondi Suddi/Bhabol Khonda Sudda

Behan Bhai Bhuri/Boodhee Bhura/Boodha Maa Baap

Sister Brother Old lady Old man Mother Father (Continued)

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  75 Table 3.1  (Continued) Ciphered word

Meaning

Hijra Farsi

Ulti bhasa

Hindi/Urdu

English

Parik

Parik

Premi/Pati

Niharin Luri Lura

Niharin/dula Tolni/Dulni Tolna/Dulna

Patni Larki Larka

Boyfriend/ Husband Wife Girl Boy

Words vis-­à-­vis the ‘world of crimes’ Inchi Inchi Genda Genda Chhilak Jhala Dingur Kutto Gobbaj

Chhilak Makur Dingur/Domor Kutto Gobbabaj

Sut

Sut

Terms related to accessories Khol Khola Santli Chadra Khalki Kholpi Firka/Kotki Satra/Sangtra

Afeem Hathagola Taskaree Chor Pulis Veshyaalay Gunda/ badmaash Rivaalvar/ Bandook

Kangi Kunkur

Kangi/Chirni Kunbasi/Kunkur

Ghaar Chadar Joota Kapada or Kapra Kanghee Selphon/Mobail

Jhanni Giyani

Jhannimasi Giyanimasi

Sonekihaar Laiptop

8.2

Opium Hand grenade Smuggling Thief Police Brothel Hooligan Revolver gun

House Shawl Shoe Cloth Comb Cellphone mobile Gold chain Laptop

Farsi Pronoun Hijras use highly contextualized masculine and feminine pronouns in their conversations that are even done in their native languages. But it has been observed that if they have to address their superiors like Guru or other seniors, they use masculine pronouns for them to give respect. Generally they use masculine and feminine pronouns according to the sexual roles assigned to a hijra within their groups. But they are more inclined towards using the feminine pronoun for themselves—along with their imitating of the so-­called female gestures. This study, as shown in the Table 3.4, confirms the common hijra usage of Humsi (I), Tumsi (You), and Ojo (He/She), quite similar to the derivations by Nagar (2008), although Awan and Sheeraz (2011) in their work with Pakistani hijras have given two more of the Farsi pronouns: Hamala (I) and Tamala (You). However, these two terms are not used by the hijra correspondents of the present study.

76  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu Table 3.2  Specific Farsi nouns Farsi noun

Dhambra Dambri Firka satra Kotki/Sangtra Sursu Sursuri Kholsi Khoulmi Jharna Jogbila Jogmasi Jog

Gender (M-­Masculine, F-­ Feminine, C-­ Common)

Meaning/Synonym Hindi/Urdu

English

M F M F M F M F C M F C

Pet/Paet Pet/Paet Kapada/Kapra Kapada/Kapra Sigret Sigret Karee Karee Karee Baal Baal Baal

Belly Belly Cloth Cloth Cigarette Cigarette Curry Curry Curry Hair Hair Hair

Table 3.3  Unique Farsi nouns Unique Farsi noun

Meaning

Moorath Akwa Moorath Nirwan Moorath Chapti

A hijra who is willing to be castrated. A non-­castrated hijra. A castrated hijra. The orifice of a hijra left behind after castration at the place of penis similar to a vaginal aperture.

Table 3.4  Farsi pronouns Farsi pronoun

Humsi Humsilega Tumsi Tumsilega Ojo Ojelega

8.3

Gender (M-­Masculine, F-­ Feminine, C-­ Common)

Meaning/Synonym Hindi/Urdu

English

F F C C C C

Mai Ham Aap/Tum Aaplog/Tumlog Vah/Oh Ve/Oye

I Us You You (plural) He/She They

Farsi Verbs The hijra language has a number of notable verbs that refer to the Farsi conversation. Table 3.5 lists some commonly used Farsi verbs that are not found in other commonly spoken vernacular Indian languages. But the interesting key findings regarding Farsi verbs after the analysis of the selected speech of the hijras is that mostly their verbs end with na, resembling the usages in Hindi and Urdu.

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  77 Table 3.5  Farsi verbs Farsi verb

Gender (M-­Masculine, F-­ Feminine, C-­ Common)

Meaning/Synonym Hindi/Urdu

English

Machhia* Patana Tandana Chamtana Thibna Vogna Turpitna Dhurpitna Lugirna Chamna* Koondna Khootna Taankna Seghna Siotola

C C C C C C C C C C C C C C C

Hoon Bataana Maarna Pasand Rahena Jana/Ana Ghumna Sahavaas Marna Samajhna Khana Karna Peena Gaya – (Nil)

Badhaitola

C

– (Nil)

Being Tell Hit Like Stay Go/Come Ramble Cohabit Die Understand/Do Eat Do Drink Went Singing in a wedding ceremony Playing with newborn babies

* indicates the verbs which are used in different senses in different sentences.

8.4

8.5

Farsi has verbs of its own but, morphologically, their uses are similar to these two languages. From the conversations with Bengali, Hindi, and Oriya hijras, it is clear that regional languages have a greater influence on their verb usage. The study also found two unique verbs, termed as Siotola and Badhaitola, used in hijra society, which are not used in any other language and have no synonyms. Another fascinating fact is that some Farsi verbs, such as Machhia and Chamna, are employed in different ways depending on the context. Farsi Adjectives Although adjectives are used infrequently in Farsi conversation, the language does contain a few adjectives that are used in a variety of situations. Table 3.6 summarizes the key findings about adjectives, including the fact that some adjectives are used in a masculine sense while others are used in a feminine sense despite having the same meaning. Farsi Adverbs This study has also disclosed that there is almost no use of adverbs in Farsi communication. During the survey, with similar meaning only two adverbs Badda or Baddabila (very, much, or a lot) were found to have been used, despite the fact that it is used in different sentences with varied meanings. Table 3.6 represents some key findings of its application.

78  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu Table 3.6  Farsi adjectives Farsi adjective

Lakkhar Bila Chandni Chisa Chisi Lukhri Dhamri Khutninaththi

Gender (M-­Masculine, F-­ Feminine, C-­ Common)

Meaning/Synonym Hindi/Urdu

English

M C F M F F F C

Kharaab/Boora Kharaab/Boora Chand kiroshni Khoobsurat Khoobsurat Gareeb Garbhavatee Goonga/Goongi

Bad Bad Moonlight Beautiful Beautiful Poor Pregnant Dumb

Table 3.7 Use of Farsi adverbs Sentences with Farsi adverbs

Meaning

Humsio chamchia baddabila hein. Dingur baddabila chamanchhe. Humsio ojo nal rootha badda krendi ey. Humsilega baddabila khelua chamanchhe.

I am very sick. The police are causing a lot of trouble. I love him very much. We are drinking wine too much.

Table 3.8  Farsi determiners Farsi determiners

Insa Insi Unsa Unsi

8.6

8.7

Gender (M-­Masculine, F-­ Feminine, C-­ Common)

Meaning/Synonym Hindi/Urdu

English

M F M F

Es/Yeh Es/Yeh Oos/Vah Oos/Vah

This This That That

Farsi Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Interjections Although the use of their own linguistic adjectives has been found in Hijra Farsi, the use of ciphered prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections is not found at all. Usually, they use these words from their regional languages. However, it is found that prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections of the Hindi language are mostly used in their Farsi conversation. For example, they use Hindi prepositions Ki for ‘of’ and Nal for ‘with’ to make their Farsi sentences. Farsi Determiners Determiners are also used by hijras in their secret language. Table 3.8 shows that Farsi features determiners that are similar to those found

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  79 Table 3.9  Syntactical structure of Farsi sentences Farsi syntax

English meaning

Subject

Object

Verb

Humsi Humsi Tumsike Tumsi Tumsiko Lurako Ojsi Humsilega

Ratna Chhakka Khol ehan khalkinal tonchha humsiko tonchhana

machhia. machhia. jis? nei vogna. tandunga. nei chamna. khumuchis kie. hoga.

8.8

I am Ratna. I am hijra. How is your family? You don’t come here. I’ll hit you with shoes. Don’t scold the boy. He kissed me. We have to dance.

in other languages. According to the present study, Hijra Farsi has separate determiners for masculine and feminine genders, whereas other Indian languages have no gender marking on determiners. Farsi Syntax Unlike English, where Subject, Verb, and Object are combined to construct a sentence, Farsi language follows the general syntactic pattern of Subject, Object, and Verb (S + O + V), respectively. Table 3.9 demonstrates that Farsi is distinct but not completely dissimilar to the other languages spoken in the local areas as they all have the same syntactical structure.

9 ‘To Be or Not to Be’ Treated as a Full-­fledged Language In terms of their linguistic affiliation, hijras speak the vernacular language of the regions where they were born and lived before joining the present hijra community, but within their community they have to learn the secret language. While the language in question is cloaked in mystery, the people who retain it are not invisible. The Indian hijra community is one of the most conspicuous sexual minorities, with bright make-­up, rose-­red lipstick, and colourful saris wrapped across a physique that is neither totally male nor entirely female. The hijras are able to exert control over their interactions with the public by using Hijra Farsi, which some Indian sociologists describe as an obscene and double-­meaning language (Singh, 1982). This allows them to invite non-­hijra listeners into a linguistic space that challenges dominant gender and sexuality ideologies. India’s hijras are able to place themselves on an otherwise inaccessible social grid by mapping their own sexual ambiguity onto language ambiguity (Hall, 1997). According to some studies, the most accurate way to describe Hijra Farsi is as a register, or a variation on a language used for a certain circumstance or setting. Even if Hijra Farsi does not fit all of the linguistic criteria for a full-­fledged language, it should be referred to as a distinct language because the hijras call it a

80  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu language (Hall, 1995, 1997). Some researchers discovered that the language has its own vocabulary. Hijra Farsi has a unique syntax that distinguishes it from other mainstream languages, making it as good as any other vernacular languages (Awan & Sheeraz, 2011). Although, some of the previous academic studies validate the assertion that Hijra Farsi is a language, not just a collection of secret code terms, the present study, having acknowledging the fact that it does not meet all the linguistic requirements of a full-­fledged language, aims at underscoring some of its characteristic features: 1 Although Hijra Farsi and Ulti remains in use across much of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, yet its lexicon is invisible to the ‘mainstream’ society and has no recognized written documentation. It chiefly belongs to the culture of oral traditional praxis. 2 In Hijra Farsi and Ulti language, certain parts of speech differ from one region to another. Therefore, instead of trying to standardize it as a uniform language, in the traditional sense, there is a need to celebrate the plethora of its secret variants. 3 The hijras’ secret language has nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and other parts of speech to construct a sentence, much like any other language. But, the mode/grammar of formulation of Hijra Farsi or Ulti sentences is unintelligible. 4 The hijras believe that they speak a hidden, traditional language which is their own. They are also quite possessive of it, arguing that only their community has the right to manipulate and modify it according to their needs. Hence it is characterized by its need based improvisation. 5 Most of the words used in this language have no synonyms and terminology in other languages. The language contains unique words that have no equivalent meaning in other languages—for instance, Chapti (the orifice left behind after castration), a feature found only in hijras. 6 The use of verbs in this language is fiendishly mystical as the same verb is used in different senses in different sentences. The Farsi verb Chamna, for example, is used in a variety of ways in different sentences. In the sentence Dingur baddabila chamanchhe (The police are causing a lot of trouble), Chamna is used as ‘do’ verb; while Chamna is used as ‘drink’ in Dulna khelua chamanche (The boy is drinking). 7 The majority of the words in this language gets bracketed as slang because of the sexual connotations and is used as an erotic code of brevity. It can be, therefore, be called LGBT slang or argot (Baker, 2002; Long, 1996). On the other hand, as the hijra community occupies a marginal or precarious position in society as a sexual minority, especially where their sexual paradoxical identity and activities push them at the peripheries of the ‘mainstream’, their secret language of counter-­culture may be considered as a powerful anti-­language of resistance. Anti-­language, that refers to a

A Hidden Language That Reveals a Distinct Culture  81 minority dialect or method of communicating within a minority speech community that excludes members of the main speech community (Nordquist, 2018), can become a powerful tool of protecting the culture of the minoritized. 8 Hijra Farsi is also distinguished by the juxtaposition of contradicting characteristics such as native/regional phrases mixed with obscenities, causing deliberate disturbance of its cultural and linguistic standards. Although Hijra Farsi is based on Hindustani, according to some experts, 9 it lacks taxonomic support and does not belong to a distinct language family. Until now, no linguistic research has been able to reflect on the tree model of this hidden language. As a daughter language, connected intimately despite subsequent modifications, this language cannot be placed inside any language family. Conclusion For Indian hijras, though their secret Hijra Farsi and Ulti bhasa is not standardized as a language and it borrows some expressions from other Indian regional languages, predominantly from Hindi, yet it is not merely a dialect or mixture of other languages. It is rather an anti-­language of queernormative desire and orientation that bespeaks how the minority can protect the counter-­culture from getting turned into a collector’s item. This study also shows how the languages of the hijras have separately and secretly evolved in order to better express their feelings, their isolation, their tradition, and how the hijra community has managed to keep their language as a secret lingua franca which is not to be revealed to the rest of the non-­hijra world. Despite a lot of scholarly work in LBGTQ languages of the Western countries known as ‘Lavender Linguistics’, very little work has been done concerning the hijra community of India as well as South Asia. Notes All Farsi or Ulti and Hindi words excluding ‘hijra’ have been transliterated using the English Roman script and are consistently italicized, based on the modern form of transliteration used in R. S. McGregor’s Oxford Hindi-­ English Dictionary (1993). According to transliteration conventions, the ­correct spelling is ‘hijr.ā’; for this article, the authors use ‘hijra’ (without diacritics) for easier reading. References Abbas, Q., & Pir, G. (2016). History of the Invisible: A People’s History of the Transgendered Community in Lahore. THAAP Journal, 162–175. Ali, S. (2003, July 6). Khawajasaraoon Ki Dunya. Nawa-­e-­Waqt. Sunday Magazine, 27. Awan, M. S., & Sheeraz, M. (2011). Queer but Language: A Sociolinguistic Study of Farsi. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(10): 127–135.

82  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu Baker, P. (2002). Polari – The Lost Language of Gay Men. London: Routledge. Barrett, R. (2017). From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures. Oxford Studies in Language and Gender. New York: Oxford University Press. Besnier, N. (2003). “Crossing Genders, Mixing Languages: The Linguistic Construction of Transgenderism in Tonga.” In Janet Holmes, & Miriam Meyerhoff (Eds.), The Handbook of Language and Gender, (pp. 279–301). Oxford: Blackwell. Brown, L. (2005). The Dancing Girls of Lahore. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2004). Theorizing Identity in Language Research. Language in Society, 33(4), 501–547. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2016). “Embodied Sociolinguistics.” In Nikolas Coupland (Ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates, (pp. 173–197). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2006). “Gender, Sexuality and Language”. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed., pp. 756–758). Cambridge: Elsevier. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5): 585–614. doi:10.1177/1461445605054407 Calder, J. (2019a). “The Fierceness of Fronted /s/: Linguistic Rhematization through Visual Transformation.” Language in Society, 48(1): 31–64. Calder, J. (2019b). “From Sissy to Sickening: The Indexical Landscape of /s/in So Ma, San Francisco.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 29(3): 332–358. Calder, J. (2021a). The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, Edited by James M. Stanlaw. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/9781118786093. iela0206. Calder, J. (2021b). “Language and Sexuality: Language and LGBTQ+ Communities.” In James M. Stanlaw (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Cheshire, J. (2005). Syntactic Variation and Beyond: Gender and Social Class Variation in the Use of Discourse-­New Markers. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 9(4): 479–508. Davis, J. L., Zimman, L., & Raclaw, J. (2014). Opposites Attract: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. In L. Zimman, J. Davis, & J. Raclaw (Eds.), Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality (pp. 1–10). Oxford University Press Eckert, P., & McConnell-­Ginet, S. (2013). Language and Gender (2nd ed., pp. 218– 219). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freeman, J. M. (1979). Untouchable: An Indian Life History (pp. 294–315). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gaudio, R. P. (2009). Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Hall, K. (1995). Hijra/Hijrin: Language and Gender Identity. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Hall, K. (1997). Go Suck Your Husband’s Sugarcane!‖ Hijras and the Use of Sexual Insult. In A. Livia, & K. Hall (Eds.), Queerly Phrased: Language Gender And Sexuality (pp. 430–460). New York: Oxford University Press. Hall, K. (2001). Language Choice and Sexual Identity in New Delhi. Stanford University. Retrieved from https://web.stanford.edu/dept/linguistics/colloq/prev/ 2001/2001feb09.html

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84  Sibsankar Mal and Grace Bahalen Mundu Mallik, B. P. (1993). Aparadh Jagater Bhasha O Shabdokosh. Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing. Mukherjee, J. B. (1980). Castration—A Means of Induction into the Hijirah Group of the Eunuch Community in India: A Critical Study of 20 cases. American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, l (l): 61–65. Mukherji, A. (2013, October 7). Hijra Farsi: Secret Language Knits Community. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Hijra-­Farsi-­Secret-­ languageknitscommunity/articleshow/23618092.cms. Nagar, I. (2008). Language, Gender and Identity: The Case of Kotis in Lucknow, India. PhD Dissertation. The Ohio State University, Columbus, United States. Nanda, S. (1986). The Hijras of India: Cultural and Individual Dimensions of an Institutionalized Third Gender Role. Journal of Homosexuality, 11(3/4): 35–54. Nanda, S. (1990). Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co. Nanda, S. (1994). Hijras: An Alternative Sex and Gender Role in India. In Herdt Gilbert (Ed.), Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism In Culture And History (pp. 373–417). New York: Zone Books. Naqvi, N., & Mujtaba, H. (1992). Neither Man nor Woman. Newsline, December: 80–89. Nordquist, R. (2018, March 14). Retrieved from www.thoughtco.com/what-­is-­anti-­ language-­1689103 Pimpley, P. N., & Sharma, S. K. (1985). Hijaras: A Study of an Atypical Role. The Avadh Journal of Social Sciences, 2: 41–50. Queen, R. (2014). “Language and Sexual Identities.” In Susan Ehrlich, Miriam Meyerhoff, & Janet Holmes (Eds.), The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality (2nd ed., pp. 203–219). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Rao, I. B. (1955). Male Homosexual Transvestism: A Social Menace. Antiseptic, 52: 519–524. Rehman, Z. (2016, April 15). The secret language of South Asia’s transgender community. Quartz. Retrieved from https://qz.com/india/662917/the-­secret-­language-­ of-­south-­asias-­transgender-­community Sheeraz, M., & Afsar, A. (2011). Farsi: An Invisible but Loaded Weapon for the Emerging Hijraism in Pakistan. Kashmir Journal of Language Research, 14(2): 67–80. Singh, G. (1982). Hijro Ka Sansar. Delhi: Anupam Books. Zimman, L. (2012). “Voices in Transition: Testosterone, Transmasculinity, and the Gendered Voice Among Female-­to-­male Transgender People.” PhD dissertation, University of Colorado. Zimman, L., & Hall, K. (2010). ‘Language, Embodiment, and the ‘Third Sex’’. In Dominic Watt & Carmen Llamas (Eds.), Language and Identities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Zimman, L., Davis, J., & Raclaw, J. (2014). Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Part II

LGBTQ+ and the Regional Literature

4 Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves Tirunangai Autobiographies in Tamil Kiran Keshavamurthy

This time, I wore a sari and travelled in the ladies coach … I somehow made it to Salem and got into a local bus to go to the bus station—and then stopped to think. I couldn’t possibly return home in a sari … I should change into men’s clothes, I decided. I tried to find a room in some lodge near the bus stand, but no one appeared to want to let me in. I returned to the bus stand and decided to go to the women’s toilet there. But the man who stood there to receive money for the pay-and-use toilets dismissed me as a pottai and would not let me in. When I tried to get into the men’s toilet section, I was shooed away from there as well. In Delhi, they let me use the women’s toilet, but here things were clearly different. Then there was the issue of entering the toilet dressed as a woman and coming out as a man – this was sure to cause trouble. I was confused and not sure what I could do. I had to somehow get into male clothes; the question was how. Finally, I told the man who stood in front of the men’s toilets, collecting fare to enter them, that I was a man, and had dressed up as a woman for a show … Startled, the men who were peeing in there started yelling. I muttered, ‘I’m a man too,’ and ran into one of the bathrooms … I ought to have changed on the train, but the necessity of changing into male clothes hadn’t occurred to me then. Besides, I had travelled by ladies coach – imagine what would have happened if I’d emerged as a man from the toilet! (Revathi, 2010, 65–75) I kept asking my counsellor to ensure that I’m prescribed hormone pills. If I was prescribed hormones, I would have to wear female clothing for at least a year. But I was reluctant to go to school in female clothes because my body had grown muscular and my face now sported a beard and moustache. I was scared that a man like me would be beaten up or even killed for dressing up like a woman … I would dress up like a woman only when I had to visit my counsellor. I lied to him that I was always in female clothes. (Tanuja, 2020, 101–102)

The above quotations illustrate the complex ways in which tirunangais negotiate social, sexual and legal norms that constitute and regulate gender.1 In the first quotation, Revathi is on her way back from Delhi to see her mother

DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-7

88  Kiran Keshavamurthy in Namakkal. She is dressed up as a woman and manages to pass off as a woman in the ladies’ compartment. She cannot go home dressed up like a woman and changing into men’s clothes in a public toilet runs the risk of discovery. The man at the counter tries to shoo her away thinking that she is a pottai, a cross dressing effeminate man.2 Revathi has no choice but to tell the man that she is a man who had cross dressed as a woman for a performance. She realizes she could not have changed into men’s clothes on the train for fear of being discovered by the female co-travellers! Revathi has to carefully traverse gender lines without being discovered for which she has to compromise her own sense of self and deceive others with her performance. Note that the transgendered subject is constituted by a dialectic between cross-dressing and a normative social construction of the gendered body. Revathi does not always manage to pass off as a woman; when she has to use the toilet, she cannot use the women’s toilet; her choice is already determined by the man’s evaluation of her physical appearance and her performance as a cross-dressing man, which is a socially sanctioned but temporary inversion of gender. In the second quotation, Tanuja has to convince her counsellor, the state and the German courts of law of the seriousness of her decision to transition. But she cannot convince her counsellor without putting her own life and dignity at risk. She decides to deceive him by dressing up as woman only when she visits him. This essay is a comparative study of two autobiographies, The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story by A. Revathi, which was first published by Penguin India in English translation in 2010, and An Autobiography: Tanuja, an Eezham Tirunangai’s Journey and Struggle that was published in Tamil in 2020 by Karuppu Pirathikal.3 The 2010s have been a crucial decade in the history of queer discourse in India with the emergence of a whole spectrum of queer voices that have demanded justice in the face of gendered forms of oppression and homophobia. In the 2014 National Legal Services Authority vs Union of India judgement, the Supreme Court of India passed a landmark judgement that upheld the right of all people to self-identify their gender. It was the first judgement to acknowledge the third gender or transgender people.4 The Supreme Court further decriminalized consensual sexual acts between adults irrespective of their gender in the 2018 Navtej Singh Johar vs Union of India judgement. The 2017 Supreme Court ruling on the Right to Privacy was a fundamental right and applicable to the protection of sexual orientation that gave a reprieve to the LGBTQ community. The legal recognition of transgender people has only been the first step in a long struggle to demand equal representation in educational institutions and public employment, access to courts of law and medical care. Although the autobiographies I discuss were published ten years apart, they resonate with each other and have shared concerns about the divergence between laws that protect the lives and rights of transgender persons and their fraught social realities where they have to constantly negotiate stigma, violence, exploitation, poverty and structural exclusion.

Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves  89 A. Revathi: The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story In her preface to her autobiography, Revathi states that her autobiography is an account of her “everyday experiences of discrimination, ridicule and pain … and her endurance and joys.” It is also an attempt to share her “innermost life as a hijra” and sex worker. She also hopes that her autobiography like her book of interviews of other hijras from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala (Unarvum Uravamum/Feelings and Relationships) will enable a transformation in the way people perceive hijras by presenting hijras as agential subjects who are capable of more than begging and sex work. She does not seek the government’s sympathy but demands the right to live a dignified life in society. Her preface suggests that her autobiography is a testimony or confession of her suffering and struggle to survive in a society where she has been relegated to the margins and it is also an assertion of her resilience and joy as a hijra and activist who demands a life of dignity guaranteed by the law.5 Revathi belongs to a fairly privileged and middle caste (Gounder) family from a village in Namakkal, Salem district that owns land and had its own milk delivery business. Her father and older brothers were in charge of the business. Revathi was a boy named Doraiswamy who was the youngest son of five children that included three older brothers and a sister. Childhood is a formative stage in the lives of tirunangais like Revathi where they enjoy the freedom to explore what it means to be feminine for the first time. In Revathi’s case, it is also a phase when prejudices against gender and caste become apparent. The presence of caste is evident from her description of her village, which was demarcated as Tamil villages are along caste lines. The lower caste groups had to work on fields that were owned by Gounders and were not allowed to participate in the temple festivals. She remembers being reprimanded by her mother for sharing food with the son of one of the Dalit peasants who worked on her father’s land. From the time she was a boy, she remembers playing games that girls normally pay. She is made to realize that she is different from most boys of her age. Revathi remembers being humiliated and abused for dressing up and walking like a girl. She is bullied and shamed by her classmates for being effeminate but she is ironically happy for being acknowledged as a girl. As she says early in her autobiography, “being a girl was natural to her … [she] did not know what it meant to be a man.” (Revathi, 7) The autobiography draws attention to certain forms of feminine embodiment that are socially and ritually sanctioned in particular contexts. One of the crucial ways in which an everyday notion of femininity is enacted is domestic labour. As a boy, Revathi enjoys helping her mother in what are conventionally regarded as feminine forms of household work like cooking, washing dishes and drawing water. Then there are at least two aesthetic spaces, one virtual and the other real, that represent the possibility of embodying femininity: cinema and religious and theatrical performances. The medium of cinema offers an impressive albeit ideal and stereotypical model of femininity that mediates and constitutes Revathi’s self-perception. One of the

90  Kiran Keshavamurthy south Indian actresses who shapes Revathi’s imagination is Saroja Devi. Revathi remembers skipping school and stealing money from her parents to watch movies for which she would be beaten up. She would secretly imitate Saroja Devi’s gestures and mannerisms. Unlike Saroja Devi’s cinematic performances that can only be emulated in the private confines of her room, Revathi enjoys social visibility and acclaim when she acts in plays and dances in religious processions. One of Revathi’s early memories is performing the role of the mythical Chandramathi, Raja Harishchandra’s wife in a play whose chastity and willingness to sacrifice her own life brings her husband and son back to life. Revathi remembers passing off as a woman and her convincing performance of a suffering and self-sacrificial wife wins the admiration of the audience. Like her performances on stage, folk dance performances during religious festivals are ritual spaces where gender norms are violated and the very distinction between cross dressing and transgenderism is blurred. Through her performance, Revathi temporarily transgresses gender norms by embodying certain ritual forms of femininity. Revathi envies the made up girls who dance during the Mariamma festival procession. She also sees some boys dressed up as kurattis (female gypsies) begging at the festival. She decides to dress up like them for which she nearly gets beaten up by her brothers; she is spared when she tells them she danced for the goddess. As a boy, Revathi is conflicted by her homosexual desire for other boys and men. She is divided by her male body and her feminine self-expression. Note the unmistakable irony between social codes of masculinity and her discomfort with her own body and her inner femininity. When she is compelled to dress up like a boy/man she feels self-estranged and inauthentic but when she dresses up as a woman she is able to externalize her true inner self. In my kurathi garb, I could express all those female feelings that I usually have to suppress and so felt happy for days afterwards. But I felt troubled by the feelings that men incited in me … I felt drawn to them, but I wondered if I should not be drawn to women instead, since I was a man. Why did I love men? Was I mad? Was I the only one who felt this way? Or were there others like me, elsewhere in the world? … I somehow got to class 10. I experienced changes in my body and being. I experienced a growing sense of irrepressible femaleness, which haunted me, day in and day out. A woman trapped in a man’s body was how I thought myself … Would the world accept me thus? I longed to be known as a woman and felt pain at being considered a man. I longed to be with men, but felt shamed by this feeling. I wondered why God had chosen to inflict this peculiar torture on me, and why He could not have created me wholly male or wholly female. (Revathi, 2010, 201–206) Revathi’s life changes when she accidentally encounters some cross-dressing men on a hill where the Namakkal fort is located. She discovers that they are

Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves  91 men who have undergone surgeries to become women and dress up like women for their evening meetings. Some of them live in Erode and Dindigul. They become Revathi’s companions and they address each other as women. She admires their courage and they become a lasting source of hope and resilience. She learns that she would have to go to Delhi or Mumbai to get her penis surgically removed. Her introduction to the world of hijras fills her with hope and self-affirmation, and it spells the beginning of a peripatetic life driven by violence and a desire for a life of freedom and dignity. The autobiography traces Revathi’s journeys back and forth from Namakkal to Erode, Dindigal and then to Delhi, Mumbai and back as she oscillates between familial oppression and her life as an exploited hijra who struggles to gain visibility. During her sister’s wedding, Revathi makes a secret trip to Dindigul wearing a sari and wig where she meets some hijras for the first time. One of the hijras who later becomes Revathi’s adoptive hijra mother/guru tells her that she resembles the actress Revathi, which is what inspires her name. Revathi passes off as a woman because of her hairless and womanly appearance. When her guru decides to go to Delhi, Revathi, who is more attached to her than she ever was to her own mother, wants to accompany her. But her guru asks her to study further and get a job to spare her of the miseries of a hijra’s life. Revathi later encounters a group of hijra performers from Erode and accompanies them to visit her Erode nani, her guru’s mother/guru who runs a dance troupe that performs at temple festivals in nearby villages. Although Revathi is keen to become a part of the troupe, they tell her that she will only be accepted if she grows her hair long and looks feminine. Revathi’s inclusion into the hijra community has to be a ritually sanctioned process that includes performing chores and errands for the elders of the community that would make her eligible for nirvanam (a ritually sanctioned form of emasculation where the hijra’s penis and testicles are severed by a thayamma, a hijra who has been appointed for the ritual) and her acceptance into the community. When she returns to her family, Revathi is beaten up, her education is discontinued and she is compelled to work as a cleaner in her family’s lorry. She helps her brothers deliver milk, but she is desperate to be with her guru who now lives in a place called Wazirpur in Delhi. She grows her hair long much to her family’s disapproval. She realizes she does not have money to go to Delhi and steals one of her mother’s earrings and pawns it with the help of one of her cross-dressing friends and manages to buy a ticket in an unreserved compartment. She takes a train for the first time to Delhi. She ends up meeting her guru who lives in a Tamil colony in Wazirpur with other hijras like her. Her guru is anxious of being accused of converting men into women when she sees her coming dressed up in a shirt and lungi. Her guru and her chelas earn their living by doing badhai work, where they are invited to dance at weddings and bless new-born children. Revathi’s experience of the hijra family is an ambiguous one. On the one hand, hijra kinship offers hijras like Revathi a sense of community and belonging. It is a hierarchical kinship system that is constituted by hijras

92  Kiran Keshavamurthy who have to perform certain tasks if they want to become a part of the family. Every hijra is allotted certain ritual and social obligations that would sustain the kinship structure. In her guru’s house, for instance, the Hindispeaking chelas of the house/gharana perform badhai while the others have to beg and give a portion of their earnings to their gurus. But on the other hand, the family makes absolute claims on the loyalty and personal life of every hijra who is obliged to sever ties with her own family and renounce romantic desires. Revathi is divided by her loyalty towards her hijra house and her fraught love for her own family. Revathi writes a letter to her family without her guru’s knowledge telling them that she has come to Delhi in search of work. Later a lorry driver from Namakkal accidentally discovers her and reports to her family. Her family takes two pottais to the local police station and accuses them of selling Revathi to beggars in Delhi.6 Her mother fakes an illness and sends Revathi a telegram asking her to visit her. Revathi is deceived by the telegram and decides to meet her mother. Although she is wearing a sari on the train journey, she realizes she would have to change into male clothes. But she is unable to change into male clothes as she is traveling in a women’s compartment. At the public toilet in the Namakkal railway station, she is not sure whether she should use the male or the female toilet. She tells the man at the counter and the men in the toilet that she is a man who had dressed as a woman for a show. This incident resonates with Revathi’s guru’s and nani’s words of caution: they ask her to be discrete when she urinates in the open and ensure that she uses public toilets that can be locked lest she is discovered and harassed. Like trains, public toilets are socially promiscuous spaces where Revathi runs the risk of being discovered and humiliated. Revathi is more fortunate than other hijras because she is able to pass off as a woman but having a penis remains a constant source of shame, revulsion and anxiety. Once she reaches home, she discovers to her dismay that her mother is fine and she is beaten and tortured by her brothers. Her mother insists on taking her to the Samayapuram temple where her head is shaved and her hair is offered to the goddess. Losing her hair causes Revathi more pain than the pain her brothers inflicted on her, she feels as though she has lost her femininity. Without her hair, she can neither accept herself nor will she be accepted by the hijra community for whom long hair is an essential marker of femininity and feminine beauty. Her desire to transition is a painful and long-drawn struggle for she prays that the goddess should turn her either into a man or a woman. She goes back to helping her brothers sell milk, but this time she is determined to return and transition. She is sent by her guru to her nani who has now moved to Mumbai. Unlike her guru, her nani lives a relatively comfortable life with her chelas who sing and dance for a living. Revathi notices that hijras do not observe caste, class and religious differences. If there is any conflict between hijras, it exists among hijras who belong to different gharanas/houses over claims to beg and do sex work. Revathi is told that she can have two gurus, one in Delhi and the other in Mumbai who is her nani’s

Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves  93 chela’s chela. Revathi becomes a chela in a consecration ceremony before the naiks, the leaders of the seven hijra gharanas. Revathi can choose to either undergo a nirvanam performed by a thayamma or a sex reassignment surgery (SRS) at a hospital. Revathi opts for the latter as nirvanam is far more risky and painful and can be fatal as it has been for many hijras. She and a fellow pottai worship their goddess, Pothiraja Devi, before the operation at a hospital in Dindigul. They worship the goddess 40 days after the surgery in a ceremony that marks the end of a woman’s polluted status following her first menses. When she sees herself in the mirror, Revathi feels like a complete woman. But becoming a ‘true’ and ‘complete’ woman in hijra society only begins with nirvanam. In order to be accepted by other hijras, it becomes necessary to grow one’s hair long, get rid of facial and body hair, and embody certain conventionally feminine forms of modesty and bodily comportment. To become a part of hijra society, one cannot have romantic relationships and one has to ensure the integrity of the hijra gharana. Her nani like her guru earlier warns her to never fall in love with a man, to never lift her skirt or drink and quarrel with other pottais to ensure the peace and integrity of the group. While the hijra family offers hijras a certain degree of protection and support, it is also characterized by exploitative relationships between gurus and chelas who are obliged to give most of their earnings to their gurus. Some of Revathi’s fellow chelas rebel against their gurus and refuse to give them a share of their earnings. They save money to visit their parents or pursue their own personal and romantic lives, which is strictly forbidden by the hijra gharana/house they belong to. The hijra house is an institution where there is no room for romantic intimacy, which is something that drives Revathi’s loneliness. She temporarily leaves her nani to join the Chauhan house in Mumbai where hijras unlike the hijras in her nani and guru’s house engage in sex work. Her decision to become an informal part of the Chauhan house has to do with her desire for intimacy. She realizes she cannot have any sexual or romantic affairs as long as she is with her guru in Delhi as her guru’s gharana only does badhai work. But once she joins the Chauhan house and becomes a sex worker, she discovers that the hijras of Chauhan house lead precarious and illegitimate lives that are always threatened by the police and by violent clients who refuse to wear a condom or pay. Many of the hijras are raped and exploited and run the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. One of Revathi’s friends, Shakuntala, ends up with a rowdy who gambles away her savings and threatens to throw acid on her if she does not give him money. Revathi is sodomized by one of her clients but she is powerless to stop him or file a complaint. Revathi loses interest in sex when sex becomes work and her romantic desires are disillusioned. She again returns to her family where she is again beaten. She is constantly trapped between her precarious life as a sex worker and her hostile family. She returns to her nani in Mumbai and ends up in an exploitative relationship with her guru who demands half of her earnings. She has quarrels with

94  Kiran Keshavamurthy her fellow hijras over a customer but she does not have her own guru or nani to support her. But she saves enough money to buy breast-enhancing hormones from her guru’s sister. Her nani asks her to return to Kamathipura, a red light district in Mumbai, where she accidentally meets her own relatives who are lorry drivers in search of sex workers. This causes tension with the other hijras who resent her for attracting most of the customers. She decides to rent a room in a brothel run by a woman where she meets her own clients. Although she earns enough to take buses and trains, she is molested by a bus driver and the man who tries to rescue her is injured in the scuffle that ensues. Revathi addresses another important aspect of a hijra’s life which is her right to inherit property. When Revathi’s brothers decide to retire from the milk delivery business, they demand a share of their father’s ancestral property. Revathi decides to leave Kamatipura and return to Namakkal, but she is initially unable to find a job. Her brothers threaten to kill her if she claims her share of the property, but Revathi is determined. Her family lawyer tells her she cannot come to court dressed up as a woman and asks her to send her father a letter demanding her share under her former male name, Doraisamy. Later she is asked to pay the lawyer a large sum of money for his fees, and as she does not have any money, she accepts whatever her family has to offer. Their ancestral land is divided equally among the brothers and the money they get from selling the lorries is also divided among the brothers. Since the inheritance of ancestral property is a patriarchal transaction between father and sons, Revathi and her sister do not get a share of the land. Revathi is finally given a lump sum that she deposits in a bank account that is in her male name and lives off the interest. She finds a place of her own in Namakkal. Later in the autobiography when Revathi becomes a visible activist, her father threatens to disinherit her. She wants her father to register the house in her name, which she is denied because she does not have a family. Her father is anxious she will give her share of the house to hijras. When Revathi asks him to register the house in her name, her father fears that she will force her parents to vacate the house. When she tells him that the money she sent him to renovate the house was money she had earned from sex work, her father insists on returning the money. But Revathi is adamant and threatens to set herself on fire if the house is not registered in her name. Her father finally relents and tells her she will get the house only after his death. In Namakkal, Revathi still runs the risk of being harassed and molested. She is still known as Doraisamy. She is allowed to enter a temple that is forbidden to menstruating women because she is still known as Doraisamy. She meets a man named Babu at the temple who works as an operator in a cinema theatre. She grows interested in him but when goes to visit at the theatre, she is not sure if she should reveal her true identity. They become close friends and Babu never shows any curiosity in her personal life nor does he suspect her of being a hijra. Everyone in the neighbourhood including her landlady assumes she is a woman and Babu is her husband until her brothers openly humiliate her. Babu disappears when he gets to know she is a hijra.

Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves  95 Revathi’s life is a constant negotiation between belonging and not belonging; belonging to a hijra gharana offers a certain degree of protection and support even as it curtails individual freedom while not belonging threatens her survival for lack of an education and employment. She moves to Bangalore where she works in a hamam run by hijras. The hijras at the hamam earn just about enough through the hamam; some engage in sex work and begging. Revathi gets handsome tips from her clients, and she hopes she can continue to work at the hamam where she earns money without being violated and exploited. But then she realizes that she will never have her own money and be accepted by her fellow hijras until she becomes someone’s chela. She has no choice but to become the chela of a guru from the Hyderabad house. Every time she finds a new guru, the guru has to pay her former gurus a fine that covers the money that was spent for Revathi’s nirvanam, which in turn entitles the guru to a share of Revathi’s earnings. Later her Hyderabad guru encourages her to do sex work because of her beauty. She ends up getting more customers, which creates resentment among her fellow hijras. But again Revathi is exploited and assaulted by her customers when they get to know she is a hijra and a plainclothes policeman who mistakes her for a woman and steals her money and jewellery. As a hijra sex worker, Revathi is subjected to structural violence and exclusion; she is perceived as a criminal devoid of rights and freedom. She is arrested by a policeman who takes her to the station where she is stripped and abused. She is forced to pay him a fine in court for soliciting customers. No one comes to her rescue when she is humiliated and nearly stabbed by a man. In another instance, she is accosted by the police who promise to release her if she can find ten of her regular clients and hand them over to the police. In the process, many innocent men are arrested and Revathi fears those men will avenge their humiliation. Revathi realizes she has to be careful and ensure she does not jeopardize her fellow hijras’ lives and livelihoods. She is further obliged to give a share of her earnings to her guru. When she applies for a driving licence, the police inspector who asks her for her documents refuses to give her a licence because her ration card is in Doraiswamy’s name. She is asked to bring a certificate from the municipal office in her village that states that she has become a woman. The school instructor has to bribe the inspector when Revathi threatens to expose him on television and she ends up with a licence that says, “Doraiswamy who is now Revathi.” Unlike most of her gurus, Revathi is an unusual guru who learns from her own experiences of exploitation and loneliness that sets her apart from the rules of the jamaat. When she has chelas of her own, she pays for their initiation rituals and lets them pursue their own romantic lives. Her chelas are English educated and fashionable and visit their friends in bars and pubs, which are new experiences for Revathi. It is through her chelas that she discovers Sangama, a non-governmental organization that works with homosexuals. She hears the word gay for the first time. She feels awkward about not knowing English. She gets a job as an office assistant that pays her a

96  Kiran Keshavamurthy modest salary and she is happy that she is able to do something for her community. Working for the organization introduces her to a world of pervasive violence and injustice that cuts across various sections of society: dalits, women, homosexuals, transgender people, Muslims and various other minorities. Revathi manages to find a house now that she is no longer a sex worker and begins to work for Sangama. She is now filled with a sense of purpose and is determined to fight for the rights of hijras; she is no longer ashamed of her past and her stigmatized status. Revathi wants to fight against sexual violence and the victimization of hijras but this requires hijras to be visible. The hijras are initially wary of seeking Sangama’s help, and it is only when Sangama actually succeeds in freeing hijras from false police cases do they begin to seek their support. Although some hijras try to dissuade Revathi from exposing their miserable lives, she organizes workshops to create awareness where she addresses the rights of hijras and police atrocities. She even delivers talks in colleges and universities. She interviews other hijras in her second book and she identifies with their experiences of violence and humiliation that brings her closer to her community. Revathi finds work in an AIDS prevention group in Karnataka. She returns to sex work but even that becomes challenging now that she is older. She finally returns to Sangama. Writing this autobiography is a healing process for Revathi; a process that helps her to come to terms with her own stigma and humiliation. Her activism is an empowering experience that helps her negotiate loss and romantic disappointment: her ‘marriage’ to a fellow activist from Sangama comes to an end when he doesn’t have the courage to tell his parents he is ‘married’ to a hijra and loses interest in her, her chelas die by suicide, her mother dies of disease and her guru is stabbed to death by a man who wants her money. In the next section I discuss an autobiography by Tanuja, another tirunangai whose life is markedly different in some ways from that of Revathi’s but at the same time shares similar experiences of violence, humiliation, exploitation and romantic disappointment. Tanuja: An Autobiography, An Eezham Tirunangai’s Journey and Struggle Tanuja is a Sri Lankan Tamil tirunangai whose family fled to Madurai during the Sri Lankan civil war and later immigrated to Germany. She begins her life as a refugee whose precarious existence traverses genders and political boundaries. As she says in her preface to her autobiography, “When refugees migrate from a war torn land, they don’t just traverse land and water, they traverse death!” (4).7 Tanuja spends her early years in Kochadai, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee colony in Madurai. Tanuja belongs to a younger generation that has access to the television and the internet. Like Revathi, Tanuja’s early impressions of feminine beauty are drawn from the actresses and comperes she watches on television. When she is admitted to an English school in Madurai, she is

Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves  97 impressed by one of her teachers and internalizes her majestic authority, which inspires her fantasies of ideal femininity. Like Revathi, femininity for Tanuja is ritually enacted by performing domestic chores: she helps her mother with kolam in the mornings, washes dishes and learns to cook. Her first encounter with tirunangai performers is at the famous Kochadai Muthaiyya temple festival in Madurai. She initially mistakes the karkattam performers for cross-dressing men who she realizes are tirunangais like her. She is drawn to their sparkling clothes and wishes to become a dancer like them when she grows up. For Revathi and Tanuja, religious festivals are occasions to visibly embody and enact their femininity without being stigmatized. When Tanuja encounters these tirunangais begging at a shop, she is tempted to become a tirunangai and escape with them. When she watches tirunangais on television getting married to Aravan at the Kuthandavar festival in Koovagam, it becomes an enduring symbol of her desire to get married to a man.8 Tanuja’s family moves to Aachen, a German town that borders Netherlands and Belgium where her father works in a hospital. Tanuja has a fraught relationship with her family when she is young. Her father is a frustrated man who is unable to earn enough to support the family and resorts to drunken violence. Tanuja and her brother are invariably the targets of his physical abuse. Her sister is her only source of emotional sustenance. There are moments when Tanuja is tempted to report her father’s violence, but the thought of being sent away to a foster home compels her to submit to her father’s abuse. When she is very young, Tanuja’s family appreciates her feminine beauty when she dresses up in her sister’s clothes and adorns herself with her mother’s jewellery. Even her attempts to help her mother in the house are met with indulgence. It is only when she grows older that her family begins to disapprove of her femininity. She is regularly beaten up by her father and brother. She grows distant from her father who over the course of the autobiography becomes an absent presence in her life. In school, Tanuja is introduced to gender and sexuality and reproduction; to ideas of sexual consent and different notions of good and bad touch, but there is no discussion on transgender people. She is left with the impression that gay men do not have the courage to resist their families and transition. She wears make up to school for which she is teased. In the centre where she learns Dutch, her classmates tease her for being effeminate and gay. Tanuja, like Revathi, initially equates gender with sexuality or masculinity with heterosexuality and begins to wonder if she is a gay man and then grows anxious that she will never marry or have children. She is determined to become a conventional man and desire women but she fails to suppress her femininity. Unlike Revathi who has no choice but to join the hijra community to escape her unsupportive family, Tanuja does not have access to a consolidated hijra kinship structure in Germany. Although she lives in Germany, her world is constituted by her real and virtual encounters with Tamil men and tirunangais from different parts of the Tamil-speaking world. While Revathi came of

98  Kiran Keshavamurthy age in the 1970s and 1980s, Tanuja is a second generation German immigrant who grew up in the 1990s and 2000s, and learned Dutch, German and English, which gave her access to the internet. The internet introduces her to a new world of tirunangais and their lived realities that reaffirms her own sense of self and opens up the possibility of becoming a woman besides a whole host of other professional and romantic/ sexual choices. She has sexual interactions under a pseudonym with men she can see on webcams without entirely revealing herself. Their admiration for her beauty is a source of pleasure that fulfils her imaginary fantasies of herself as a woman. Through some of her gay friends, she is introduced to a gay dating website where to her surprise there are gay men who are drawn to her even after she discloses her identity. She watches documentaries on gay people and Tamil-speaking tirunangais living in Malaysia and Singapore. She watches a show where a Singapore Tamil tirunangai named Buvana describes the wretched lives of tirunangai sex workers and appeals to tirunangais asking them to abandon sex work. Tanuja identifies with Buvana’s description of her childhood and life. Through Buvana’s show, Tanuja discovers that hormone supplements are available for people who want to transition. She also learns that Thailand is a destination for many tirunangais who want to undergo cheap and superior quality sex reassignment surgeries and breast implants. She discovers Rose, a Tamil tirunangai in Chennai who hosts her own television show. Rose disabuses Tanuja of her impression that she wants to transition because of her disappointing sexual relationships. She realizes she was born with a woman’s mind and sensibility and that she is not gay. Rose and Angel, another tirunangai from Tamil Nadu, tell her that most tirunangais in India cannot afford SRS and those who undergo surgery cannot have sex without being in pain. They can only get rid of their penis through nirvanam. The internet puts her in touch with a larger ritual community of Tamil-speaking of tirunangais who dress up and perform in temple festivals in Kilang, a town in Malaysia. She discovers that there is a temple dedicated to Bahuchara Mata, the tutelary deity of the tirunangais that is modelled on the temple in Gujarat. She listens to interviews by Sundari and Ranjitha, two tirunangai cabaret dancers who have married white men and settled down in Switzerland. They introduce her to the hijra kinship structure that was exported to Malaysia and Singapore by some tirunangais from Bombay. Revathi spends many years living with her gurus and fellow chelas, and she is constantly divided between her hostile family and an exploitative guru– chela system that offers her a certain degree of protection and visibility. Although Tanuja also acquires a new family of tirunangais, her relationship with the larger tirunangai community is more flexible without the formal structure of the hijra family that is constituted by a hierarchical relationship of authority and subservience. The hijra household may offer a certain degree of protection but only at the cost of extracting a certain share of the chela’s earnings and curtailing their personal independence. Sundari introduces

Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves  99 Tanuja to her guru mother, Priya. Priya is born to a poor family in Malaysia; her mother is a sex worker and her father is a goon who gives her away to a tirunangai who runs a brothel where she becomes a sex worker. She has to send a portion of her earnings to her father and later, when she becomes an adult, she moves to Singapore where she registers herself as a sex worker. In Singapore she meets Sundari who facilitates her immigration to Switzerland. Priya is married to a white man so that she can continue to stay in the country. She has to pay 40,000 francs to the man to get a Swiss visa. Priya does not manage to save any money because she gives all her money she earns to Sundari and Tilakam, her guru mother. Priya initially works for two other tirunangais who demand a share of her earnings. This causes tension between Priya and the two other tirunangais who hire men to assault her and expose her illegal status to the government. Priya describes the plight of Malaysian tirunangais to Tanuja; there are men who temporarily transition to do sex work and there are some who undergo breast implants inspired by tirunangais and when they have earned enough money, they go back to being men who then marry women. Priya’s life is an example of the oppression that tirunangais face at the hands of the hijra household and the plight of helpless chelas who fear being expelled from the hijra household if they refuse to do sex work. Unlike Revathi, Tanuja’s family becomes more supportive of her decision to transition. Tanuja realizes that the only way she can lead a free and independent life is to complete her education and get a job. She does a series of part-time jobs to support her family when her father runs into financial hardship and to pay for her education. She is initially a baby sitter for a Tamil family, which indirectly fulfils her desire to be a mother. Then she works in a fast food joint, washes dishes in a restaurant and so on. Then she applies for a position as a flight attendant in a German airline that is only open to ciswomen and although she is shortlisted she is finally rejected when she reveals her true identity. She is later offered a contractual job in a cosmetics factory on the condition that she conceals her identity. Although she passes off as a ciswoman, she is humiliated by her co-workers for being dark. She sets aside some of the money that she earns to pay for laser therapy to get rid of her facial hair. Initially, Tanuja is unwilling to engage in sex work despite the entreaties of other tirunangais because she believes sex work is a lowly profession; she is determined to complete her education and get a job. Later she realizes that being a high-end escort is a lucrative job that will allow her to send money to her family and save some for her SRS. Tanuja discovers that German laws and hospital procedures have strict regulations when it comes to sex reassignment surgeries. German law requires any man who wants to transition to consult a counsellor for at least two years and wear female clothing for a year.9 If the counsellor is convinced, she sends the client to a doctor who prescribes hormone supplements. Only then will she get permission to undergo an SRS. The state health insurance

100  Kiran Keshavamurthy company covers these expenses and the SRS. Tanuja is referred to a counsellor in Aachen. She begins to grow her hair long but later discovers that the counsellor is a sympathetic listener but has no experience with transgender people. For Tanuja, it is a challenge to be dressed as a woman at an age when she is beginning to look more and more like a man. She is also anxious that she may get killed for cross-dressing. She decides to cross-dress when she has to visit her counsellor to convince him of the seriousness of her decision to transition. But she realizes that her counsellor is greedy for his share of her insurance money and after a point turns hostile. She discovers another counsellor through a transgender friend who has had transgender clients. He is convinced of her decision to transition and she is prescribed hormones; she is amazed by the visible transformation in her body: her growing breasts, her diminishing desire and her diminishing body/facial hair. She is overjoyed when she finally receives a letter from the health insurance company giving her permission to undergo SRS. Unlike her fellow tirunangais from Singapore and Malaysia who have lived poor and exploited lives as sex workers even after immigrating to Europe, Tanuja is fortunate to be educated and employed with enough money to afford the surgery. While most German transwomen are older when they undergo SRS, the doctor is surprised when he discovers Tanuja is just 19 unlike most German transwomen who transition much later in life. Like Revathi, Tanuja passes off as a woman and the doctor tells her she will not need any plastic surgery. When he tells her that the surgery may impair her ability to experience sexual pleasure, Tanuja has a mature and truthful response, “After this surgery, what I feel is something that a woman can never feel. No woman or tirunangai can feel the desire that I have felt so far. Sensations differ from person to person” (177). Although the SRS is successful, the post-operative recovery is a slow and painful process. Her doctor gives her a lubricant and a rubber dildo that would have to be used regularly to ensure that her vagina acquires the right shape. This ends up being an excruciating process. The pain of transitioning is continuous with her experience of having sex for the first time with a man as a tirunangai. When he tries to penetrate her new vagina, it is excruciating, “This is femininity. This pain is bliss, this is what I longed for, I’m now a complete woman” (209). Following her surgery, she compares her bleeding vagina to that of a menstruating woman. Her new body is not just a physical body but something that symbolizes her notion of what it means to a (ideal) woman. It takes Tanuja a while to discover her own body following her surgery. She falls in love with a man named Jeevan who is the first man to help her discover the pleasure of being a woman when he stimulates her clitoris. Following her surgery, her tirunangai mother Priya and grandmother Sundari invite Tanuja to Zurich to perform certain rituals to welcome her into the tirunangai community. Although Tanuja’s family is supportive of her, it is this ritual acknowledgment of her new identity that makes Tanuja feel like a complete woman. Tanuja submits her medical certificate along with her application to change her gender and name to the immigration

Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves  101 office. But her application is rejected because she is still a Sri Lankan citizen and Sri Lanka has laws that acknowledge and protect the identity and rights of tirunangais. She discovers to her surprise that it is easier for those transwomen who come from countries with hostile laws to get legal recognition of their adoptive gender. She approaches the Sri Lankan consulate in Frankfurt to gets her documents translated into English. But the consulate is unsure of the rules as they have never received such a request from a tirunangai and they ask her to go to Sri Lanka to get her name and gender changed. She is left with the option of applying for German citizenship as only citizens can get their names and gender changed. To become a citizen, Tanuja has to have a permanent job. She loses this job after she tries to kill herself when a man she falls in love with abandons her. Later she gets another part-time job in a sweets store that does not discriminate against transwomen. Her employer agrees to convert her job into a permanent one and when she becomes a German citizen some months later her application to change her name and gender is accepted by a court in Cologne. Tanuja has a conflicted relationship with men. When she is still a young boy in Madurai, her femininity draws the attention of the men in her neighbourhood even as she is openly ridiculed. Her ability to seduce men ironically validates her femininity even if it entails humiliation and violence. When she and her sister move to Colombo to apply for a passport to go to Germany, they stay with their uncle who sexually abuses her for being effeminate. She begins to eroticize his violence, which she says is derived from her impressions of Tamil women in movies. Later towards the end of the autobiography, she ends up having sex with him, which for her is a vindication of her femininity and an affirmation of her uncle’s hypocrisy. She longs to be loved and desired but when men exploit her for sex and money, she is disabused of her romantic fantasies. When she is in Madurai, she has a sexual affair with one of her cousins who secretly uses her for his own sexual pleasure but insults her when he is with his friends. She is heartbroken and tries to commit suicide when he finally gets married to one of his female cousins. Although she believes that her femininity is the source of all pain and sorrow, it is what ultimately defines her sense of self. Her romantic disappointments only strengthen Tanuja’s resolve to become a woman. When she gets an opportunity to dress up as a woman and perform at a church in Madurai during Christmas, she is praised by the audience even as she is teased and harassed. She is ambivalent about the attention she gets: she feels humiliated even as she is validated. Her sexual encounters only affirm a cultural equation of femininity with sexual passivity and victimhood. After she moves to Germany, she meets several men through Facebook and various Tamil chat groups. Many of these men desire Tanuja when they see her online because of her feminine appearance, which is the effect of taking hormones: her shaved, made up face and her emerging breasts. She does not reveal her identity to most of these men before she meets them. She either manages to avoid having sex or following Priya’s strategy, tricks them into believing that she has a

102  Kiran Keshavamurthy vagina by tucking her penis between her thighs. Most of the men she meets are willing to have sex with her even after she discloses her identity. But these encounters are devoid of love and intimacy and end in abuse and exploitation that leaves her feeling empty and estranged. Her preference for Tamil men threatens her reputation at home; when everyone in the Tamil community discovers that she is a tirunangai, her mother is ashamed and her brother abuses her. When she attends or performs at religious festivals, she is humiliated and abused for being loose. Tanuja is slandered by one of the Tamil men she meets online on a British website for pretending to be a woman and seducing and exploiting unsuspecting men. When the police are unable to help her, she calls the owner of the website and threatens to commit suicide unless the article is removed. Many of the Tamil men she meets offer promises of love and marriage but they all end up being deceptive and dishonest. Many of them have affairs with other women and some are already married. Tanuja discovers that one of them, Satish, who lives in Holland with his parents, is divorced and has a ciswoman lover but wants to marry Tanuja just to get a German visa. There are other men like Ramesh who is a gangster in Paris who claims to love her but when they meet he is violent and abusive and is only interested in her money. She later discovers that he had exploited her guru mother Priya too. Before her SRS, concealing her identity to men is always a source of anxiety. She feels more vulnerable as a tirunangai than she was when she wore male clothes. She feels that the law will never protect a tirunangai from sexual violence. Even her relationship with Jeevan ends in disappointment. She dreams of getting married to Jeevan and adopting a child once she becomes a German citizen. She even gets him a job in a restaurant but after they begin to live together, he begins to lose interest in her. His parents who live in Holland are initially unaware of that fact that Tanuja is a tirunangai. When his mother gets to know, he is forced to abandon her after which she tries to commit suicide for the second time but her family comes to her rescue. Her last relationship with a Tamil man from Canada also ends in betrayal when she discovers that he is an alcoholic and drug addict who has affairs with other Tamil women. She spends a month with his parents and briefly enjoys the bliss of a mundane domestic life as Naren’s ‘wife’ and his parents’ ‘daughter-in-law’ who begin to accept her. Like some of the other men she meets, Naren only needs her for her money. Like Revathi, Tanuja’s need for a husband or partner is essential; she is unable to let go of her partners even when she is being betrayed because she believes only a man or a husband can give her the validation that she seeks. And the only way she thinks she can sustain a relationship with a man is to give him sexual pleasure. Tanuja finally becomes an escort with her mother Priya and another tirunangai from Malaysia named Iyer chithi in Hamburg. From her bitter experiences with men, she learns to dissociate love from sexual desire. Priya’s friend Mona, a tirunangai from Singapore, cautions her to stay away from Priya who wants to exploit her for her money. Mona’s words come true when Priya resents her for securing most of their clients and exposes her to one of them.

Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves  103 Tanuja finally parts ways with Priya and becomes Kamini, another tirunangai’s daughter. Tanuja’s autobiography ends on a note of solidarity with her tirunangai community notwithstanding their internal tensions. Tanuja visits Malaysia where her guru performs another ritual welcoming her to the community. Tanuja is filled with a new sense of purpose as she decides to work for the betterment of her own community. Both the autobiographies are framed by the annual Koovagam festival in Tamil Nadu where tirunangais marry Aravan for a night and widow themselves, which becomes an enduring symbol of tirunangai solidarity. Revathi and Tanuja’s autobiographies are testaments of their negotiations with sexual and social norms that regulate bodies and spaces. Their experiences of stigma, discrimination, humiliation, violence, and social and political disenfranchisement constitute their female subjectivities and agency. Even their romantic disappointments only strengthens their desire to assert their femininity even if this means being estranged from their families and fellow tirunangais. They grapple with their own desire for validation but by the end it is their solidarity with the tirunangai community notwithstanding their internal differences that empowers them and gives them a sense of purpose. They both emerge as activists who are determined to eradicate stigma and ensure a life of equality and dignity for transgender people. Notes 1 The word tirunangai was coined by M. Karunanidhi, the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, to refer to transwomen. The term tirunangai is a composite word that comprises two parts, thiru, meaning mister, and nangai meaning woman. The word tirunangai was created to replace earlier terms like ali, pedi, aravani that the transgender community thought were discriminatory. 2 In certain instances, tirunangais may use the term ‘pottai’ to refer to each other while in others it may be a derogatory term. 3 In an interview, Revathi says that she published her book in English first so that it reaches a wider readership and she does not get into trouble with her family and acquaintances. I wish to thank A. Revathi for her time and patience. 4 The Court directed the Central and State Governments to take several steps for the advancement of the transgender community, including organizing awareness programmes to eradicate the stigmatization of transgender persons, making provisions for the legal recognition of “third gender” in all documents, recognizing third gender persons as a “socially and educationally backward class of citizens”, entitled to reservations in educational institutions and public employment and taking steps to frame social welfare schemes for the community. There have been other private bills that were introduced in 2015 and 2016 that have created an uproar among transgenders because they have diluted some of the important provisions of the 2014 judgement including the definition of the term transgender, the right to self-identify, the doing away of national and state commissions for transgenders and transgender rights courts, and reservations for transgenders in official appointments. 5 The term ‘hijra’ is a Hindustani word that has been translated into English as eunuch and hermaphrodite but in reality it mostly refers to biological men who get rid of their penis and testicles and transition. Hijras sometimes call themselves

104  Kiran Keshavamurthy kinnar and may include other transgender communities including jogathis etc. In northern India they have their own hierarchical kinship structure that comprises gharanas/houses each with their own set of nanis/grandmothers, female gurus/ mothers and their chelas/daughters. Many of them do sex work, badhaai work where they bless newlyweds and newborn children, and begging. 6 Pottai could be used to refer to an effeminate cross dressing man or a term that tirunangais use to address each other. It can also be a derogatory term used to refer to transwomen. 7 Revathi and Tanuja identify as women but they also identify as tirunangai in their capacity as visible activists who demand equal representation and rights for transgender people and funding for various causes. 8 According to certain folkloric myths, Aravan was the son of Arjuna and the Naga princess Ulupi. He volunteered to be sacrificed to Goddess Kali so that the Pandavas win the battle of Kurukshetra. But he did not want to die unmarried. Krishna blessed him with three boons: that he would witness the battle even after he was beheaded, that Krishna would marry him in the form of Mohini as no one else was willing to marry someone who would soon die and that his sacrifice would be celebrated for generations to come. Aravan, who is also known as Koothandavar is worshipped as the god and husband of the tirunangais. In an annual gathering, tirunangais from all over the world gather at Koovagam, Tamil Nadu, to marry Koothandavar only to be widowed as they mourn his loss as Mohini did. Tirunangais are also known as Aravanis in Tamil Nadu. For a greater discussion see Alfebeitel. 9 This has been seen as transphobic in the Indian context where trans activists have demanded that the private bills concerning the rights of transgender persons be revoked as they dilute the most important provisions of the 2014 judgement including the right to self-identify.

Bibliography Hiltebeitel, Alf, “Dying before the Mahabharata War: Martial and Transsexual BodyBuilding for Aravan” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 54, No. 2 (May, 1995), pp. 447–473. Prabhu, Gayatri, “Writing a Life between Gender Lines: Conversations with A. Revathi about her Autobiography The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story”, eprints.manipal.edu, 1 Feb. 2014, eprints.manipal.edu/139765/1/WIC-Prabhu.pdf. Accessed 9 February 2022. Reddy, Gayatri, With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India. New Delhi, Yoda Press, 2006. Revathi, A., The Truth about Me. Trans. V. Geetha. Penguin India, 2010. Tanuja, An Autobiography: Tanuja, Eezh Tirunangaiyin Payanamum Porattamum. Karuppu Pirathikal, Chennai, 2020.

5 ‘They’ Are Queer Transgressing Gender Normativity in Vernacular Assamese Literature Tonmoyee Rani Neog and Rimpi Borah

Literature is an expression of life and life becomes the subject of literary imitation when it draws inspiration from the social realities. In the last years our contemporary societies have experienced a rapidly evolving literary social scene, in which new forms of literature are being generated to reflect new modes of being in the world. However, the prevailing values from which the literary canon emerges in each different period has subsequently provided us some works that not only depict the other less socially accepted realities but also challenge the ‘mainstream’ ethics in force. We need queer literature in regional languages to tell the non-cis-het stories of small towns and villages. A key issue that has plagued queer literature in Indian language is that the community has not yet been normalized. In India and the world over, being queer is still viewed through multiple lenses of morality and propriety, based on religion, morals, social stature and even governance. For a community still grappling with gaining everyday acceptance creating literature can take a backseat or can be done only from behind a veil of anonymity. Literature that addresses the taboos and cultural endorsements of the taboos critiques the dominant inter-disciplinary notion of queer space. Identities are complicated to begin with and became more complicated when relating them to nation and sexuality. Indian sexual identities are the product of multiplicities effects and perceptions of tradition, modernity, colonization and globalization that are more in conflict with each other than in a harmonious synthesis. Since the 1990s, it has been commonly accepted within geographies of sexuality that any space, private or public, is actively produced as heterosexual and heteronormative. There are different overt and covert mechanisms of spatial control, which leads to suppression of non-normative sexualities, governing and silencing LGBT desires and queer embodiment of space. Feminist scholars have shown that space is rather negotiable and can encompass conflicts and splits. These conflicts construct meaning and open up new way of re-imagining and being in space. Space reproduces power relations which are mostly based on the heteronormative constitutions of identities, recreating hierarchies and exclusions. Our contemporary societies have experienced a rapidly evolving literary social scene, in which new forms of literature are being generated to reflect ‘new mode of being in this world’. Social situations, DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-8

106  Tonmoyee Rani Neog and Rimpi Borah mirrored by literature possess the feelings and emotions of the people and literary work becomes the key to revive the muffled voices when they are intermingled with issues of history, politics and identity. The prevailing values from which the literary canon emerges has given a invisibility of written works depicting other less socially accepted realities due to their challenging the ethics in force. This is the case of the narratives located inside the queer literature in Assamese language—where the insiders create their own network without being appreciated or supported. From this lack of normalization arises several related issues. The first is the misconception that being queer is an urban phenomenon, limited to the English-speaking community. The voices of working class queer and DalitBahujan queer are side-lined even by the media, which looks for the ‘ideal’ urban queer person who they think represent the community. Transgressive Sexuality: Daring to Explore As Doty (1993) says “cultural texts offer the potential for queer readings that focus on connotative rather than denotative meaning, that is, to find credible readings hidden in text that a culture of homophobia and heterosexism bars us from seeing” (17). In Assamese literary criticism, ‘transgressive’ sexuality has, until fairly recently been shrouded in silence. Social activism regarding the topic of queer rights within the region has become dynamic and has inaugurated various organizations and forums around the issue of sexual orientation. Homosexuality in Assamese literature is as Seidman opined: Constructing the homosexual as defiled justifies his/her exclusion from public life. Symbolically degrading the homosexual contributes to creating dominated gay selves – that is, individuals for whom shame and guilt are at the core of their sense of self; public invisibility becomes in part self- enforced. (2001: 353) Recent publications have made this theme more visible and have begun to engage the discourse of queer in overt ways. The two works have made important intervention in understanding queer space. Panchanan Hazarika and Bipasha Bora’s fictional works engage with themselves such as identity, loss and politics that stretch from things like pressure from ‘home’ and present-day discrimination against the queer communities. The authors have made identity and identity formation one of their central concerns, thus both Hazarika and Bora’s fictions are inhabited by liminal characters trapped in in-betweens, forced to integrate with the socially constructed gender norms but not allowed to belong among others. Many golpos seem to be trapped in gender-marked traumatic life experiences, often triggered by abandonment. Their progressive physical and mental deterioration is disguised, made invisible and pushed outside the public realm. They are confined to their own

‘They’ Are Queer  107 small spaces under the disabling effects of the traumatic memories. In many golpos the female characters seem to be powerful and their resistance is understood as constitutive of their agency. Drawing from the writings of Bora and Hazarika, it feels like the tensions are teased out within the queer relationships in relation to those that feel they are not heard within the spaces as well as those that feel able to speak on behalf of a diverse and sometimes fractured community. The importance of the lived experiences and shared understandings is shown to be very important to the queer community in the fictional writings of both authors. The characters of both authors provide a sociological analysis of the relationships within and between the queer which finally delve into the interesting insight of the complexity of discourses that will be relevant for those with an interest in human rights, gender activism and LGBTQ movements. Hazarika is currently one of the best loved and most prolific authors in Assamese, having written many golpos, among which are the celebrated Andharatkoi Udaah Botaahot Koi Swadhin (Lifeless than the dark, Liberated than the wind) and Xomudroxofen (Foamy Sea). Hazarika’s golpos concentrate on the queer characters whose deep philosophical interrogations and intensely human dimension subtly but effectively subvert accepted gender roles in the society. Utilizing the interpretative methods of the queer theory, Hazarika had led to a rigorous scholarship that includes the society and sexuality at the centre of the analytical concern. Writers like Govinda Prasad Sharma, Monikuntala Bhattacharya and Akashitora continue to communicate across differences in the queer literature and they move toward a more mutually respectful understanding of the literary intersections of gender, sexuality, nationality and aesthetics. Hazarika very carefully considers the passionate and complex textual relationship between the public and the private in the process of the identity making. Through his characters, he makes a provocative argument of the multi-layered queerness in the oxomiya society. Hazarika asks difficult but necessary questions to the readers; he reaches to a deeper current of significance making honest spaces for the voices for the experiences and the voices often unheard or wilfully silenced. Hazarika and Baruah’s explorations of homosexuality within the particular social and political milieu that constitutes the setting of their texts, while comparable in significant ways, also show divergences. Both explore the possibilities for reconciliation between the two diametric and frequently polarized concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and thus presents alternatives to hegemonic antagonistic often portrayed in fictional works on the theme. While these writers’ interventions in the discourse on ‘transgressive sexualities’ serve to broaden the psychosexual, emotional, and discuss landscape within which non-normative sexuality is discussed, and a space for representation of repressed sexual identities in an Assamese society, they also problematize issues of home, nation, and belonging in the sphere of sexual citizenship. Given that ongoing national and regional discussions about political and cultural sovereignty, they reveal in their work how the

108  Tonmoyee Rani Neog and Rimpi Borah representation of same-sex love and bisexuality problematize the issue of identity politics and assert the need for renegotiation of such identity. These texts ultimately move the discourse forward in ways that fracture traditional dichotomies of the dynamics of human sexuality. Their work helps in understanding the ruptures in narrativized heterosexuality and the ways in which these narratives suggest a deep yearning for wholeness and that belonging is both material and existential, both physical and psychic, that can ultimately displace the pain of dismemberment wrought by social exclusion and ostracism. One can talk about voiced silence by Bipasha Bora in Mou Makhir Xomrajya (The Kingdom of the Honey Bees) in understanding that the work abjures the Western notions of a dichotomy in which silence denotes muteness or absence, and voice denotes presence/power; instead, “utterance and silence are integral aspects of the linguistic phenomenon that produce, interrogate, fill and illuminate each other within the same ontological system” (Forbes 2011: 13). Further, Philip’s construct, “the space between”, even though theorized around the sexualized body of the black woman, can be applied to the lived realities and experiences of the characters in the works of Hazarika and Bora who embodies and resides within a space of ‘in-between-ness’, an identity positioned between socially regulating and restrictive and at times invisible set-up on the one hand, and a liberating space on the other. Hazarika’s work questions gender and non-normative sexuality at the centre of a contemporary discourse on Assamese identity and belongingness. Hazarika’s deliberate choice of the local, colloquial references in this regard both underscores the problematic way in which the subject of homosexuality is couched in the Assamese social and cultural context and emphasizes their insistence on cultural specificity. Vernacular speech with embedded colloquialisms serves, then, to reinforce the novel as a Assamese text, situating it within that cultural milieu. Seeing and understanding literature through the queer lens has been a revelation for the readers who have felt the lack of inclusivity particularly in Assamese literature. Reclaiming Sexual Identities in Oxomiya Golpos Hazarika and Bora try to write about love: a word and a feeling which is political and revolutionary to the queer community, as much as it is emotional. Both the work seeks and gives emotional refuge to people who have experienced a dehumanizing gaze alongside discrimination. Panchanan Hazarika has written from a semi-autobiographical perspective. He does not shy away from discussing and expressing the difficulties that a queer person navigates through life, regardless of one’s privileges of education and acceptance from family. This multi-thematic text not only underlines societal disapproval and condemnation of the queer lifestyle but also implies the political disillusionment on the part of queer themselves

‘They’ Are Queer  109 regarding the possibility of change through texts. Set in Assam and involving queer people and their friends and relatives, the work provides a location specific set of dynamics in considering homosexuality and examines it within a fixed geopolitical context. The homosexual relationship is explored within the narrow boundaries of a sexually conservative and religiously conventional society. In such a society with its social, legislative and religious proscriptions, overt or explicit challenge to the negative hegemonic attitudes toward the gay lifestyle becomes a difficult prospect. The characters appear unable to alter or transcend these hegemonies and the novel reflects a foreclosure of queer relationships within this space fraught with religious/dogmatic assaults in a repressive homophobic society. The socially erected border seeks to contain ‘normal’ sexuality and downgrade ‘aberrant’ sexuality beyond its confines, functioning as a disempowering boundary distinction where the characters exist at a border set up as an exclusionary apparatus, within whose precincts exists only a space of constriction. Yet this restrained, narrow space functions precisely as the site from which Hazarika launches his social critique and as such can be imagined as a potentiating space of liberation. Most of the stories in Hazarika’s work become powerful symbol of the non-viability homosexual love and of societal rejection. In one of Hazarika’s story “Judhor Anuchhed” (War paragraphs), the relationship begins with a clear sense of monogamous possibilities, it shows a gradual degeneration as it becomes characterized by infidelities, fierce quarrels and physical battles, and finally, dissolution when one of the character recognizes that the relationship is beyond restoration, moves out of the relationship. The challenge of maintaining a homosexual union within a border space that challenges its legitimacy and viability and within a society that insists upon the silencing of transgressive sexuality eventually becomes insurmountable. The stories of Hazarika serves to reinforce the novel's dystopic message regarding the non-viability of the homosexual relationship within the frame of heteronormativity. Confinement, Resistance and Queer: Subverting Performative Gender Panchanan Hazarika’s golpos make substantial contributions to queer studies as a massive rereading of oxomiya culture through the lens of sex and sexuality which offers the possibility of deconstructing our own discourses and their constructed silences. Chandrabala’s silence (in Andharatkoi Udaah Botahot Koi Sadhin) in the contemporary gay and lesbian discourse and ujjiban’s intention to transcend and transgress any social and ideological liabilities, queer as Hazarika has observed becomes the ground for a radical and often rethinking of the sexual. Ujjiban’s sartorial elegance and his kohled eyes talk of a politics of fluidity and engagement. In the works of Hazarika, the concept of queerness is unruly and he is rather interested in multiple axes of identity formation when he introduces the characters of ‘Xomudraxafen’.

110  Tonmoyee Rani Neog and Rimpi Borah Junuka’s father who is a single parent is attracted to Pabahan and the samesex sexual expression here undermines the attempt at fixation. Hazarika deserves immense credit for helping to build an intellectual community of queer within literary community. In ‘Xomudraxofen’, the narrator very eagerly enters into the queer capaciousness when he indulges in an intimate kiss with probahan. When the narrator says “puruxhnahaimanuh hobo khuju” (I want to be a human not man), the golpo succeeds to import some queer vocabulary into the literary space which will ground the humanistic model of the queer studies. In the story ‘Botahjaak’ (The Wind), Hazarika tries to understand ‘queerness’ as a radical critique of hierarchy and identity. The difference between the inside and the outside, the us and the other, the homo and the hetero and the natural and the unnatural is less reflected in the works of Hazarika and many contemporary writers as compared to the ones who tried not to reveal their sexual identities in some oppressive historical moments in the oxomiya society. Ujjiwan’s confession to his mother, “I am only interested in men and its very natural maa” might stir social tensions and supply fuel for social critique but Panchanan Hazarika uses Queer as an important concept for achieving the powerful ways in which bodies in his golpos sputter as contradictory signifiers of desire, hope, pain, power and love. Hazarika has less to hide and this uncovering calls for a better days of Queer Studies in the oxomiya literature. Hazarika’s work does better in a beautiful balancing of gender by reinventing the gay and lesbian identities rather than dismantling such identities. His effort is laudable as he tries to create figures of agency and new possibilities for participation in politics. By introducing the characters Shweta baideo, Ujjiwan and Prabahan, Hazarika tries to challenge the prior assumptions regarding queer in the oxomiya society. Prabahan evolves gradually by pondering on the questions society avoid asking and whether or not to acknowledge them; the onus is on the readers. In the works of Hazarika, queer tends to become a synonym of gay and lesbians, a forefront that sex and gender identities are not the basis on which critical literary movements are built. There exists a suffering and whimpering person next to every queer character in Hazarika’s golpos. The suffering of Ujjiwan’s mother is very private—it houses two worlds, from heartbreak to abandonment, all of which is re-memory and the work of relation. ‘mani lobo pare ne moflosia sohor ekhonor madyabitto poriyal etar, prothaboddho jiwonot obhyas to chandrabalar dore nariye?’ (it is possible to accept the sexuality of her son in a principled middle class family of a small town?’—a very sensible lady, well versed with the understanding of gender in the contemporary world, Chandrabala finds herself in utmost pain and suffering when she gets to know about the sexuality of her son. She then questions herself how is it possible to love her son and the world together. Hazarika with his literary elegance makes an attempt where he tries to figure out how we succumb to the totalitarianism of love and the false democracy of equals. The way Ujjiwan distances himself from his mother, from his home, from society tells us that distance is the condition

‘They’ Are Queer  111 of democracy. This rejection by his mother because of his homosexuality not only mirrors the larger repudiation of homosexuals by society but represents her ontological dismissal of him. His mother’s attempt to negate his being reflects the concept of ‘silencing’ by which society attempts to erase the existence of those deemed subhuman, to renounce their sacrosanct being. The border between desire as a relation and desire as a body is very well depicted by Bipasha Bora. Katyani and the narrator in Mou Makhir Xomrajya share a moment of intimacy and proximity by imposing the us-ness on the world, choreographing a non-relation in the existing oxomiya society. Bora in her literary grace talks of the world of the bees, where the female honey bees rule—their world, their relations and their bodies. The issues of power and control are enmeshed within the authoritative discourses of the body and it is inherently structured through gendered norms. Bora very consciously writes about the cohabitation by power than by intentions. Male honey bees dies quickly after a mating flight, thus by serving the sole purpose of mating and pleasing the female honey bees. Mou Makhir Xomrajya focusses on the discourse surrounding the body—the feminine body in particular—the women draw from when living their embodied experiences. Unlike the existing society, the female honey bees reside in a world free from the control of the patriarchal norms of control and oppression. The discourses about gender, the body, and the emotions are internalized by women, festering into unease with their femaleness and shame over their bodies. Bora creates a space for the women to narrate otherwise silenced experiences in a different but an attractive way. Through katyani, Bora rebels against the experiences of subordination associated with the sexual trauma. The narrator says, “jidina tair topot duta uthe mur uthot chuma aanki disil, moi kunu acharjya prokaxh kora nasilu. Janiu othoba najaniu moi taik xohojug korisilu. Hoi, moi Lesbian” (the moment her passionate lips touched mine, I did not exhibit any displeasure, I cooperated her in the process, yes; I am a lesbian). This sentence strikes the right chord which talks of the practice of freedom— freedom from the custody of the societal norms. The deep individualization of katyani becomes the narrative of freedom in Bora’s work. On the first night after marriage, the powerless and helpless newlywed bride suffered from the fear of being psychically intimate with an unknown. Where the newlywed female body was only looking to be loved, the sexual entitlement and harassment of her by the patriarchal groom has left her a little without any desire. So she gave up desire to become need, in the hope someone would want her. And the more she got better at meeting the needs, the more desire seemed unattainable for her. The only place where the newly wedded felt wanted, where the desire and the need intersected, where her body needed the embrace of a female body. The socially constructed gender norm was a lump in her throat and wasn’t a condition of love which she very gracefully shed off with the female narrator, and Bora illustrates that world without the binary of male and female as an empire—the empire of honey bees where the female bodies can make their

112  Tonmoyee Rani Neog and Rimpi Borah skins feel beautiful. Bipasha Bora’s non-normative way of relating and the gender expression informs and disrupt the dominant literature canon of binary. The main outcome after reading and rereading Bora reinforces the argument that a psychological reading of the characters in the queer literature is of utmost importance to deliberately remove the social regulations attached. Bora successfully discusses upon the validity and rigidity of the dominant authority and social structure, and allows new forms of inclusion to appear. Bora’s depiction of toxic masculinity in her work does not aim at reproducing archaic gender roles, but to deconstruct them through imaginations and grotesque exaggeration, and thus promote alternative form of sexuality that transcend traditional boundaries. Her main protagonists uses their bodies, presented in violent performances and deadly situations, as a filter of distillation of saturated gendered values, allowing these characters to find a real connection in unique communitarian ensemble outside (gendered) bodily boundaries. Bora emphasizes identity as a process and her works offers a critical reading of gender, body and postmodern alterity. Dr Akashitora names her book as Nixidho (Forbidden) meaning banned. An interesting observation can be made that most authors differ not only in their understandings of queer life writing but also in their understandings of queer life. Is a queer life solely one in which a person’s primary emotional and sexual bonds are to others with the same gender identification, or is it also a life lived queerly—that is, against the grain of social norms? Dr Akashitora presents her characters in a struggle toward voiced-ness, but she also shows how societal borders work to occlude rather than engender a space of liberation. The Assamese golpos mentioned in this chapter highlight the struggles of queers which is a clear counter-discourse to the “ideological and institutional practices of heterosexual privilege” (Mohammed 2007: 2), which renders virtually no social and cultural space within which queer characters can feel at home both within themselves and within the larger societal sphere. The works fractures what Timothy Chin (2007) refers to as “the us/them, native/foreign, natural/ unnatural” (543) dichotomies that often complicate and obstruct the broad view of human relations. Hazarika ruptures the notion of a master narrative of normativized heterosexuality and explores multiple possibilities within the discourse of human sexuality. Bipasha Borah re-imagines an interior space in which artificial borders and dichotomies are collapsed and social strictures and conventions are transcended. The texts raises questions regarding the definition of morality, and the constituents of human dignity. Characters and readers are impelled to re-evaluate old positions, to rethink issues of sexual identification in new and unorthodox ways. This complex set of dynamics propels a re-conceptualization of human sexuality, a redefinition of love, and a refiguring of the range of human feelings and interaction.

‘They’ Are Queer  113 Conclusion Although many battles remain for queer people in India, newly confident gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities have emerged over the past decade. Meanwhile, Indian publishing houses—who nearly a decade ago maintained a stony silence when it came to sexuality—are eager to print books on queer lives. To understand these changes in attitude, it is important to scrutinize how sexuality is being written about in fiction, popular writing and the Indian academy and how homophobic narratives have played a part in the history of writing about homosexuality in India. With important writers, the choice to write about homosexuality, regardless of their judgements of it, has an importance. As scholars, writers, and readers working on this field continue to communicate across difference, they move toward a more inclusive and mutually respectful understanding of the literary intersections of race, nationhood, sexuality, gender, genre and aesthetics. Taken together, the works mentioned in this chapter engage vernacular literature with a challenging respect and they ask difficult but necessary questions. In all the works, the authors make a honoured and honest space for voices and experiences too often silenced or wilfully unheard. Bibliography Bora, Bipasha. 2014. Mou Makhir Xomrajya. Guwahati: Akhor Prakash. Bhattacharya, Monikuntala. 2017. Mukti. Guwahati: Students Stores. Butler, Judith. 2017. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”, in Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (eds), Literary Theory: An Anthology, pp. 722–730. Wiley Blackwell. Dasgupta, R. K. (2011). Queer Sexuality: A Cultural Narrative of India’s Historical Archive. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 3(4), 651–670. De Lauretis, Teresa. 2017 “The Technology of Gender”, in Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (eds), Literary Theory: An Anthology, pp. 713–721. Wiley Blackwell. Devi, Shakunthala. 1976. The World of Homosexuals. New Delhi: Skylark Publishers. Doty, Alexander. 1993. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Forbes, Curdella. 2011. “This Space/Dis/Place Between: The Poetics and Philosophy of Body, Voice and Silence”, in M. Bucknor and A. Donnell (eds), The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, pp. 78–84. London: Routledge. Hazarika, Panchanan. 2020. Andharatkoi Udaah Botahotkoi Swadhin. Guwahati: B. R. Publication. Mohammed, Crista. 2007. Subverting the Lesbian-Gay Agenda: A Re-examination of Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, 1, 1–9. Sarma, Gopinda P. 2015. Golposamagra. Guwahati: Banalata. Sarma, Rudrani. 2020. Tribhuj. Guwahati: Purbayan Prakashan.

114  Tonmoyee Rani Neog and Rimpi Borah Seidman, Steven. 2001. “From Identity to Queer Politics: Shifts in Normative Heterosexuality”, in Steven Seidman and Geoffrey C. Alexander (eds), The New Social Theory Reader: Contemporary Debates, pp. 353–360. London: Routledge. Thadani, Giti. 1996. Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India. London: Cassell. Vanitha, Ruth. 2005. Love’s Rite: Same-sex Marriage in India and the West. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Vanita, Ruth and Saleem Kidwai. 2002. Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

6 Urdu and the Queer Consciousness Omar Ghazali

Introduction Urdu literature finds its foundation in the rich traditions of classical Arabic and Persian literature. Urdu literature has been influenced by two distinct genres since its inception. The eminent Sufi played a pivotal role in the initial flourishing and development of various forms of literature. Moreover, within the context of Sufism, a particular sentence holds significant renown: “Almajaz Qintarul Haqiqah” (One will traverse the path of divine love by means of their affection for a specific individual). The affection towards an individual person can be interpreted as allegorical. Hafiz Shirazi, Shaikh Saad, and Amir Khusru have produced literature regarding the affection for the male beloved. Hafiz in one of his ghazals in “Deewan-e-Hafiz” writes: Agar aan Turk-e-Shirazi ba-dast aarad Dil-e-ma ra Ba-khal-e-hinduvash bakhsham Samarqand-o-Bukhara ra (If that Shirazi Turk will take my heart in hand, I will give Samarqando-Bukhara to his Hindu mole)1 In this context, the term ‘Shirazi Turk’ refers to a boy or male individual. In early and middle classical poetry, the term ‘Shirazi Turk’ was frequently used to refer to male beauty and romantic relationships between men. The terms ‘Turk’ and ‘Shirazi Turk’ have evolved into poetic synonyms for masculine attractiveness. Maulana Jaami also writes about a Turk boy in his ghazals book Deewan-e-Jaami: Ai turk-e-shoKH ii.n hama naaz-o-itaab chiist Baa Dil-shikastagaa.n sitam-e-be-hisaab chiist O, my stone-hearted (Turk-e-Shokh) darling, full of boundless rage and ego. Why are you being so cruel to those whose hearts have been broken beyond repair?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-9

116  Omar Ghazali Kausar Khairabadi is a famous Urdu poet who also writes about a Turk boy in his ghazals. As for example: Saamne uss Turk ke Dil rakh diyaa sar rakh diyaa Paas thaa maujuud jo kuchh ham ne laa kar rakh diyaa Before my beloved, I laid down my head and my heart; Whatever I had in my possession I surrendered in his service. Similar couplets can be found in the works of poets such as Abu Sayeed Abul Khair, Maulana Rum, Abu Mansoor, Manuchehri, Nasir Khusru, Farid Uddin Attar, Nizami Ganjawi and Sayeb. Another Urdu poet who extensively wrote on the theme of same-sex romance was Amir Khusru. Amir Hasan Sanjari was the beloved character that took centre stage in Khusru’s writings.2 Follow this ghazal of Amir Khusru: Forget me not, the sorrowful, Talk to me with your eyes; Dear heart, I cannot bear the sorrow of parting, Keep me well within your heart, Long as tresses the night of parting, The day of love is short as life, If I see not my love, O friend, How can I spend dark nights of grief? Two magic eyes with a hundred charms Have put my sad heart’s rest to flight; Now who would care to go and tell Dear love, my sad and lonely plight? Like a candle light, as an atom struck No sleep in my eyes, no rest in my heart Banished, alas, from that moon’s grace He sends no news, nor shows his face. On the day of love, for truth, Khusrau The loved one tricked me and went away If I could find him, I will keep Him in my heart with love always (Translated by Ahmed Ali) In Urdu literature, terms such as Amrad Parast, Aghlam Baaz, Bachha Baaz, Mokhannas, Humjins Parast, Londa, Hijra, Khawaja Sara, Naunehal, Londe Baaz, Shahid Baaz, Zankhawah, Neem Mard, Tiflan Paarizad, Looti, Nisf Nazuk, etc. have been used to describe homosexuals/ queer persons. At the time of Shah Rangila “Amrad Parast” became more popular. Jafar Zatalli was famous for of writing on queer love. Wali Dakkani has used the words “Abul

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  117 maali”, “Gobind Lal”, “Khum Das”, “Amrit Lal”, “Kamil”, “Akmal” and “Siraj” in this context in his writing. Abroo, Naaji, Tabaan, Meer, Miraji and Firaq’s writings have shown queer aspects in different periods and contexts for a male beloved too. Meer has used terms like “Attar ka Launda” (the son of a perfumer), “Tifl”, “Naunihal”, “Pisar”, and “Memar ka Ladka” (son of mason) in his writing, and at least 225 couplets clearly referred to a male beloved, for example: Mir kya saade hain beemar hue jiske sabab Usi Attar ke Laundey se dawaa lete hain (I ask for medicine from the same perfumer’s boy who’s the cause of my disease) The literary genre of “Rekhti” in Urdu language employs a lexicon that includes terms such as “Dugana”, “Yagana”, “Zankhi”, “Begana”, “Sakhi”, “Ilachi”, “Wari”, and “Piyari” to refer to female beloveds. Rangin was the first Urdu writer to compile about women Humjins Parasti (lesbianism) title “Angekhta” (The Aroused).3 Insha was another writer, who wrote extensively on lesbian love. Ifti Nasim was gay and he wrote Urdu literature on homosexuality. His best known book entitled Narman (Hermaphrodite or half man, half woman) is very famous in this context. Some female Urdu writers, Ismat Chightai, Wajda Tabassum, Khadija Mastoor, Hajra Masroor and Fahmida Reyaz, have contributed their writings about queer subjects, particularly lesbianism. Ismat Chughtai is well known for her controversial lesbian short story “Lihaaf” (The Quilt). In “Lihaaf”, lonely Begum Jan takes a female servant, Rabbu, as her beloved. After Ismat a lot of Urdu stories were about on queer subjects, i.e. “Dil-e-Muztar” (Mehwish Chaudhary), “Mujhe Sandal Kardo”, “Nazuk hai Rishta vDil ka” (Asia Saleem Qureshi), “Hostel ki Ladkiyan” (Jawed Khan Afridi), “Kuchh pagal pagalse hum” (Farhat Ishtiaq) and so on. Now we will find more queer voices in Urdu literature. Queerness of Urdu Literature: Arabic and Persian Connections The world’s society has always been divided by gender, caste, religion, class, language, and education. Given that the world is divided along the aforementioned lines, the Indian society is not far from this course of action. Early on, Indian society was profoundly divided along these lines. In April 2014, the Supreme Court of India acknowledged the existence of a third gender. We have a rich history with regard to the third gender. Every era has discussed the third gender, and every literary period has not only written about the third gender, but also about queerness. Now, I would like to comment on the queerness in Urdu literature. Urdu literature primarily draws its foundations from classical Arabic and Persian literary traditions. In its nascent stages, Arabic literature exhibited a notable absence of queer themes and representations. Indeed, these

118  Omar Ghazali factors were operative within the societal context. The presence of homosexuality in Iran and it’s influence in the emergence of queer themes in Persian literature is well documented. Prior to the emergence of Persian literature, Greek literature had already devoted significant attention to the queer subject. This will be discussed later in this chapter. Homosexuality was introduced here after the establishment of Islam when relations with Arab and Iran were established. And a poet like Abu Nuwas al-Hasan ben Hani Al-Hakami best known as Abu-Nuwas (751 AD–814 AD) was also attracted to it. Thus he became the first Muslim Gay poet. It is because his first teacher poet Waliba ibn al-Hubab (died 786 AD) initiated him into the joy of pederasty as well as poetry. Abu Nuwas’ father was from southern Arabia and his mother was Persian and he was born in the city of Ahvas, in Persia. He is mainly known for his celebrations in verse of wine and boys. For example: In the bath-house, the mysteries hidden by trousers Are revealed to you All becomes radiantly manifest. Feast your eyes without restraint! You see handsome buttocks, shapely trim torsos, You here the guys whispering pious formulas To one another (“God is Great!” “Praise be to God!”) Ah, what a place of pleasure is the bath-house! Even when the towel-bearers come in And spoil the fun a bit.” (Poem: “In the Bath-house” by Abu Nuwas)4 For young boys, the girls I’ve left behind And for old wine set clear water out of mind Far from the straight road, I took without conceit The winding way of sin, because this horse Has cut the reins without remorse And carried away the bridle and the bit Here I am, fallen for a faun, A dandy who butchers Arabic His forehead, brilliant like a full moon, Chases away the black night’s gloom He cares not for shirts of cotton Nor for the Bedouin’s hair coat He sports a short tunic over his slender thighs But his shirt is long of sleeve. His feet are well-shod, and under his coat You can glimpse rich brocade. He takes off on campaign and rides to attack

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  119 Casting arrows and javelins; He hides the ardor of war, and his Attitude under fire is magnanimous. Comparing a young boy to a young girl, I am ignorant. And yet, how can you mix up some bitch Who goes in monthly heat With him I see on the fly. How I wish he would come Return my greeting. I reveal to him all my thoughts Without fear of the imam, or the muezin (“A Boy is Worth More Than a Girl”)5 Abu Nuwas is known to have engaged in same-sex activities and composed literature that explicitly expresses his affection for boys. It is a fact that he exhibited both homosexual and heterosexual tendencies. Let us examine one of his renowned verses: I wish I was between a courtesan and a catamite Having pleasure from both sides6 Abu Nuwas was a gay poet but others like Omar Khayyam, Hafiz Shirazi, Saaadi Shirazi and many more Persian poets were also writing on the topic of homosexuality. First Urdu critic Maulana Aaltaf Hussain Hali wrote about whole Persian poetry: “He has given the same as the ideal beloved man of Persian poetry.”7 Maulana Mohammad Hussain Azad also wrote in his famous book Aabe- Hayat in this regard: Thoughts often contain hints of stories or anecdotes belonging to the particular country of Persia. For example, love of boys instead of women, praise of their (khat) letter, shamshad, nargis, Sumbul, violet, hair, waist, stature, cypress etc. Burqa, gaza, and gulguna, Mani and Behzad’s painting, Rustam and Asfandyar’s bravery, Saturn’s misfortune, Sohail Yemen’s coloring, famous Persian, Greek and Arab stories i.e. Rah-e-Haft khawan, Koh-e-Alwand, Kooye besotoon, Jooye sheer, Qasr-e- Shirin and Jihoon Sihoon etc.8 Love for a boy has been an integral part of Persian poetry and that is why in Persian poetry, male emotions express love to a man. The very essence of Sufism that gave rise to “immorality” is Amanullh, whose ancestral home is also Iran. It looks like a sack that encloses with a drawstring. The mention of Greece and Rome is essential in this case because the immortality here was actually far ahead in terms of wisdom and philosophy. Some of Amanullah’s relatives were

120  Omar Ghazali also present here, who considered immorality from the madrassas to the bazars to be not only exemplary but also the most essential means of reaching God. Greek physicians, philosophers, and poets have collectively propagated the idea that Amrad9, referring to a young beardless boy or handsome youth, possesses qualities that extend beyond mere youthful exuberance. It is believed that engaging with Amrad not only contributes to physical well-being but also facilitates the elimination of barriers to human cognitive advancement. Similar to the cases observed in Iran and India, the concept of immortality ignited the fervour within the pure essence of Sufism, thereby elevating its significance to a level comparable to the cultural dominion of various nations. Similarly, the civilizations of Greece and Rome served as influential sources for the development of philosophical ideas surrounding immortality, resulting in significant advancements and progress for humanity. Immorality can be understood as a manifestation of self-reflection, wherein individuals seek to perceive their own essence within their own being. This introspective pursuit represents the ultimate objective of immorality. For individuals who arrive at this particular location, the experience can be likened to a divine encounter. The imperative of “know thyself” has been vociferously proclaimed by our intellectual luminaries. Hence, the pursuit of divine enlightenment within one’s homosexuality can be understood as an endeavour to connect with the divine essence within oneself. The Qur’an’s portrayal of the ‘people of Lot’ (peace be upon him) and their opposition to the practice of sodomy (homosexuality), as well as the frequency with which Allah admonishes the Arabs in the Qur'an to recall this event and the consequences that will ensue as a result of this immoral act, serve as a conspicuous indication of the severity of this transgression. The narrative of Lot functions as a cautionary tale for adherents, highlighting the potential dire repercussions of engaging in immoral behaviours. The Islamic faith asserts that engaging in such conduct is deemed unacceptable by Allah, and those who partake in it will face retribution. This shows that this act must have continued in Arabia as well, and that God felt the need to stop it as much as He did for dance and music. The Qur’an describes the incident in which Lot's wife disobeyed her husband’s command and Allah’s command. As she fled the city of Sodom, she turned around to observe its destruction by God’s angels. Lot’s wife was not forgiven for her disobedience and was turned into a salt pillar. The message of the Qur’an is that those who sympathize with sinners deserve the same punishment. ‘Allah says in the Qur’an: 80. We also (sent) Lut: He said to his people: “Do ye commit lewdness such as no people In creation (ever) committed Before you?” 81. For ye practice your lusts On men in preference To women: ye are indeed A people transgressing Beyond bounds. (Surat 7: Al-A’raf : 80 and 81) 165. Of all the creatures In the world, will ye Approach males. 166. And leave those whom Allah Has created for you To be your mates? Nay, ye are a people Transgressing (all limits). (Surat: 26: Ash-Shu’araa: 165–165)

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  121 54. (We also sent) Lut (As a messenger): behold, He said to his people, “Do ye do what is indecent Though ye see (its iniquity)?” 55. Would ye really approach men In your lusts rather than Women? Nay, ye are A people (grossly) ignorant! (Surat: 27: An-Namal: 54–55) This means that the Arabs are closer to the actions of the former nations. It is also found in the hadiths of Sahih Bukhari Sharif and Abu Dawud Sharif, which condemn homosexuality and sodomy. Allama Shibli Numani says that the trend of homosexuality in Arabia came after the conquest of Iran after Islam. There is no doubt that the Arabs adopted the attitude of homosexuality from Iran, but it is not right to determine its origin after Islam. And most of the great Arab poets lived in this country and benefited from the luxuries here. The poetry of Abu Nuwas, a poet of the Abbasid period, is also far from the true spirit of Sufism, in which the “Ghazal Mozakkar (Masculine Ghazal)” has in fact become a means of obtaining the same kind of sexual pleasure. Servants of the slave are left to fend for themselves with “Shab Basri (nightmares)” and “Hum Bistari (bedtime)”. Imam al-Ghazali had said in the “Kimiya-E-Saadat”: “Man has no idea of the greatness of his own self. If he looks right at his own body, he will see thousands of things that will be unique and unparalleled.” Amanullah took Ghazali’s point seriously. They also insist that: The body is the greatest blessing given by the God and the garment borrowed from it which we have to give back to Him. Therefore, it should be kept as clean and tidy as possible and should not be dusty. Amanullah’s lineage can be traced back to Shams Tabrez/Tabrizi, a renowned Persian poet and spiritual mentor to Maulana Rumi. The enduring legacy of Shams Tabrez within the Sufi order was widely acknowledged, with the exception of a minority, such as Allauddin Muhammad. Following the disappearance of Shams, Rumi composed poems to express his grief over the absence of his mentor and romantic partner. During the 13th century’s sixth decade, Amanullah travelled to India. Amanullah’s behaviour can be categorized as involving the practices of “Shahid Bazi” (witnessing), “Ataat Guzari” (obedience), “Eteraf-E-Shikast” (confession of defeat), and “EhsasE-Huzn” (feeling of sadness). Nevertheless, he lacks any sexual characteristics or tendencies. However, it is evident that this particular vulnerability of his surfaced as a formidable asset for the poets under his tutelage. The poets who received his training were subject to social pressure to engage in sexual activity with both genders, thus the immorality present in their work is not

122  Omar Ghazali without a gendered context. Hence, the aforementioned poets who were raised during the sway of Amanullah do not depict the vulnerable state of Amanullah himself. If anyone wants to know the affairs of Delhi, they should read the case written in Noorul Hasan Hashmi’s book Dilli Ka Dabistan-E- Shairi, Gayan Chand Jain’s book Urdu Masnavi Shomali Hind Mein, Mohammad Hasan’s book Delhi Mein Urdu Shayeri ka Tehzibi-o- Fikri Pas Manzar and Mahmood Shirani’s book Majmoa-E-Naghz, then one can easily see the good and forms of immorality in the heart of this age. Mohammad Shah Rangeela himself was immortal and it was because of this tendency of the king that the people got an opportunity to show more and more deeds in this matter. As far as we can tell, the city of Delhi and its marketplaces resembled the city of Sodom during the time of Lot. The bazaars were filled with tales of sexual encounters that were socially unacceptable. Blood-stained clothing strewn throughout the alleys and nooks of the city’s streets served as evidence of being “inked in lust”, while the sheets were stained similarly to a white face that had been licked with love. A study of the memoirs written during this period reveals that the term “Mohammad Shahi Jawan” had become famous for such idiots and it was not only considered good but also to openly beat the drum of one’s deeds. The gentlemen did not spare any effort. Obscenity, lust, adultery, love, inferiority, disgrace, love and don’t know how it was inhabited. On the one hand, there are poets like Zani who have never seen the form of a woman in their life, because they have lost their lives in the crowd of the deed. His beloved is playing with a rope around the neck of a poet named RUSWA and they are walking naked in the streets and bazaars in his love. In spite of all these things, when his temper is not satisfied, then in a crowd, he kisses his young man on the face of his beloved and in return, the beloved stabs him in the stomach and prays for the life of the beloved even after this death. As far as taste is concerned, the love affair with Hindu boys continues unabated. In this regard, the following verse of Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq comes to my mind: Khat badha, kakul badhe, zulfen badhin, gesu badhe Husn ki Sarkar mein jitney badhe Hindu badhe (Letters grow, kakul grow, hairs grow, gesu grows. In the reign of beauty, the more Hindus grow”) The prevalence of homosexuality during that era can be attributed to the cultural norms and values of the time. Engaging in physical intimacy, spending evenings with significant others, and engaging in sexual activity with select individuals within the community. The aetiology and negative consequences of prevalent homosexuality in contemporary society exhibit certain distinctions. In a societal context where it is presumed that ministers and the wealthy possess no fewer than one hundred wives, the unavailability of attractive women or the inability to secure their affections presents a

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  123 significant challenge for an ordinary man. In such cases, patience becomes unbearable and society goes out in search of those men from whom their desire for beauty reaches its goal when they have sexual intercourse and this desire gradually starts turning into lust. In sex, the concept of surrender as well as helplessness and compulsion is a kind of beautiful sexual passion. In this context, Gayan Chand Jain quotes sketch of Delhi on page 22 of his book Urdu Masnavi Shomali Hind Mein as follows: Nadir Shah asked Mohammad Shah’s minister Qamar Uddin Khan how many wives he had. He replied that eight hundred and fifty. Nadir told his servants to send one and half hundred more women prisoners so that the minister could get the post of “Bashigri” (offer of a thousand men) Well known Urdu critic Syed Ali Abbas Jalalpuri expresses his views in this context. He writes: Persian Ghazal is the ideal beloved man, kings and princes, beautiful boys to come and sit and openly express their love. The young Khush Gul Amrad went on a number of occasions with the “Khanqahon” (monasteries) of the Sufis and the Diwans of the poets. The great king Zaheer Uddin Babar wrote a book called Tuzk-e-Babri. In this book, where he has discussed many things. He has described the social conditions of India very well. This autobiography of Babar presents the glorious past of India. In this book, Babar has also described the incidents of homosexuality. From which it is clear that in the time of Babar homosexuality was in its infancy. Apart from that Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi was also in love with his slave, Ayaz. Mughal emperor Jahangir was known to keep boys in his harem. Immorality reached its climax in the Mohammad Shahi era. When a king is immoral, his effects on his subjects are inevitable. In the same period, ‘Ihamgo poetry’ has painted a good picture of him. Jamil Jalbi writes in his book History of Urdu Literature: In this era, boys had gained extraordinary importance. It was normal to keep them with you and be crazy about them. Interestingly, a whole tradition of love from boys is born in this era. Azam Khan is one of the great emperors of Mohammad Shahi era. He was famous for his immorality. Mirza Manu was another prince of the time who was so obsessed with the art of immorality that most of the prince’s sons saw the essentials of this knowledge. During this period, the art of immorality developed to such an extent that not only teacher–student relationships were established but also the methods of decorating, decorating and beautifying the boys were fixed. Aabro has written an entire Masnavi entitled “Dar Moeza Aaraish-e-Mashooq” on this subject.

124  Omar Ghazali Traditionally, love is divided into two parts, “Ishq-E-Amarad” and “IshqE-Niswan”. In Arabic, “Amarad” refers to a young man who has not yet seen the Khat (letter) on his face. The concept of love for teenage boys remained a tradition in Persian and Urdu poetry. He was also found in Sufi shrine and poets’ gatherings. Sheikh Mohammad Hayat Hindi wrote a magazine Ishq Al Niswan-O- Al Mardan in which he described these two types of love as fitna (persecution). Allama Shibli Nomani has mentioned “Ishq-e Amarad” in many places in “Sherul Ajam”. He writes in one place: In Iran, Amarad and (Neo Khat) New letters were beloved, with whom we used to meet all the time. Therefore, the whole country went insane. The pious elders could be expected to keep their feet safe from this fire, but there they appreciated the virtual love. He ordered: “Mehtab az ishq roo garche majazi ast Ki aan bahr-e-Haqiqat kar sazi ast” (The book of love is Virtual. That’s the truth of the matter) The result was that, this type of thing in Khanqah (monestery) was in high demand, and Saadi had to say: “Mohtasib dar qazaye andan ast Ghafil az sufian shahid Baz” It doesn’t matter if it is good or bad. The point is that love poetry and Ghazal, which developed in Iran, had these inevitable causes. Queerness of Urdu Literature: Sufi Turn and other Influences Besides Arabic, Persian influences Urdu literature, which borrowed the styles of Sufi mystics. The Sufiyana Andaaz considered it is necessary to love a specific human being in order to love God. In this context, following phrase was popularized among the Sufis: Almajaz Qintarul Haqiqah (For love of God you will go through love of a specific human being).10 Love of a specific human being means allegoric. First of all, Plato has said that love for a boy is necessary for love of God. According to Firaq Gorakhpuri, Plato’s teacher Socrates himself was an immortal. Wali Daccani has said in this context: Dar wadi-e-Haqiqat jisne Qadam rakhkha Awwal Qadam hai uska Ishq-e-Majaz karna11 (“Anyone who has stepped in to the valley of “Divine Love (Real Love)”. The first step is to authorize his virtual love”)

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  125 Hafiz Shirazi, Shaikh Saadi and Amir Khusru have produced literature about the love of male beloved. Hafiz Shirazi writes: Agar aan Turk-e-Shirazi ba-dast aarad dil-e-ma ra Ba-khal-e-hinduvash bakhsham Samarqand-o-Bukhara ra12 (If that Shirazi Turk will take my heart in hand, I will give Samarqando-Bukhara to his Hindu mole) Here, Imam of ghazal Hafiz Shirazi has used the symbolic word “Turk-e Shirazi” as “Shirazi Turk” is a boy. Hafiz’s poetry is full of immortality. Besides that Abu Sayeed Abul Khair, Maulana Rumi, Jaami, Abu Mansoor, Menuchehri, Nasir Khusru, Farid Uddin Attar, Nizami Ganjavi and Sayeb have written much poetry regarding homosexuality. Amir Khusru, a disciple of Nizam Uddin Aaolia, has also written this type of poetry. Amir Khusru loved Amir Hasan Sanjari, a disciple of Nizam Uddin Aaolia and fascinated on him. This has been mentioned in different “Tazkira” and Dr Andalib Shadani has also quoted it in his book Tahqiqaat.13 The famous Persian poets Alam and Sufi Sarmad Shaheed fell in love with a Hindu boy “Abhi Chand” from Thatta. The poet Wali Daccani wrote some poetry based on immorality, inspired by Persian. He has recited poems and ghazals on the beauty of the male beloved namely Abul Maali, Gobind Lal, Khem Das, Amrit Lal, Kamil, Akmal, Meerza and Siraj. Wali writes: Tera qad dekh, aye syed maali Sukhan fahman ki howay hai fikr aali (Look at your height, O Syed Maali, Competents’ thinking is always high) Aye Wali kia kahoon bayan uska Lutf mein Dilruba hai AMRIT LAL (Amrit Lal is fascinated by pleasure … O Wali, what can I say about it?) Hai bas ki bemisal nadekha jo khawab mein Aayena-e- Khayal misal-e- GOBIND LAL (It’s just that I haven’t seen anything unique in dreams. A mirror of thought like Gobind Lal) Hai bas ki Aab-o-Rang-e-Haya KHEM DAS mein Aata nahin kisi ke Khayal-o-Qayas men (It is just that the extreme level of modesty in Khem Das. Doesn’t occur to anyone’s thought) Garche sab khubru hain, khub wale Qatl karti hai Meerza ki Ada (Although all are beautiful, well done, however … Meerza’s elegance pay kills) Aaj teri bhuvan ne masjid mein Hosh Khoya hai har namazi ka

126  Omar Ghazali (Today in the mosque, your eyebrows, made all worshippers lose their minds) Wali uss gauhar-e-kaan-e-haya ka kiya kehna Mere ghar iss tarah aaway h jeeun seene mein raaz aye (Wali, what can I tell you about that pearl or essence of virtue. He enters the house the way an insight arrives in the heart) Homoerotic Urdu: Poets and Their Poetry Like Persian ghazals, in Urdu poetry it is not considered against nature and immorality for the beloved to have sex with a male. And while the sentiments and concepts of immorality began to find their way into poetry, there was a strong Persian poetic tradition behind it. Mohammad Shah Rangeela’s period and whole Delhi culture followed the concept of immorality. Dr Noorul Hasan Hashmi wrote in his book entitled Dilli ka Dabistaan-e-Shayeri about the culture of whole Delhi at the time of Mohammad Shahi: The superiority and greatness of love is also created by the Sufis of Iran. Love is considered to be the source of love of God. And since the true love can only come from the opposite sex, according to “Al-majaz Qantarat-ul-Haqiqah”. Therefore, to love boys and then reach God from there, became necessary for scholars, philosophers, poets and intellectuals. Dr Waheed Quraishi, in his research on Allama Shibli Numani’s love affair, has proved that Shibli, the author of books like Al-Farooq, Al-Mamoon, Al-Ghazali and Seerat un Nabi, not only stayed with Attia Faizi but was also fascinated by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. So the pioneers of Shibli also had to resort to the above sentence in clearing Shibli that virtual love is the ladder of real love. In the case of Sufis, Ishq-e-Amarad may have acted as a bridge to reach the truth (Haqiqat) from virtual (Majaz), but it did show a new way of life to the society of the eighteenth and half of the nineteenth century. Jafar Zatalli’s description of the mild-mannered behaviour of immortals in prose and poetry reveals the fact that immorality had taken on a more physical form than a mental one at that time, for which the word “Lawatut” (homosexuality) in Urdu is used. It is written in the translation of Taban in the “Majmoa-e-Naghz” that “Amrad Shirin Ada” was adorned in his house and send to “Shab-e-Hashmi” at the house of Amr Qazalbash as per demand. The Mashafi has written in “Tazkira-e-Hindi” that when he met Fidwi Lahori in Aaonla or Tanda, he was found injured. This was the result of their declared disorientation. Hasan Yar, Ruswa, Zia, Afzal Dakni, Salahuddin Pakbaz etc. and the romance of other unknown poets has been mentioned by the writers. A study of Nawwab Dargah Quli Khan’s book Moraqqa-e-Delhi

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  127 shows that in this age, i.e. 1738, homosexuality was not only prevalent but was considered admirable among poets. Therefore, he has also introduced the introduction of many immortals and has also pointed out some bases of this kind of beauty. Some poets like Shah Mubarak Abroo, Qayem Chandpuri, Qamar Uddin Khan Qamar, Mir Mohammad Shakir Naji, Mazmoon, Mirza Mazhar Jan-e-Janan and Mir Taqi Mir etc. have also written proud poems on this act. Mir Mohammad Ja’far Zatalli “Malik-usshuara” (poet-laureate) is a poet and commentator of the court of the son of Aurangzeb. Zatalli means “babbler of nonsense”. Zatalli was one of the most critical and prominent literary figures of his times. The shamelessness of the personal behaviour of the Mughals has been portrayed in Gandunama—The Memoirs of Homosexual. This is his crowning glory. He was also employed at the court of Kam Bakhsh, fourth son of Aurangzeb. He composed a satire on the prince Kam Bakhsh having sex with a goat! Raziuddin Aquil in his famous book The Muslim Question: Understanding Islam and Indian History mentioned many anecdotes on Ja’far Zatalli. According to Raziuddin Aquil's account, Zatalli composed a vulgar satire targeting his magnanimous employer, Kam Bakhsh: the prince. The poet levied an accusation against the prince, alleging that he engaged in sexual intercourse with a beloved pet goat. The satire begins with the couplet: “Zahe shah-e wala guhar Kam Bakhsh Ke ghachchi buz kard pichchi wa pakhsh” (Well done! Kam Bakhsh’s prized possession. The goat’s little orifice suddenly expanded into a yawning chasm.) In his poetry, Zatalli has beautifully presented the scenario of immorality of his era. He uses the words “Londay” and “Ladkay” for this. In the following couplets he has reflected it. He says: Londay phire hain ghar ba ghar khawe niwale tar batar Bhoke phire chaakar nafar, Bibi bure ahwal mein (Londay (slaves) are wandering from house to house, eating high quality more and more. Hungry servant, Bibi in lousy condition.) Bahut Ladkay phire koni ki Delhi Dhoondte soni Maraway kon bedooni, Ajab yeh Daur aaya hai (Many Ladkay (Boys) are looking for Delhi. Whoever dies, wonder, this time has come) Homosexual love has always been a part of the Urdu poetry’s history. Mir Mohammad Shakir Naji, Hatim, Tabaan, Arzoo, Mazhar Jan-e-Janan, Yakrang, Mazmoon, Qayem and Yaqeen’s writings have shown queer aspects in different periods and contexts for a male beloved. The male beloved was usually an Amrad, a beardless, handsome youth. Hairlessness is the most critical trait of a male beloved. Boy-lovers are called Amrad-Parast. The poet

128  Omar Ghazali Shah Mubarak Abroo is well known for his Ishq-E-Majazi (Virtual Love/ Mortal or Earthly Love). His entire Masnavi entitled “Dar Moeza Aaraish-eMashooq” has mentioned this subject. In his rhyming couplets he gives an untutored youth advice and tips on how to adorn himself to make himself most attractive for his admirers.14 Khan Arzoo is actually a colourful poet of Mohammad Shah Rangeela’s era whose nature was more inclined towards Londebaazi (male homosexual desire; close male friendships; sodomy) than Amradparasti (immorality). Khan Arzoo’s beloved is the Londa who wanders in the bazaars, smokes marijuana and uses opium. The duration of his beauty is short, and Khan Arzoo is willing to sacrifice his life for this little boy. Khan Arzoo probably did not get married and even if he did, he was happier in the crowd of “Khak Basar Londay” than his wife. Londebaazi (male homosexual desire; close male friendships; sodomy) was not only familiar but also appreciable in his time. Shaikh Zahuruddin Hatim, well known by the pen names of Shah Hatim or Hatim, was a great poet of the Delhi School of Urdu poetry. He was in Delhi during the reign of Mohammad Shah Rangeela. The great poet Mirza Sauda was one of his disciples. The prime themes in his poetry were romance and self-reflection. In the doctrine of Amrad-Parasti (Boy-Love), “Tazkeer” is also used because masculine metaphors like God, Heaven, Angels, Adam and Yousuf are used here to understand Adam and humanity. Allah had also decided in “Laqad Khalaqnal Insana Fi Ahsan-E-Taqweem” that “the best manifestation of nature is man himself.” This culture of Urdu poetry is derived from Arabic and especially Persian sense of poetry. Tariq Rahman writes about this sense of Ghazal in his excellent and detailed essay entitled, “Boy-love in Urdu poetry” (Annual of Urdu Studies, No. 7, 1990): The ghazal is a product of a culture in which men did not assume that it was pathological, effeminate or abnormal to fall in love with boys, appreciate their beauty, or desire them sexually. It was their beauty which was used as a symbol of divine beauty. In this the ghazal is the only form of literature in which the love of boys can be mentioned in an erotic, aesthetic, romantic and a spiritual context. Firaq Gorakhpuri is a genuine creative writer and critic of Urdu ghazal in respect of homosexuality. He writes about same-sex love and its desire from different angles: Practitioners of Amrad-Parasti (boy-love) are not criminals, nor are they villainous and contemptible beings. Many boy-lovers have been famous people, iconic figures of virtue, civilization and spirituality, such as Socrates, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, and Sarmad among many others. Similarly, women too can be romantically and erotically inclined towards other women. That doesn’t make them shameless or immoral. We live in the scientific age where nobody should pass

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  129 judgement on ethical and moral behavior without first resorting to a thorough study of science and psychology. Firaq Gorakhpuri has written with a sincere approach and expression of pleasures. In this context he said that every sexual feelings are not ugly, nor are sexual acts obscene, otherwise it must be admitted that every child is the fruit of his parents’ “ugly emotions and obscene actions”. The notion of intimacy and chaste expressions of physical affection that engender a sense of belongingness, prompting one to assume a position of prostration, is a compelling concept. The underlying premise posits that the world is constructed and sustained through the manifestation of desire and emotional closeness, thereby implying that the theft of one's heart is a consequence of these fundamental forces. The human experience necessitates the presence of both desire and emotional closeness, however, these aspects are often viewed as impure or unclean. The cleanliness of these objects is not in question, rather it is the individual who perceives them as unclean who may be in need of hygiene. The term “pornography” does not refer to mere nudity. The artisans of Ajanta and Ellora, the ancient Greek and Roman idol-worshipers, as well as renowned poets and artists, have transformed nudity into a refined and chaste aesthetic entity. The depiction of the human body in a state of undress does not necessarily constitute pornography. The human body is not an object of a pornographic nature. The outcome is obscenity. Duplicity refers to the condition where an individual experiences sexual stimuli within themselves, while simultaneously harbouring feelings of self-blame for this covert inclination. This state is characterized by an inability to reconcile with homosexuality, which is perceived as a curse. Firaq always saw the truth of love poetry in ghazals. It’s a celebration of love, both earthly and mystical, but more intriguingly, the ghazal is not a celebration of heterosexual love exclusively. There’s an inherent and valuable queerness to the ghazal. Meer Taqi Meer’s poetry is full of love. His love is with Allah and with boys too. The era in which Mir has opened his eyes has been one of immortality. Therefore, new specific terms of queerness were coined in the Urdu poetry of his time, i.e. Amrad Parast, Aghlam Baaz, Bachha Baaz, Mokhannas, Humjins Parast, Londa, Hijra, Khawaja Sara, Naunehal, Londe Baaz, Shahid Baaz, Zankhawah, Neem Mard, Tiflan Paarizad, Looti, Nisf Nazuk, Lawatut, Dahqan Pisar, Ghulman, Bhangi, Mughbache, Pattu etc. Meer has used the terms in his poetry like “Attar ka Launda” (the son of a perfumers), “Tifl”, “Parizad”, “Naunihal”, “Pisar”, “Khush Pisar”, “Baghbaan Pisar”, “Aatishbaaz ka Launda” and “Memar ka Ladka” (son of mason), and at least 225 couplets clearly referred to a male beloved, for example: Mir kya saade hain beemar hue jiske sabab Usi Attar ke Launday se dawaa lete hain (I ask for medicine from the same perfumer’s boy who’s the cause of my disease)

130  Omar Ghazali Vay nahin toh unhon ka bhai aur Ishq karne ki kiya manai hai (I want you, but if not you, just fine is your brother! I need to love, who the beloved is not the matter) Ladka birahmanon ke sandal bhari jabeen Hindostan mein dekhe so unse Dil lagaye (Brahmin boys of India take away my heart. Beautiful foreheads, headier with the fragrance of Sandal) Afsanakhawan ka ladka kiya kahiye deedni hai Qissa hamara uska yaaron shuneednin hai (The story-teller’s lad is a sight beyond compare. As is his and my story, a story beyond compare.) Who Baghbaan pisar kuch gul gulshagufta hai ab Yeh aur gul khila hai ek phoolon ki dukaan par (The florist has found a new flower. It is the gardener-boy, who has just flowered.) Kiya uss Aatishbaaz ke launde ka itna shauq Mir Beh chali hai dekh kar usko tumhari raal kuchh (The fireworker’s son has fired my heart so I can do nothing, but sit and salivate) Your face with the down on it, is our Quran What if we kiss it, it is our faith. Finding him inebriated, I pulled him into my arms last night He said “So you too have become intoxicated tonight” It would be strange if an angel could hold its own The fairy-faced boys of Delhi are far ahead of them In the time of Shakir Naji, Abdul Hayee Taban was so beautiful as he usually known as “Yousif-e-Sani”. There is not a single narrator who has not mentioned the extraordinary beauty of this poet. Tabaan himself used to love a boy most named “Suleiman”. This homosexuality was at its height during the Meer-o-Sauda era. Imam Bakhsh Nasikh, a great Urdu poet, was in love with a boy named “Meerzai”. For this the king had fixed a stipend from time to time. He had bought shops and a house. Among the later poets, Firaq was homosexual. Mirza Ghalib’s poetry and style of writing engages with queerness in unique ways. That is why the world has been called a “Bazicha-e-Atfal” (child’s play) in his poetry. Ghalib uses queer terms Shahid Baaz, Londay Baaz, Tifl, in his writings. Iftikhar Nasim has written an important article entitled “Kia Ghalib Gay Thay?” based on the reasons, which was published in the first issue of the first volume of the Calcutta quarterly literary magazine Mizgan (editors: Dr Sanjar Hilal Bharti and Dr Naushad Momin). I took this

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  131 article personally from Iftikhar Nasim, when he presented this paper in an International Seminar on “Urdu love poetry”, organized by Centre of Indian Languages, School of Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 1999. The article explains the signs of Ghalib’s gayness. While the wellknown Urdu critic Shams-ur-Rahman Farooqi in his famous novel entitled Kai chand thay sar-e-Aasmaan has hinted at the homosexuality of Ghalib. However, this was not a bad thing at that time. Anyway, Urdu poets have always presented their beloved as Tazkeer Mahboob (masculine beloved). Some poets like Shaikh Ghulam Ali Humdani Mashafi, Aatish, Qamaruddin Qamar, Aseer, Tasleem, Wazir, Ashrafuddin Ali Khan Payam, Nasikh, Chirkin, Daagh, Akbar etc. are very much crucial in respect of homosexuality in their writings. Dabistan-e-Delhi and Dabistan-e-Lucknow are good places for those poets, who are who are in most cases homosexuals or inclined to homosexuality and write about homosexuality. In this context they were writing about some issues of their era. The Masnavi genre of Urdu poetry also mentions immortal attitudes from the very beginning. In this context, Siraj Aurangabadi’s Masnavi “Bostan-eKhayal” is at the top of the list. In his poetry, the particular term “PARI” is used in such a way that it is explained. According to Dr Gayan Chand Jain: The volumes of Bostan-e-Khayal are full of examples of nudity, obscenity and immortality. Mirza Rafi Sauda’s Masnavi “Zargar-o-Pisar Shishagar” and “Dar Hajv-eTifl Lakdi Baaz”, “Masnavi-e-Mir Dard” and Mashafi’s Masnavi “Hajjam Pisar” mentioned an artistic expression of the sentiments of homosexuality. The “Masnavi Gulzar-e-Nasim” does not have an abundance of sexual themes, while Mir Hasan in his “Masnavi Sehrul Bayan” also writes about sexual intercourse in the usual detail. The statement about the meeting of Benazir and Badr Monir is contained in a whole chapter, which has 52 verses. This narrative centres on the transformation of a female individual into a male persona and its correlation with the Taj-ul-Muluk and Bakawli entities within the Talisman desert. Meer’s writing portrays two facets of immorality, namely the depiction of Zahir Parasti as an ordinary love. Meer lacks the same level of enthusiasm for Atta ka Londa (perfumer’s boy), Dhobi ka Londa (laundryman's boy), and Teli ka Londa (oil-pressers’ boy) as his contemporaries. The evaluation of Meer’s love is contingent upon the occurrence of “Zikr Meer”, wherein Meer refers to his uncle and mentor Amanullah's romantic attachment to a Teli youth. The literary work “Masnavi Khawabo-Khayal” is the primary source of Meer’s expressions of love. Here, the word “Eestada” has been used by Meer for Homosexuality. The terms “Ishwa Saaz” and “Ba Sadrang Naaz” have been used as positive terms for homosexuality as well. Again I would say that there are two Meers in

132  Omar Ghazali Meer’s poetry. There is an immortalist who examines immortality as well as the aesthetics of their body, temperament, habits, qualities, attitudes and evils. It determines the destinations of the universe through this spirit. The second Meer, accompanied by the Sodomites of his time, performs evil desire tricks, wandering in the Bazaars. He also gets the pleasure of sex from this immortality. It also happens with “Masnavi Shola-e-Shaoq”. In this Meer has changed the story of love between a man and a woman in the original story with the love of a man and a man. Meer has mentioned “Paras Ram’s” relationship with a man before marriage. Urdu Literature: The Centrality of the Hijra and other Voices Eunuchs are often mentioned in Urdu literature. And the reason was the political and social conditions of that era had a profound effect on Urdu literature. “Tarikh-e-Farishta” mentions the interest of Sultan Ali Adil Shah, one of the sultans of Bijapur, towards eunuchs and his subsequent murder by a eunuch: He was very fond of collecting beautiful eunuchs and slaves. Ali Adil Shah sent one of his messengers message: “I know that you have two very beautiful and handsome eunuchs, you send these eunuchs to me immediately.” Ameer Barid for a few days, he hesitated and did not send the eunuchs to Ali Adil Shah. In those days Murtaza Nizam Shah Bahri attacked Ameer Ali. Barid sought help from Ali Adil Shah. Ali Adil Shah sent two thousand cavalry to help him. Arid was impressed by this and he sent two beautiful eunuchs, whom Ali Adil had summoned, from Bedar to Bijapur. When these two eunuchs reached Bijapur and found out the reason for their coming here, one eunuch was very upset. He intended to finish Adil Shah’s life. On the day that these two eunuchs appeared before the royal court, on the same night the aforesaid eunuch killed Ali Adil Shah with a knife. This incident happened on the 23rd Sifar, 989 Hijri (Islamic Calender). Another king Shah Burhan Shah’s love for Yusuf a eunuch was such that Yusuf tried to assassinate the king. Nevertheless, the king had no complaints against Yusuf. Similar events took place in India during the Mughal period. Eunuchs/ hijras gained a special status during the reign of Mohammad Shah Rangeela. It is mentioned in “Farhang-e-Aasfia”. This sect flourished in our India from the time of Mohammad Shah, because the aforesaid king appointed such people instead of “Qulmaqinon”, “Turks”, “Jasolinon”, i.e. “Basavalinon” etc. for coming and going. He was nicknamed “Nazir” and “Khoja” as Nazir Mahboo Ali Khan Wazir Bahadur Shah, Nazir Basant Ali Khan wazir Shah Alam, Nazir Belal Ali Khan, Nazir Mahfoz Ali Khan, etc., were still named. Mohammad Shah favoured cultural performance of arts.

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  133 These individuals embraced dancing and singing, and established distinct sect for themselves. Mir Bahuji, a eunuch, established one such sect and assumed the title of Mir Bhachri as its leader. The most authoritative among these eunuchs was referred to as ‘Takht Pahar Ganj’ (lit., King of Pahar Ganj), situated in the city of Delhi. Another instance, of hijra gaining visibility and positionality was the case of Malik Kafoor during the reign of Allauddin Khilji. In the social milieu of Delhi, and indeed, throughout India, individuals who identify as eunuchs (known by various terms in Urdu literature, such as “Khawaja Sara”, “Hijra”, “Zankha”, “Aakhta Mard”, “Mokhannas”, “Khusra”, “Nazir”, “Nisf Nazuk”, and “Khoja”) had attained significance. Their involvement in various social activities, including but not limited to marriage, death, circumcision, birth, and other communal endeavours, continues to be regarded as auspicious. According to popular belief, their supplications are both acknowledged and potentially subject to malevolent consequences. The prevalence of Rekhti in Urdu poetry emerged as a means for poets to compose verses in the feminine language and convey the emotions and perspectives of women. Syed Miraan Hashmi Bijapuri, Mohammad Siddiq Qais Hyderabadi, Mirza Ali Beig Naznin Dehlavi, Qalandar Bakhsh Jurra’at, Mir Yaar Ali Jaan Sahib Lucknavi, Abid Mirza Begum Lucknavi, Nisar Sajid Ali Sajni Lucknavi, and others have gained recognition for their contributions to the genre of “Rekhti” poetry. The poets in question composed poetic works on the topic of sexuality utilizing the vernacular of women, employing “Begum Idioms” and specialized terminology. Furthermore, the poetry of that era was notably influenced by sexual intercourse between women and promiscuous women. Ismat Lucknavi was a poet who engaged in the practice of cross-dressing and performed in Mushaira, a traditional form of poetry recitation. Additionally, Lucknavi presented poetry in the style of Rekhti, which features a female voice. Jurra’at has employed the terminology “Chaptinama”. In her work, Ruth Vanita discusses the concept of “Chapti” as a form of play that does not involve the use of a dildo. Additionally, she notes that “Saraapa” refers to a literary genre in which poets explore various parts of the body as a means of expressing lesbian erotic themes within the sub-genre of Rekhti. The tradition of Urdu poetry is replete with themes of homosexuality, lesbianism, transgender identity, immorality, and Rekhti. In contemporary poetry, homosexuality has been embraced and incorporated into poetic expression. Prominent poets such as Firaq, Josh, Faiz, Meeraji, Noon Meem Rashid, Akhtarul Iman, Niaz, Fahmida Riyaz, Khalid Sohail, Nasim Khan, among others, have included this theme in their works. Firaq Gorakhpuri is a renowned poet who is known for his homosexuality. Josh Malihabadi expresses support for homosexuality. While Firaq and Josh’s homosexual relationship was well known in both their poetry and personal lives, there is a dearth of comparable examples from more recent times. The film Unfreedom (2015) draws inspiration from Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s poem “Yeh Dagh Dagh Ujala” (1947), which poignantly portrays the yearning for freedom among lesbian couples residing in Delhi.

134  Omar Ghazali The literary works of Mohammad Sanaullah Dar, also known as Meeraji, were primarily focused on the topic of homosexuality and explored various aspects of sexual emotions. The poetry of Noon Meem Rashid, namely Inteqam, Khao piyo magan raho, Havaskari, Gunah, Bekaraan raat ke sannate mein, Jo shayed Biwi hai, and Mere bhi hain kuchh khwab, has gained significant recognition in relation to the topic of homosexuality. Furthermore, Iftikhar Nasim is the individual who has most effectively preserved this cultural legacy. Iftikhar chose to acknowledge and accept his homosexuality instead of living a deceitful existence. Being the pioneer of openly gay poetry in Urdu, “Ifti Nasim” glorified homosexuality and the related experiences. The most renowned literary piece of the author is his anthology of poems titled “Narman,” which features the theme of hermaphroditism, depicting a being that is both male and female. Ifti authored several renowned poems, including “Hara Patta”, “Kishwar Nahid keliye Nazm”, “Manazatua”, “Safar mein ek raat ki kahani”, “Kaash”, “Mein andheron se darta hoon”, “Wast-e-Umr ka bohran”, and “Qalb-e-mahiyat”, among others, that are widely recognized for their themes of homosexuality. The poem “Mere Baba” has had a significant impact on the literary sphere. In Urdu literature, queer poetry has given prominence to homosexuality, immorality, transgender and lesbianism, while queer prose has also been given prominence. In many genres of Urdu prose such as short story, novel, translation, travelogue, autobiography, criticism, etc., lesbianism, immorality, homosexuality and transgender are well presented. Homosexuality or lesbianism in Urdu prose was first formally portrayed by Ismat Chughtai in her most controversial short story “Lihaaf” (Quilt). Through this story, Ismat Chughtai has alerted thousands of “Begum Jan” and “Rabbu”. Syed Mohammad Aqil has not called the movements of Begum Jan, the protagonist of Ismat Chughtai’s masterpiece short story “Lihaaf”, a surgery, nor has he given place to such pictures. On the other hand, Ale Ahmad Suroor, while praising “Lihaaf”, has counted them among the good fictions of Urdu literature. He said that none of them shared the courage and boldness with which Ismat had exposed the misery of the middle class and noble families of Muslims in India. She has the mind of a rebel, the power of a flamboyant woman, the honest and ruthless look of an artist. She is a woman but more than that she is an artist. Anyone who calls “Lihaaf” nude should call life nude. According to Din Mohammad Taseer, there is adolescent anxiety in Ismat Chughtai. Mumtaz Mufti has a lot of criticism. However, there is sexual unrest in Rajinder Singh Bedi. But when we study the history of Urdu literature, it is clear that the stories written at Fort William College also raise the issue of homosexuality. One of the most important stories (Dastan) published by Fort William College is “Tota Kahani”, written by Haider Bakhsh Haideri. This story is a significant and excellent example in the context of queerness. The “Tota Kahani” (Parrot story) contains many stories that can easily be called immoral in today’s world. Perhaps in view of this danger, Dr Waheed Quraishi has compiled and published it, so either change or delete many passages from it.

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  135 Another famous story of Fort William College is “Bagh-O-Bahar” (Garden and Spring), which is well presented by Meer Amman Dehlavi. “Bagh-o-Bahar” is a masterpiece of Urdu prose, without which the history of Urdu prose could not be complete. It is said of this book that whoever reads it will recover, and it also happened in past. There are a number of reasons for this, one of which, I think, is the amalgamation of conditions between “Khawaja Sagparast” and “Saudagar Bachcha” (Minister’s daughter, who dressed up, wore cosmetics yet ended up looking like a boy or become a boy). This union covers many mornings, many evenings, many days and many nights. In this story, there are incidents between the “Saudagar Bachcha” and the “Khawaja Sagparast”, which when read, the mind is left stunned. For example, when the “Khawaja Sagparast” sees the “Saudagar Bachcha” for the first time and agrees to keep it with him without any hesitation. Another example is when the two spend the night together. Another thing is that the story does not show intimacy. The third example is when the “Khawaja Sagparast” bathes the “Saudagar Bachcha” with his own hands. A great story “Alf Laila-O-Laila” has been presented with outstanding excellence in 1940 by Dr Abul Hasan Mansoor Ahmad. The story depicts the romance of “Dolzabai Auraton” (Twin women), which clarifies queerness. In Urdu literature, novelist and allegory writers cover all kinds of queer topics. For example, “Jinsi Ghulami” (Sexual Slavery), “Eeza Koshi” (Persecution), “Eeza Talabi” (Persecution), “Mard Afgan Aurat” (Male Origin Woman), “Haiwaniyat” (Bestiality), “Humjinsiyat” (Homosexuality), “Ma’ashqa-E-Mehramaat”, “Nargisiyat” (Narcissism), “Zanane Mard” (Feminine man), “Mardana Aurat” (masculine woman), “Naukhez” (adolescent relationships with older people), etc. After Ismat a lot of Urdu stories were narratives on queerness. I would like to introduce some Urdu stories regarding lesbianism. After Ismat, Mumtaz Shirin is the most prominent female fiction author. Her most well-known narrative, “Angrai”, is about homosexual love. Lesbianism is the central theme of “Lihaaf” and “Angrai”. However, the two ambiances are completely distinct. The clitoridal woman differs from Ismats “Lihaaf” and Shirin's “Gulnar” in “Angrai”. Later, Gulnar falls in love with a man and becomes estranged from her teacher. Gulnar and her instructor are both lesbians in this instance. Hajra Masroor is an influential Urdu story writer, most of whose fiction is devoted to homosexuality. In this regard, one of his famous and well-known short stories is “Til oot pahar”. This story is included in his collection of stories Hi Allah. Most of the stories in the book under consideration are on the topic of homosexuality, in which “Hi Allah”, “Til oot pahar”, “Bandar ka ghao”, “Rakh”, “Sargoshiyan”, “Aapki Dunya ka zikr hai ke” etc. are important. “Hi Allah” is based on the suppressed sexual desire of a little girl. The story is reminiscent of Ismat’s legend “Gaynda”. In this story, a young girl, seeing her father’s luxuries, finds herself sexually aroused and inadvertently expresses physical intimacy with a woman.

136  Omar Ghazali The beauty of Hajra Masroor is that she does not cover her experiences and observations in the most important social and sexual life, honestly incorporating them in her fiction. One of Siddiqa Begum Sewharvi’s fables “Tarey Laraz Rahe Hain” (The stars are shaking) is an excellent example of this. The story mentions a married woman who, even after marriage, could not get rid of the notion of homosexuality and who was in fact bisexual. The heroine of the story “Bhabhi” retains her taste despite being married. She is not only bisexual but also a lesbian. So whenever she gets a chance, she goes crazy with her little sister-in-law. This scene is described by Siddiqa Begum as follows: Bhabhi smiled and then rampageous hugged me. Safi came in front of my eyes. Bhabhi was squeezing with full force. Her breath was blowing. There are those who stretch like this. All the bones are shaken. I also wanted to stretch like this. Then as if someone had put his hand on my chest and my eyes suddenly burst open with a delicious curb. Safi is a fool who is screaming loudly. What will someone say if hears it. I was snatched away. My Bhabh’s grip was loosened and their breaths are blowing, as if she was running from afar. Siddiqa Begum‘s story “Tarey laraz rahe hain” is the story of a woman who has nurtured both types of inclinations equally. Such women and girls are sometimes known as tomboys and boys as sissy. Many important short stories related to homosexuality have been written in Urdu literature. Mohammad Hasan Askari has priority among them. His story “Phislan” (Slippery) is short and symbolic and focuses on homosexuality. Another of his stories, “Haramjadi”, is also important in this context. Chaudhry Mohammad Ali Rudaulvi's famous story “Teesri Jins” (Third Sex) is a successful fiction written on this subject. Ashraf Sabuhi Dehlavi’s story “Koil Zanana” is essential as well in this regard. Manto has also made the subject of homosexuality a part of his fiction. For example, in “Asli Jinn” and “Doda Khan” etc. homosexual symbols are beautifully portrayed in these stories. Siddiq Alam’s story “Tea pot”, Salam bin Razzaq’s story “Darmiyani sinf ke soorma”, Irfan Ahmad Arfi’s story “Graffiti”, Iftikhar Nasim’s story “Apni apni zidagi”, Mosharraf Alam Zauqi’s story “Katiyain Bahnen”, Khalid Sohail’s stories “Kachche Dhage” (Raw thread) and “Humzaad”, Nasim Faiq’s story “Kamzor tawanayee ki mazboot jakad” (which magazine Shabkhoon refuses to publish), etc. are unique fictions in Urdu literature regarding homosexuality. Aziz Ahmad is a great Urdu novelist. He wrote the novel Gurez, where he shows the robust character of homosexuality. Khdija Mastoor and Wajida Tabassum are eminent Urdu novelists showing women’s empowerment in their novels in respect of homosexuality. Wajida Tabassum’s novels Nath ka bojh and Nath ka ghuroor are written on this topic. Novels like “Charagh tahe daman (Iqbal Matin), Dil-e- Muztar (Mehwish Chuadhary), Mujhe

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  137 sandal kardo are related to homosexuality. Some lesbian Urdu novels are Nazuk hai rishta Dil ka (Asia Saleem Qureshi), Hostel ki ladkiyan (Jawed Khan Afridi), Ab inkar ka mausam nahin, Titli ke rang utar gaye (Nabila Abr Raja), Tum sath rahna (Maryam Aziz), Yaram (Sumera Hameed), Sahilon ke geet (Rukh Chaudhry), and Kuch pagal se hum (Farhat Ishtiaq) are not well known in Urdu so much, but have some credibility to publish regarding this type of subject. Nimayeel wrote a story “Lund ki pyasi rooh” (publisher: Create space independent publishing platform, 22 Nov, 2015), which is a gay erotic story in Urdu. Ash’ar Najmi wrote a novel Us Ne Kaha Tha in respect of homosexuality. This is the first novel in Urdu that describes the relief of homosexuality in a purely human condition and existential paradigm. In Urdu poetry and fiction topics like immorality, lesbianism, homosexuality, transgender and gayism are presented in good numbers. There is also an abundance of these subjects in non-fiction literature. For example, Khalid Sohail’s letter “A Lesbian Letter” (Urdu letter to English) and Iftikhar Nasim’s letters “You should be proud of me, no regrets” and “A letter from Gayan Chand Jain” are of great importance. Similarly, many articles have been written in this context such as Chaudhry Nayeem’s article “The Poet of Nirman”, Dr Sheen Akhtar’s article “Lesbianism in Urdu Fiction”, Iftikhar Nasim’s article “kiya Ghalib Gay thay”, Akhtar Baloch’s article “Eunuch of India”, Khlid Shail’s article “Historical Study of Homosexuality”, Pitras Bokhari’s article “Chori Chuppe”, Mohammad Hasan Askari’s articles “Adab-o-Funn mein Fahash ka Masla” and “New poetry”, Mohammad Hasan’s article “Baat Uryani ki”, Shamsur Rahman Farooqi’s article titled “Chun Khameer Amad Badast-e-Nanba”, Salim Akhtar’s article “Interpretation of Obscenity” and Wazir Agha’s article “Literature and Sex”, Tasnif Haider’s article “Literature, Amrad and Amanullah” and Firaq’s article “A Sincere Expression of Pleasures” etc. Ali Abbas Jalalpuri, Wajahat Masood, Rashid Yusuf Zai, Haqqani-ul-Qasmi, Tahir Yasin Tahir, Mojahid Mirza, Zahoor Shahdad Azhar and Arya Ahmad Zai write consistently on queerness. Besides, translations related to such topics were also presented in Urdu. Saaqi Farooqi wrote an autobiography entitled Aap Beeti/Paap Beeti. Zubair Rizvi wrote his memoirs entitled Gardish-e-Paa. Ash’ar Najmi, the editor, published a special issue of his magazine Esbaat on homosexuality in 2021. Khalid Sohail wrote a book on the subject of “Lesbian and Gay” entitled Har Daur Mein Masloob (Crucified in Every Age), which became very popular. This book was published at Calcutta (Co publishers Creative Links, Canada and Sharjil Arts Publications, Calcutta) in 1995. Now we will find more queer voices in Urdu literature. The queerness of Urdu literature has been extensively discussed and will continue to be a topic of discussion. Currently, individuals have developed a psychological connection with the pain and suffering experienced by queer individuals, rather than a sexual one. Human psychology plays a significant role in shaping sexuality. Writing on such subjects can rectify the intricacies of human psychology.

138  Omar Ghazali Notes 1 Deewan-e-Hafiz by Hafiz Shirazi. 2 Tahqiqaat, Dr. Andalib Shadani. 3 Deewan-e-Meer by Meer Taqi Meer. 4 Esbaat, Book series Urdu, by Ash’ar Najmi, 2012. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Moqaddam-e-Sher-o-shairi, by Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali. 8 Aab-e-Hayaat, by Maulana Mohammad Hussain Azad. 9 Har daur mein Masloob, by Khalid Sohail, 1995. 10 Esbaat, Book series Urdu, by Ash’ar Najmi, 2012. 11 Deewan-e-Wali, by Wali Daccani. 12 Deewan-e-Hafiz, by Hafiz Shirazi. 13 Tahqiqaat, by Dr. Andalib Shadani. 14 The Queerness of the Urdu Ghazal, by Nighat Gandhi.

Bibliography Aagha, Wazir. (2012). “Adab Aur Jins.” Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Ahmad, Aziz. (1982). Gurez (Novel). New Delhi: Modern Publications House. Akhtar, Sheen. (1995). “Urdu Afsanon Mein Lesbianism” (Essay), (Har Daur Mein Masloob). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Akhtar, Salim. (2012). “Fahhashi Ki Tabeerein.” Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Alam, Siddiq. (2008). “Tea Pot” (Fiction). Lamp Jalaney Wale. Delhi: Educational Publishing House. Askari, Mohammad Hasan. (1942). “Meri Behtarin Nazmein.” Allahabad: Kitabistan. Askari, Mohammad Hasan. (1943a). “Phislan” (Story). Delhi: Sazeerz, Mahboob-ul- Metabe. Askari, Mohammad Hasan. (1943b). “Haramjaadi” (Story). Delhi: Sazeerz, Mahboob-ul- Metabe. Askari, Mohammad Hasan. (1981). “Adab-o-Funn Mein Fahash ka Masla” (Essay). Jhalkiyaan (Part I). Edited by Sohail Omar and Naghmana Omar. Lahore: Makhtaba-e-al-Rewayat. Azad, Mohammad Hussain. (1998). “Aab-e-Hayaat.” Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy. Azhar, Zahoor Shahzad. (2012). “Iran Mein Shahid Baazi.” Esbaat. Baloch, Akhtar. (2012). “Hindustan ke Khawaja Sara.” Esbaat. Chughtai, Ismat. (1942). “Lihaaf” (Story). Adab-e-Latif, 154–168. Chughtai, Ismat. (2012). “Ya Allah! Yeh Fahash Nigari Kia Hoti Hai” (Essay). Esbaat (Book series), Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Danish, Jawed. (1995). Nijaat (Play), (Har Daur Mein Masloob). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman. (2012). “Chun Khameer Aamad Badast-e-Nanba.” Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Gorakhpuri, Firaq. (2012). “Lazzaton Ka Pur Kholoos Izhar” (Essay). Esbaat (Book series), Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Gorakhpuri, Mehdi Afadi. (1939a). “Barhana Qazi.” Azamgarh: Maarif Press. Gorakhpuri, Mehdi Afadi. (1939b). “Inshaye Uryaan.” Azamgarh: Maarif Press.

Urdu and the Queer Consciousness  139 Haider, Tasnim. (2012). “Adab Amrad Aur amanullah.” Esbaat (Book series), Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Hali, Altaf Hussain. (1928). “Moqaddama-e-Sher-o-Shairi.” Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University Press. Hasan, Mohammad. (2012). “Baat Uryani Ki”. Esbaat (Book series, Urdu Quarterly), a special issue on “Uryaan Nigari aur Fahash nigari”. Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Iqbal, Ali. (2011). Roshni Kam Tapish Ziyada. Karachi: Royal Book Company. Jalalpuri, Ali Abbas. (2012). “Humjinsiyat” (Homosexuality). Esbaat. Khan, Naseem. (2012). “Naseem Khan ki char Nazmein.” Esbaat. Manto, Saadat Hasan. (1995). “Asli Jinn” (Story). Mantonama. Lahore: Sangmil Publications. Masood, Wajahat. (2012). “Humjinsiyat Jurm Nahin.” Esbaat. Masroor, Hajra. (1991). “Til Oot Pahad” (Fiction). Sab Afsaney Mere. Lahore: Maqbool Academy. Matin, Iqbal. (2005). Charagh-e-Tah-e-Damaan (Novel). Hyderabad: Reyaz Printers. Mufti, Mumtaz. (1993). “Angrai” (Story). Kahi Na Jayeh. Karachi: Matba Firozisous. Nahid, Kishwar. (1995). “Lesbian Nama”, (Har Daur Mein Masloob). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Najmi, Ash’ar. (2012a). Esbaat (Book series, Urdu Quarterly), a special issue on “Uryaan Nigari aur Fahash nigari”. Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Najmi, Ash’ar. (2012b). Esbaat (Book Series, Urdu Quarterly), a special issue on “Homosexuality”. Najmi, Ash’ar. (2021). Us Ne Kaha Tha (Novel). Maharastra: Esbaat Publication. Nasim, Iftikhar. (1994). Narman (Collection of Poetry). Faisalabad: Ham Khayal Pablisharz. Nasim, Iftikhar. (1995). “Tumhen Mujh Par Fakhr Hona Chahiye, Nedamat Nahin” (Letter), (Har Daur Mein Masloob). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Nasim, Iftikhar. (1999). Kia Ghalib Gay Thay? “Mizgaan”, Quarterly Urdu Magazine, 1(1), 24–38. Nasim, Iftikhar. (2005). Abdoz (Collection of Poetry). Faisalabad: Ham Khayal Pablisharz. Nayeem, Chaudhry Mohammad. (1995). “Nirman Ka Shayer” (Essay), (Har Daur Mein Masloob). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Nomani, Shibli. (1912). “Sherul Ajam.” Azamgarh: Matba Maarif. Parwa. (2009). The Monthly, London, May. Quraishi, Waheed. (1950). “Shibli ki Hayat-e-Maashqa.” Lahore: Maktab Jadeed. Razzaq, Salam Bin. (2010). “Darmiyani Sinf Ke Soorma” (Fiction). Delhi: Shikasta Batob Ke Darmiyaan Darul Ishata Mostafar. Reyaz, Fahmida. (1973). “Badan Dareeda.” The Herald, Karachi, August 1973. Rudaulvi, Chaudhry Mohammad. (2012). “Teesri Jins.” Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Saadi, Shaikh. (1954). “Gulistaan.” Delhi: SabRang Kitab Ghar. Sabohi, Ashraf. (2012). Koyel Zanana (Fiction). Esbaat. Shadani, Andalib. (1950). “Tahqiqaat.” Baraily: Jalil Academy. Shadani, Andalib. (2012). “Adab Mein Uryani.” Esbaat (Book series), Maharashtra, India: Esbaat Publications. Sohail, Khalid. (1939). “Humjinsiyat Ka Tarikhi motala.” Azamgarh: Maarif Press.

140  Omar Ghazali Sohail, Khalid. (1995a). Har Daur Mein Masloob (Crucified in Every Age). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Sohail, Khalid. (1995b). “Ek Lesbian Khat” (Letter), (Har Daur Mein Masloob). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Sohail, Khalid. (1995c). “Kachche Dhagay” (Short Story), (Har Daur Mein Masloob). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Sohail, Khalid. (1995d). “Hum Zaad (Story)”, (Har Daur Mein Masloob). Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. Sohail, Khalid. (1995e). Lesbian (Poetry), Calcutta: Creative Links, Canada & Sharjil Arts Publications. The Herald. (1973). Karachi, August. The Herald. (1985). Karachi, April. The Frontier Post. (1990). Lahore, July. The Frontier Post. (1991) Lahore, April. Urfi, Irfan Ali. (2010). “Grafatie” (Fiction). Delhi: Shikasta Batob Ke Darmiyaan Darul Ishata Mostafar. Uryaan, Ashraful Haq. (1939). “Kulliyat-e-Uryan.” Azamgarh: Maarif Press. Zai, Rashid Yusuf. (2012). “Humjinsparasti aur Islami Adab.” Esbaat. Zatalli, Jafar. (2011). “Kulliyat-e-Zatalli.” New Delhi: Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind). Zauqi, Mosharraf Alam. (2004). “Catiayen Bahnen” (Fiction). Delhi: Educational Publishing House.

Part III

Performing the Vernacular Queer Offline, Online and On Screen

7 Mawngkuahur in the Times of E-Love Sexualities, Regimentation, Control, Display and the Zo Queer Anup Shekhar Chakraborty The Zo World: Sexualities, Regimentation, Control Literature on homosexuality in Mizo society is conspicuously silent. The silence, however, does not signal an absence. Indigenous terms that refer to sexual orientations and body-related vernacular slurs in the native Zo/Mizo language can be found in colonial writings. J. Herbert Lorrain, a Scottish Baptist Christian missionary who had served in Lushai Hills (now Mizoram) from 1894 and a pioneer in the creation and development of Mizo script, had mentioned in his Dictionary of the Lushai Language that Tuai-pheng (noun) refers to a man who practises sodomy, cross-dresses and has a woman-like gait; a sodomite who masquerades as a woman. Patil (noun) means a woman who behaves and dresses like a man, a sex pervert. Superintendent of the Lushai Hills N.E. Parry (1924–1928) wrote in his book A Monograph on Lushai Customs and Ceremonies (2009) about the practice of Mawngkawluk (lit., sodomy) among the Zo people. All cases of sodomy during the colonial days were to be reported to the Superintendent to be dealt with by him. In the pre-colonial days the sodomized or his father had the right to kill the sodomite or have his nose and ears slit open. The father of the sodomized could shoot any mithun (gayal, sial/siel, se/siadrung ox; for the Zo people it was a measure of a family’s wealth) in the village. The villagers would consume the meat, and the sodomite would compensate for the slaughtered mithun by paying a monetary fine. “Sodomy, however, is rare in these hills” mentioned Parry (2009). The penetrator was held accountable for sexual deviation and fined accordingly. Zo society was silent on whether the act was consensual, the penetrator was ensnared into penetrating the sodomized etc. The silence seems to signal a culture of tolerance towards the Tuai and the Patil. The colonial encounter resulted in the criminalization of homosexuality among the Zo people. In 1909, one of the Superintendents of the Lushai Hills, H.W.G Cole, issued a statute (Order No. 3 of 1909. 10) criminalizing homosexuality and cross-dressing. The order prohibited cross-dressing of the Tuai and sought maleness in behaviour. The order imposed taxes on the Tuai and labour services (coolie, porter). Reporting of any defiance of the order DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-11

144  Anup Shekhar Chakraborty and display of sexual incoherence rested with the village chiefs. The chiefs were thus bound to report all cases of unnatural offences that come to their notice whether or not any complaint had been made to them. Failure to do so invited the possibility of severe punishment. The ambivalence in the treatment of acts of defiance and sexual misconduct in Cole’s 1909 edict would catch the inquiring gaze: “In future, all Tuais (homosexuals) who are clearly of the male sex are to abandon wearing women’s clothes and are to live as men and will pay revenue and do cooly (porter) work.” The order is silent on Patil—a woman who behaves and cross-dresses like a man. This could presumably be associated with the Patil’s unhesitant participation in communal labour, which would benefit the colonial demand for labour and investment in the building of the Raj in these borderlands. The missionaries successfully won the confidence of the tribes of these borderlands. The Khasis were first among the tribes of the region to have converted to Christianity way back in 1812–1813. The missionary activities were initiated in the Naga Hills in the 1840s and the Zo/Mizo/Lushai Hills in 1894–1895 (Fuchs 1973). In this time frame, the Zos/Mizos were a late arrival to the Evangelical missions. However, the success rate in the Zo Hills has been the maximum in terms of mass proselytization. Awakening to a new sense of identity, political consciousness, proto-nationalism and ethnic consolidation within larger kinship groups, the tribal communities sought to differentiate themselves from the new sovereignties being asserted by rest of South Asia. The encounters between the British and the ‘Kuki-Chin-Lushai tribes’ and the expansion of territories by the Kuki, Chin-Lushais towards south and south-west from Hakka (in Myanmar) and towards eastern Mizoram from Tiddim Falam region of Burma (Myanmar) at the beginning of the 19th century and the gradual extension of the British Frontiers towards the Northeast led to the confrontation between the ‘wild tribes’ and the ‘colonial world’ (Mackenzie, [1884] 1995; Lorrain, [1912] 1988; McCall, [1939] 1980). The British developed the ingenious method of protecting the frontier by establishing ‘fortified posts in the hills’. Such a move would call for the import of human resources (Lewin, [1912] 1977; Chakraborty, 2008b). The expansion work at Aizawl and Lunglei in Mizoram, as well as the setting up of administrative machinery, required an increase in the inflow of immigrants, that is, ‘the trusted Gorkhas’, as mentioned by O.A. Chambers ([1899] 2005) and Col E.B. Elly ([1893] 1978). The colonial administration system required human resources such as dak—runners, chowkidars, peons, cart drivers, traders, masons, etc. Since such work was unknown to the local people, it was advisable to introduce migrant labour. The migrant Gorkhas resembled the natives to an extent. Though the Gorkhas were not allowed to settle outside the allotted areas, many Lushai chiefs were eager to have them in their villages. They even entreated the Superintendent of Lushai Hills to permit the Gorkhas to reside in their villages (Shakespeare [1927] 1977; Pachuau 1990, cited in Sunar et al. 2000). The Queer has always been expurgated from the realms of ethnic constructions, nationalist discourses, and the like. All this geared strongly to make the

Mawngkuahur in the Times of E-Love  145 ‘Queer’ ‘Invisible’, drive forward patriarchally driven images of the ‘self’, and inject images of ‘sacred and profane’ into the proselytized Zo/Mizo cosmology. Colonial encounters and the wave of proselytization threw open the process of ‘Localization of the Gospel’ (Chakraborty, 2008a). The assimilation and retention of the chauvinistic traditional Zo practices and the Judeo-Christian notions of original sin and sexuality went hand in hand (Chakraborty, 2008a). In their zeal to build an Ideal Zo Christian State, the Churches and the Nexus of Patriarchy engage vociferously in controlling sexualities, especially ‘homosexual’ (in Mizo: (male) Tuai/(female) Patil).1 The overarching notion of ‘Sin’ and sinful acts inherited from the Biblical narratives of Sodom and Gomorrah continues to regulate the ‘social imaginaries’ (Castoriadis, 1987; Zizek, 1991; Anderson, 1991; Shotter, 1993; Appadurai, 1996; Taylor, 2004) and vernacular slur among the Zo hnahthlak. The abominable sin of sodomy (anal penetration) began to define the homosexual man (Tuai) as ‘mawngkuahur’ (lit. Insatiable rectum).2 Following the Supreme Court of India’s decision to decriminalize Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a section of churches and ethnic community-based organizations in the Northeast of India have instituted a strict gender policing regime for ‘worldly’ activities by prohibiting them in both real and digitally configured virtual spaces. The churches and the Nexus of Patriarchy began their policing regime in the ‘this worldy’ (lit. khawvel) activities by invoking the traditional ethnic rules of prohibition (lit. Thiang leh Thiang lo) to sanitize the society. These rules extended from the real to the digitally configured virtual spaces. In the midst of ecclesiastical regulations and societal reproach, the concept of masculinity and its multifaceted expressions is undergoing a process of negotiation, giving rise to novel notions of manhood. The contention posited by these critics is that the act of enforcing gender norms only exacerbates the marginalisation of already susceptible populations, particularly those who self-identify as LGBTQ+. Moreover, it is contended that such a mode of law enforcement sustains pernicious generalisations and fortifies the notion that particular pursuits possess an innate quality of being either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ (Chakraborty 2008a; 2008b; 2021). The post-global times’ proliferation of media and heightened media consumption has facilitated the emergence of secure havens for the expression of homosexual inclinations in the technology-driven, web-based virtual realm. The ecclesiastical institutions within Mizoram hold the belief that the internet and the global network of interconnected computer systems are providing a haven for individuals who identify as homosexual and experience same-sex attractions. Cyberspace opens the possibility of disengaging the constrictions in the physical spaces and setting free the Zo queer towards a khawvel (lit. world) to find survival, anonymity, and collective solidarity hinged on personal experiences of discrimination.3 The Northeast as a region is markedly rigidified in practices that silence the amplification of questions concerning sexualities and gender and codified homophobia and transphobia in the name of ethno-national aspirations hinged on religiosity.4

146  Anup Shekhar Chakraborty The Methodological and Conceptual Moorings

A hybrid methodology (Caracelli & Greene (Eds.) 1997; Teddlie & Tashakkori (Eds.), 2003; Brannen (Ed.), 1992; Creswell, 2003; Malhotra & Shapiro, 1998) or ‘scavenger methodology’ (Halberstam, 1998, 2005; Sedgwick, 1990, 1993, 2003)was adopted keeping in mind the messiness of social life, and the place of the research/researcher in (re)creating it. The study involved multiple personal interviews and prolonged conversations conducted in parts to suit the interviewer and interviewee’s timings and needs between 2010 and 2022. Information was gathered in bits and pieces through the decade. The ethnographic accounts of 19 Zo/Mizo informants were collected through snowball sampling. The sample comprised a range of native Zo/Mizo men (sexually ambivalent, sexually ambiguous; top, versatile, bottom; polyamorous, single, never married, married and divorced) within 15–50 years of age. Few have migrated within regions of the northeast, and a few reside in major cities and urban centres (within India) for work or studies. The informants in this study were engaged in different professions. The names of respondents have been changed, and specific details are retained in parts not to ‘out’ the respondent but to show the sample’s complex ethnic, religious and geographic representations. As a study on queer subjects, a ‘queer methodology’ combining methods often cast as being at odds with each other was adopted without the compulsions of academic or disciplinary coherence (Halberstam, 1998) to weave the discussions in this study. I use the term ‘sexuality’ to refer to sexual behaviour. ‘Sexual desire’ is what people want to do and fantasize about doing. The two are differentiable from the term ‘sexual’ that refers to genital or sex (anatomical and productive differences) that man and woman are born with or develop later on. Furthermore, the term ‘gender’ is about the cultural meanings, social/psychological roles and personality traits associated with sex differences. For this study, I refer to the LGBTQIA as the ambivalent sexualities. They are marked by ambivalence precisely because of the coexistence of opposing contradictory emotions at play. This ambivalence is both internal and external. For instance, the non-agreeability of the Hijra across South Asia to be bracketed and boxed into the square cage of ‘Transgender’, ‘Trans-sexual’, and other imported nomenclatures from the West can be treated as external ambivalence in the context of South Asia. While the non-acceptance of binaries such as ‘Top– Bottom’ in male–male sexual preferences/inclinations can be treated as internal ambivalence. These conceptual and theoretical non-agreements exemplify the ambivalence of sexualities as performed in the lifeworld across South Asia. I use the term ambiguous sexualities to refer to the internal ambivalence and non-acceptance of defining sexual roles among the MIM (Men Interested in Men). Many among the MIM were not ready to define themselves as gay, queer or homosexual, though they proudly mentioned their roles in sexual acts as ‘top’, dominant or straight. The ambiguous sexualities camouflaged their sexual orientation in their everyday lives and were best described as ‘straight-­ acting’ males. I use MIM in place of the officially/broadly popular MSM (Men having Sex with Men) in my discussions in this chapter. My past field interactions with the said category informed me that they preferred to be referred to as ‘Men Interested in Men (MIM)’ (Chakraborty in Upadhyaya Joshi, & Brassard

Mawngkuahur in the Times of E-Love  147 (Eds.) 2020). The discomfort arose especially among those men who engaged only in ‘body sex’ (kissing, touching, licking, sucking nipples, mutual body massage, mutual masturbation, etc.), ‘oral sex’ (licking/sucking of the organs (genitals), deep throating etc.) and also ‘just for friendship’ (not involving physical intimacy but finding solace in the company of men). Interestingly, most of my respondents mentioned that ‘non-anal penetrative sex’ was not ‘sex’. Therefore, the definition of what is ‘sex’ to the concerned category was in variation to the theoretically, socially formulated constructions as imported from the West (for the discussions in this chapter, the European/North American/ global North) and the officially/legally accepted formulations in India. The Bible, Gender Turn and the Question of Diversity

The ecclesiastical authorities of Mizoram have expressed their opposition towards homosexuality and any form of sexual behaviour that deviates from the norms prescribed and sanctioned by the Bible. The Presbyterian Church of Mizoram severed its affiliation with the Presbyterian Church of the USA subsequent to the latter’s decision to permit the ordination of individuals identifying as homosexual to become clergy. In 2011, the Synod Executive Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Mizoram sent a circular to each of its subordinate churches clarifying the standpoint of the Church towards sexual relationships grounded on three arguments based on the Bible: 1 In the beginning, God created human beings as male and female. He created females to be the companion of males. Only males and females can sanctify the holy matrimony (Genesis 1:28, 2:18). 2 A sexual relationship should only occur between a male and a female who is married. (I Corinthians 7:2, Hebrew 13:4) 3 The practise of homosexuality and pre-marital sexual relationship is against God’s will (Romans 1:26–27). I locate the Gender Turn (GT)5 in India, more to the ripples of the NALSA judgement. The Supreme Court of India in National Legal Services Authority vs Union of India on 15 April 2014 passed a progressive judgement recognizing the Fundamental and Civil Rights of the Transgender person. The court ruled that transgender people should be treated as a third category of gender or as a socially and economically “backwards” class (Chakraborty in Upadhyaya Joshi, & Brassard (Eds.) 2020). Communities in India have responded very differently to this GT. Nevertheless, the Presbyterian Church of Mizoram opposed discrimination and requested the church members to bring the Kawngsual (lit., those who strayed from God’s teaching) to an alignment with the norms of Zo Christian ways of life. Inclusivity and accommodating diversity sans flamboyant visibility were mantras to overcome stigmatizing the sexually ambivalent.6 The Churches wanted to tame the sexually deviant individuals and make them realize their sinful ways, bringing mualpho, zathlak (collective shame, disgrace) to the Zo hnahthlak.7

148  Anup Shekhar Chakraborty However, the message of accommodating the sexually ambivalent was met with a myriad responses. The Young Mizo Association, as an active component of the Nexus of Patriarchy, strongly condemned the Delhi High Court verdict scrapping Section 377. The women’s organization MHIP aligned itself with the YMA and on 14 September 2015 expressed concern that the increased visibility of Tuai (gay) and Patil (lesbian) in the Christian state of Mizoram would negatively affect society and the religion/church (Vanglaini, 15 September 2015). The MHIP, on 22 December 2015, called a meeting with other NGOs, which was attended by the representatives of Young Mizo Association (YMA), Mizo Upa Pawl (membership is for those who are 50 years and above), Mizo Zirlai Pawl and Mizo Students Union (MSU). They proclaimed that Tuai and Patil (lesbians) are becoming bold and audacious in the city; therefore, they agreed on showing the sexually ambivalent their cordoned spaces in Mizo society. The Nexus of Patriarchy and the women’s bodies, such as the MHIP, collectively invested in designs to regulate the lives of the sexually ambivalent.8 The ethnographic accounts of Zo/Mizo Men Interested in Men (MIM) in this study showed reluctance on the part of the sexually ambivalent about participating in the Church service and religious gatherings. However, most informants continued to call themselves Christians and the Pathian ring (believers). Few respondents raised critical questions that require introspection on the part of the Churches. “The Church says the Mawngkuahur who are out and proud are doomed to burn in meidil (fire in hell) after death.”9 What about the closeted and those who indulge in same-sex in private? What about those who conceal their sexual orientation—the ambiguous sexualities, for instance, and are publicly active in the Church?10 Does being a believer and being Mawngkuahur make being a sexually ambivalent lesser sin in the eyes of the Church?11 Can the sexually ambivalent and the heterosexuals share the same God? Or does the sexually ambivalent Zo need to invest in a gay God?12 Sissyphobia: Mawngkuahur as Mawng Nau

This section discusses the degrees and variations in masculinities among the Zo people. The prevalence of male effeminacy and “sissyphobia”—the fear or hatred of effeminate men—“fresh soft butt” (mawngnau) in a more comprehensive social, cultural, and political background and adopts a culturally saturated and historically specific approach to queer masculinities in the Zo context.13 For instance, Ziki, mentioned that as a northeasterner in Delhi, she could pass off as a Thai ladyboy and earn more clients. Her investment in skin care, beautification and concealment of native ethnic identity earned her stable clients looking for fresh meat in the highly competitive, and youth centric gay prostitution market. “The shelf life of fresh meat (here the youthful bottomer) in the queer circles was shortlived. No one wants or desires an old/aged bottom. The Tuai as ‘mawngkuahur’ is imagined to be a youthful insatiable rectum.”14 Contrary to this the fresh meat (here the male genitals) in the context of the top/ the penetrator has an extendable shelf life. ‘The

Mawngkuahur in the Times of E-Love  149 ability to retain and maintain long erections is considered the trademark of the desirable top/penetrator. The older tops were projected as experienced partners with the right positionality. The quintessential salt and pepper sugar daddies.’15 The fresh meat image of young male persons explores the disjunctures between the culture of youth/being young and sexy, commodification of the male body, the queer gaze and desirability in Indian cities, and also, the Zo patriarchal attitudes. The tension between them tells us about gender roles and subjectivity in contemporary Mizo/Zo society. The Mawngnau, the lowest category of the Mawngkuahur, churns the standard of masculinities sparked by the images of the interplay between manhood and the assigned Zo male attribute of tlawmngaihna (Chakraborty 2021). For instance, Vanlalpeka mentioned that the very effeminate gays or twinks would be cornered and bullied in schools by the quintessential masculine Zo boys with tilpawr aw (coarse, broken voice). These bullies would also be socially recognized active members and being tlawmngaih by organizations such as the YMA or the KTP.16 These bullies would pass lewd comments on sissyboys and say that if oiled well and ass-fucked passionately, in groups, the sissyboys could be impregnated.17 The mawngnau was also stereotyped as the hungry butthole or the mawngkham lo (lit., untired ass/butt, or an ass that is not worn out, never satisfied with one dick). The sissyphobia inherent in the use of terms for degrees of maleness/unmaleness and the fetishization of the body or specific parts of the male body reveals the deep-seated anxiety over what an effeminate and how the younger effeminate are classed as ‘twinks’, ‘fresh meat’, ‘insatiable butthole’. In either case, the effeminate male is reduced to the butt (mawng) and subject to stereotypes of anal intercourse.18 The Nexus of Patriarchy and the Church bodies considered the mawngkuahur to be responsible for the high rates of HIV-Aids cases in Mizoram.19 Being Tuai, Being Mawngkuahur: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

This ethnography of the ambivalent Zo/Mizo conjures ambiguities and everyday interactions that could question and redefine the existing notions of stereotypes of gender and sexualities. Ostensible homogeneities mark the northeast of India amidst variegated heterogeneities (Chakraborty in Sharma, 2021). ‘Moving out’ from the region into more secured spaces becomes the lived realities of the region. The push, as mentioned earlier and pull factors have existed in the region for the last few decades. However, the trend of outmigration to megacities, mainly in search of job opportunities, did not occur rapidly until globalization emerged. ‘Pink Migration’20 within India to the metropolitan centres provides interesting insights into the trend of ‘leaving ‘Home’-searching for a newer ‘Home’. These alien cities become a gateway to survival, anonymity and a collective narrative of discrimination.21 The queer Zo/Mizo negotiates its space through livelihood opportunities—a Pink economy/Pink market22 for any acquired skills and a chance to freely express choices and desire under the garb of anonymity. Considering the three crucial underlying issues in the

150  Anup Shekhar Chakraborty Pink economy/Pink market: (1) Gender perspectives on the urban labour market; (2) the role of cities in ensuring social inclusivity; and (3) public policy challenges and their gender ramifications. This section focuses on the urban labour market from a gender perspective. Given the rapid urbanization process across Asia, the urban dystopia visibly affects the gender roles, often conjuring newer forms of risks due to migration for employment opportunities. In the context of inclusive growth, the ‘segmented labour markets’ (regulated and unregulated) in Asia are rooted in the need for decent work and productive employment. The sexually ambivalent Zo/Mizo workforce from the Northeastern borderlands has to negotiate numerous structural and socio-cultural hurdles in these urban spaces.23 Simon, for instance, mentioned that his step father sexually exploited him during his childhood in Mizoram, and later when he moved to Manipur to live at his maternal uncle’s home. He was sexually abused both at home (by his maternal uncle/guardian) and in school (by his class teacher). Simon says, “I started enjoying being sexually used, I felt desirable, sexy. Boys and men found me sexy and sought my company.”24 Most of these men lived in larger families as khual/awmpui (lit., guests, household help) and engaged in unpaid household services. They were the subordinate males under a patriarch and lacked property rights. Being freeters and unsalaried/under paid, their positionality was that of subversion. In their aspiration to move out of their traditional family ties, they had to rely on sponsorships or loans for their travels without collateral from banks. This often resulted in being snared in the debt trap of high-interest rates from local moneylenders. In this instance, rural indebtedness existed prior to the departure of those ‘forced to flee due to their sexual orientation’ in search of a more accepting space symbolically referred to as a pink sky. Some respondents also mentioned being sexually exploited by male relatives or men who hosted them in the urban spaces or at different turns of their migration network.25 Lower levels of education, lack of work experience and linguistic unfamiliarity limit their opportunities in Indian cities.26 The centralized nature of most institutions compels them to fall back on support networks in urban settings, so they are forced to rely on intermediaries to fulfil the requirements and for information for a cost reduction.27 Many of the Zo men could not move beyond the urban centres for work due to the limitations of language. These ethnographic accounts highlight the issues of increased ‘invisibility’ of migrants (Wilson, 2011) and the lack of data on them and the myriad forms of same-sex exploitations underneath. The sexually ambivalent have been subject to the guilt of being sinners and living in sin. Same-sex love and same-sex desires has been tabooed, and speaking about homosexual desires a sacrilege. Not being accepted, being classed as a misfit, ‘Leaving ‘Home’ in search of a newer ‘Home’ becomes the indelible feature of the sexually ambivalent.

Mawngkuahur in the Times of E-Love  151 Our Sky: Dreams, Hopes and Exasperations

The quest for ‘Our Sky’ among the sexually ambivalent enforces itself in the urban ecology dynamics to navigate liveability and sustainable urban spaces (Park and Burgess, [1912] 2012; Wirth, 1938). The urban spaces provide solidarity of a visible queer movement and avenues for community building and networking. The most prominent solidarity display are the ‘Pride Parades’ that have taken centre-stage across urban spaces in India. In short, the sexually ambivalent are constantly seeking spaces that provide acceptance/inclusivity and an escape from one’s kin and region. Recent studies on cities have started to look at the city through the lens of processes and experiences within spaces and times, thereby making a case for locating individual experiences within a larger social context (Robinson, 2006; Srivastava, 2015). The growing preoccupation with understanding urban as a dynamic, processual social space (de Kooning, 2007) unravelled new forms of social interaction, hierarchies and segregation, creating its spatial regimes (de Neve and Donner, 2006). One such interconnection was brought forth through the linkages between space and gender—‘city spaces as gendered spaces’, limiting access to many sites creating new forms of gender inequality (Chakraborty in Upadhyaya Joshi, & Brassard (Eds.) 2020). The promises of the neo-liberal economic policies for a better future through newly available employment opportunities, financial independence, autonomy/freedom and anonymity (including concealment of their sexual orientation) accelerated the migrations to cities from peripheral spaces. They heightened the emotional exasperations of the ambivalent persons.28

The Webbed Zo Queer

Resorting to virtual ethnography (social media- Facebook, Tik-Tok, Grindr, Blued, Oh Mojo, and other gay online dating platforms) and interactions with the sexually ambivalent and the ambiguous sexualities, this segment of the chapter evaluates how the vernacular is used to establish patriarchal norms that govern families, societies and polities in the geopolitical space. It identifies how elements of misogyny, effemimania, hyper-masculinity and other discriminatory hierarchical cultures are addressed, contested and the efforts geared at inventing alternatives and resisting these norms. The rise of a Pink economy/Pink market and the world wide web (WWW) has enabled the queer to acquire skills and a chance to express choices and seek/display E-Love29 without inhibitions. One intriguing pattern that was noted by participants in their discussions of same-sex attractions on digital platforms utilizing various technological mediums is that of “electronic love”/ “E-Love”. The phrase “electronic love” denotes the intricate interplay between humanity and technological advancements. The concept at hand pertains to the notion that individuals possess the capacity to establish profound affective connections with persons in distant places through the

152  Anup Shekhar Chakraborty medium of technological devices, including but not limited to computers, robots, or virtual assistants. The manifestation of this particular form of affection can take on a multitude of expressions, ranging from the mere pleasure derived from ‘virtual cruising’ utilizing technological devices to the intricate connections individuals establish with chatbots and even automatons designed for sexual gratification. There exists a dichotomy of opinion regarding the concept of electronic love, with some positing it as a novel frontier in human relationships, while others express concern over its potential to engender social isolation and a dearth of empathy. Irrespective of individual perspectives, it is evident that the subject of digital romance holds a growing significance in contemporary society. Lonesomeness and the desire to have intimacy with like-minded persons compels the sexually ambivalent to invest in E-Love, and become entrenched in the webbed world of online dating services, pornography and the limitless possibilities that the virtual world promises. The engagement in E-Love also compels the sexually ambivalent to invest and divert their earnings even in conditions of precarity on high-end gadgets including latest smartphones, and larger data-packages for high speed flow of visuals and images. E-Love without high-speed internet connectivity and sophisticated smartphones/gadgets is meaningless and unachievable. The world of the queer in the context of E-Love is regulated and channelled by digital power and the growing pink economy. For instance, Harvey mentioned that investment in E-Love requires that we have a good smartphone with the best internet service. Without these, online cruising and seeking love, and pleasure becomes impossible to achieve. Low data means buffering, and bad connectivity during video chats or exchanges of videos, messages, memes etc. E-Love is all about superfast connectivity, swiping left or right, or scrolling up or down. The first thing that follows a Hi, or a Hot/ fire emoji is the sharing of pictures/photos of genitals, and questions about size, and ‘age, sex, location’ (ASL). The life of a gay top is extremely demanding due to the images that we see in pornography. Tops are expected to be ready to fuck and fuck for long hours, be polyamorous. Being top ain’t easy.30 Respondents disclosed that they struggled with body image issues when it came to living up to the standards and measures of desirability. The portrayal of male desirability within virtual realms of social media is a fascinating phenomenon. In contemporary society, the assessment of male attractiveness frequently hinges upon their digital footprint and social media prominence. The digital platforms of interpersonal interaction have emerged as a site/ space for exhibiting one’s allure and appeal. Notwithstanding, the depiction of male allure may prove to be deceptive and may not accurately represent an individual’s authentic disposition. My respondents mentioned that they created a ‘Pubvate’ space (Chakraborty in Upadhyaya Joshi, & Brassard (Eds.) 2020) when meeting their online ‘friends/dates’ in offline spaces. Urban spaces like Delhi or Bangalore Mumbai provide avenues for virtual community building and bonding to navigate anonymity and lonesomeness through digital networks.

Mawngkuahur in the Times of E-Love  153 The metropolitan circles elevate and enhance the desire to reach like-minded people and same-sex desires.31 The digitally enhanced virtual space limits the purpose of regulating and controlling sexualities. The effect of gating and community policing becomes intensely ineffective, though not impossible.32 Although these digital gay dating applications (Grindr, Blued etc.) have fundamentally transformed the manner in which LGBTQ+ individuals establish connections and seek romantic relationships, they concurrently present a noteworthy hazard to the safety of their users. The utilization of GPS technology and location-based matching has the potential to facilitate the targeting of susceptible individuals by predators. Furthermore, law enforcement agencies have been reported to employ these applications as a means of ensnaring homosexual males in regions where same-sex relationships are deemed unlawful. Few MIMs mentioned that they had negotiated the restricting ‘Queer spaces’ by cruising online and opted for the virtual spaces to seek out like-minded ‘friends’. However, they also showed concerns that “the urban overdrive and the restricting ‘Queer spaces’ have compelled the ambivalent sexualities to seek physical intimacies rather than emotional bonding” (Chakraborty in Upadhyaya Joshi, & Brassard (Eds.) 2020). “Such practices have evolved precisely because of the restrictive social settings of the city and the governments’ overdrive which snips any chance for a genuine ‘Queer bonding’ and the evolution of a ‘Queer emotional space’” (Chakraborty in Upadhyaya Joshi, & Brassard (Eds.) 2020). The digitally enhanced virtual world and the fast-­evolving gay dating apps were also the sites/spaces that made the sexually ambivalent and the ambiguous vulnerable to being trapped, duped and risking their lives. These gadget-based digital spaces were addictive and charged the adrenal instincts of the persona involved. These gay dating apps and these websites were intensely addictive and exposing; they were the mythical Indrajaal-Lord Indra’s net- a webbed magical realm; illusion (Indra is the king of the devas [gods] and swarga [heaven] shared in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism) (Chakraborty in Upadhyaya Joshi, & Brassard (Eds.) 2020). For the ambivalent sexualities cruising areas in the urban spaces and the dating apps become the possible spaces to pick/choose/swipe dates, friends or partners. These are also spaces (physical and virtual) where they can be themselves without worrying about anything else, but at the same time these are also the ‘problem areas’ where the ambivalent sexualities are most open to vulnerabilities (physical, emotional or health-wise) and being caught by the Police/law enforcement agencies (Chakraborty in Upadhyaya Joshi, & Brassard (Eds.) 2020). The virtualization of the ‘Queer Public Sphere’ is strongly marked by the predominance of bilingualism and gadget exclusion. Those not in tune with the wave of the gadgets remain tucked in the peripheries of the ‘digital divide’. My study indicates that this section of the ambivalent sexualities and the ambiguous sexualities create the ‘queer spaces’ in real-time and space. The ‘queer space’ provides the necessary visibility and vocality space for the

154  Anup Shekhar Chakraborty ambivalent and ambiguous sexualities to cushion the emotional bonding that has been stretched and exasperated by heteronormativity. Reclaiming the right to a ‘queer space’ in real time and space is urgent for a more democratic, queer-friendly society where people from various walks of life can come into a conversation with each other. These virtual spaces and gadgets enable the ethnically disparate, sexually ambivalent persons to negotiate the slippery and knotty realms of the politics of sexualities, regimentation and control operating in the Northeast Indian states. Some Closing Comments

The study has weaved the ethno-narratives derived from in-depth interviews of the sexually ambivalent and sexually ambiguous native Zo/Mizo men in/ from India’s northeast. The limited possibilities of growth, the skewed infrastructural initiatives, and homophobia in the region naturally propel the flow of Pink Migration from the region to other destinations providing more significant opportunities in terms of jobs, the realization of aspirations and political stability. The study shows the marked interconnections between space and gender in Pink migrations and how newer gender inequalities evolve amidst watermarked traditional forms. Furthermore, highlight the emotional exasperations that arise from the promises of all-inclusive neo-liberal economic policies through newer employment opportunities, financial possibilities, autonomy/freedom and anonymity or concealment of sexual orientations and preferences. The queer Zo negotiates its space through livelihood opportunities—a Pink economy/Pink market for any acquired skills and a chance to freely express choices and desires under the garb of anonymity. The urban spaces provide solidarity of a visible queer movement and avenues for community building and networking. In short, the sexually ambivalent are constantly seeking spaces that provide acceptance/inclusivity and an escape from the hurt/trauma of one’s kin and region. Notes 1 Zorampara (21 years, M, Versatile.; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 12 March 2010. 2 Lalsangzuala (25 years, M, Versatile; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 17 March 2010. 3 Zova (41 years, M, Bot.; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 24 February 2014. 4 David.(33 years, M, Gay—Top; Home Town: Lunglei, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 10 November 2011. 5 By ‘gender turn (GT)’ I mean the vocality and visibility demanded by the ambivalent sexualities across an array of urban spaces and the Public Spheres (both real and virtual) in India, from the university campuses to public transport, sites of bonding and leisure, parks, museums, art galleries, art itself, fashion, memes, cinema, the creative realms and also institutional spaces which until 2014 were neatly hemmed and barricaded for those suffering from ‘gender discriminations’.

Mawngkuahur in the Times of E-Love  155 6 Peter. (27 years, M, Gay—Top; Home Town: Saiha, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 5 November 2012. 7 Ronny. (29 years, M, Gay—Top; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Telephone Interview. 22 October 2017. 8 Thara. (20 years, M, Gay—Bi-Versa.; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 19 December 2015. 9 Robin. (25 years, M, Gay—Top; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 5 March 2010. 10 Kamlova. (47 years, M, Gay—Top; Home Town: Kolasib, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 9 February 2011. 11 Hruiah. (15 years, M, Gay—Bot.; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 5 May 2013. 12 Peter. Op. cit. 13 Ziki. (46 years, M, Trans.; Home Town: Delhi/Aizawl, Mizoram) Personal Interview. 13 April 2020. 14 Lalsangzuala. Op. cit. 15 Kamlova. Op. cit. 16 Vanlalpeka (16 years, M, Bi.; Home Town: Serchhip, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 26 September 2021. 17 Hruiah. Op. cit. 18 Mimi. (17 years, M, Gay—Bi, Crossdresser; Home Town: Delhi/Lunglei, Mizoram) Personal Interview. 14 August 2019. 19 Robin. Op.cit. 20 Pink Migration refers to the flight/migration of the ambivalent sexualities from their traditional home settings where prejudice against a sexual minority is high to elsewhere that is marginally safer. The relationship between sexuality and the decision to migrate is a severely understudied aspect of Migration, often assumed to be exclusively driven by income gaps between origin and destination countries. https://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/pink-migration-rising-tide-lgbtmigrants retrieved on 1 May 2021. 21 Robertson (28 years, M, Versa.; Hotel in Kochi; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 23 April 2020. 22 Pink Economy/Pink Money/Pink Market or Rainbow Capitalism refers to the targeted inclusion of the gay community that has acquired sufficient purchasing power to generate a market-focused explicitly on the LGBTQIA. 23 Simon (15 years, M, Top; Home Town: Churachanpur, Manipur). Personal Interview. 12 January 2019. 24 Simon. Ibid. 25 Lalhruaitluanga. (26 years, M, Bi; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram) Telephone Interview. 1 March 2022. 26 Zoremkima (32 years, M, Top; Home Town: Shillong, Meghalaya). Telephone Interview. 27 September 2022. 27 Lalremruata. (22 years, M, Top; Home Town: Aizawl, Mizoram). Telephone Interview. 2 March 2022. 28 Lalhruaitluanga. Op. cit. 29 E-Love or Electronic Love (also Virtual Love) refers to the digitally enhanced love/ romance/infatuation that evolves over the internet between individuals through email exchanges, or sharing of photographs or other digital/electronic mediums like smart mobile phones. 30 Harvey Zoparmawia (21 years, M, Top; Home Town: Delhi/Aizawl, Mizoram). Personal Interview. 25 April 2019. 31 Harvey Zoparmawia. Ibid. 32 Vanlalpeka. Op. cit.

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8 The Many Bodies of the Vernacular Negotiating Queer Identity in the Public and Virtual Domains of Assam Amrita Pritam Gogoi The work I was looking for turned old Scrolled through the entire sky Cleared forests and settled villages For me, left my name address with none … villages settled, fields flourished, histories made I couldn’t find a name anywhere.1 (Berintho 2021:42, Translated by the author)

The above poem titled ‘Me’ originally written in Assamese by Berintho was published in the multilingual (English, Assamese, Hindi) book Queerscape (Deka and NEthing Initiative 2021), which was the outcome of a two-day writing workshop with participants from within the LGBTQIA+ community and their ‘strong allies’. The book, as the editor notes, includes personal accounts of their identities and is composed also of fictional stories of people with different identities and experiences, their struggles, love, heartbreaks, and expectations from the family and society. It is mostly a collection of experiences of pain—of invisibility, non-acceptance, loneliness and depression of people belonging to the community from different parts of Assam and Northeast India (Deka 2021: Foreword). Berintho’s poem, in this context, is an expression of their rage against injustices inflicted on the community, they represent, through a denial of recognition of their material as well as immaterial labour in the narratives of the land, the people and its history—to the formation and constitution of which their thoughts, ideas, skill and labour have played a contributing role. The poem, at the same time, is an articulation of their pain of being rendered unseen, unheard and invisible. However, the very act of registering these layers of injustices by describing their pain, forms of violence and injustices through their writings, signify efforts at formation/creation of resistances against these injustices. Writing, in this context, is a means also towards claiming and reclaiming the right space, dignity and identity of their role in the histories of labour, nations and societies. A form of resistance has been built not through the act of writing poetry alone. Organizing a workshop, bringing together people from within and outside DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-12

The Many Bodies of the Vernacular  159 the community to talk of and share experiences, and the subsequent publication of the book—Queerscape—together make parts of this process of creating a voice for the ones otherwise rendered voiceless. With these acts of resistances as a point of departure, this chapter evaluates the usage of social networking sites (SNS) as a site of resistance by the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies in raising and expressing individual concerns as well as in creating a support system for the community. The chapter identifies efforts at reclaiming their rights and spaces experienced through the use of SNS to communicate their vulnerabilities, violence and desires, simultaneously informing of their pain, grievances, rage and joy to the world at large. In recent times, the role of the internet in affecting the political participation of the masses has been widely discussed (Tolbert and McNeal 2003; Dahlgren 2005; Hendriks 2016; Bosch 2018, for example). The role of social media has particularly been highlighted for its potential for participatory citizenship, for its usage in shaping, making, and contesting meanings (Hendriks 2016), for its ability to create networked public providing citizens with political information (Bosch 2018). Working specifically on Facebook, Nadkarni and Hofman (2011) observe that its usage is largely motivated by people’s need to belong and their need for self-presentation. Members of the LGBTQIA+ community have been using social media sites in diverse ways in raising consciousness and awareness of rights amongst members of the community. A report by MoveMe, which is a collaborative project by students enrolled in “Social Media and Social Movements” at UC Berkeley the role of social media platforms in enabling members of the community to connect, engage in dialogue, and to share their lived experiences, particularly for members from rural and less progressive regions has been highlighted. The use of the Facebook rainbow filter, hashtags like #LoveWins, #PrideConnectsUs, #LoveWins, #LoveisLove, #NoH8, #transban, FTM (Female-to-man) Newsletter, Dotgay (.gay) Initiatives are some of the notable campaigns launched by the community on SNS platforms. Through a virtual ethnography conducted over the Facebook and Instagram pages of four LGBTQIA+ collectives, this chapter identifies issues of violence, rejection and silencing experienced by members of the community in Assam. The chapter also identifies forms of resistances created by these collectives particularly in the context of Assam. The collectives I study are: ‘Drishti: A Queer Collective’ mostly based in Jorhat formed in April 2021, ‘Xobdo Foundation’ formed in 2018, ‘Sage: The Barak Queer Collective’, and ‘Xomonnoy’ formed in November 2018. As stated in its Facebook and Instagram pages ‘Drishti: A Queer Collective’ (‘Drishti’ hereafter) is dedicated to work towards queer rights in Assam focusing on rural areas with an approach of love, compassion and feminist ideology”. ‘Xobdo Foundation’ (‘Xobdo’ hereon), on the other hand, states, “Xobdo, which means both words and sound in the Assamese language, is the first initiative in Tezpur which works towards upholding the dignity of the LGBTQIA+ identifying people through the creation of dialogue and movement.”2 ‘Xobdo’, in fact, is the first registered

160  Amrita Pritam Gogoi LGBTQIA+ organization from Assam.3 ‘SAGE—The Barak Queer Collective’ (Sage hereon), which is an effort by a group of people hailing from Barak Valley in Assam, is aimed at creating a space for queer discourses and queer visibility and solidarity in the valley. ‘SAGE’ is an acronym for Sexuality and Gender Equality. The fourth group under study is ‘Xomonnoy’ which works from Guwahati. Formed on 1 November 2018 by Debika Chakraborty, Prakash Das, Nuzhat Nasreen and Shivalal Gautam, the group is targeted towards reaching out to members from within the community living in different peripheral regions of Assam. The Facebook and Instagram followers for ‘Drishti’ are 1050 and 376, 1556 and 549 for ‘Xobdo’, 523 and 219 for ‘Sage’ and 1424 and 1338 for ‘Xomonnoy’.4 The reasons behind my decision to do a virtual ethnography are manifold. First, in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, much of the activism of these groups like generating awareness and building supporting networks shifted online. Second, in the face of the rejection and humiliation they are subjected to, within the existing socio-political and cultural structures, SNS has been regarded by many queer people as a space through which they have been expressing and communicating their experiences, emotions, and desires. SNS has provided a platform to place their grievances, fears, insecurities along with the joy of becoming anew and alive—facilitating the process of knowing and interacting with people with similar thoughts, experiences and ideas. For example in a conversation organized by Drishti—titled Kobita, Kotha Aru Eti Queer Xondhya (Poetry, Speech and a Queer Evening) between Jimi, Rituparna and Mayuri Deka—that went live on both Facebook and Instagram, on 8 June 2021, Mayuri who is an engineer by profession, a poet and a queer activist shared, “Once I began to write poetry openly in Facebook expressing my queer identity, I started to have more and more friends from the community and that was a joyous experience for me.” In that conversation organized by ‘Drishti’ both Rituparna and Mayuri highlighted the strategic, ideological and political significance of writing— particularly writing in the vernacular medium if the transformations they were working for was to gain momentum. Rituparna, in particular, has been seen stressing the point that, this isn’t guided by any nationalistic idea or emotion but by the logic that much has already been written in English and if one has to reach the masses, which was important to bring substantive changes in the society, then writing in the vernacular becomes in choiceless choice.5 Third, these SNSs have also become an archive of events organized by these collectives in the offline mode. Posters, photographs and videos of events organized in offline mode posted on SNSs and public reaction to such events through comments and reactions offer accounts of the nature of their engagements outside these SNSs. Moreover, it facilitates the process of knowing their experiences, views, ideas and acts of resistance without invading their spaces—emotional as well as physical. These apart, to develop

The Many Bodies of the Vernacular  161 a deeper insight into various forms of vulnerabilities and resistances I resort to interviews conducted by different organizations and media houses where members of these collectives spoke on issues, processes and challenges they encounter in their lived everydayness. Recent publications like Queerscape (Deka and NEthing Initiative 2021), Aandhar Kuthalir Duwar Bhangi [Breaking Doors to Dark Rooms] (Deka 2021)—an anthology of poems by Mayuri Deka—have also been relied upon. This chapter, in unfolding the manner in which the vernacular is used to problematize established patriarchal norms that govern families, societies and politics in Assam, is divided into two sections. Each of these sections identifies how elements of misogyny, effemimania, hypermasculinity and other discriminatory hierarchical cultures are addressed and contested by the groups under consideration. Considering the suppression and misrecognition of their voices, identities and histories as reflected in Berintho’s poetry and the attention given by many of these collectives to share, express and claim right over their freedoms, the first section of the chapter addresses forms of self-assertion and initiatives towards norm breaking and norm remaking that are being made by creating spaces and forums for expressing their nonconforming bodies, identities and experiences through writing, work of art, fashion show, poetry reading sessions and the like. The second section engages with resistances built against vulnerabilities experienced at the hands of family, educational institutions, workplaces, and medical practitioners by building newer families, relationships, and communities. I argue that with the very nature of the norms and ethics based on which these newer bonds and families are made, these relationships become transgressive as they question existing norms. The section drawing on Bergman and Montgomery’s (2017) work Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistances in Toxic Times argues for the powerful forms of resistances built through the forging of a community and support system for people from within the community. Voice, Visibility and Speaking the Unspeakable Whatever pain achieves, it achieves through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language. (Scarry 1985:4) Pain’s resistance to language, it’s unsharability, incommunicability, Scarry argues, “is not an incidental or accidental attribute but is essential to what sustains it” (Sacrry 1985: 5). This attribute about pain further leads to many political and perceptual complications. It not just renders experiences of pain invisible but hinders processes of healing and creating infrastructures of support and rescue. The incommunicability, indescribability of pain helps sustain power dynamics and exploitative structures. This, in turn, makes material and verbal expressions of pain a political exercise that might significantly unfold, questions, and shatter power equations in a given order. One

162  Amrita Pritam Gogoi experience that queer people universally suffer in a system that fosters and promotes heteronormativity is the pain—of loneliness, invisibility, non-recognition, homophobia, being questioned and bullied at various institutional spaces. While pain on queer community is inflicted in diverse ways it is denied expressibility by social norms and taboos that govern norms of acceptability and recognizability. This makes the expression of pain a traumatic experience as well, leading to further humiliation, rejection, vulnerability, fear and uncertainty of various other forms. Since expression of their experiences in written and oral accounts remain limited, knowledge about the severity of the pain, their desires, range of identities and intersectionalities of these identities too remains unknown. Most often, even the spectrum of knowledge of people who they live in close proximity with sharing the lived everyday, and also of people who are assigned the task of setting new terms of acceptability based on equality and justice viz. lawyers, policymakers, legislators and the like. The ability to express themselves, under this given set of patriarchal conditions, therefore signifies questioning and challenging patriarchal norms, values and practices that suppress their voice and benefit from it. Considering thus, the political significance of expressing, informing, and sharing pain inflicted by heteronormative structures this section engages with conditions these groups are creating for the expressibility of their bodies, identities, emotions and experiences. In doing so I shall first highlight how lack of knowledge or distorted, partial, patriarchal knowledge within the existing institutional, academic, and literary traditions make their journeys even more confusing, solitary and painful. In an episode of DARBAR by NKTV on 29 June four queer rights activists from Assam (Milin Dutta,6 Shivlal Gautam from Xomnnoy, Rituparna from ‘Drishti’ and Mayuri Deka) were invited to be in conversation with Pranay Bordoloi where almost each one of them spoke of the unavailability of a safe space in/through which people belonging to the community could understand and identify themselves within the existing socio-political order. They elaborated on the anxieties and insecurities they suffered in an order where neither social life nor textbooks, cinema, poetry, or novels represented them—their desires, fantasies, dreams, emotions, feelings and experiences. The severity of the trauma, fear and precarity that the widely prevalent practices of misrepresentation inflicted was focussed upon. Shivlal, co-founder of ‘Xomonnoy’, for example, pointed out the negativity that certain ways of knowing and misrepresentation could bring about. He shared how upon first knowing of the word gay Shivlal looked for its meaning in a dictionary, and the manner in which a gay person was described in it left a very negative impression in him. It left in him a feeling of “shame” making his journey of knowing oneself much more painful, confused and guilt-ridden. Mayuri, in the same conversation, reflecting on the role of literature noted how the literature she had read left her confused about herself as all the characters presented were heterosexuals—she couldn’t find a representation of her desires, identity and emotions. This was until she read Mamoni Roisam Goswami’s

The Many Bodies of the Vernacular  163 1989 novel Udaybhanur Choritro [Udaybhanu’s Character] when in class 9 where she first found reference to the word homokamita (homosexual) along with a homokami (homosexual) character in it. Mayuri too, like Shivlal, resorted to a dictionary when she came across words like transgender, lesbian and the like. These experiences, which remain ingrained in their memory or their memories of becoming, in their quest for the self inform of the role that knowledge production and generation could play in either empowering or in pushing them towards further vulnerabilities. Their narratives depict the violence that certain forms of knowledge could inflict if produced out of a patriarchal, homophobic outlook, and also the joys it could bring if disseminated through an egalitarian approach. Creating knowledge, participating and facilitating the process of producing knowledge about their lives is therefore seen as a political act—of giving and creating voice, visibility and representation. Within the existing heteronormative patriarchal structure, however, for people from within the queer community too knowing themselves, expressing themselves, and participating in the process of creating knowledge about their experiences, vulnerabilities, desires to make their lives more understandable and setting the stage for communication with others undergoing the process hasn’t been easy. For instance, Shivlal, during the conversation, recollected how he left home “in a shirt and pant” to attend the first Queer pride parade held in Guwahati but couldn’t make it to it. As he reached halfway he was so petrified that he got down from the bus, crossed the road and returned home. Mayuri too in her conversation with Jimi and Rituparna shared how writing has always been a part of her and she had resorted to writing as a way of taking “care of the self”. But she had to write secretly, “chupchup”, in a hush, without showing, sharing and reading them to others.7 This, however, was only until a certain point in her life. As mentioned earlier, writing on Facebook enabled her to forge more communications with people with similar thoughts, people who supported and understood, and with people who suffered similarly. The response from her readers and the communications it allowed strengthened and energized her to continue writing. Since then she has been writing on Facebook regularly. To put it differently, she has been using Facebook as a forum for self-expression and in navigating her social-political self. A review of the Facebook and Instagram pages of the collectives under study reveals that they are invested in creating opportunities and spaces for people of the community to articulate their experiences and express them. ‘Drishti’, which was only months old as an organization, organized a virtual workshop titled “How to Tell a Rainbow Story?” on 15 June 2021. Reflecting on the support system it aimed at creating for greater visibility and acceptance of the lives of queer people, it invited applicants saying, “If you have a story, experience to share and you are trying to find a way; we can find it together in a writing journey.” The collectives’ inclusivity of diverse identities and cultures within the Assamese vernacular is depicted also in the name of its forthcoming e-magazine, which will be published

164  Amrita Pritam Gogoi in Assamese. Lri: bang, as the forthcoming e-magazine has been named, means rainbow in Mising language.8 ‘Drishti’ also runs a book club the Queer Pristhar Gungunani (Murmurs of the Queer Pages) where members of the collective read and discuss books. Also, to celebrate pride month (June) it had called for submissions for works of art and stories some of which were published on their Facebook and Instagram pages. Similarly, ‘Xomonnoy’ on the occasion of International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOTB) organized a visual LGBTQIA+ art exhibition at the Gauhati Artist Guild, Chandmari from 16 to 18 May 2019. In the pride month of 2021 it organized an art competition called Can Queer 2.0 and a story writing competition called Queer Kalam. Similarly ‘Sage: The Barak Queer Collective’ and ‘Xobdo’ in collaboration with ‘The Chinky Homo Project’, ‘Manipur LGBTQ+’, ‘Empowering Trans Ability—ETA’, Imphal, ‘Manipur Forum of Partners of Transmen and Transmasculine Person’, Manipur, ‘All Trans Man Association—ATMA’, Manipur initiated a campaign called the Yes We Exist in the pride month of June 2021 where experiences of violence, the pain of invisibility, misrecognition, of being forced into the heteronormative structures were shared and published in a blog as well as in the SNS sites. These initiatives clearly are resistances against generations of discrimination and inequality of opportunity queer people in the region have been subjected to. They highlight the use made of social media to not only present and express their queer identities but also in reaching out to a larger public, generating awareness about the LGBTQIA+ community in a move towards ensuring a safe, democratic space for dialogue and deliberations. In the discussion at NK TV Rituparna who identifies as a non-binary person pointed out the inadequacies of the Assamese vernacular in representing and describing them. One has to resort to English language in explaining oneself either as non-binary, lesbian, gay, queer and the like. Therefore, they urged the assistance and support of different groups of people in Assam in helping them come out with a booklet wherein meanings of certain words are explained well enough ensuring not to leave people “ashamed” (like Shivlal had to) and also to come out with words in the vernacular medium to represent and describe non-heterosexual people’s unique, multiple identities as they live and experience them locally. Such an initiative, according to them, would contribute to enhancing knowledge about queer experiences within the region and will enable them to reach out to the masses of the people forging better connectivity and communication of ideas and experiences. In the discussion at NK TV, Mayuri, while narrating her journey of becoming, undoing and redoing oneself noted, “After 2016 I experienced a drastic change as I started to engage with people of the community. It gave me a different kind of courage and I continued to write and express myself more and more.” Her words underscore the joy and freedom one experiences in friendship, in a collective, where one feels more alive and capable of newer things. The next section unfolds the significance of having and building

The Many Bodies of the Vernacular  165 thriving bonds, as expressed in some of their writings, that help navigate through violent spaces and experiences. It highlights efforts made by the collectives under study in building and providing the security and warmth of families, friendships, and comradeship. Building Communities of Resistance Until yesterday, there was happiness and wasn’t too There would often be a home of resentment and loneliness But yesterday, some stranger, Showed me the path to a world More beautiful than a dream Don’t know why? But this new home no longer feels new Perhaps a part of me was always in search of this home The poem titled ‘Ghar’ (Home) originally written in Hindi by Ved and published in Queerscape (Ved 2021: 43), in the first place, informs of the incompleteness and loneliness that characterized the lives of the LGBTQIA+ people even when they lived in the companionship of near and dear ones. This loneliness within the sphere of one’s dwelling, i.e. the home in most cases, which could simultaneously be loving, caring and supportive, finds expression in conversations and writings. More importantly, the poem speaks of the comfort and joy of belongingness in the companionship of people with shared experiences of suffering and pain, resisting similar forms of rejection, humiliation, violence and violations, and also with people fighting for similar rights and forms of justice. It instils courage, as Mayuri puts it. Courage, Featherstone (1992) notes, is a feature, a characteristic of the realm of the heroic essential for one’s quest for the self, the quest for self-realization. It is a breakaway from the everyday marked by routine life, mundaneness and boredom. In undoing and overcoming the everyday forms of loneliness, silent acceptance of humiliation, rejection and bullying, people belonging to the queer community are bound to engage in a relentless struggle against patriarchal structures promoting/supporting heteronormativity criminalizing every other form of intimacy. Indeed, without courage undertaking this continuous struggle could be tiring, often leading to serious consequences like suicide, living closeted lives and the like. This makes efforts made by Mayuri, Rituparna, Shivlal and their friends, comrades and allies to forge a support system for their peers heroic, as they instil the courage to combat saddening affects and threats against the community coming from diverse ends. According to Montgomery and Bergman, saddening affects (for example loneliness, incompleteness as evinced in Ved’s poem) reduce our power to act (2017: 24). If sadness reduces our capability to respond to a situation, then saddening affects could have severe implications on sexually marginalized communities. It helps retain a status quo where power equations remain

166  Amrita Pritam Gogoi undisturbed. Saddening affects are, therefore, deliberately regulated by systems that control and administer our lives. As in Ved’s poem, conversations, writings, and reflections of queer people are often informative of saddening affects imposed on them. In a weekly conversation held by ‘Drishti’with Shivlal from ‘Xomonnoy’, a question from the audience was, “What if a queerphobic doctor prescribes us medicine that would harm us”. A medical practitioner should be a person who heals, cures and is to be trusted by the patient with personal information about one’s body, emotions, and experiences. The question, therefore, informs how institutions that were supposed to be a part of the healing process become or area part of the structure that subjects people from the LGBTQIA+ community to further vulnerability, insecurity and threat. These relationships of power, fear and distrust pervades their everydayness reducing the ability to heal, to work, to be productive, and to be expressive. In an institution of higher education, with high repute and ranking within the state, an institution where science is practised, discussed, and where scientific rational thinking should be the way of life, Mayuri was denied the right to live in a girls’ hostel during her years as an engineering student. It was rumoured if she touched her friends they would all turn lesbian. It did cost her a lot—financially, mentally, and emotionally, affecting her academic performance.9 Educational institutions which are to be trusted with one’s growth could thus become an active site where rights are curbed and violated. Shivlal’s experience of trying to talk about his homosexual identity to two of his closest childhood friends too wasn’t an enabling experience as a result of which he kept himself closeted for a long time. Out of his quest to find oneself, he kept looking for people and spaces. He connected with people over Facebook and volunteered in a Queer film festival held in Guwahati but refrained from identifying himself as someone from within the spectrum.10 Each instance of distrust, violence, and alienation that the narratives above reflect, informs how institutions, relationships, and spaces where one should feel the safest are turned into spaces of violence and violation. According to Montgomery and Bergman (2017), this system that controls and administers our lives which they call ‘Empire’ constantly attenuates and poisons relationships sapping them of their intensity and transformative potential. However, vulnerabilities created through relationships of distrust can be overthrown and broken, “by new and resurgent forms of intimacy through which people come to depend on each other, defend each other, and become dangerous together” (2017: 37). Ved’s joy in their new home, or a stranger showing the path to the new one expressed through the poetry and Mayuri’s new-found courage to express oneself better and engage with family and friends on diverse issues relating to the LGBTQIA+ community after their increased interaction and engagement with people and work within the community is reflective of the potential of such solidarities to combat saddening practices, and institutions and build in the capacity to participate more fully in life. These friendships, new-found homes where they are aware that

The Many Bodies of the Vernacular  167 they have each other's back, therefore hold great political significance in resisting corrosive practices, undoing ingrained habits, and becoming capable of newer things. It is for these reasons that these relationships are accorded great value, and much thought, energy, and resources are invested in building, strengthening, performing, informing, and portraying the existence and availability of these relations for people seeking assistance both through online and offline programmes. Since these families forged through friendships with members of the communitystrengthens them and are a source of joy, hence they are also flaunted with an intention to accrue more power to their beingness and identities. All of these are vividly expressed in ‘Drishti’s’ friendship day wish posted on Instagram and Facebook that said, “Bondhttwa, xahsarjyar naamot xokoluke raamdhenurongi morom” (In the name of friendship, companionship rainbow coloured love to everyone). The photograph that accompanied the post was a collage of photographs of the meetings both virtual and physical with a logo of the collective and a caption that read: Who knows better than us about friendship? We find our family with friends, we choose a family outside of our family. Friendship gives us a chosen family. We cherish our friendship. It gives us comfort, safety, oneness. We feel loved cared among us. Rainbow love to all everyone. Happy friendship day! In his Rhetoric of the Image (1977) Barthes notes, when a text is included in a photograph it is intended to constitute the principal message that the photograph is expected to convey. A text, in a photograph, imposes a meaning to the photograph directing seeing. It works in a way that it causes the reader to avoid some signifieds and receive others. The text remote controls the observer towards a meaning chosen in advance (Barthes 1977: 37–41). The text in this particular photograph is a guide to seeing, or a way of telling how the people, their meetings, and the collective are to be seen, understood, and analysed. As per the text, they want themselves, as a collective, to be known as ones who have found, created and lived the transformative potential of friendship—the freedom it enables, the courage and comfort in the companionships. Moreover, it speaks of their ability to overcome the loneliness imposed on them by regressive cultures and practices. Depicting the subversive capacities of these friendships in the interview at NK TV when the participants were asked about their romantic life and future plans Shivlal shared his vision of a life where he would live with his friends, the three other co-founders of ‘Xomonnoy’ and dedicate his life to work for the people of the community. The four friends have been living and working together and if the other three agree, he wishes to continue with it. The question by the anchor undoubtedly comes from the belief in placing sexual ties and bonds, particularly marriage, above every other form of companionship and relationship. A review of their published and unpublished work11

168  Amrita Pritam Gogoi substantiates in undeniable terms that this belief has been the source of many forms of violences like forced marriages and coercive corrections of bodies. In order to build and strengthen these friendships, to create space and conditions for their freedoms Dristi and ‘Xomonnoy’ organize weekly virtual meet-up sessions. In fact, one of ‘Drishti’s’ weekly meets titled Bondhutta, Xaxamarmitar Kothare (Through the Words of Friendship and Companionship) was dedicated to telling, discussing and listening to their experiences of friendship, and compassion. According to them, “an effort at getting closer to one another”. In trying to achieve this end of getting closer to becoming more capable, more powerful and more alive, ‘Xomonnoy’ has been organizing meetings in different regions within Assam. To include the people of the community living in areas outside Guwahati, where the movement is already eight years old with its first pride held in 2014, they have been organizing meetings in different parts of Assam—at Bongaigaon on 8 March 2020 for LGBTQIA+ community of Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Barpeta, Goalpara, at Lumding on 13 March 2020 for people from Nagaon, Morigaon, Golaghat, Karbi Anglong and Sonitpur, and in Nagaon on 30 December 2021. Apart from these, the collectives are reaching out to educational institutions and bureaucratic offices in their drive to make these spaces and institutions more sensitive, respectful and egalitarian. They have also been providing mental health support to people of the queer community, particularly during the lockdown period by organizing talks on the theme. For instance, Dristi on 3 June 2021 organized a talk with Dr Sujata Barkakoty on ‘Mental Health during Pandemic and the Queer Community’. Similar initiatives were also taken by Xommonoy, which also came up with a Whats App support group for LGBTQIA+ persons and their friends and family. ‘Xobdo’ on the other hand organized a series of talks from 19 to 30 August 2020 on issues ranging from gender, sex, sexuality, feminism, LGBTQIA+, sexual health, mental health, understanding the Hijra community, issues of queer lives and the like. The Story Forward: The Box Under My Bed There is a box under my bed Actually, it’s been imposed on me. Many a stories, many a things I kept inserting in the box. The box kept filling in. I began to develop a bond with it Something of a wanted unwanted kind The box was imposed on me. And the emptiness inside it? The things that filled it? They too were given. That the box was not mine

The Many Bodies of the Vernacular  169 Why should I continue carrying an unwanted asset! One day I opened the box I peeped in, Amongst the things inside it Was it me or something else Nothing was mine Since that day I have kept it open Something that is not mine Why should I keep it locked? At times when I peep in A thing or two seems missing Another day, another thing, The box is getting emptier everyday The more empty, the more relaxed Peeping into the box these days It feels really good. As it is getting emptier. Sometimes in a drowse, I see the box missing from under the bed. But it’s there, The one imposed on me. Perhaps one day it will get empty. And me? I shall be free that day. (Rituparna 2021:38) Veena Das (1995) in her seminal work Critical Events questions Scarry’s argument that pain is characterized by incommunicability. Das (1995), on the other hand, hints atthe capability of pain to be able to create a moral community out of the sufferers. An analysis of the contemporary work of queer activism in the vernacular in Assam reveals that a generation of youth, who has suffered the pain and violence of rejection, humiliation, misrecognition have come forward with greater willingness and dedication to contribute to the cause of the queer community. They have used diverse avenues and approaches available in trying to build a community of resistance and support. Much faith in communication and dialogue through writing, reading, work of art, discussion and the like remains visibly evident from the archive they have created through the SNS sites. In doing so they encounter different challenges. However, rigidities within the movement appears to be the most crucial. For example, some are questioned and considered as not queer enough and therefore not an equal sufferer and stakeholder in the movement. Revealing the new forms of isolation and hierarchies such rigidities might create, Indranee Kalita, the co-founder of ‘Xobdo’, in “A Conversation with Pain” (Kalita 2021: 1–2) published in Queerscape, brings forth the sidelining

170  Amrita Pritam Gogoi and isolation that a bisexual person can experience, and be called, “not queer enough to be a part of the community”, being made fun of for dating both male and female partners, and doubted about their commitment and willingness to be a part of the queer struggle. Montgomery and Bergman (2017) call this tendency “rigid radicalism” which stifles productive tension, tending groups towards mistrust and a rigid way of interrelating. These tendencies, according to them, destroy the capacity to be responsive, creative and experimental. Despite the challenges from within and outside the movement, one cannot deny the joy of undoing, becoming, unbecoming and redoing. In their ability to identify and overcome violations and impositions—even with one small step taken forward at a time—is distinctly evident in Rituparna’s poem. Notes 1 All translations for the chapter has been done by the author herself. 2 www.facebook.com/xobdofoundation last accessed on 12 March, 2022. 3 It receivedits registration on 30 September, 2021. See: https://helloguwahati.in/ assam-gets-the-first-registered-lgbtqia-organisation-xobdo/?fbclid=IwAR0DnX 1uvvVFVDShvtdQ4MoFJKREeRUO5D8DAepZzWmkbBWMI6lwuiD9blU last assessed on 21 December 2021. 4 These are data from their pages as per 29 December 2021. 5 As a part of the ethnography the author attended one of the workshops organized by ‘Drishti’ basics of gender and sexuality on 18 and 19 June 2021. The workshop was conducted in Assamese language and the same explanation for the choice of the language was discussed and communicated to the participants. 6 Milin Dutta is one of the foremost queer activistsfrom Assam. He is also the producer of the first Assamese movie on the LGBTQIA+ community called the Fireflies—Jonaki Poruwa. 7 In the conversation at ‘Drishti’ with Jimi and Rituparna. 8 Within constitutional provisions Mising is yet to be given constitutional status of a language. It is spoken by people belonging to the Mising community residing mostly in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. 9 In the conversation at NK TV. 10 As mentioned in the conversation at NK TV. 11 For example see Mayuri’s poems Prathambar Xee Teuk Log Paisil (p. 37), Bhalpowaat Enekuwai Hoi (pp 53) in the collection of her poems Aandhar Kuthalir Duwar Bhangi in Deka 2021 and in the statement of the Yes We Exist Campaign (2021).

References Barthes, R., and Heath, S. 1977. Image, Music, Text. Fontana Press. London. Bergman, C., and Montgomery, N. 2017. Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times. Edinburgh, United Kingdom: AK Press. Berintho. 2021. ‘Moi’, in Deka and Nething eds. Queerscape. p. 42, Guwahati: NEthing. Bosch, Tanja. 2018. Digital Media and Political. Citizenship: Facebook and Politics in South Africa. 10.1007/978-3-319-62057-2_9. Dahlgren, P. 2005. The internet, public spheres, and political communication: Dispersion and deliberation. Political Communication, 22, 147–162.

The Many Bodies of the Vernacular  171 Das, V. 1995. Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 2018. Deka, M. 2021. Andhar Kothalir Duwar Bhangi, Guwahati: Purbayan Publication. Featherstone, Mike. 1992. The Heroic Life and Everyday Life. Theory, Culture, Society, 9, 159. Hendriks, C. M. 2016. Performing Politics on Social Media: The Dramaturgy of an Environmental Controversy on Facebook, Environmental Politics, 25, 1–24. Kalita, I. 2021. “A Conversation With Pain”, in Deka and Nething eds. Queerscape. pp. 38–39, Guwahati: NEthing. Nadkarni, A. and Hofman, S. G. 2011. Why Do People Use Facebook?, Personality and Individual Differences, 52(2012), 243–249. Rituparna. 2021. “Mur Bisonar Tolor Bakostu (The Box Under My Bed)”, in Deka and Nething eds. Queerscape. pp. 38–39, Guwahati: NEthing. Tolbert, C., and McNeal, R. 2003. Unraveling the Effects of the Internet on Political Participation? Political Research Quarterly, 56(2), 175–185. Scarry, E. 1985. The Body in Pain: the Making and Unmaking of the World. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Statement, Yes We Exist Campaign, June 2021. https://yesweexistcampaign.wordpress. com/statement/ last accessed on 29th December, 2021. Ved. 2021. ‘Ghar’, in Deka and Nething eds. Queerscape. p. 43, Guwahati: NEthing.

9 Queer Assam on Celluloid Locating Queer Characters in Bulbul Can Sing and Fireflies– Jonaki Porua Anupom Kumar Hazarika When I was an undergrad, film studies was not a part of the undergraduate courses. During my undergraduate classes, I became familiar with the film adaptations of famous English novels, but I did not learn that a film had the features of a literary text. A cinematic narrative has a plot, revolves around fictional characters, contains symbols and metaphors, and it makes more sense when we take context into account. Cinema, like literature, has the potential to foster social change, and gives positive representations to people who are discriminated against on the grounds of sexual identity, gender and sexuality. Hence, film analysis is a particularly relevant method of understanding and studying society. Fictional representations of queer people on celluloid can help us understand how socio-cultural discourses on sexual and gender identity are reflected in popular culture. What Is Assamese Queer Cinema? Before I discuss the two selected films, I would like to explicate what I understand by the phrase ‘Assamese queer cinema’. In the phrase, both ‘Assamese’ and ‘queer’ function as adjectives and they are used in speech or writing to construct identities. While the former is a cultural identity, the latter’s meaning rests upon the human body—our non-normative desires1 and the fulfillment of such desires. The Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘queer’ as “strange, unusual, or not expected” and recognizes it as an outdated word. There was a shift in the meaning of the term ‘queer’ in the latter part of the twentieth century. Bob Nowlan (2010: 4) observes, “In the late 1980s and early 1990s … the term ‘queer’ became an increasingly prominent term of self-identification … to denote a commonality of identity among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.” Donald E. Hall (2003: 53–54) explains how it became an important marker of identity: Queer a term commonly used to deride and vilify same-sex desire was reclaimed by Queer Nation as an umbrella term to celebrate, rather than castigate, difference from the “norm” at a time when the oppressiveness and implicit violence of that norm was clear and undeniable. DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-13

Queer Assam on Celluloid  173 Just as other oppressed groups and individuals have “turned the tables,” so to speak, on oppressors by occupying and rewriting meaning of slurs (such as “bitch” or “nigger” in music, culture and certain intra communal usages), political action groups responding angrily to governmentally sanctioned homophobia took back a term that drew immediate attention to itself as a (now positive) marker of difference, and that more broadly drew attention to the way language has long been used to categorize and devalue human lives and lifestyles. Proposed at Toronto Festival of Festivals in 1991, the two-word phrase ‘queer cinema’ refers to “a spate of films (beginning in the late 1990s) that re-examined and reviewed histories of the image of gays” (Hayward 2000: 307). The re-examination and reviewing of gay men through the medium of cinema was done on purpose. In the 1990s, cinema became a vehicle for challenging the misconception about gay men who were considered responsible for the spreading of AIDS among the masses. Queer cinema, which had not acquired the status of mainstream cinema, now became more visible (ibid.: 307). In 1992, B. Ruby Rich came up with a new phrase “new queer cinema”, which she used in an article published in Sight and Sound. In the article, she looked at six American movies—Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992), Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991), Christopher Munch’s The Hours and Times (1991), Tom Kalin’s Swoon (1992), Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992) and Laurie Lynd’s RSVP (1991) screened at film festivals. She considers 1992 a “watershed year for independent gay and lesbian film and video” (Rich 2013: 16): the new queer films and videos aren’t all the same and don’t share a single aesthetic vocabulary, strategy, or concern. Nonetheless they are united by a common style: call it “Homo Pomo.” In all of them, there are traces of appropriation, pastiche, and irony, as well as a reworking of history with social constructionism very much in mind. Definitively breaking with older humanist approaches and the films and tapes that accompanied identity politics, these works are irreverent, energetic, alternately minimalist, and excessive. Above all, they’re full of pleasure. They’re here, they’re queer, get hip to them. What Rich implies is that queer cinema is “a cinema that takes pride in difference” (Hayward 2000: 308) and involves a postmodern strategy which destabilizes the notion of stable identity and subverts the gender binary and the hetero/homo dyad. Assamese queer cinema includes Assamese-language films that revolve around queer characters and portray queer experiences. Unlike large film industries like Hollywood or Bollywood, its primary target audience comprises those people whose mother tongue is Assamese or who can, at least, understand Assamese.

174  Anupom Kumar Hazarika From Bollywood to the Regional The inclusion of queer characters in Hindi cinematic narratives is not a contemporary development. Rohit K. Dasgupta (2015: 92) writes: Cinema in India has repeatedly addressed queer representations through stereotyped depictions, such as the ambiguous gendered side characters in Raja Hindustani/King India (Dharmesh Darshan, 1996) or the drag performances of Amitabh Bachchan in Lawaaris/Orphan (Prakash Mehra, 1981) whose elemental function appeared to be limited to the provision of comic relief. In these afore-mentioned Hindi movies, transgressing gender norms was shown as an unacceptable form of behaviour. From the late 1990s onwards, Hindi films, such as Main Khiladi Tu Anari (I Am a Player, You Are Unskilled, 1994), Kal Ho Na Ho (Tomorrow May Not Come, 2003), and Masti (Mischief, 2003), began to exploit the bromance motif. Besides, the dialogues of the male characters or their intense homosocial feelings reflect their supressed homosexual desires. Ruth Vanita (2005: 223) says that all these movies that celebrated male–male friendships include gay subtexts and “it has become mandatory to have a minor gay character, usually an exaggerated effeminate male, who either is or suspected of being gay”. Analysing two Bollywood movies Kal Ho Na Ho (Tomorrow May Not Come, 2003) and Masti (Mischief, 2004), Dinah Holtzman (2010: 113) argues that the inclusion of gay jokes in these movies illustrates “the conflicted love-hate approach to male homosociality and homosexuality currently popular in western media”. The shift in the subject matter of jokes had a lot to do with India’s economic revolution. India’s economic liberalization began in the 1990s. Consequently, satellite television was introduced in India and people were exposed to western pop culture (Hotlzman 2010: 111). Rohit. K Dasgupta in his essay ‘The visual representation of queer Bollywood: Mistaken identities and misreadings in Dostana’ echoes Holtzman in the way he demystifies the two male characters’ homosocial feeling for each other. Dostana (2008) was the first commercial cinema made in Hindi to explicitly portray queer characters. Dasgupta (2015: 97) explains why the film did not bring forth much criticism from the public—“Dostana avoided such protest, most likely due to the overseas location in the film, combined with the use of humour to convey the story.” There have been attempts by filmmakers who have made queer lives visible and offered positive cinematic representations of queer people. For example, Fire (1996),2 My Brother Nikhil (2005), Fashion (2008), I Am (2010), Bombay Talkies (2013), Margarita with a Straw (2014), Aligarh (2015), Loev (2015) and Kapoor and Sons (2016) came out at a time when homosexual behaviour was deemed criminal. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019), Subh Mangalam Zyada Saavdhan (2020), Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021) and Badhaai Do (2022) are big-budget movies that are

Queer Assam on Celluloid  175 commercially successful and are lauded for their sensitive portrayal of queer people. In contrast to Hollywood and Bollywood, the Assamese film industry is smaller, comprising actors and directors from Assam. The Assamese movies that came out during the 2000s stuck to the conventions of Bollywood movies—they had cisgender males as central protagonists, men/women were fitted into the straitjacket of masculinity/femininity, ambitious urban women were attributed negative roles. Most of the Assamese movies were big budget films and favoured a conventional view, but they were not aesthetically pleasing. Assamese cinema was in a state of decline for a few years. No producer was willing to invest money in Assamese films as they failed to perform well at the box office. In addition, people preferred English/Hindi language narratives to regional movies since the former was better in terms of content and cinematic techniques. The introduction of satellite television also changed people’s preferences. Assamese cinema bounced back in the twenty-first century. Independent filmmakers such as Bhaskar Hazarika, Rima Das, Kenny Basumatary, Himanshu Prasad Das and Anupam Kaushik Barua have changed the trajectory of Assamese cinema by narrating such stories which are not regarded as suitable subjects for mainstream Assamese cinema. They have projected the dreams, desires, hopes and aspirations of ordinary people. In the West, queer cinema is now treated as a subgenre of cinema, or it has gained the status of a subgenre. In fact, on online video platforms, like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and so forth, films are categorized into different sub-genres—fantasy, science fiction, thriller, mystery, drama, biography, etc. The process of categorizing films into different subgenres can mean only one thing—films that fall under one subgenre share commonalities with each other. Assamese queer cinema is not as old as Western queer cinema. The notion of genre is very alien to not only Assamese cinema but also most of the Assamese viewers. Rima Das’s Bulbul Can Sing (2018) and Prakash Deka’s Fireflies—Jonaki Porua (2019) revolving around gender issues and sexuality are subversive in terms of subject matter. In this chapter, I draw on a queer theoretical framework, and my act of reading is similar to that of Rohit K. Dasgupta’s (2012: 4–5): The purpose of a queer reading is not to reveal any hidden agenda to please the queer identified, rather a queer reading examines the function of cinema in remoulding subjectivities, desires, and pleasures. It helps us negotiate with patriarchy and masculinity and reveals the social conflict this creates. Rima Das’s Bulbul Can Sing Rima Das is an independent filmmaker who hails from Assam. She began her directorial career with her short film Partha (2009). Her big-screen directorial debut was Antardrishti (2013), which was screened at The Jio Mami Mumbai Film Festival and the Tallinn Black Knights Film Festival. It was

176  Anupom Kumar Hazarika followed by Village Rockstars (2017), which was a huge critical success. Village Rockstars was screened at both national and international film festivals and was India’s entry for the 90th Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. Immediately this film was released in theatres, her third film Bulbul Can Sing (2018) began to travel various film festivals across the globe. Das became a familiar face among people only following the success of Village Rockstars. Rima Das, a self-taught filmmaker writes, edits, produces and directs her own films. Das chooses the village as the setting for her films. Her cinematic narratives do not revolve around the affluent. Rather they centre around the have-nots, their dreams, hopes and aspirations. Bulbul Can Sing by Rima Das is a coming-of-age film that centers around three characters—Bulbul (Arnali Das), Bonny (Banita Thakuriya) and Sumon (Manoranjan Das). Bulbul lives with her parents and her brother. Bonny is raised by her single mother who runs a tea stall. Sumon is shown as Bulbul’s next-door neighbour. At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to the three major characters who spend their leisure time climbing trees. They go to the same school and are classmates. At school, most of the boys make fun of Sumon because of his effeminate nature. Bulbul is the only friend to go to his rescue. Before the plot unveils how the three teenagers fall in love, Bonny is already in love with Deep who also goes to the same school. Another boy named Parag who happens to be Bulbul’s classmate falls in love with Bulbul. The two girls each have their boyfriends. Their lives take a drastic turn after an unfortunate event. One day, the two girls, their lovers and Sumon visit a photo studio to take photos, then go around an unpopulated place near the river. Meanwhile, some villagers pass by the place and see each pair cuddling except for Sumon who is not with them. Outraged, they beat the girls and their boyfriends. They capture videos and circulate them immediately. The school authority gets to know about it and takes strict action against them for ruining the school’s reputation. This unfortunate incident leads to a tragic event— Bonny develops self-loathing, and she dies by suicide. Functioning as a peripetia in the narrative, Bonny’s death changes the mood of the film and the nature of the characters. In the end, Bulbul finds confidence in her ability to sing. Shubhra Gupta (2019) notes, “watching them share physical space, sprawled on a bed or on the ground, limbs carelessly bushing against each other, bound by deep affection not desire, is to see something rare in Indian cinema”. Gupta finds this aspect of Das’s film striking. Romance, heartbreaks, teenage pregnancy, obesity, peer pressure, rivalry and family conflict are a few themes explored in young adult Bollywood movies, such as Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander (1992), Teere Sang (2009), Uddan (2010) and Gippi (2013). Except for Vandana Kataria’s Nobleman (2018), most of the Hindi movies tend to avoid gender issues and adolescent homosexuality. Das’s film stands out from all the other Indian young adult movies. Das’s attempt to celebrate friendship is evident in the bonds Sumon shares with Bulbul and Bonny. Bulbul and Bonny do not treat him like an outsider. They even do not hesitate to share their personal issues with him. It can be said that Das shows that girls are

Queer Assam on Celluloid  177 more inclusive than boys and do not consider male femininity as a deviation from gender norms. Whenever they are together, they create an inclusive space. Bulbul’s and Bonny’s lovers, Pradip and Deep, also do not treat Sumon like an outsider. Bulbul out of the four teenagers raises her voice against bullying faced by Sumon at school. Though Bulbul, in the beginning, is shown as a character who lacks confidence, this aspect of her surprises us and projects her as a radical girl who has the guts to speak out against toxic masculinity and genderphobia. Before moving on further, I would like to explicate my use of the term ‘gender’ in this essay. Marlene Mackie (1987: 3) observes: “Sex” refers to physiology and “gender” to the socio-cultural elaborations upon physiology. To go a step further, sex roles (behaviors stemming from biological sexual differences) may be distinguished from gender roles (socially created behaviors differently assigned to men and women). Alluding to the land/building model, Barry Rutland (1997: 1) writes, “gender is a secondary formation grounded in biological reproductive sex but distinct from it, as a building is distinct from and heterogenous to the land on which it stands”. My usage of the term gender corresponds to the theoretical postulations provided by these theorists. The rural school functions as an ideological state apparatus regulating gender norms. It does not have any zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment and bullying. The classrooms are divided along gender lines—the boys and girls do not sit on the same side. Besides, one teacher sexually harasses Bulbul while he returns her answer sheet. He touches her body in an inappropriate manner when no student is around. Bulbul cannot raise her voice against the harassment she undergoes. Kimberly Tauches (2012: 174) says that gender operates at a “personal, interactional and institutional level”. At school, some boys call Sumon “Ladies”. The term ‘Ladies’, the plural form of the word ‘lady’, is attributed a new meaning by the speakers. In the socio-cultural context represented in the film, the signifier occupies the status of a derogatory term. Any boy who is feminine is referred to as so-called ‘Ladies’. It is used to mock someone who does not adhere to the straitjacket of masculinity. The school does not have any proper loos for boys. An open space which is within the premises of the school is where they micturate. As Sumon urinates, some boys make fun of him for urinating like a boy and tell him to use the girls’ toilet instead. What this points to is that the school is split along gender lines. At some cultural event, one of the boys mercilessly mocks Sumon. Ladies, where are your bangles? Do you need lipstick? Go and be with the girls. Why are you dressing up like a man? Doesn’t suit you. Go and wear a necklace, ladies. (Bulbul Can Sing 2018)

178  Anupom Kumar Hazarika Outraged, Sumon leaves the classroom and says to Bulbul, ‘I am tired of these people’ (ibid.). Bulbul confronts the boys and raises her voice against the culture of bullying. She asks them why they constantly tease him and do not mind their own business. This leads to a quarrel between them over Sumon. In one scene, Sumon accompanied by Bulbul and Bonny goes out to fish in a nearby river. While fishing, Sumon is constantly teased by both boys and grown-ups. They ask him why he has come to fish instead of staying at home. They believe that only masculine people can catch fish in the river. Having been humiliated, Sumon does not fish anymore. As his friends find him crying and Bulbul tells him not to cry, he says, Why should not I? Everyone calls me ladies. You saw how they were teasing me today. Don’t I have any shame? They bully me everywhere … At schools or weddings, wherever they see me. (ibid.) Here, Das takes a close-up shot of Sumon’s face to intensify Sumon’s emotional state. The film depicts how male femininity is seen as an anomaly that threatens the binary between masculinity and femininity. Sumon’s gender identity makes him stands out as an aberration. The film does not provide any resolution to his external conflict—Sumon versus society. Right from the start, Das leaves clues that hint at Sumon’s sexuality. As Bulbul cuts a heart out of a pipal leaf, Sumon tells her to make one for him. When Bulbul asks him who he is going to give it to, he replies, ‘Why? Can’t I love someone?’ (ibid.). He has also written people’s names in the pages of a book. As Bulbul and Bonny take a keen interest in the names, Sumon tells them not to look at the names. Sumon’s inhibition makes it clear that he is trying to hide something from his best friends. In one scene, Sumon draws a heart on the trunk of a tree. The act of drawing reveals some facts about Sumon—like his friends, he longs for someone who will accept him the way he is. He does not fill the heart with the initials of his name or anybody else’s name. The heart he draws is a metaphor for his emotional emptiness. It is quite normal for one in the 13–19 age group, that Sumon represents, to develop desires for someone. The writer/director does not let us know who Sumon likes and about his desires. This scene does not reveal much about his sexuality. Though she does not give any overt references to his sexual orientation, yet the few scenes through which she hints at his desires make it clear that what he longs for is unusual. The way Das handles queer sexuality makes her an auteur. The minute details are significant to understand Sumon’s characterization. Throughout the movie, we never see Sumon fall for someone. Das’s choice raises pertinent questions about the sexuality of an effeminate boy. Why does the writer–director not touch on Sumon’s sexuality? Das is not radical in her characterization of Sumon. Had the director let us know about his coming to terms with queer sexuality through some scene, the film would

Queer Assam on Celluloid  179 have been the first coming-of-age Assamese film to deal with male homosexuality. While Bulbul and Boni are fully fledged characters, Sumon does not receive the equal amount of attention. Nandini Ramnath (2019) says, “Sumon’s evolution is somewhat under-serviced.” This is an irrefutable fact about the way Sumon is portrayed in the film. The film shows how Sumon faces marginalization in public, yet we are not sure how his family or his relatives treat him. We are not informed of his socio-economic background and do not get to see who his parents are. Prakash Deka’s Fireflies—Jonaki Porua Prakash Deka pursued an acting career to begin with, then shifted to filmmaking. He is a self-taught Assamese filmmaker whose big-screen directorial debut was Fireflies—Jonaki Porua (2019). An exclusively queer film, this Assamese cinema was a critical and commercial success. It was first screened at a few film festivals across the globe. Deka’s film received a special mention at the 67th National Awards and the lead actor of the movie bagged the Best Actor Award at Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival in 2020. It was the first Assamese film to centre around transgender/transsexual issues. “Transsexual” and “Transgender” are key terms in queer studies and trans studies. Sandy Stone (2006: 2227) defines a transsexual as a person “who identifies his or her gender identity with that of the opposite sex and is born in the wrong body”. The film charts Jahnu’s journey (played by Benjamin Daimary) from suffering from gender dysphoria to becoming a female transsexual. Jahnu lives with his parents and his siblings. He has one elder brother and one elder sister. Both his elder sister and he do not follow the genders assigned to them at birth. He is very close to his tomboyish elder sister who helps him in his studies. Born male, Jahnu, the central character, suffers from gender dysphoria. He secretly wears his sister’s bodices, applies turmeric on his face, and likes to hang out with girls. One day, he visits Guwahati with his mother and bumps into a female transsexual at a cosmetic shop. Feigning illness, he escapes from school and goes to the city to meet the transsexual woman. Jahnu tells his lover Palash that he has decided to become a girl. He asks him whether he will accept him or not after his transformation. Palash who is gay replies in the negative. A bully overhears their conversation and spreads a false rumour about them. Beaten up by his elder brother, Jahnu runs away from home. Taking advantage of the situation, the bully and one of his friends follow him and rape him. They warn him not to tell anyone and give themselves an assurance that nobody will believe his words. Having been molested by the boys, Jahnu leaves for the city to join a transgender community. The hijra community provides him food along with shelter and allows him to join the community. Jahnu takes up their profession, i.e. begging. Moreover, he must prostitute himself to survive. The health of Jahnu’s father deteriorates after the incident. His father dies at last. Jahnu visits home to pay his last respects to his dead father, yet the village people tell him to leave as soon as he can.

180  Anupom Kumar Hazarika Judith Butler (2000: 111) says, “its (gender) undecidability can be traced between psyche and appearance”. She argues that gender is not a purely psychic truth and to support her claim, she gives the example of drag performances— “it reflects the mundane impersonations by which heterosexually ideal genders are performed and naturalized and undermines their power by virtue of effecting that exposure” (Butler 2000: 110). Jahnu suffers from an internal crisis—he is not satisfied with the sexed body he was born with. Jahnu does not become a drag queen, but the performative aspect of his gender and his longing for a female body prove the fact that masculine gender identity is not innate. As “gender is an assignment” (ibid.: 110), society expects Jahnu to perform the gender assigned to him at birth. As the film is set in a rural village in Assam, Deka manages to beautifully capture genderphobia which generally marks any rural space. Jahnu is always teased by cisgender men for not adhering to the masculine gender role. They call him “Ladies” and “Heroine”. Some even refers to him as “Pradip’s daughter”. Only the men in the village mistreat him. Besides, Deka shows how men equates the body of a feminine man with the female body. Considering the performative nature of Jahnu’s gender, some boys objectify Jahnu’s body and believe that his body can be an outlet through which a man can translate his physical urges for the female body. At school, his male classmates mock him in front of the teachers. Jahnu cannot live his life according to his own terms. As his brother sees Jahnu wearing feminine clothes, he tells his mother, “You gave birth to two specimens, mother. Both have made us notorious in this village” (Fireflies–Jonaki Porua 2019). At home, his parents do not express any dissatisfaction at the ways he and his elder sister dress up. The film is not only about the lived experience of the transsexual but also about alternate sexualities. At home, Jahnu is taught mathematics by a boy named Ratan. After his tutorial class is over, Ratan asks Jahnu to accompany him to the riverbank. Upon reaching the bank, Ratan tells him to sit with him for some time. Jahnu, oblivious of Ratan’s intentions, sits by him. Ratan makes him touch his private parts. We see two figures against the pitch-black sky. Shot at night, the scene intensifies the character’s repressed same-sex desires. Here, night is equated with unconventional desires and stands for the transgression of sexual norms. It also affirms what Aaron Betsky (1997: 21) says about queer spaces, that they “create itself in darkness, in the obscene, in the hidden”. The film also introduces us to Palash who cuts himself from other people in the village. As Jahnu is passing by his hut, Palash asks him to come inside and offers him a glass of milk. Palash knows how the villagers treat Jahnu, and says to him, “society will not accept us the way we are” (Fireflies–Jonaki Porua 2019). He adds that he does not have any courage to fight against society and that is why he prefers to live alone. Jahnu slowly falls in love with him as he is the only male who accepts Jahnu for who he is. He lets Jahnu wear a traditional sari and does not make fun of his gender identity. As Jahnu suggests that they should get married, Palash replies that the law does not permit same-sex marriages. Through the two cisgender male

Queer Assam on Celluloid  181 characters—Ratan and Palash—Deka denaturalizes the fact that cisgender males are always heterosexuals. Deka does not portray only one form of femininity. Jahnu’s elder sister who is a bit tomboyish is perhaps a lesbian. Her decision not to get married throws light on her sexuality. Being a lesbian, she has much fewer options than male homosexuals. Deka lets her remain a flat character who neither evolves nor moves the story towards climax. Conclusion Both the directors have the same opinion about rural spaces— people living in rural spaces have vague ideas about queer identities and uphold strict gender norms. Lawrence Knopp (1995: 136) opines, “the density and cultural complexity of cities, meanwhile, has led to frequent portrayals of sexual diversity and freedom as a peculiarly urban phenomenon”. This is true in case of Deka’s protagonist, Jahnu, who, after going to Guwahati, creates a new form of selfhood for himself. He finds another home in the city. He lives with a community of transsexual people and finally becomes an economically independent person. Additionally, Prakash Deka’s Fireflies–Jonaki Porua fulfils the conventions of a metronormative story. Judith Halberstam (2005: 36–37) writes: The metronormative narrative maps a story of migration onto the coming-out narrative. While the story of coming out tends to function as a temporal trajectory within which a period of disclosure follows a long period of repression, the metronormative story of migration from “country” to “town” is a spatial narrative within which the subject moves to a place of tolerance after enduring life in a place of suspicion, persecution, and secrecy. Since each narrative bears the same structure, it is easy to equate the physical journey from small town to big city with the psychological journey from closet case to out and proud. Sumon, on the other hand, has limitations in his life. As he is a dependent on his parents and has never come across anyone who would accept him for who he is, Das cannot provide any fairy-tale endings to Sumon’s story. In his case, there is no poetic justice. Sumon is the most neglected and most oppressed character in the story. The title Bulbul Can Sing gives the impression that the movie is about the ability to find your inner voice, yet it does not illuminate Sumon’s same-sex desires. The few queer subtexts discussed do not deal explicitly with homosexuality. Only can a certain section of people unmask the film language of her film. The actor (Manoranjan Das) who plays the role of Sumon in Bulbul Can Sing helped Rima Das while she was shooting her second film, Village Rockstars. She witnessed how other people made fun of him because of his gender identity. Inspired by his life, Das decided to make a documentary titled Ladies on effeminate men. She later abandoned the project and developed a character based on the actor’s personal experiences. Das is a feminist filmmaker because gender issues are a major trope in

182  Anupom Kumar Hazarika her movies. In Village Rockstars too, the main protagonist, Dhunu, defies gender norms. She likes to be with boys, climbs trees and wants to play the guitar. In an Q and A session conducted by the organizers of Kasish Film Festival, Prakash Deka says that his genre is realistic films (‘Q & A,‘ 2020). He likes to make movies based on social issues. Upon asking why he wanted to make a film on the queer community, Deka says that he grew up among queer people in his village and saw how they struggled against the oppressive systems of society (ibid.). In fact, Deka selected Benjamin Daimary who self-identifies as gay as the protagonist of his film. The filmmakers did not approach any cisgender Assamese actors about playing queer characters in their films. Their cinematic narratives are unlike Hindi queer movies/mainstream movies in every way. They are low-budget movies, and first-time actors are featured as the leads in the two movies. Notes 1 By non-normative desires, I mean non-heterosexual desires. 2 It was the first mainstream India cinema to explore lesbianism.

References Betsky, Aaron. 1997. Queer Space: Architecture and Same Sex Desire. New York: Harper Collins. Bulbul Can Sing. 2018. Directed by Rima Das. Performed by Arnali Das, Banita Thakuriya and Suman Das. Flying River Films, 2018. Film. Butler, Judith. 2000. ‘Critically Queer’, in Paul Du Gay, (ed.), Identity: A Reader, pp. 108–117. London: Sage. Dasgupta, Rohit K. 2015. ‘The Visual Representation of Queer Bollywood: Mistaken Identities and Misreadings in Dostana’, Journal of Arts Writing by Students, 1 (1): 91–101. Dasgupta, Rohit K. 2012. ‘The Queer Rhetoric of Bollywood: A Case of Mistaken Identity’, Interalia: pismo poswiecone studio queer: 1–13. https://interalia.queerstudies. pl/issues/7_2012//04_the_queer_rhetoric_of_bollywood_a_case_of_mistaken_identity. htm (accessed on 23 July 2021). Fireflies—Jonaki Porua. 2019. Directed by Prakash Deka. Performed by Benjamin Daimary, Bitopi Dutta, Nibedita Kalita, Palash Mech, and Manash Ranjan. Milin Dutta, 2019. Film. Gupta, Shubhra. 2019. ‘Bulbul Can Sing Movie Review: The Actors Win You Over’. The Indian Express. http://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/movie-review/ bulbul-can-sing-movie-review-rima-das-6033412 (accessed on 13 November 2021). Halberstam, Judith. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press. Hall, Donald E. 2003. Queer Theories. New York: Routledge. Hayward, Susan. 2000. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge. Hotlzman, Dinah. 2010. ‘Between Yaars: The Queering of Dosti in Contemporary Bollywood Films’, in Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeswari V. Pandharipande (eds.), Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation and Diaspora, pp. 111–128. London: Anthem Press.

Queer Assam on Celluloid  183 Knopp, Lawrence. 1995. ‘Sexuality and Urban Space: A Framework for Analysis’, in David Bell and Gill Valentine (eds.), Mapping Desire, pp. 136–146. London: Routledge. Mackie, Marlene. 1987. Constructing Men and Women: Gender Socialization. Holt: Rinehart and Winston of Canada. Nowlan, Bob. 2010. ‘Queer Theory: Queer Cinema’, in Jo Anne C. Juett and David M. Jones (eds.), Coming Out to the Mainstream: New Queer Cinema in the 21st Century, pp. 2–19. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ‘Q and A with Jonaki Porua Director & Actors’. 2020. You Tube video, 23:21. Posted KASHISHfilmfest. http://youtu.be/tZyndX7snus (accessed on 12 September 2021). Ramnath, Nandini. 2019. ‘ “Bulbul Can Sing” Movie Review: The Beauty of Rural Assam Has Love—but also Heartbreak’. Scroll.in. http://scroll.in/reel/938656/ bulbul-can-sing-movie-review-the-beauty-of-assam-has-love-but-also-heartbreak (accessed on 10 November 2021) Rich, B. Ruby. 2013. New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut. Durham: Duke University Press. Rutland, Barry. 1997. Gender and Narrative. Canada: Carleton University Press. Stone, Sandy. 2006. ‘The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttransexual Manifesto’, in Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (eds.), The Transgender Studies Reader, pp. 221–235. New York: Routledge. Tauches, Kimberly. 2012. ‘Transgendering: Challenging the “Normal”’, in Steven Seidman, Nancy Fischer and Chet Meeks (eds.), Introducing the New Sexuality Studies, pp. 173–179. London: Routledge. Vanita, Ruth. 2005. Love’s Rite: Same Sex Marriages in India and the West. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Part IV

Queer Invisibility and the Linguistic Community

10 The Many ‘Queer’ Silences Competing Masculinities in Kashmir Huzaifa Pandit

Rahee na taqat-e-guftaar aur agar hau bhi/tau kis umeed pay kahiye ki arzoo kya hai,1 Ghalib said. I evoke Ghalib as not just a poet whose verses are a part of collective memory, at least of those who read, cherish or listen to Urdu (or Urdu music) but as a marker of a silence, an erasure, an incongruity in a text written and meant for audiences who in all likelihood will not understand Urdu and its resonances. I use the Urdu verse and not the English translation to mark the commencement into the dominion of silence, untranslatability to not just draw attention to the erasure of Persian–Urdu traditions from the narrative landscape to atone for their Muslimness, but to a larger dominion of silence that exceeds simplistic binaries of religious identity. It draws attention to a larger politics of masculinity and the contestations of power in the domain of state making. Of this dominion of silence, there are many things to say and therefore one must set the agenda of the chapterfirst—it proposes to understand why the total absence of queer texts and conversations in Kashmir is an extension of its contested narrative landscape, which is forever engaged in reframing Kashmiri bodies to conform to masculine political identities and political strategies that transform “the site of (non-normative dissident) citizenship into a ‘queer site’ of contested narratives” that is dismissed as “non-existent” narratives (Malik 181). Such reframing calls into question any fixed, coherent and stable masculine Kashmiri body imagined by both statist and nationalist critiques of Kashmiri desire, and calls for examination of absenting and erasures of ‘dissenting’ and ‘desiring’ effeminate bodies from the narrative landscape. This absenting permits these erased bodies to be examined under the rubric of queerness as this lens investigates the “impersonal, structural, and systemic workings of power” which bears witness to “the incomplete project of decolonization” (Liu 14) and its ideological cartography that manifests itself in cultural, and literary representations of and in Kashmir. In this investigation of memory and representations of memory, the project intersects with feminist critiques as both are interested in exploring the operation of structural and naturalized ‘heteropatriarchy’ that reproduces the economies of fear and vulnerability that characterize a female body as well as other bodies on the ‘margins’. In its exploration of silences, therefore, this chapter demands a detour into the DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-15

188  Huzaifa Pandit varied structures at which masculinity is normalized including popular memory, history, cinema, art and literature. Beginning at the beginning, it would not be out of place to commence from the genesis of current Kashmir. I speak of Kashmir not just as the valley flanked by Himalayas in north of India and a bone of contention between India and its neighbour—Pakistan—after 1947, but as a space constructed from varied narratives—the unfinished and messy business of partition, histories of aspirations and governance, imaginings of history and more importantly as a lived space that offers an interesting insight into powers and functions of symbolism, silences and articulations as well as the varied conditions and structures that determine them. It begins then with the legend of Mughal Emperor Akbar ‘tricking’ the last Chak dynast (Yusuf Shah Chak) to visit the Imperial Court at Agra in 1586 for peace talks. Ignoring the advice of his ministers and commanders to the contrary, the young king, with a view to sparing his people from suffering caused by a devastating war, accepted the invitation and went to Agra, never to return to his native land. (Gyawun) In popular memory, aided no doubt by the endorsement of Sheikh Mohamad Abdullah and the National Conference (whose role this chapter will delve into later), this is the commencement of the ‘foreign’ rule in Kashmir, and the beginning of its descent into ‘slavery’.2 The headline of the article on the Gyawun portal that insists on providing disinterested narratives from Kashmir by its insistence on “non-political, positive and inspirational content” (Gyawun) draws attention to the legitimization of this inaccurate narrative that has its genesis in a deeply political context of mapping dissident desire. The cover of disinterestedness suggests that this commencement of foreignness is routinely contrasted with the loss of ‘nativity’ and ‘autonomy’, and hence a reverting to the idea of a glorious period of ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-rule’ that remains a political ideal owing to an unbroken history of the silencing of its political aspirations. Even as this version of binarized history is not borne out from authentic records, not the least because it preceded the evolution of nation-states and nationalism, the version has stuck. A more accurate version of events is provided by Ashraf Wani who notes that “he (Yusuf Shah) pretending to inspect the outposts, and along with a few horse men went off quickly and joined the Mughal camp on 14th February 1586” after signing a treaty of conciliation with Mughal emperor Akbar “convinced of the futility of war” (Wani 191). Although the treaty was indeed violated by the Mughals, and Yusuf Shah imprisoned, the path to his imprisonment had been paved by his decision to bolster his claim to the throne by seeking Mughal help on 15 January 1580 “through Mughal officers of Punjab – Raja Man Singh and Mirza Yusuf

The Many ‘Queer’ Silences  189 Khan” (Wani 187). The prioritization of legend over history also permits the erasure of the troublesome legacy of Yusuf’s “excessive indulgence in merry making and gross neglect of state affairs” (Wani 188). It allows collective memory to recast his image as a patriotic, idealistic young king who fell victim to his infallible belief in hospitality and honour—the first prototype of the male martyr–victim that has since come to be a perpetual trope in framings of dissenting Kashmiri bodies. The image was reinforced by the poetry of his lover—Habba Khatoon— who broke ranks with tradition of mysticism to create an immensely personal, secular and elegiac lyric that “touches upon various moods of a woman in love, one who is not content to just love and worship from a distance, but demands fulfilment” that creates a “heavy air of pathos and despondency” in her poems (Matoo 86). The pathos generated by verses like Tse kamyuu soni myaani3 has resonated across generations ever since, as the individual search for love has metamorphosed into a longing for a lost ideal of security, stability and aspiration that has always been elusive in Kashmir. Centuries later, Agha Shahid Ali began his lament for Kashmir in The Country Without a Post Office by invoking her and her legend. The collection that has since come to be a cherished catalogue of Kashmiri dissent directly plays into the nationalist narrative that catapults Khatoon to be the first versifier of dissent, and inaugurating a tradition that was later taken up by Mehjoor, Azad and Shahid. The poem points out: And will the blesséd women rub the ashes together? Each fall they gather chinar, leaves, singing what the hills have reechoed for four hundred years, the songs of Habba Khatun, the peasant girl who became the queen. When her husband was exiled from the Valley by the Moghul king Akbar, she went among the people with her sorrow. Her grief, alive to this day, in her own roused the people into frenzied opposition to Moghul rule. And since then, Kashmir has never been free. (Ali 146) In effect then, Habba Khatoon provides the first prototype of gendered dissent, as the object of desire is firmly marked as masculine, while the female role is restricted to a passive role of mourning and searching. Ather Zia points out the abiding nature of this narrative of role allocation that has been particularly reinforced post the unprecedented militarization of Kashmir post-90s: In Habba’s search for Yusuf there is a strong resonance with the women, mothers and of course the half-widows searching for their loved ones. In fact, if the illegal detainment of her husband and his exile and her ignorance about his predicament is kept in view, Habba becomes the symbolic first half-widow in Kashmir’s fraught history. (Zia 139)

190  Huzaifa Pandit Contrary to Khatoon’s foregrounding of the Kashmiri (female) body as a site of desire and longing, the Mughals erased the Kashmiri body altogether from the narrative landscape. The land came to be associated with a feminine beauty that demanded embellishment. This directly led to the creation of the trope of an undiscovered and unregulated paradise, and hence the need for Mughal intervention and administration to develop it. While the landscape was reduced to an abstract paradisical bower feted in visual and textual representations, the Kashmiri subject existed only in negation of the land—as a mere accessory—rather than the body on and from which lived meaning is generated. As Rai points out In Mughal mythic geography, the realm of culture belonged to the city, while Kashmir could at best hope to graduate, through their intervention, from a wilderness to the nurtured and controlled garden. Kashmir was ‘raw’ nature to be ‘cooked’ suitably for more discriminating Mughlai palates. Therefore, in Mughal miniatures, Kashmir put in an appearance either in the form of manicured gardens or of scenery glimpsed incidentally through a window in what was otherwise predominantly the architecture of the Mughal city. (Rai 16) By and large Kashmiri subjects found little space in Mughal representations since they were held culpable of having made a mess of the paradise they had been endowed with, and were moreover prone to “a whining and cringing manner”. Therefore, they were hardly considered “worth the waste of paint” (Rai 16). This erasure evokes the erasure of feminine from the social order and language, as demonstrated by feminist scholars across the spectrum. Lucy Irigray, the feminist philosopher, for example, contends that “women have been put in the schizoid position of being simultaneously in history and not in history – ‘written out’ of history by male theory” (Pinggong 252). Drawing from a Freudian hypothesis of psychosexual development, she points out that in the phallic stage, the female is drawn towards a dissociation from her subjectivity in absence of a phallus, and so no symbolic signification is associated with the female sex. She points out “this fault, this deficiency, this ‘hole,’ inevitably affords woman too few figurations, images, or representations by which to represent herself…she borrows signifiers but cannot make her mark, or re-mark upon them” (Irigaray 51). Even as her approach has been critiqued for pandering to a biological essentialism that presumes the stability of the body, and unquestioning acceptance of the culture/nature dichotomy, it is useful in mapping the invisibilizing function of representative strategies of masculinism and hierarchy resident in them. Butler offers a more interesting approach to gendered language and contends that Sex, as a category—like the categories of male, female, man, woman, masculinity, and femininity—is imbued with power, and inscription is

The Many ‘Queer’ Silences  191 the process by which such categories achieve their solidity, where unstable meanings are “written” on the body. These categories then become naturalized through endless repetition, or “sedimentation,” of discursively constituted actions. Thus, our understanding of biology itself is merely a set of cultural meanings, but meanings that are literally embodied by us. (Hooper 30) The sedimentation of heterosexual norms permits a naturalization of heteropatriarchy across societies leading to an erasure of feminine bodies from social and narrative surfaces in consequence of a longstanding “narrowly and severely normative, difference-eradicating ethical program (that) has long sheltered under developmental narratives and a metaphorics of heath and pathology” (Sedgwick 19). The feminist project, therefore, underlines the role of culturalized repetition in normalizing erasure to produce a psychic space of masculine communality, transactions and enculturation. This impulse of normalization through ‘reinvention’ explains the reorientation of the Kashmiri landscape in popular culture to an exotic paradise as summed up in Jahangir’s quoting of Khusro’s famed couplet: Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast/ Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.4 can well be understood then as informed by this strategic naturalization of erasure of different, desiring and perceptive bodies. At play is a species of heteronormative masculinity that offered the effeminate ‘Kashmiri’ no agency or opportunity to come out, and mark the spaces inhabited by them. With the advent of the Afghan rule (1752–1819), Sikh rule (1819–1846)and Dogra rule (1846–1947), this normative masculinity became more entrenched as power was not only resident in the male, but also masculinity was performed conspicuously by agents of authority. A popular legend that alludes to the tenor of their rule recalls that an Afghan governor on his way to Kashmir came across a funeral. He ordered the funeral to be stopped and bit off the ear of the corpse saying “Tell all the dead people in your world that Kakkar Khan has arrived in Kashmir,” sending shivers among the people around. (Irfan)Such a repressive and authoritative performance of manliness reduced the Kashmiri to a passive role restricted to reception of this performance. The Sikh rule was no less conspicuous in its performance of repressive masculinity. The Sikh empire was established by Ranjit Singh popularly known by his moniker the Lion of Punjab. As a towering and fearsome patriarch, blind in one eye which added to his aura, “he defeated and absorbed the twelve warring confederacies of Punjab into the Sikh Empire” (Singh and Rai 113). Soon, Kashmir too came under his expansionist gaze, and was amalgamated into the empire after the battle of Shopian fought in 1819. Continuing with tradition, all land rights were vested in his person, and the population simply enjoyed only occupancy rights, thereby clearly establishing him as the sole locus of authority and power. From this person followed

192  Huzaifa Pandit a series of repressive diktats that ranged from confiscating jagirs of Muslim jagirdars and divines to an oppressive taxation regime that apart from realizing one half of produce as government share imposed further taxes in the form of trake, nazrana and tambol. Further, a long line of masculine officers including Qanungus, Shaqdar, Sazawal, Muqaddam, Patwari and Tehwildar were employed for revenue collection but much to the chagrin of the peasantry their salary was borne by the beleaguered peasantry. The collective outcome of this oppressive taxation was that the peasant was left with only one fourth of his produce. (Khan, Mir and Bhat 7) Starvation and poverty were the natural consequences, and so the Kashmiri subject was left emasculated and marginalized, erased materially and symbolically from the landscape by figures vested with masculine authority. Similarly the Dogra rule that followed inaugurated a peculiar masculinity as its very existence in perpetuity was resident in a male body through the Treaty of Amritsar signed between the British East India Company and Raja Gulab Singh of Jammu after the conclusion of the First Anglo-Sikh War. The treaty transferred: forever in independent possession to [him] and the heirs male of his body5, all the hilly of mountainous country … eastward of River Indus and westward of the River Ravee …being part of the territories ceded to the British Government by the Lahore state…for a sum of Rupees seventy-five lakh. (Rai 27) While the erasure of Kashmiri concerns and subjectivities in the imposition of a non-native ruler and an unprecedented sale was a masculine gesture in itself, the further performance of the kingship reiterated this masculinity. The Dogra rulers invested particular energy in maintaining a narrative of Rajput lineage in order to legitimize their rule. Mridu Rai provides a detailed inventory of the way in which the Rajput identity emerged as a politically expedient identity to counter the political power of Sikhs and consolidate colonial rule. She points out that the adoption of the identity allowed a peculiar kind of nationalism that permitted creation of a narrative of oriental and native honour, and purity in Hindu antiquity interrupted by the foreign and barbaric Muslim conquest of India. Great stress was laid by Maharaja Ranbir Singh, who assumed the throne in 1856, on devising an elaborate code to devise a carefully regulated system of control for every temple located within his state, actualizing a hierarchy linking each temple to the Dogra maharaja himself. Ranbir Singh worked towards establishing a

The Many ‘Queer’ Silences  193 fit between the sway of the Hindu religion over which he would preside as chief patron, and the borders of his political dominion, which he would command as maharaja. (Rai 117) The Dogra regime, therefore, emerged as an exemplar of a restorative monarchy that could undo the contamination wrought by foreign rule, and usher in a continuity of that glorious antiquity. The Maharaja emerged as a species of messianic masculinity that could restore the glory of the motherland—Bharat— which was mapped alongside a political spectrum of Hindu nationalism. The Hindu patriarch thus envisioned could therefore rule over a Muslim population that was completely antithetical to the tenor and tilt of the state, and thus the Kashmiri subject was silenced and erased from the language of belonging. It was no surprise then that the dissent that rose against this silencing was articulated in a vocabulary of masculinity. Frustrated and enraged by a debilitating tax rate.6 a delegation of weavers led by Sheikh Rasool and Ali Baba, the weavers and their Khandwaaws (apprentices) marched through the streets of Srinagar city towards the palace of Kripa Ram, Governor of Kashmir on 29 April 1865. At the narrow bridge of Zaldgar, the procession was fired upon by Dogra forces. Twenty-eight protestors, all men, lost their lives, and hence the mandate to dissent came to be associated with performing a very public and valorized masculinity. No record exists, at-least in publicly accessible domains, of the lives of women associated with men or how they went on with their lives after the massacre. The tallest leader to emerge from the dissent against the Dogra rule was Sheikh Mohamad Abdullah, also known by his moniker Sher-e-Kashmir (Lion of Kashmir). The imposition of a masculine power could only be countered through a paternal figure of ferocious masculinity who was invested with absolute power. Legend still recalls how the popular chant of that era was ali kari wangan kari ba’ab kari lo lo.7 It was fitting indeed that the destiny of Kashmir post-independence was decided on the basis of a close relationship between two paternal figures (Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah)who each helmed the counter-colonial struggle of India and Kashmir and became the default prime ministers on account of their popularity. The relationship famously exemplified in Sheikh Abdullah’s quoting of the Khusro couplet: Mantu shudam tu manshudi man jah shudam tu tan shudi man degram tu degaree8 disintegrated just as quickly, leading to imprisonment of Sheikh Abdullah and the beginning of the unravelling of Kashmir. It is poetic irony indeed that the two couplets that have come to define Kashmir in collective imagination have both been of Khusro, who never set foot in Kashmir, and moreover assumed a feminine persona as the subject of his love poetry. This gender bending has led to him being anointed as a queer trailblazer even as his poetry is solicited for a project, entirely antithetical to the fluidity permitted by queerness. Even as Kashmir has had its fair share of poets of all genres including nationalist poets like Mehjoor who wrote anthems of resistance and revival like Walo ha baghwano, navbvahaarukh shaan paida kar,9

194  Huzaifa Pandit none of their verses have come to be entrenched in collective memory as these couplets. It would not be far amiss to impute that one reason for their abiding longevity is that their speakers wielded considerable power that has left an abiding legacy behind—in Jahangir’s case the image of Kashmir as an idyllic bower, and creation of gardens continues to be a tool of erasure of local subjectivities, and in case of Sheikh Abdullah the simmering bloody conflict that refuses to abate 70 years after formal decolonization. In that sense, these couplets are manifestations of the trope of effeminate disempowerment since both allude to the erasure of Kashmiri desire and voice from narrative landscapes, and imposition of an abiding power to mould the Kashmiri subjectivities into an imprint far removed from local realities. It is not surprising, therefore, that narratives of Kashmir post-1947 abound in performance of competing masculinities that leaves little space for expression of any alternate desire. A psychic economy of accumulative masculinity pervades every narrative from politics to cultural representations of Kashmir, and in turn permits the individual subject to come into being only by aligning itself with this masculine collective. A cursory analysis of the Kashmiri political scenario post 47 and its major players provides an easy insight into this tilt. After Sheikh Mohamad Abdullah, Bakshi Ghulam Mohamad, GM Sadiq, Farooq Abdullah, Mufti Syed and Omar Abdullah represent the pro-India spectrum of political leadership that sought to enforce the writ of New Delhi in Kashmir. It could be argued that Mehbooba Mufti, the last Chief Minister of the former state of undivided Jammu and Kashmir doesn’t conform to this spectrum, being a woman and that the long succession of male leaders is simply a consequence of historical patriarchy, which is not restricted to Kashmir alone but extends to India and in fact the world. Yet, this argument suffers on two grounds. One, Mehbooba Mufti doesn’t rebut the performance of masculinities in the way the ascent of Indira Gandhi in India or Margaret Thatcher in England didn’t herald a counter-patriarchal revolution. Rather their anointment as chief minister or prime minister only reaffirmed the masculinist tenor of power as not only did they shed all explicit markers of their femininity and sexuality (through dressing in loose fitting clothes, and absence of any jewellery as well as a studied absence of a partner/consort), but second, while in power they actively relied on masculinist projects like the repressive arm of law viz army and police, and nurtured a punitive state that was intolerant of any dissent or subversiveness (imposition of emergency/emergency like restrictions like curfew or information blockade, dismissal of employees, imprisoning detractors and unleashing violence upon the dissenting populace). Moreover, the entire political spectrum emerged out of both a dynastic structure—the Abdullahs (Sheikh Abdullah-Farooq Abdullah-Omar Abdullah, GM Shah-Begum Khalida Hassan-Muzaffar Shah) and Muftis (Mufti Syed-Mehbooba Mufti/Tasaduq Mufti, Sartaj Madani)and a benefactor–patron system (Bakshi Ghulam Mohamad owed his rise to the patronage of Pandit Nehru, GM Sadiq to Indira Gandhi) which imposed leaders on the Kashmir without them having any stake in ground

The Many ‘Queer’ Silences  195 level politics. With the abrogation of Article 370, while this traditional coterie has been sidelined, it has produced another species of patron–client system of governance: the administrator–bureaucracy setup that owes its existence not to popular mandate but to a proximity to the ultra-nationalist belligerent politics of ruling dispensation, which takes a very dim view of the secessionist impulse that underlies the Kashmir problem being rooted in “strident colours of a militantly aggressive nationalism embodied by Savarkar’s Hindu soldier” (Banerjee 92). This uneasy nexus of dynasty–patronization can easily be understood then within the heteropatriarchal masculinist framework, as it reproduces the same violence of erasure and reframing that allows the production of unequal relations of power and representation that Irigray drew attention to as it forecloses any possibility of alternate paradigms of power and performance of power in Kashmir. Rather the alignment of leadership and governance to a peculiar masculinist tenor only reaffirms the historical dialectic in which the Kashmiri has been viewed as incapable of advancing the dialectic of history, devoid of the capacity of the required “self-consciousness of conceptual thought. Mired as they (are) in the concrete world, they (are) condemned merely to repeat the cycles of (an unacknowledged) life” (Hooper 19). Moreover, the addition of pervasive militarization to maintain the writ of the state only reinforces this masculinist paradigm as the ‘jawaan’10 embodies a “a manly activity requiring the ‘masculine’ traits of physical strength, action, toughness, capacity for violence … It has historically been an important practice constitutive of masculinity” (Hooper 47). As the ground level and most ubiquitous representative of the state,11 the jawan often emerges as the sole arbiter of the identity of the subject on the ground, and the first adjudicator of whether or not the subject on ground is a suspect or a militant or a civilian, whether a particular space is accessible or inaccessible, and whether any action is permissible or impermissible. In this coalescing of roles of a defender, aggressor and adjudicator, the soldier ensures that spaces are regulated and by extension only conforming bodies accepting of his power to regulate extend into the spaces. By the repetition of their selves (uniformed and armed) and gestures like regulating traffic or movement, the soldiers ensure that the Kashmiri bodies become oriented and habituated into spaces that enable action only to the extent deemed fit by the state, insofar as the capacity for other species of action (like straying into spaces outside bunkers earmarked by concertina wire) are curtailed and prohibited. In effect then, the soldiers become investments of masculinity that is naturalized by repetition of specific forms of conduct (frisking, guarding, regulating) that emphasizes ‘acceptable’ conduct (prescribed through official edicts, billboards, social media posts and press releases among other things12), a continuous process that goes unnoticed by the Kashmiri subjects much like compulsory heterosexuality perpetually orders the economies of emotion in India and the world at large. Among other ways, cultural representations like Hindi cinema and music videos provide an inventory into ways in which masculinity has been

196  Huzaifa Pandit naturalized. Hindi cinema rechristened Bollywood (though the rechristening is contentious and by no means unequivocally accepted13) has played a crucial role in presenting Kashmir for consumption as an exotic paradise plagued by a crisis in masculinity that merits intervention from mainstream India. In other words, the movies play to a well-rehearsed script of cultural nationalism where the ‘effeminate’ Kashmiri is in need of rescue and restoration by the ‘masculinist’ upper class Hindu Indian. The 1964 Shami Kapoor–Sharmila Tagore film typifies this intervention where Tagore – an actress from Bengal, reprises the role of a naïve Kashmiri damsel who sells flowers and Shami Kapoor plays the role of Rajiv Lal – the scion of an obscenely wealthy mill owning family. The two fall in love despite their yawning class difference, a problem that is conveniently overcome when it is revealed that Champa is actually a daughter of the family, who was abducted as an infant. The villainous Mohan played by Pran is the other Kashmiri character, and around the trio the film revolves. What are the various erasures wrought by the movie? For one, it erases both the specificities of religion and caste in case of the Kashmiri characters. The boatman community that doubles as flower sellers in the waterbodies like Dal Lake and Nigeen lake are and have always been Muslims and hanji14 by caste, and speak Kashmiri among themselves and a pidgin Hindi to tourists from India. The movie erases all these distinctions, and lays out the template of viewing and consuming paradisical Kashmir from the panoramic and levelling gaze embedded in politics of rescue and messianism. Thus, the Kashmiri heroine Champa is first elevated from her low status by the upperclass Indian Hindu15 Shammi, and then restored to her original position as an heir of a wealthy mill owning widow by saving her from the clutches of a scheming Kashmiri—Mohan. In the same realm, one can quote the film starring Shahshi Kapoor-Nanda Jab Jab Phool Khilay (1965). Raja—a naïve houseboat owner falls in love with Rita Khanna—a rich visiting heiress while she is on a vacation to Kashmir. To overcome the wide chasm in their class positions, and cross the hurdles in way of consummation of his love, Raja has to completely alter his persona so that Rita’s father may not consider him uncouth and unrefined. One is struck by the erasure of a Kashmiri subject even as he is one of the key components in driving the narrative forward. The obvious erasure here again is the name—Raja, implying therein the protagonist is Hindu in a land where all the boatmen were and are Muslim to this present date. Instead, the protagonist has a generic Hindu name eroding the Hanji Muslim identity of the character. Besides, the transformation of Raja, which was typified in another song filmed on Shashi Kapoor in the movie Raja Sahab (1969): Raju ka tha ek khwaab: raju, raja, raj sahab16 reproduces the same reformist gaze that characterized the Mughals—privileging a cityscape as the centre of culture and its imposition on the Kashmiri body. As the idyllic 70s and 80s faded into an armed insurgency in Kashmir, a new paradigm of representation came into being. On this spectrum lie movies like Roja (1992), Dil Se (1998), Mission Kashmir (2000), LOC Kargil (2003)

The Many ‘Queer’ Silences  197 and Fanaa (2006)that constitute a paradigm where the Kashmiri male body is in perpetual crisis and the men are either terrorists (Fanaa) accomplices of terror (Mission Kashmir), or victims of terror (Roja). Like their romance filled predecessors of the earlier decades, the movies play out the same template of rescuing/resolving these crises of masculinity as Kashmiri identities are conveniently erased through stereotypical representations of naivety, villainy, victimhood and little agency. Compounding these representations is the ‘pink-washing’ that tries to straddle both narratives of queerness and nationalism by adhering to a ‘homonationalism’ that only ends up perpetuating a “difference as a neo-liberal strategy of governance and surveillance that depends on inclusion and assimilation of some forms of difference like homosexuality into the national narrative at the expense of bodies that can never fully belong” (Maikey and Stelder 95). This was on display, for example at a one-day seminar on ‘Resisting Fascism building Solidarities: India: Kashmir and beyond’ held at SOAS London in 2019 where “five masked individuals forced their way into the room where the event was being held, aggressively shouting “gay for J&K!” (Beg) In effect, the purported victimhood of homosexual publics in Kashmir was used as a counter to any discussion on the crisis and trauma of a people living in one of the most militarized regions of the world. In imposing upon a silenced people an accusation of being complicit in erasure, and holding them culpable for silencing queers, the protest was a reiteration of masculine privilege in insisting upon itself the power to determine the ‘correct’ and ‘authentic’ narrative. In the face of such an all-pervasive masculinity, the counter-publics that have evolved to resist this invisibilizing of (dissident) Kashmiri subjects have invested in the same paradigm of masculinity that they seek to resist. An explanation of this phenomenon can be that it models itself on the Indian nationalist movement, which was its immediate predecessor. As Sikata Banerjee explains, On the one hand, imperialism configured its ideas of hegemonic masculinities by defining itself against a supposedly effeminate colonial “other,” and on the other hand, the colonized subject created a masculine cultural space that resisted this effeminization. With colonizer and colonized locked in struggle, the terms of which had been set by Britain’s imperial authority, not surprisingly various nationalist responses to incorporating the values of hegemonic masculinity occurred. This incorporation did not merely duplicate British ideas but was itself an imaginative configuration of nationalist myths and icons based on traditional cultural ideas aimed at challenging alien colonial rule. (Banerjee 13) Therefore, it stands to reason that one of the popular figures of Kashmiri dissent has been the ‘mujahid’, the militant young man driven by anger and rage, or even naivety/villainy (depending upon the perspective one listens to),

198  Huzaifa Pandit and sangbaaz—the stone pelter. That both are driven by a call to ‘revolutionary’ violence is at once a reification of muscular and masculine nationalism that drives the imaginings of nation they seek to oppose. In its quest to establishan alternate masculinity, it is more disinterested in trappings of power, while driven more by a religious obligation to fight off the ‘infidel’ other for the establishment of a more just and equitable order determined by religion. At the peak of militancy in 1992, 10000 men were part of active militancy, if the testimony of a former militant is to be believed (Bhat). By this synthesis of religion and nationalism, it functions by the same othering principle that drives the statist nationalism it seeks to displace, and hence leaves little room for imaginings of a nation not configured by routines of masculinity. It is no surprise that the titles and traits bestowed on the leadership are evocative of unyielding, steadfast, overpowering and phallic masculinity (na juknay wala Geelani, na ruknay wala Geelani na biknay wala Geelani17) or larger than life paternal figures (Humara Qaid Kaun– Syed Ali Shah Geelani18). As Maikey and Stelder argue in the Palestinian context, Another complication for the project is the way that the hegemonic Palestinian national struggle reproduces a patriarchal structure that assumes a national liberation of Palestine first and social liberation later. National history and the narration of Palestine become tied to and foster normative and patriarchal configurations of a gendered national history and forms of belonging. (Maikey and Stelder 92) The claim holds true for Kashmir. A cursory reading of literatures and music videos produced from Kashmir is suffice to prove this claim. The inaugural texts of Kashmiri literary tradition of dissent: Agha Shahid Ali’s book of poems, The Country Without a Post Office, Basharat Peer’s memoir, Curfewed Night, and Mirza Waheed’s novel, The Collaborator, all rely on portraying a crisis of masculinities wrought by militarization and disenfranchisement. Shahid creates the spectral figure of Rizwan who signifies the rot in Kashmir, and extracts a promise of revenge and remembrance while ruminating on the incompatibility of a Fabian and queer secularism in geographies charged with muscular religious desire. Similarly, the Curfewed Night and The Collaborator both explore the crisis of disempowerment and symbolic castration of the Kashmiri subject, and the troubling reconciliation with effeminacy. As a bildungsroman, Curfewed Night details the troubling childhood encounters of Peer with militancy including the very immediate vulnerability (his father is attacked by militants for being a bureaucrat) evoked by conflict. Similarly, The Collaborator details the story of an unnamed narrator who ends up working for the Indian army and ends up shoring the propaganda efforts of the army by collecting identity cards off dead bodies as a trail of destruction and death is left behind on the de-facto border between Indian side of Kashmir and the

The Many ‘Queer’ Silences  199 one held by Pakistan. As a sustained rumination on isolation—both emotional and physical—the novel depicts the disastrous demise of selfhood and identity as the narrator is left with nothing else but divisions, absences and speechlessness. The stable, coherent and fixed male body is thereby destabilized and from there the pathos of the novel draws. Music videos which have emerged as a testimony to the collective anguish alongside the flowering of other narratives can also be noted as being complicit in depicting a crisis of masculinity as symptomatic of the legacy of collective trauma. “Jhelum” by Mad in Kashmir, for example, has a young boy as its protagonist searching presumably for a ‘dead father’ in the flooded Jhelum. The agency in the song is all allocated to the young man who listens to news of a flooded Jhelum on radio, visits a graveyard, runs, pants, and mourns in equal measure, while the mother is restricted to cowering in grief in the beginning, and staring with teary and dejected eyes at the end. Thus, while the male protagonist is allowed the agency to articulate and explore his despair and grief, which forms the bulk of the narrative, the woman is allowed no such agency. Her role is only mapped in relationship to loss as having lost a brother, husband and son, as the epigram proclaims. Amya Agarwal points out, “The politicization of the domestic (in Kashmir) is most evident in reproductive politics, embodied in the “martyr’s mother.” The maternal sacrifice of losing a son is the supreme political act, making the mother a symbol of grief and resistance. At the peak of insurgency, mothers wanted their sons to become militants and free their homeland from the Indian state. They sent their sons for the movement, decorating them as bridegrooms and asking them to bring home azaadi as their wives. (Agarwal 655) Similarly, ‘Hosh ha’ written and composed by Alif features four men huddled together mourning the “inevitable fate of every interaction in Kashmir, since all conversations, interactions are determined and shaped by collective trauma, since every Kashmiri is implicit and complicit in the collective trauma of subjugation” (Pandit). That the video considers mourning for demise meaning and the need to testify it to be a concern of only men, is symptomatic of the erasure of women from narratives of resistance and defiance although real life situations of women defying from Parveena Ahangar19 to Jameela Begum.20 The feminine is earmarked solely for grieving and as indelibly marked by deprivation. Masculinity operates therefore functions as an inherent assumption where feminine and effeminate bodies are permitted visibility only as an effect of the work of the masculine, while the work of the former is erased from view. It is not the argument of this chapter that the experiences of people of alternate sexualities are the same as women. Rather the purpose of the argument is to draw attention to the bio-political ordering of bodies permitted to

200  Huzaifa Pandit be visible in social domains is inevitably masculine. This project of masculinity runs concurrent to constitution of Kashmir as a nation state, where performance of power and governmentality, myth, legend and art have intersected to ensure a privileging of heteropatriarchal and muscular masculinity. This privileging and making visible of masculine bodies regulate narrative spaces through an uneven distribution of power, which in turn induces a fear of difference, and a shrinkage of bodies which fail to conform and align. By this dialectic expansion and shrinkage, the spaces of Kashmir constitute a territory claimed as a right by masculine bodies, and not others, and so constitutes a nation both of queers and without queers. While it is undeniable that the queer publics whose erasures is foregrounded by this essay are male-centred public, the analysis of culturalized repetition hints at the double impossibility of ‘female queerness’. The consequences of seepage of masculinity and militarization for other potential queer publics however demands a more comprehensive study, which is beyond the scope of this chapter. Notes 1 The faculty of speech was forfeited And even if it weren’t On what hope could you speak what your heart so pleaded. 2 Trans: Ghulaami (Kashmiri)—a term used often in Kashmir to indicate the absence of political autonomy and absence of public from structures of governance. The term has been widely used as a shorthand of the marginality of Kashmiri populace, especially in counter-statist narratives to indicate disenchantment with the Indian state. The narrative was inaugurated by Sheikh Abdullah immediately after independence to legitimize his position as an unelected prime minister. Mridu Rai notes “In the periodization adopted by Sheikh Abdullah and his associates in the narrating of the history of the valley … moved not from periods of Hindu to Muslim to Sikh Rule but from an age of Kashmiri rule through a long interregnum of ‘foreign dominance’ beginning with the Mughals in 1586, before the end of Dogra hegemony marked a triumphant return to rule of Kashmiris. Day after day, and week after week, Kashmiris were told they had been ‘slaves’ of alien rulers for more than five hundred years until their liberation in 1947” (Rai 289). The narrative was later picked by the Plebiscite movement that arose in the aftermath of the imprisonment of Sheikh Abdullah and post 90s by secessionist ideologues like Syed Ali Shah Geelani—a popular firebrand secessionist leader—to indicate a continuum of ‘foreign domination’. 3 Tse kamyuu soni myani brama dyuth nyunakho Tse kaho gayi myani duy Tsakh traavduy malaal bas chuham tsui Tse kaho gayi myani duy Which rival of mine has charmed you thus Why do you turn from me in disgust? Forgive my trespass, my only love Why do you turn from me in disgust? (Matoo 110) 4 If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this. 5 Italics for emphasis mine.

The Many ‘Queer’ Silences  201 6 On a monthly income of a meagre 7 or 8 rupees, a weaver paid Rs 5 as a tax (Saraf, Mohamad Yousuf. Kashmiris Fight for Freedom. Vol. 1. Lahore: Ferozsons, 1977). 7 Whether he will decide on this or that, Father will decide it. 8 I am You and You are me; I am your body, You are my soul; So none should hereafter say, I am someone and You someone else. 9 Come, O Gardener, revive the spring again. 10 Literally: Young person, specifically the label for a soldier from army and paramilitary forces 11 In absence of provision of official data by Government of India, only estimates of number of soldiers can be arrived at. They vary between 3.43 lac (The Print, 12  November 2019, https://theprint.in/defence/what-imran-khan-says-is-9-lakhsoldiers-in-kashmir-is-actually-3-43-lakh-only/319442/) to 9.5 lakh (The Asian Age, 18 August 2019). 12 The logo of the ‘National Health Mission’—a flagship project of Government of India—can be cited as an example. The logo represents a happy family that comprises a father, mother and a girl child. Even as the heterosexuality of the image can be said to be countered by the foregrounding of the girl child, in a country where the male child is ardently desired, the image depicts the man as taller than the woman. Moreover, as the man is placed on the right, implying therein that the family commences with him—Hindi and English (the two languages in which the logo is written) being both read left to right. Symbolically, the image is a privileging of masculinity. 13 Bollywood theorists like Tejaswani Ganti define Bollywood as a dominant global term to refer to the prolific and box-office oriented Hindi language film industry located in Bombay but scholars like Ravi Vasudevan Ashish Rajadhyaksha consider that the term has specific reference and circulation in the post-liberalization India of 90s to pitch to a diasporic audience. 14 Hanji: working class Muslim boatmen and dwellers of river bodies considered inferior in the Muslim caste hierarchy and included in the Scheduled Caste matrix. 15 Lal is commonly a subcaste of Jats—a landowning and agrarian upper caste of north India renowned for their close knit societies (Ahlawat). 16 Raju cherished just one dream: to transition from Raju to Raja to Raj Sahab. While Raju is a generic name for servile classes (famously typified by Raju Guide in the Dev Anand Blockbuster Guide), Raja and Raj Sahab represent a social rise, the sahab prefix indicates a member of a genteel landed upper class. 17 Geelani who doesn’t bow/Geelani who does not stop/Geelani who can’t be bought—a reference to the Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani founder of Hurriyet (G) that advocated a hardline position on the Kashmir issue. 18 Who is our Qaid (A visionary, Prophetic Leader)? 19 Parveena Ahangar is the founder of APDP (Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons) an advocacy group that seeks to mobilize support for investigating and ending enforced disappearances in Kashmir. 20 Jameela Begum is the widow of a shopkeeper Mohammad Ramzan Bhat slain in Miskeen Bagh area of Srinagar in 1996. After a 25-year legal fight, a Srinagar court ordered the police to form a fresh SIT to investigate the case afresh.

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The Many ‘Queer’ Silences  203 Vasudevan, Ravi. “Notes on Contemporary Film Experience: ‘Bollywood’, genre diversity and video circuits.” No Limits: Media Studies from India. Ed. Ravi Sundram. New Delhi: OUP India, 2013. Wani, Ashraf. “Sectional President’s Address: AKBAR AND KASHMIR.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 201273 (2012): 184–204. Zia, Ather. “The Politics of Absence: Women Searching for the Disappeared in Kashmir.” UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations. California: University of California, 2014. Web. 13 February 2022. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8w60c1hx.

11 In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani Silence, Slurs and the Spectacular Kevin Frank Fernandes

“What are the words for queer in Konkani?” I asked myself this question many times over the last few months but never, interestingly, aloud, or in Konkani itself. Of course, I did not expect to know the answer to that question—despite being born into family that identified as Konkani culturally, Konkani was never a language taught or spoken to us. Like many other families that were favoured by the British Raj in Mangalore, my paternal family was highly Anglophile, rarely ever speaking Konkani, and taking great pride in all things British and in the erasure of the mother tongue. And so, when faced with the task of writing about the queer in Konkani, I cannot help but notice my position as some version of U.R. Ananthamurthy’s (2000) critical insider—inside the tradition but critical of it. While I am an insider by virtue of lineage, and I stand on the threshold, swinging in and out culturally; linguistically, I am an outsider. But not a complete one, as I will argue later on in this paper, that to be Konkani is to also always be constantly multilingual. In this chapter, I will explore three ways in which queerness appears to be articulated in Konkani—through apparent silences, through slurs, slang and abuses, and finally though spectacular performances. Given the vastness of the Konkani universe, geographically (spreading across four states— Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala—in India, and with huge diasporic populations in the West) and culturally, I have chosen to limit this study to Konkani-speaking Catholic communities in Goa and Mangalore, and the diaspora emerging from these places. Further, apart from secondary sources on the history and culture surrounding Konkani, my primary data and analysis emerges from interviews with people who identify as LGBTQ+ from the Konkani Catholic community. “As with early studies of language and the sexes, the first approaches to these questions about language and sexuality tended toward the anecdotal and personal” (Zwicky 1997: 21). This study has also forced me to examine my notion of research and argument construction, as there is limited work available on Konkani as a language, and its various cultures, and a lot of my primary text would be qualitative, semi-structured interviews—a methodology that was new to me. It also encouraged me to encounter my own sense of self viz my mother tongue and my sexuality, DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-16

In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani  205 and hence, wherever possible, I have attempted to add my own observations and theorize them in an exercise of autoethnography, again, a new tool of research for me. Out of 24 individuals shortlisted and contacted, only 12 interviews were actually conducted, primarily owing to a lot of hesitation to actually talk about sexuality, and because of the current conditions of the Pandemic. From the set of interviewees, five identified as Goan or of Goan origin and seven identified as Mangalorean or of Mangalorean origin, one identified as lesbian, one as an asexual queer woman, and the rest as gay or queer or sometimes both. As per the preference of the interviewees, names/initials/ false names have been used, depending on their comfort level, and wherever requested, specific pieces of information shared in the interviews were not included in this chapter. There exists a male, cis gender bias, apart from the fact that all the interviewees come from urban or semi-urban backgrounds. As such, it is still possible to extend this exploration across other traditional centres of Konkani culture such as Mumbai, Maharashtra and Kochi, Kerala, and Konkani diasporas in the Middle East and the West; to examine the language and culture of the three other religions followed by Konkani speakers – Hinduism, Islam and Jainism; and to examine it from a cis-het perspective. Unless mentioned otherwise, when “Konkani” is used, it will be referring to the dialects spoken by Catholic communities in Goa and the united Canara (Udupi and Mangalore). Apart from that, one could also attempt to explore this diachronically, going into historical records such as myth, early translations of the Bible into Konkani, and records of the criminal offence of sodomy, perhaps even those of the Goan Inquisition, but that is outside the scope and limits of this chapter, which was primarily conducted virtually and through telephonic and video conversations. This chapter can thus be considered a study of language in use, a study in sociolinguistics. By examining the experiences and memories of the interviewees, I hope to uncover the ways in which queerness is conceived, perceived and lived, in everyday interactions as well as in language. The relationship between language, society and discourse, and how they construct and co-construct, shape and reshape, articulate and silence notions of normativity and queerness will be central to this exploration. To search for the queer requires one to define that queer, and that process of definition is inherently problematic. For the purpose of this chapter, I use the term ‘queer’ to focus on the lives, experiences and perspectives related to sexualities/orientations/bodies/expressions beyond the ‘mainstream’s’ accepted notion of the norm, or the Other to the ‘mainstream’ (Chakraborty 2021: 2; Schutte 1997: 42). Motschenbacher and Stegu’s (2013) understanding of queer and queer studies informs much of my analysis: Queer Studies is not equivalent to gay and lesbian studies. Even though the latter automatically possess Queer potential in the sense that they study non-heterosexual identities and desires, they do not necessarily

206  Kevin Frank Fernandes conform to a Queer Theoretical framework in the narrower sense, which presupposes critical reflection on sexuality-related categories and their normativity. Using a Queer perspective (also when looking at heterosexualities) is not so much a matter of deciding what is Queer, but of choosing to view certain behaviours in a non-heteronormative light or from the perspective of the sexually marginalized. (520) As such, the queer will be seen as that which is quintessentially non-normative, and at times, antinormative. Konkani as a Queer Language With over 2.2 million speakers as per the 2011 Census, Konkani is one of the 22 Scheduled Languages in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution, and is a member of the Indo-Aryan language group, and a minority language in the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat, and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, apart from being the official language of Goa. It occupies a considerably diverse geographic and linguistic universe. And yet, in many ways, Konkani itself is a queer language. It has no clearcut, normalized or standardized form, and it has often been misrecognized (as Marathi, or as a dialect of Marathi), suppressed or excluded from systems of power. N.G. Kalelkar (1962) suggests three major dialect groups on the basis of region, though social dialectical differentiation is easier to notice. And these are just ways of codifying the 24 dialects listed under the Konkani macrolanguage family (as per the ISO 639-3:2007 Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages), spoken by 42 distinct caste groups, spread across 4 major religions (Shanbhag 2020). These dialects may be written in one of five scripts, depending on caste, location and religion—Devanagiri, Kannada, Latin, Malayalam and Arabic. The debate as to which script and dialect should be considered standard or implement for use in school is unending, and takes different shades depending on the region and dominance of the communities and castes (Rodrigues 2013). Yet, despite having no script of its own, the earliest Konkani inscriptions, sometimes debated to be old Marathi inscriptions, are a Gupta period inscription from the 2nd century CE in Aravalem, Goa, and a 981 CE inscription at the foot of the Jain monolith at Shravananbelagola, Karnataka. Despite being “first born daughter of Sanskrit” and “oldest of modern Indo-Aryan languages” (Gomes 1996: 83), a lot of controversy surrounds the nature of Konkani’s relationship with Marathi, and it is often misrecognized as a dialect of Marathi, which Jose Pereira (1971: 4) traces back to an 1807 essay on Indian languages by John Leydon, which calls Konkani a “dialect of Maharashtra”. S.M. Katre’s The Formation of Konkani (1966), with its use of historical and comparative linguistics, scientifically established the

In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani  207 distinction between Marathi and Konkani. Historically, Konkani takes a backseat due to the lack of a cohesive sense of community among Konkani speakers and their lack of assertiveness or pride in the language. This resulted in Konkani speakers working within the administrative machinery of many forces that occupied the Konkani heartland without Konkani ever becoming the language of power (Gomes 1996: 85) until after the Annexation of Goa (1961). And even then, it had to fight for autonomy, under risk of the new state being subsumed into the state of Maharashtra (Venkatesh 2017). Until as late as the 20th century, in a classical diglossic manner (Fergusson 1959), elite Hindu Goans turned to Marathi for formal conversation, announcements and literary production, while the elite Christians adopted Portuguese, the language of the colonizer, whom they culturally identified with. Often referred to as ‘lingua dos criados’ (‘language of servants’), Tristao de Braganza Cunha saw this banishment of Konkani as a result of the project of ‘denationalization of Goans’ carried out by the Portuguese (1961: 55–95). The Portuguese colonial government not only outlawed the use of Konkani at various points, but they also disincentivized it, as well as destroyed existing documentation and inscriptions. The Goan Christian linguistic situation was a case of ‘extended diglossia’ (Fishman 1967) in which two languages and not two varieties of the same language enter into a hierarchical relationship. Konkani, the language of home and what Ananthamurthy calls the backyard (2006), was solely the language of everyday conversation among the non-elite, the Bahujan communities (Venkatesh 2017), and for oral tales and folklore. As Damodar Mauzo, the Jnanpith-winning Konkani writer points out There were no Konkani books to read. Konkani was spoken at home and I remember that there was a programme late in the evening, Bhurgeanlya Aanganaat, addressed to children. Until the Liberation of Goa, I thought of Konkani as a dialect of Marathi … Until then Konkani had seemed to be the language in which one laughed, the language of children and comics, street plays and tiatr. (2022) This suppression of Konkani continues to be found in homes of the elite (where English is preferred), or in families in the diaspora. Joel, a Goan researcher who grew up entirely in Bombay, recalls how his father did not allow the children to speak in Konkani as they had to “master English” first, though the degree of mastery was never fully indicated. English was seen as a language of progress and modernity, and a certain sense of shame was associated with Konkani, that leads it to being suppressed, no different from the shame and suppression surrounding queerness. While his parents spoke Konkani to each other, the only time Joel attempted to speak Konkani was when he travelled home to his native village in Goa during his summer holidays, and there too, it had to be out of earshot from his parents. Because his

208  Kevin Frank Fernandes Konkani was learnt on the sly, and was often mixed with Marathi, his attempts to speak Konkani with the children of his village were met with teasing, which increased his sense of othering or not belonging (Joel 2022). Waves of migration out of Goa furthered the marginalization of Konkani, and providing opportunities for it to interact with other languages and absorb them, while simultaneously always staying the language of the home but not the public domain. In migration though, Madhavi Sardesai (2004) observes how Hindu Konkanis found it easier to assimilate into dominant linguistic cultures through a share cultural and religious experience, while Christian Konkanis found it more alienating. Yet, when forming diasporic Goan associations in Pune, the former chose Marathi as the medium for communication, while the later chose English. Interestingly, the revival of Konkani in the 19th century was centred around British Bombay (Venkatesh 2017), almost as if one had to escape the confines of home in order to be and celebrate who you really were. One would imagine the end of Portuguese colonialism would result in a better status for Konkani, but the bombing of the Portuguese radio station, Emisora de Goa by the Indian Airforce during pre-emptive raids destroyed recordings of Konkani plays and songs made during the Portuguese era (Natasha 2021). According to the 1991 Census, as compared to the national average of 19.44% for bilingualism and 7.26% for trilingualism, Konkani speakers scored 74.20% and 44.68% respectively. This makes Konkanis the most multilingual community of India. This multilingualism is a result of the language never having a territory of its own and always being a subsidiary to another language of power. As a result of this, it appears as if many Konkani speakers not only access entertainment, art, culture and education in languages apart from Konkani, but they also seem to be in the closet regarding their linguistic identity. The 2011 census documented a 9.3% drop of over 2 lakh people since the 2001 census (The Times of India 2018). In an interview with a leading daily (Shenoy 2018), Konkani activists provided two reasons for this—one was the migration of Konkani youth to other parts of the country and the world in search of better opportunities, resulting in a skewed documentation of data. The other was the increase in Konkani-speaking people choosing to identify with the dominant language of the region they live in. It appears almost as if they chose to perform a particular linguistic identity in public but kept their Konkani identity to the privacy of their homes and in spaces shared with other Konkani people. At this point, it is also important to note a peculiarity of Konkani – despite being written in five scripts, it can only be read by speakers of the language. What I mean is that the characters or alphabet of the five scripts used to write Konkani do not accurately represent the phonetics of Konkani, especially the vowel sounds. Thus, if a Konkani word was written in the Kannada script, speakers of Kannada would read and pronounce it differently from native speakers of Konkani. This use of a script or signifying system of an adjacent

In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani  209 and seemingly more politically and socially powerful entity (in this case, language), is typical of queerness. This borrowed signifying system is not fully representative in itself, but provides enough raw material for the minority community to articulate (itself), and thus, exist. Thus, through its suppression and exclusion from systems of power and self-actualization, its misrecognition, and its lack of a standard or normalized form, Konkani appears to be a very queer language, literally and metaphorically. Silence: If a Tree Falls in a Forest and if No One Is Around to hear It, Does It Make a Sound? “What are the words for queer in Konkani?” I asked myself this question many times over the last few months, but never, interestingly, aloud, or in Konkani itself. And this question was usually met with silence or head scratching (or what I thought was head scratching, since all my interviews were telephonic) or “I have never thought of it” (Chetan 2022; Collete 2021; Daphne 2022; DD 2022; Fernandes 2022; Joel 2022; Jon 2022; MJ 2021; SP 2021). Only one of my interviewees had an answer. That Konkani does not have any formal lexicon to describe queerness or any of the ideas related to gender and sexuality-related diversity does not mean that these identities do not exist. The absence of the word does not mean the absence of the experience (Liva and Hall 1997: 10). The people interviewed for this essay are a small subset of a subset of the 2.2 million people who speak Konkani. Yet, the lack of an active or formal vocabulary does not stand in the way of queer existence. Roshan Roy, a master’s student, who is from a mixed culture background (half Goan), identifies as gay and lives with his partner, describes how he always wanted to talk to his mother and share his sexuality with her, but “did not have the language to talk about it” (Roy 2021). This stems not just from Konkani’s lack of vocabulary to articulate these ideas but from the inability of (heteropatriarchal) language itself to often appropriately represent non-heteropatriarchal ideas. Not being bound by language has, in many ways, been empowering for Roy—through the years following his coming out, he feels there “an unspoken understanding of sexuality – it doesn’t even exist in language” between him and mother. While conversing with Chetan, a mid-30s gay man, who is doubly diasporic—he is of Mangalorean origin, but lived his entire life in Bangalore, and subsequently moved to Australia—his partner, Abhishek (non-Mangalorean medical doctor) made an important observation that stands in stark contrast to Roshan. He remarked that “the inability to express or understand desire can create a sense of isolation” (Abhishek 2022)—not having a vocabulary or language in which one finds representation can make one feel like a deviant, and this dissonance between what is established as socially acceptable (by virtue of its presence or articulation in language) and how or what one feels can cause depression, social withdrawal, etc.

210  Kevin Frank Fernandes The reason I highlight this particular remark is because of an anecdote shared by Dr Andy Silveira, a Goan communications professor at the Goa Institute of Management, and partner of Roshan, in the course of my interview with him. As Andy tried to normalize his sexuality and identity in his village by having more open and direct conversations with the villagers every time they made the usual declaration of “Attam Kazar Zavatzai!” (“now you have to get married” in Konkani), a neighbour remarked that an uncle of Andy’s was also gay. Not having any confirmed information on the sexuality of the said relative, when Andy asked the neighbour why they thought so, among the reasons listed out was his uncle’s disposition of being a quiet, reserved and reclusive person, who among other things left Goa, perhaps to explore his sexuality much like Andy, before returning later in life (Silveira 2021). Of course, I am not suggesting that being quiet, reclusive or suffering from depression are “gay” characteristics or attributes; yet I cannot help but notice this connection between not finding space or articulation in a language or culture and withdrawing from it. Talking about his first love, MJ, a Punebased HR professional from Udupi, who identifies as gay, shares this same sense of alienation from language and the inability to express his desire: We grew up in a society where only man and woman get married, we never knew there were other possibilities—I really loved a guy, used to have sex every day, used to care for him—I just didn’t know it was love. It was my first love. (MJ 2021) It also draws attention to a number of men and women in Konkani Catholic families who choose to stay bachelors/spinsters, in a culture which sees only two alternatives for individuals—holy matrimony or holy orders. Were these constant refusals to marry, constant rejections of proposals or using the excuse of staying home to care for parents over getting married ways in which queer people retained some autonomy over their bodies and desires, albeit though denial of the body itself in some ways? One can only wonder. It is not as if the conception of same-sex sexual activity, particularly MSM behaviour, is unknown or unspoken of. It is often represented as a sort of hobby or a bad vice, like digging one’s nose and sniffing snuff, something people do, but is not something they speak about. It has no identarian bearings. This is in keeping with the evolution of the words ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ from their late 19th century coinage by European sexologist Kurl Kurtbenny from being descriptive categories to “analytical categories, locked in binary opposition to one another” (Sen 2021). MJ candidly mentioned a shopkeeper from his neighbourhood whose fondness for fondling his employees, many of whom were teenaged boys, was well known, as well as a parish priest who came into conflict with the youth group of his parish after his fondness for a particular member was unwelcomed and reported to the group at large (MJ 2021). In both instances, MJ spoke about how the

In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani  211 behaviour of both the shopkeeper and the priest was common knowledge, and the subject of jokes and teasing aimed at the victims in various social groups. MJ goes on to also mention that all those “boys” are “happily married with kids” now. Another neighbour of Andy Silveira remarked something similar to him “there are many (gay) people in the village; we just don’t know”, or those that are known, are concealed as family secrets or gossip (Silveira 2021). Silveira, whose truly queer and subversive notion of “activism through gossip” or using the villagers’ fondness for gossip as a way to open up conversations, introduce vocabulary, and sensitize people, was often pleasantly surprised when at some point in the conversation or later, people would share how they knew of other queer people. Sometimes, after he would carefully try to explain gender and sexuality without using jargon, someone would exclaim “attanm tu gay zala” (“Now you’ve become gay”, suggesting the word was already know, but not used. But as progressive and promising as these encounters seem, the silence of Konkani to queerness has always caused displacement—queer Konkani people have time and again taken refuge or exile in other languages to think of themselves and their identities (Collette 2021; DD 2022; Joel 2022; Jon 2022). This move, usually towards English, is not always linguistic. It often results in displacement and migration to other (urban) centres, usually Bangalore, Pune or Mumbai (Daphne 2022; DD 2022; MJ 2021), and sometimes the Middle East or the West. Not many ever return, either physically or linguistically, and this further prevents Konkani from developing or evolving a vocabulary to express queerness. It is important to reiterate that this study focuses primarily on Konkani dialects spoken by Catholic communities, and therefore, we cannot ignore the role and the possibility of Christianity silencing queer expression that may have existed in the local communities and their folklore. As Roshan suggests, the lack of language should prompt us to think about knowledge formations rather than think about its lack of existence … be it in the realm of language, history or whatever we encounter, so much of silence or absence … does not mean it does not exist; it means language has been biased to it, how it has been elided in knowledge formation. (2022) It is interesting to note that three of the interviewees were part of seminaries at some point, and there is a possibility that queer individuals sometimes turn to faith to deal with the dissonance between their desire and the social norm. The church not only controls discourse but also bodies and how they are experienced and represented. MJ recounts how he and his fellow seminarians were warned, in vague terms, about Sodom and Gomorrah in their dorms, and though it was never explained, everyone knew what was being referred to (MJ 2021).

212  Kevin Frank Fernandes Slurs and Slang Another way in which queerness articulates itself is in jokes, slurs and slang. Only one interviewee responded knowing words for queer or queerness in Konkani; the others required probing to slowly start sharing things like jokes or abuses, usually based on associating men with effeminate or feminine behaviour. All the narratives shared corroborated with James Armstrong’s work on homophobic slang among college students: often in public interactions, people who might not think of openly attacking homosexuals use language that derogates homosexuality. Often those who employ this language in public are males, usually young, and presumably heterosexual. Use of such language creates an atmosphere of uncritical acceptance of intolerance toward homosexuality, while reinforcing stereotypical attitudes toward gays. At the same time, in some contexts this language asserts male (heterosexual) dominance by confirming presumed masculine values, while degrading presumed feminine gender attributes. (Armstrong 1997: 326) He goes on to argue that in most cases, while the receiver of the abuse is not suspected of being a homosexual, they are linked or associated with acts or mannerisms attributed to homosexuals (327), or as Judith Butler would argue, “performing” homosexuality through repetitive, stylized acts (Butler 2004). Goa has a richer vocabulary of derogatory words simply because Konkani was the sole lingua franca. At best, the common person changed dialects. In Mangalore, Konkani is only used at home and in church. One used Kannada or English, and sometimes Hindi in school, and in addition to these, Tulu for social relations outside home and church. In many ways, Konkani becomes the language home, family and church, and never the space of non-normative, deviant identity formations. Queer people rarely think of sex or sexuality in Konkani, the language they associate with church and family and the indoors, and use Kannada and English for the outdoors. Many of the interviewees also mentioned how they avoid meeting other queer people from the Konkani community for fear of being outed (DD 2022; MJ 2021; SP 2021). It is also for the same reason that they chose to have anonymous profiles on dating platforms when they travel back to their hometowns. Thus, with Konkani being the official language of the Archdiocese of Mangalore, it takes on almost sacred proportions, literally erasing and replacing even Latin from paintings and murals on church walls and altars. While words like hijra/hijda and chakka are commonly used in a derogatorily manner, the words themselves are loaned, possibly seeping into Konkani from Hindi, Marathi or Kannada. When asked about derogatory words, MJ immediately volunteered gand marun (literally butt-fucked in Konkani), and

In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani  213 went on to observe how it is remarkable that a culture that carries all the prudishness of Catholicism has an awareness not just of anal sex but of a particular power dynamic that emerges from it—it is abusive or insulting to the person it is hurled at (who would be the passive receiver), not so much the person threatening to carry out the particular act. Once again, despite being located within a certain narrow heteropatriarchal framework, it opens up possibilities to acknowledging a certain unspoken consciousness about queerness that exists. This is not very different from Halperin’s discussion on sex in classical Athens and how it was perceived as an act performed by a social superior (adult male citizen) on a social inferior (boy, woman, slave). Erotic desires and sexual object-choices were determined not by anatomical sex but by “the social articulation of power” (420). Andy Silveira listed “baizon” and “bayla/bailot”, both used in a derogatory fashion to describe effeminate men, and “ladis”, probably a corruption of “ladies” (Konkani derogatory for a bisexual person), “izzdo” (Konkani derogatory for a transgender person), “hozzo” (Konkani slang for homosexual), and “bacao” and “boquis” (Portuguese derogatory terms) (2021). Expressions like “chedyanche pishem” or craze for men (implying a certain pathological desire for men, which needs to be healed or cured; also, once again, implying that it is some temporary and can be remedied), saying “Maka aapod naka, Pois rav” (“don’t touch me, stay away”) or “hijdya-bori kornaka” (“don’t do/behave like a hijra”) to effeminate men or men one wanted to tease or bully emerged from an interview with SP, a gay man from Mangalore (2021). It is important to note how in the case of all three expressions, the idea of same sex attraction is seen as something that is external to the subject—that the behaviour is either learnt or copied from the Other (in the case of “hijdya-bori kornhaka”) but is not natural to the self, and that it can be cured like a mental disorder (“chediyanche pishem”) or through marginalizing it out of existence (“pois rav”). What was striking though, in this particular conversation, was the fact that the interviewee kept referring to these as “jokes” or “things said for fun”, and not as insults or slurs. Perhaps, denial comes as a sort of defence mechanism or coping strategy for him to deal with situations like this within his own social interactions. Although not a slur, the word “saiba” has tremendous queer potential. Its possible etymological origin is via the Perso-Arab “saheb”, an honorific or title for a man in a position of power. And hence, “saiba” and “saibinn” (feminine form of saiba) are traditionally used to refer to God the Father (Saiba bhogos or Lord, have mercy), Jesus, the saints (saiba San Zuze, St Joseph) including the Blessed Virgin Mary (Ankvar Saibinni) and St Francis Xavier (the patron saint of Goa, who was also responsible for the Inquisition), and even various forms of the Mother Goddess among Konkani Hindus. Among the Mangalorean Catholics though, these words are more fluid. Apart from being a term of respect, it is also a term of endearment. A woman may refer to her husband or a male lover as “saiba”, while a man may also refer to another male friend as “saiba”, and the same for “saibinni”. In the

214  Kevin Frank Fernandes former scenario, “saiba” takes on the meaning of beloved, while the latter, it is more like “dude” or “bro”. The fact that two meanings, different from each other, can be encoded into the same word but are understood depending on the dominant conventions of the context is what allows for queer slippages. It allows, for instance, a queer man to express sexual desire for another without directly alerting or alarming the other man, queer or not. Based on a study of the use of the word “yaar” or “friend” in Hindi, Raja Rao studies the homoerotic tendencies of Bollywood in the 70s and 80s. Similar to “yaar”, “saiba” “provides a convenient alibi in India, both for the external world and for the practitioners of yaari” (Rao 2000), through a cultural sanction for intimate same-sex relationships in India. While most of the Mangalorean Konkanis I interviewed agreed with these possibilities for the word “saiba/saibinni”, none of them had ever used it for a lover themselves, primarily because of the tendency to avoid sexual and romantic relationships with members of the same community, and the tendency to leave Konkani as a language or as a geographical space in order to explore and articulate their sexuality. While the use of slurs and homophobic language may serve to reiterate a culture that is intolerant to homosexuality, and this disincentivize it with the implicit assumption that all present are heterosexuals, who think poorly of homosexuals (Armstrong 1997: 332), it once again points in the direction of the presence of queerness within this socio-cultural milieu—not in a place of pride with its own empowering but as something on the margins of language and cultural recognition. The Spectacular The queer in (Catholic) Konkani often appears in unsanctioned forms, such as the earlier discussions silence and slurs. In this section, I highlight ways in which queerness is performed and articulated in social spaces and scripted forms. Gender theorist Judith Butler discusses gender as repeated performative acts and suggests in Undoing Gender that “it is a practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint. Moreover, one does not ‘do’ one’s gender alone. One is always ‘doing’ with or for another, even if the other is only imaginary” (Butler 2004: 1), highlighting the need for a social group as part of gender performance acts. Two specific acts will be focused on—drag and social dancing. The use of drag, cross-dressing in a public or semi-public space for entertainment purposes, to ‘undo’ or destabilize established gender roles and norms is well established (Butler 1990; Ru Paul 1996). There are primarily three spaces where this happens within the Konkani world. The first is the Goan Intruz, which is popularly called the Carnival. Synonymous with the Brazilian Carnavale, this is usually a three-day extravaganza before the austerities of Lent. Though popular throughout the Western Catholic World, the Intruz is the only established public Carnival celebration in India, and

In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani  215 possibly the entire Eastern world. Celebrated in the four cities of Panaji, Mapusa, Margao and Vasco, apart from the universal floats that celebrate excess and decadence in their appearance and street dancing in colourful costumes, the Intruz has strong indigenous touches such a folk dances in kunbi (indigenous agrarian community of Goa) sarees, fugdi folk songs and floats that talk about social and local issues and Goemkarponn or Goanness (Kaisuvker 2019), possibly because of its roots in the Hindu festival of Shigmo which was Christianized and co-opted into the Carnival tradition of the Portuguese (Deshpande 2016). In the midst of the elaborate floats, King Momo (the appointed king of the Carnival) and his queens, and the elaborate costumes, face paint, wigs and feathers, it is not uncommon to also find men ‘cross-dressing’ or in drag. A fast-fading Christmas tradition in Mangalore is that of Nathalache Khel (literally Christmas Play or Fun). I am lucky enough to have witnessed a few in my childhood—they involve the youth of the vado (ward or locality) or parish dressed and drunk, serenading from house to house. The menagerie includes, among singing youth (all men), torch bearers (with the huge petromax or kerosene lamps carried on shoulders), a Santa Claus-esque figure (sometimes called Father Christmas in the British fashion), a brass marching band and, surprisingly, young, clean shaven men in drag—long wigs, shiny dressed and with oversized balloons for cleavage. The entire troupe is paid in cash and with a bottle of alcohol. This used to be organized by parishes, which are increasingly preferring to organize more ‘civilized’ carol rounds instead. As of this point, there exists no ethnographic work on the drag performers in both these cultural contexts. Interviewees from Goa did not mention the performers in Carnival, unless asked, and those from Mangalore had not seen or heard of the khel. Conversations with older members of my own family suggest that the men who participated in khel often came from lower income Catholic families, often living in low-income neighbourhoods. Given the intersection of class and caste, it is possible that they also came from lower caste families. During the khel, a lot of the dancing is highly sexualized, and often, though not mandatorily, there is ‘fondling’ of the drag artists’ ‘breasts’, either by himself or the other dancers. James N. Greens’ Beyond the Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Brazil (2001) offers a useful framework to explore these two sites of drag. He argues that these annual deviations from societal norms, through stylized subversive performative acts articulate deep patterns of repression and homophobia (not very different from those discussed by Armstrong 1997). Yet, these acts of drag give space for men, queer or otherwise, to express and explore their notions of femininity and gain some form of social space and recognition, as temporary as it may be. It is interesting to note, however, that in the carnivalesque of both Intruz and Nathalachekhel, the men in drag are always performing the role of women, and are never taking on the role of effeminate men or gender queer men—the only role possible for them through their performance is the one on the other side of the social binary, that of women.

216  Kevin Frank Fernandes In both these spaces, as well as in the numerous instances of men in drag performing the roles of women in skits and plays (often as comic relief) highlighted by MJ (2021), who used the local folk dance–drama theatre of Yakshagana as a reference point, it is possible that desire for the male actor in drag is evoked in the male spectator. Theorizing his own observations on Yakshagana, MJ shared how the performances involve all-night performances of all-male troupes, travelling from place to place. The actors who performed the female roles were usually fixed, and were effeminate even when off stage—“young men of pleasing figure” (Hansen 2004: 112). While they were all usually married or eventually got married, MJ is of the strong opinion that many of them slept with other men, either co-actors or patrons from the audience. Yet, none of this was attached the idea or identity of being gay. Kathryn Hansen’s work on Indian theatre (2004) and Rohit Dasgupta’s work on the Launda Dancers of Bengal and Bihar (2013) discuss “this queer paradox in how men lust after the Laundas, fall in love with them, without identifying as queer, gay, or homosexual” (Bakshi 2021). It is important to note, however, that men performing as women has a long history in India, though in contemporary times, it is usually restricted to comic relief. The primary motivation for this in the past were the restrictions placed on women performing publicly (Hansen 2004). Among the Konkani Catholics of both Goa and Mangalore, social dancing at gatherings is common. Heavily influenced by Radio Ceylon of the 60s to the 80s, the jive appears more popular in Goa, and is increasingly gaining popularity in Mangalore over the last 30 years. The number of male dancers is usually lesser than the number of female dancers, and in such situations, often two female dancers to dance together, with one of them taking on the role of the lead. In such situations, it is not uncommon to overhear things like “I’ll dance with you only if you lead/be the guy”. This, however, is never the case if the number of male dancers is greater than the number of female dancers. Schneider’s discussion of heteronormativity recreated in salsa dancing (2013) provides a useful framework to understand this phenomenon on the jive dance floor, and possibly explains why two men dancing together becomes a taboo. The interviews she conducted with salsa dancers and the spectators suggest that the role of the woman is to follow and be led, and when two men danced together, the audience perceived them as parodying the power dynamics of heterosexual salsa—one figure was ‘playing’ submissive to the other, while two female dancers dancing together were seen as not real dancing, but ‘rehearsal’ or warming up until they actually found a partner—as one respondent explained to Schneider, “when guys doing the same thing, it’s comic [and] has an element of fun … [but] two girls together, not so much” (Schneider 2013). This idea of a man being submissive, as we saw earlier in the example of ghand maroon is socially unacceptable and is threatening to the heteropatriarchal order. A woman dancer, by virtue of her verbal agreement to either lead or be led in a same-sex dance signals to the community that her participation in this dance is only because of the absence

In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani  217 of men. While I was unable to interview a queer woman who has taken advantage of this space, it is not uncommon for certain women to be overlooked in dances because they ‘do not follow (the lead) well’ or are used to leading (in same sex dancing), posing a sort of threat or challenge to the power of the male dancer in the jive. In these performances and social acts, queerness may not necessarily be the intended articulation of the social structure that created it, but it is safe to say that they create ruptures in the otherwise monolithic heteropatriarchal structure, and could possibly allow, if not actually allow articulation of queerness in socially sanctioned spaces. Closing Thoughts The search for the queer in Konkani opened up more questions and Pandora’s boxes than provided answers. An important question is can or should Konkani develop a specific vocabulary to talk about queerness, when many speakers of Konkani already use other languages to think about and articulate the same? Will developing a formal vocabulary strip the queer of its emancipating and liberating queerness by prescribing a normative, standardized idiom? And given the already existing tensions between the various dialects and scripts, who will participate in this standardization? As such, even from the activism point of few, creating a vocabulary seems redundant, given that queer people, like all speakers of Konkani, turn to other languages to fill the gaps they encounter within Konkani. With the beginning of Pride de Goa in 2017, and it being taken over by Goa Rainbow Trust in 2018, it is still left to see how this is received and perceived by local communities. Francis Fernandes, co-founder of Goa Rainbow Trust, suggests that most participation in the Pride march, as well as queer events in Goa is from those visiting Goa; in a state as small as Goa, one runs the risk of being seen by someone you know either at the events or with someone who is open about their sexuality, and this parochiality is what pushes people further into the closet (Fernandes. 2022). While opening up the state itself to the Pink Rupee and Pink tourism, this runs the risk of presenting queerness to local communities as something that comes with outsiders, further othering Konkani queer youth. Queer Spaces Saga, an initiative by the School of Social Work, Roshini Nilaya in 2019, is perhaps one of the first such spaces in the city of Mangalore. It is still too early to see or quantify the impact of these initiatives on communities and their perception, let alone language itself. The time is ripe though, I believe, to search for the queer in Konkani, and build a repository of the notable (or visible) figures, and archive stories from the communities. The most noticeable name remains the acclaimed fashion designer, Wendell Rodricks, and perhaps even Dominic D’Souza, whose ‘victimhood’, popularized by the 2005 film My Brother Nikhil, as India’s first HIV diagnosis overshadows his activism (Ferrao 2021). While the coverage

218  Kevin Frank Fernandes of Rodricks’ personal life, including his relationship with his partner is something that may older queer men remember consuming, via newspapers, magazines and the TV, in their childhood (Joel 2022; Silveira 2021) and gave them a sense of assurance, if not representation, many of the younger community are either not familiar with his name (Fernandes 2022) or feel his activism has been very exclusive, and not reaching the common people (Collette 2021). Rodricks’ contribution to fashion, Goan art history and his espousing of environmental causes has forced people to confront and engage with him and his identity, Andy Silveira (2021) says, and in doing so, normalizes him into the middle class heteropatriarchal conception of the world. “It is queer how fighting other causes forced people to engage with him and sexuality more than the news of his wedding itself” (Silveira 2021). The search for the queer in (Catholic) Konkani revealed moments of queerness and queer articulation in silences, slurs and spectacular performances of gender, and opened up questions about the language, how it perceives itself, and in relation to other languages. Konkani is a truly queer language based on the observation by bell hook (2014) that queer not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live. References Abhishek. 2022. Interviewed by Author, 7 January 2022. Ananthamurthy, U. R. 2000. “Being a Writer in India”. in S. S. Sharma (Eds.), Four Essays. pp. 54–72. Delhi: Doaba Publications ———. 2006. Towards the Concept of a New Nationhood: Languages and Literatures in India. Talk delivered at Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India. www.iopb.res. in/~mukherji/jhap/URA/ura.pdf [accessed on 29 October 2021] Armstrong, James D. 1997. “Homophobic Slang as Coercive Discourse among College Students” in Anna Liva and Kira Halls (eds) Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender and Sexuality. pp. 326–334. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bakshi, Kaustav. 2021. ‘Sex, Commerce and Queer Rural India’, review of Launda Dancer: Anyo Hijrer Bhinna Bhuban, by Niloy Basu. https://vartagensex. org/2021/01/26/sex-commerce-and-queer-rural-india/ [accessed on 23 December 2021]. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Abingdon: Routledge. Census of India 2011. Vol. Paper 1 of 2018: Language. https://censusindia.gov. in/2011Census/C-16_25062018_NEW.pdf [accessed on 1 December 2021]. Chakraborty, Kaustav. 2021. Queering Tribal Folktales from East and Northeast India. Oxon: Routledge. Chetan. 2022. Interviewed by Author, 7 January 2022. Collette. 2021. Interviewed by Author, 29 December 2021. Daphne. 2022. Interviewed by Author, 8 January 2022.

In Search of the Queer in (Catholic) Konkani  219 Dasgupta, Rohit K. 2013. “Launda Dancers: the Dancing Boys of India”. Asian Affairs 44(3): 1–7. DD. 2022. Interviewed by Author, 8 January 2022. Deshpande, Abhijeet. 2016. “Viva Carnival Goa: a First Hand Account!” The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/things-to-do/viva-carnivalgoaa-first-hand-account/as52899019.cms [accessed on 23 December 2021]. Fergusson, Charles A. 1959. ‘Diglossia’, in Language in Culture and Society edited by Dell Hymes. pp. 429–439. New Delhi: Allied Publishers. Fernandes, Francis. 2022. Interviewed by Author, 8 January 2022. Ferrao, R Benedito. 2021. “Twenty-five Years after Dominic D’Souza: What Happens When Your Queer Icon Refuses to Be?” in Ahonaa Roy’s (eds) Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective. pp. 61–83. London and New York: Routledge. Gomes, Olivinho. 1996. “Konkani: An Overview”. In U. P. Upadhyaya’s (eds) Coastal Karnataka- Studies in Folkloric and Linguistic Traditions of Dakshina Kannada Region and the Western Coast of India. Udupi: Rashtrakavi Govind Pai Samshodhana Kendra. Greens, James N. 2001. Beyond the Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Brazil. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Halperin, David. 1993. “Is There a History of Sexuality?” In Henry Abelove, Michele Barale, and David Halperin (eds.), The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. pp. 416–431. New York: Routledge. Hansen, Kathryn. 2004. “Theatrical Transvestism in the Parsi, Gujurati and Marathi Theaters (1850–1940).” In Sanjay Srivastava’s (eds) Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia. pp. 99–122. New Delhi: SAGE Publications. hooks, bell. 2014. “Are You Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body”, Panel discussion at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, New York, 6 May 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJk0hNROvzs [accessed on 1 February 2022]. Joel. 2022. Interviewed by Author, 29 January 2022. Jon, 2022. Interviewed by Author, 25 January 2022. Joshua, A. Fishman, 1967. ‘Bilingualism With and Without Diglossia; Diglossia With and Without Bilingualism’, Journal of Social Issues 23(2): 29–38. Kaisuvker, Suraj P. 2019. “Ponda Carnival hits out at politicos over migrants assuming Goan Names” in The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/ 68262167.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_ campaign=cppst [accessed on 23 December 2021]. Kalelkar, N.G. 1962. ‘Koknni’ (in Marathi) in Bhaashaaaanni Saunskruti, pp. 105– 121. Mumbai: Mauz Prakashan. Katre, Sumitra Mangesh. 1966. The Formation of Konkani. Poona: Deccan College. Liva, Anna, and Kira Hall. 1997. Queerly Phrase: Language, Gender and Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mauzo, Damodar. 2022. “‘I had no Konkani books to read. It was the language in which one laughed’: Damodar Mauzo”, an interview with Jerry Pinto in Scroll.in. https://scroll.in/article/1014594/i-had-no-konkani-books-to-read-it-was-thelanguage-in-which-one-laughed-damodar-mauzo [accessed on 12 January 2022]. MJ. 2021. Interviewed by Author, 29 December 2021. Motschenbacher, Heiko and Martin Stegu. 2013. “Introduction: Queer Linguistic Approaches to Discourse’. Discourse and Society, 24(5): 519–535.

220  Kevin Frank Fernandes Natasha. n.d. “The History and Future of Konkani Language” in Omniglot. https:// omniglot.com/language/articles/konkani.htm [accessed on 4 December 2021]. Pereira, Jose. 1971. Konkani—A Language: A History of the Konkani Marathi Controversy. Dharwar: Karnataka University. Rodrigues, Valerian. 2013. “Konkani: the Script Controversy”. Economic and Political Weekly. 48(31). www.epw.in/journal/2013/31/web-exclusives/konkaniscript-controversy.html [accessed on 3 January 2022]. Rao, Raj R. 2000. “Memories Pierce the Heart: Homoeroticism, Bollywood-Style”. Journal of Homosexuality, 39: 3–4. Roy, Roshan. 2021. Interviewed by Author, 8 January 2021. Ru Paul, Y. 1996. Lettin it All Hang Out: An Autobiography. New York, NY: Hyperion. Sardesai, Madhavi. 2004. Mother Tongue Blues. www.india-seminar.com/2004/543/ 543%20madhavi%20sardesai.htm [accessed on 28 October 2021]. Schutte, Ofelia. 1997. “A Critique of Normative Heterosexuality: Identity, Embodiment, and Sexual Difference in Beauvoir and Irigaray”. Hypatia, 12(1): 40–62. Schneider, B. 2013. “Heteronormativity and Queemess in Transnational Heterosexual Salsa Communities”. Discourse & Society 24(5): 553–571. Sen, Parjanya. 2021. Queer-in the Eastern Himalayas: Indigeneity, Identity and Make-Up. Unpublished. Shanbhag, Anup V. 2020. Are There any Konkani Communities other Than Gowda Saraswat Brahmins? www.quora.com/Are-there-any-Konkani-communities-otherthan-Gowda-Saraswat-Brahmins [accessed on 28 October 2021]. Shenoy, Jaideep. 2018. “Census stats on ‘Amchegele’ fails to cut ice with Konkani activists” in The Times of India. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/ 64799418.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign= cppst [accessed on 1 December 2021] Silveira, Andy. 2021. Interviewed by Author, 30 December 2021. SP. 2021. Interviewed by Author, 30 December 2021. TNN. 2018. “Konkani sees sharpest drop in speakers across country” in The Times of India. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/64792344.cms?utm_ source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst [accessed on 1 December 2021]. Tristao de Braganza Cunha, 1944. ‘The De-nationalization of Goans’, in Goa’s Freedom Struggle (Selected Writings of T.B. Cunha). pp. 58–98. Bombay: Dr T. B. Cunha Memorial Committee. Venkatesh, Karthik. 2017. “Konkani vs Marathi: Language Battles in Golden Goa” in The Mint. www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/yO371luBUKFCjhQouRcBCK/Konkanivs-Marathi-Language-battles-in-golden-Goa.html [accessed on 1 December 2021]. Zwicky, D. M. 1997. “Two Lavender Issues for Linguists” in Anna Liva and Kira Halls (eds) Queerly Phrase: Language, Gender and Sexuality. pp. 21–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part V

Making the Queer Visible in the Vernacular Culture

12  Exploring Queer Literature in Nepali from the Hills of Darjeeling and Sikkim Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang

Introduction Despite developments in queer and sexuality studies in India, there exists a glaring gap in the field of queer literary and social research in the geo-­social contexts of the district of Darjeeling in the state of West Bengal and of the hill-­state of Sikkim. In-­depth research in the field of non-­heteronormative sexuality and queerness in the Darjeeling and Sikkim Hills1 is shockingly sparse, and the few exceptions reveal the lack of queer-­positive awareness, discourse, and understanding in the Hills. For example, Nikita Rai (2018) notes that there is “little knowledge or awareness about the queer community” (37) and that “traditional gender based roles push them further into closeting themselves” (26). It also doesn’t come as a surprise that Pema Gyalchen Tamang’s (2020) article reveals how homophobia, discrimination, and otherization are widespread in educational spaces in Darjeeling, with queer-­negative treatment from peers, teachers, and parents. Nirvan Pradhan’s (2022) article too attests to the unfortunate reality of a sanctioned and normalized culture of queerphobic prejudice, negligence and discrimination at Anglo-­Indian and Christian Missionary schools in Darjeeling. Focussing on the aspect of literary expression and representation of queerness and LGBTQ+ issues in the vernacular, this article locates and analyses all available texts published in the Nepali language (1989–2021) from the Hills that deal with LGBTQ+ contexts. The study considers literature produced by both queer and non-­queer poets/authors from the Hills in order to explore the linguistic politics of expression invested in such textual representations. The authors range from established, celebrated writers like Norjang Syangden, Amala Subba Chhetri, Rita Thakuri, and Sahitya Akademi Award winners Uday Thulung and Sharan Gurung Muskaan to young, up-­and-­coming poet-­ performers like Raju Poakhrel, Lubina Kritika Dahal, Avinam Manger and Mojesh Hriday Trikhatri. Through a focus on the expression and representation of queerness in Nepali, this study elicits a subjective understanding of queer sexualities specific to the Hills and how queer subjects negotiate heteronormativity and heteropatriarchy.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-18

224  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang 1 “Ek sānjh euti videshi paryataksita eutā cafémā” (1989) by Norjang Syangden Singamari-­based poet Norjang Syangden’s (b. 1952) poem titled “Ek sānjh euti videshi paryataksita eutā cafémā” or “One evening, at a café with a foreign female tourist”, from the anthology Kavitā Jasto Kavitāharu (1989), is a radically bold text that is way ahead of its time, due to its focus on issues such as homosexuality, sensuality, misogamy and anti-­heteropatriarchy. In what is perhaps the first queer literary text in Nepali from Darjeeling, Syangden’s poem brings to the fore several issues that the society in the Hills never openly discusses in public. Structured as a conversation between a man and a woman at a café, the poem narrates a dialogue questioning the heteropatriarchal norms of the society at large. Beginning with the reference to D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), Syangden provides an apt setting for the conversation between the two speakers. Midway the conversation regarding the general problems with human civilization, the female speaker confesses that she knows the male correspondent’s secret. She says: Tara ma khushi chhu sunera ki timilāi pani malāi jastae āfnae prajātiko ankmāl bhitra kampan mann pardo rahechha (Syangden 1989, lines 21–23) But I am happy to know that you too, like me, like shivering within the embrace of your own species/sex2 Here, the reality of same-­sex desires and relations that were closeted in the past, and are closeted even now, in the Hills is cleverly wrapped within the use of the term “prajāti” to mean sex/gender while denoting the idea of a species. The female speaker’s revelation is one of mutual comprehension among queer subjects; she is not outing the other speaker but acknowledging the sexuality of those closeted in a restrictive society, such as that in the Hills. Continuing with the intimate confessions regarding her own same-­sex sexual realizations and investments, the female speaker further asserts that she too ‘needs love’ but ‘not marriage in the name of love’ (Syangden 1989, lines 39–40) and that she too ‘needs a lover’ but ‘not a husband in the name of a lover’ (Syangden 1989, lines 41–42). She goes on to make a bold declaration: Ma misogamist hu, ma lesbian hu Samāj dwārā anumodit veshyā ma banna chāhanna (Syangden 1989, lines 43–44) I am a misogamist, I am lesbian I don’t want to become a prostitute sanctioned by society

Exploring Queer Literature  225 These lines are multiply radical in the sense that a lesbian woman not wanting to be dictated by the heteronorm of patriarchal reproductive economy entails a certain level of challenging and subverting the societal expectations. The poem, having being published in 1989, makes use of a queer diction that had just begun to be used in the Indian socio-­cultural contexts. As such, the poem also reflects on how terminologies related to sexual non-­ heteronormativity, vis-­à-­vis the politics of naming initiated in the Global North, had already begun circulating in the Hills in the late 1980s. The foreigner’s role in this conversation could also be considered as a radical eye-­ opener for readers (especially female readers) in the Hills. Overall, Syangden’s poem stands as a key text in the existing literature on queerness and LGBTQ+ representation in/from Darjeeling, and the themes explored in the poem, albeit briefly, showcase how contemporary writers from the region can learn to take a bolder stand on such socially and intimately relevant an issue. “Ādhā Artha” (2017) by Uday Thulung 2 Mungpoo-­based writer Uday Thulung’s (b. 1967) short story titled “Ādhā Arth” or “Half Meaning”, published in the collection titled Aksharrekhā (2017), is the perhaps the first prose fiction in Nepali from Darjeeling that deals with queerness and LGBTQ+ issues. The short story narrates the tale of Tārā. In narrating Tārā’s story, the focus is on the tussle between the necessity for self-­identification and the need for self-­assertion, all the while dealing with both complicated relationships with the self and others, including amorous interests and the nexus of class and sexuality in the society in the Hills. Early on, the narrative implies the affection and love that Tārā feels and expresses for Saralā, a close female friend. Tārā’s desire for Saralā has been depicted through the micropractices of intimacy that showcase the sensuality of tactility in a same-­sex interaction. For example, while returning from the hospital, Tārā sits with Saralā and proceeds to express her love through caresses that underscore Tārā’s overflowing passion. As they continue their journey, the narrative too continues to testify to Tārā’s love for Saralā: “Ahiley, uslé Saralālāi māyā garibasyo – premilé jasto. Lognéléjasto. Gāriko vegsangae usko premil āshaktiko raftār pani samāntar bhairahyo” (Thulung 2017, 116). Now, she continued loving Saralā—like a lover. Like a husband. The speed of Tārā’s intense infatuation synchronized with the momentum of the moving vehicle. Tārā’s relationship with another character—a man named Nirmal—introduces the context of plurality of non-­normative desire in the story. Tārā ponders over diverted affection for Nirmal and Saralā: “Prem ra āsaktiko hohallābeech usko mānsik avasthālāi paribhāshā diné shabd sanket kahān chha? Tyo paribhāshā, prakritiko rachnālāi pratinidhitva garné aksharharusangae katātira almalla pareko chha?” (Thulung 2017, 117–118).

226  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang Amidst the hullabaloo of love and infatuation, where is the word that would define Tārā’s mental state? That definition is somewhere confused along with the letters that represent nature’s creations. Tārā’s rumination reveals how, stuck in between non-­normative desires for both men and women, the path to self-­acceptance and assertion can be daunting for some queer folx, especially when notions of the natural and the unnatural matter in heteronormative societal contexts. This aspect of the discursive outfall of queer identity crisis, and subsequently, desire for and relations with other people is represented in the story through physical markers of gender and femininity. While soling rocks at work, Tārā tries to remove nail polish from the nails that do not serve the purpose of gendered expression and reflects on the in-­betweenness of life in a poignant manner: Mero sansār ādhā, rahar ādhā, āsakti ādhā, sukh ra dukh ādhā adhā. Sapnā vipanā ādhā. Upbhog ādhā. Sab ādhā chha. (Thulung 2017, 121) My world is half, half desires, half passions, half-­half happiness and sadness. Half dreams and reality. Half fulfilments. Everything is half. Yo ādhā arthko jeevan mero; sanskārko āvashyaktā viparit chha. (Thulung 2017, 120) This half-­meaningful life of mine; it is opposite to the world’s necessity. Tārā’s reflection on the half-­ness of life not only stems from the otherization that society makes Tārā face but also highlights the dislocated reality of non-­ heteronormative subjects in a conservative context. Highlighting the problems faced by queer individuals in rural areas in India in general and of the Darjeeling Hills in particular, Tārā reminds Saralā that while she and Nirmal will lead a normal life with a partner, Tārā, on the other hand, would be forsaken (Thulung 2017, 122–123). However, Saralā doesn’t budge and asserts that queer individuals like Tārā are living dignified lives outside of the small villages and towns of the Hills (Thulung 2017, 123), pointing at how several queer individuals decide to leave home for new destinations in India and abroad, based on their affordability, which depends on their class, for freer lives. The story ends with Tārā’s failed attempt at suicide; in the end, Nirmal and Saralā point out to Tārā that the latter’s sense of purpose in life is to look after two young nephews (Thulung 2017, 123). While the ending of the story reinscribes normative notions of a queer person getting a purpose in life through nurturing children, in the rural context of Darjeeling, such a purpose can be considered desirable by many non-­heteronormative subjects like Tārā for whom such alternative forms of kinship and family constructs could be a way out of the conservative society. As such, Thulung’s story not only ventures into an important social aspect of queer lives in the Hills that is often

Exploring Queer Literature  227 side-­lined due to being located in the working-­class, rural settings but also highlights how such literary representation could lend a voice to the multiplicity of queerness in the region. In this context, it becomes important to note how, in Darjeeling, in the so-­called cosmopolitanism that is constructed is based on the residues of the colonial past and the English-­ speaking/ Anglicized class, the struggles of the marginalized people of/in the rural areas and the working class are rendered almost invisible. Additionally, it is also necessary to highlight how the continued tenacity of bracketing Darjeeling predominantly with the Gorkhaland Movement locates the question of ethnic sub-­nationalism at the centre of the discourses related to the hills, pushing, as a result, other identitarian issues and contexts (such as LGBTQ+ folx, their narratives, and their problems) further into the margins of popular socio-­political discourse. “Mero bhāgko ākāsh” (2019) by Amala Subba Chhetri 3 In her poem, “Mero bhāgko ākāsh” or “My share of the sky” (2019), Darjeeling-­based poet Amala Subba Chhetri (b. 1953) narrates the tale of a boy who desires to express gender on his own terms but is subjected to opposition and otherization at the hands of the family and the society. Subba Chhetri’s poem is an important text also because of the positive assertion of queer pride and agency, despite the struggles that queer-­identifying individuals have to go through. Written in the form of a recollection, the speaker is in a monologic conversation with his mother, beginning with an attempt to remind her how the parents would, when he was a toddler, relish his non-­ normative gender expression: Thāhā chha āmā! Timro sāri ānkhāmā gājal onthmā rātā ‘lipstick’ ani aglo ‘heels’-ko ‘sandal’-mā timi ra bā sāmu mero ‘catwalk’? (Subba Chhetri 2019, lines 15–21) Remember, mother! In your sari with kohl in eyes with red lipstick on lips and in high-­heeled sandals my catwalk in front of you and father?

228  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang While recalling this specific incident about a more joyous past, the speaker also comments on how the reality changed into something restrictive and oppressive soon as he grew up, when his mother asked him: “Ta chhoro māchhé, / arulé dekhé ké bhanlān?” or “You are male / what will others say if they see you [like this]?” (Subba Chhetri 2019, lines 28–29). The speaker mentions this event as a turning point in his life because, thereafter, he started fearing the heteronormative gaze of the loved ones and of the society in general: Malāi dekhné ānkhāharusita ma darāuna thāleko ho vishādko dharsā koriyéko timrā tiraskārpurna ānkhāharu ‘lākhes’ garné bākā kathor ānkhāharu chharchhimékkā ānkhāharu saāthi-­sangiko ānkhāharu sir-­gurumāko ānkhāharu ānkhāharu ānkhāharu ānkhāharu (Subba Chhetri 2019, lines 31–41) I have started fearing the eyes that observed me your contemptuous eyes lined with dismay father’s harsh eyes that said ‘beware’ the eyes of neighbours the eyes of friends the eyes of teachers eyes eyes eyes The sense of panic and insecurity that is entailed in realising that the otherness of the queer self is inevitable is reflected in the speaker’s focus on the word “eyes” that not only gaze at his non-­normativity with disapproval but also judge his queerness. Thus, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the queer boy in the poem finds himself suffering immensely in the Hills’ social spaces. The speaker reveals how such negative treatment at the hands of the heteronormative society pushed him into a state of self-­denial and self-­reproachment: Darāuna thālé āfaedekhi Lukna thālé arudekhi Tann ra mannko khinchātānimā

Exploring Queer Literature  229 Ma tukriyé yasri ki Na milna saké kasaesita Na khulna saké kasaesita Dah banera jamāidiyé āfaelāi (Lines 58–65) I started getting afraid of myself I started hiding from others In the tussle between body and mind I got shattered in such a way that I could not befriend anyone I could not open up to anyone I froze myself like a marsh The intensity of harm done to the non-­heteronormative subject is evident in the negativity reflected in this coming-­of-­age recollection of the queer boy who, while exploring and coming to terms with his own sexuality, has to also deal with queerphobia, leaving him emotionally fragmented and personally and socially closeted. However, Subba Chhetri’s poem ends on a positive note where the queer speaker informs that he has come to realize and accept the naturalness of his non-­normative sexual subjectivity similar to “prakritiko ‘canvas’-mā eutā rang” or “a colour on the canvas of nature” (Subba Chhetri 2019, line 72). Furthermore, the speaker compares the queer subjects in the Hills to “kuiroko kāgharu” or “crows of the fog” (Subba Chhetri 2019, line 75) that are “rushing out, in flocks, parting the fog, in search of new direction” (Subba Chhetri 2019, lines 77–78) and ends the monologue with an assertion that he is also taking steps towards self-­emancipation and freedom: Thotro mānyatākā sānglāharu churālera jindagiko samar ladna kammar kaseko chhan Sachetatāko jhilkālé ahilé ujelindo chha ākāsh Āmā! Swachhanda udnechhu ma pani āfno bhāgko ākāshmā (Subba Chhetri 2019, lines 80–87) Breaking the worthless chains of opinion to fight the war of life [they] have braced themselves Now the sky is brightening up

230  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang with the embers of consciousness Mother! I will also fly freely in my share of the sky In breaking the oppressive chains of heteropatriarchal strictures against non-­ heteronormative voices, queer individuals in Darjeeling, like the speaker in Subba Chhetri’s poem, aspire towards a positive future—an assertion of LGBTQ+ dreams, aspirations, and rights. “Asāmānyatā” (2020) by Mojesh Hriday Trikhatri 4 In his poem series titled “Asāmānyatā” or “Inequality” (2020), Darjeeling-­ based poet Mojesh Hriday Trikhatri (b. 2001) draws attention to the unequal status of queer individuals in the Darjeeling Hills. With respect to the marginalization and otherization that is predominant in society, Trikhatri, especially, comments upon the dehumanizing nature of categorizing members of the LGBTQ+ community in the Hills as unnatural. He rues the hegemonic constructs of societal propriety and strictures that push queer individuals to the peripheries of both identity and subjectivity. In the first section, Trikhatri talks of the cruel realities that queer individuals in the Hills have to face—the foremost of them being labelled as the non-­ normative, unnatural sexual subject. Speaking about how societal propriety and expectations vis-­à-­vis the natural render the queer subject as the sexual other, Trikhatri points out how inhumane self-­erasure and self-­denial can be in this context. The society forces the queer individual to consider oneself/themselves as the embodiment of ugliness transformed into the socio-­sexual abject. Mukhoutāharuko bajārmā chāhena uslé lukāuna āfno satya astitva Yasaelé baneko chha oo sādhāranharuko hulmā eklo asādhāran manu. (Trikhatri 2020, lines 12–17) In the market of masks they didn’t wish to hide their3 true reality For this, they have become in the crowd of the natural the lone, unnatural human In the second section, Trikhatri continues to criticize this culture of otherization that considers anything unnatural, in the normative sense, to be outside the peripheries of the acceptable. In highlighting how human desires often

Exploring Queer Literature  231 make us turn a blind eye on the rules of nature, Trikhatri draws attention to the fact that homosexuality and non-­normative sexualities are as natural as the rain and the sun and that humans need to accept the realities of nature as natural, while realizing that it is human-­imposed, heteronormative propriety on sexuality that is unnatural. In the third section, Trikhatri voices his anguish at the cruel reality of the queer subjects in the Hills who do not have the freedom to be themselves and to live their lives on their own, dignified terms. Trikhatri evokes pity for the queer individuals in the Hills and writes as such: Bichārā, Oo ta ajhae samājbāt pani fyākiyeko mānchhe ho! Kahān pāunchha ra uslé ‘āfu’ hunu? Usko sapnāharulé pāundenan udna khullā ākāshmā (Trikhatri 2020, lines 33–36) It’s a pity, They are people rejected by the society! How would they get to be ‘themselves’? Their dreams do not get to fly in the open skies In the fourth section, Trikhatri continues to utilize the trope of the freedomless skies in the Hills and laments that the multitudes of queer individuals in the Hills, despite trying to spread their wings for flight, are unable to dream and realize freedom. Trikhatri provides an example of this restrictive reality of social heteronormativity in the Hills, with respect to the gendered nature of strictures prevalent in the Hills, in straightforward terms as such: Chhoro nae bhaera janmeko oo tara uskā utkanthāharulé ta uslāi -chhori jastae huna mann bhayo -chhori jastae pahirina ruchi bho … Yo ho usko sāmānyatā ra samājlé kahilé herna nachāheko vikriti. Dhongi samājbāta beglae baniné dourmā uslé anekau upnāmharu jiteko chha. Ra hijo-­āja uslāi, usko nāmbhandā badhi upnāmharulé sambodhit garinchha. (Trikhatri 2020, lines 53–72) They are born as a son but their desires

232  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang - make them be like a daughter - make them dress like a daughter … This is their equality and the distortion the society never wants to see In the race to become different in the hypocritical society they have earned several aliases. And they, nowadays, more than their own name are addressed by their aliases. The strictures of heteronormative performance of gender in the Hills, according to Trikhatri, suppress the natural desires and aspirations of several queer individuals who might not be comfortable in identifying with the gender assigned to them at birth. Perhaps, the most moving metaphor used by Trikhatri is that of “aliases” that are provided to the queer individuals by the heteronorm; the reductive and stigmatizing aliases, laden with contempt and hatred, in turn, become markers of queer identity in the Hills. The process of naming becomes otherized too, and the otherization of the queer subject is always already conscripted to the margins by the language of the heteronorm. 5 “Samāntā” (2020) by Avinam Manger In the poem titled “Samāntā” or “Equality” (2020), Gangtok-­based poet Avinam Manger (b. 1999), who self-­identifies as queer, expresses a small part of his reflections on being queer and unequal in the Hills’ society. In his confession-­style poetry, Manger raises some pertinent questions regarding socially constructed normativity in terms of the gender binary and the naturally conceived idea of love and freedom in plurality that is embedded in maternal affection. Manger begins the poem with an example of equality—the love and affection of his mother during his infancy. He points out how his first experience with equality came in the form of the treatment that entailed unconditional love from his mother. The extended metaphor of Mother Nature is implicated in the figure of the human mother wherein the basic idea of equality is showcased as naturally derived. However, Manger also highlights how, with the passing of time and coming of age, gendered rules of normativity started stifling his access to equality in terms of expression and choices; he represents this aspect of the restrictive social presumptions through one of the most basic entities for survival—clothes—as such: Sāno chhandā ta rāto pahilo gulābi hariyo neelo sabaelé suhāuné, Umer dhalkandae jāndā tyo chhorāko ré! tyo chhoriko ré!

Exploring Queer Literature  233 Samājko yas vargikaranmā ma ramāuna sakina Swatantra hāwāmā samāntāko bichhyounāmā hurkera holā malāi jé sahi lāgyo tyasae garé (Manger 2020, lines 4–9) While young, red, yellow, pink, green, blue – all used to make me look good, with the passing of years that is for sons! that is for daughters! I could not delight in this categorization by the society Having grown up in the free air, bed of equality, maybe, I did whatever I deemed correct Expressing his identity through choices of colours and the inability to do so without societal gaze and commentary is one of the primary contexts of heteronormative gendered hegemony that informs toxic constructs of masculinity, femininity, and the assumed given-­ness of adhering to the binary in the society. What Manger also highlights is the need to accept one’s queer non-­normativity and to reflect upon sexuality in a constructive manner. He writes: Ma nae tyasto holā bhani thāné, Anek anek nām suné, āfno bāremā anek ani kurā suné. Ké bhannu tara … Bhinnae thiyé chhu, āfulāi kaslé bhanidiné!! Mero āmālé ta mālāi samāntāko bichhyounmā nae sutāunu bhayo. (Manger 2020, lines 12–16) I concluded that, maybe, I am like that I heard several names; I heard a lot of things about myself But what should I say?… I was indeed different; who was to tell me that!! My mother had laid me on the bed of equality. Referring to the aliases that the homophobic society provides to queer individuals, Manger, having accepted his sexuality, goes on to assert that his difference is indeed a reality—a reality that does not become fiction lost in the sea of heteronormativity. Manger reminds himself and the reader that he had learned about equality first through maternal affection: something that cannot be cancelled by any heteropatriarchal society. The return to the mother–nature metaphor gets transformed into the unsettling refrain of queerness wherein the non-­ heteronormative speaker-­ subject, ostracized and otherized by a heteropatriarchal and normative society,

234  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang questions the limits of human ethics and ideals. Manger leaves the reader to rethink our presumptions about difference and equality again because, for queer subjects like him, the question turns into an eternal loop of challenging the injustice that is embedded in the defiance of the maternal and natural. “Fulmāyāko chont” (2021) by Sharan Gurung Muskaan 6 Mungpoo-­ based poet Sharan Gurung Muskaan’s (b. 1984) “Fulmāyāko chot” or “Fulmāyā’s Injury” is a poem about Fulmāyā who wants to shed away the heteronormative identity given to them at birth. The poem begins with the line “Na ful / na hunasakchha / ful rugné shool” or “Not a flower/ nor could it be / the thing that colours the flower” (Gurung Muskaan 2021, lines 1–3), trying to metaphorize the reality of the non-­binary nature of queer individuals in the Hills. The poet then highlights how the lives of queer individuals are generally painful and dangerous, like walking along a steep cliff (Gurung Muskaan 2021, lines 4–6). However, Muskaan reimagines queer individuals as fierce, courageous, and strong by comparing Fulmāyā’s chest to that of a fearless hunter who goes into the dense jungle to hunt a lion (Gurung Muskaan 2021, lines 12–13) and Fulmāyā’s shoulders to that of a soldier going to war carrying a gun (Gurung Muskaan 2021, line 14). However, Fulmāyā is also a victim of the delusion created by the heteronormative society; Fulmāyā feels a sense of detachment towards the ornaments and clothes they wear as such: Pāunko pāuju Hātko bālā Onthko lipstick Ānkhāko gājal kehi pani āfno hoina. (Gurung Muskaan 2021, lines 7–10) The pāwju on their feet The bangles on their hands The lipstick on their lips The kājal of the eyes, none of it is theirs. These lines reveal how otherization, vis-­à-­vis sexuality in the Hills, is often correlated to the inability to claim one’s desires and expressions, leaving queer individuals to forever be in a tussle with questions of non-­belonging-­ ness—with both themselves and others: Ani mann-­mastishko tārebhirbāta belgām urliraheko ākānkshāko khahresita āmālé dekhāyeko jamānāko nām mildaena bābulé dohorāyeko bātoko jāt mildaena. (Gurung Muskaan 2021, lines 27–30)

Exploring Queer Literature  235 The true, unruly desires that rise from the Tārey Bhir4 of the heart and the brain does not match the name of the times shown by mother does not match the path of the clan their father walked them through. With these lines, Muskaan describes Fulmāyā’s detachment towards the attire, the sexual orientation, and the name and customs of the homeland that have been sanctioned by the heteronormative society, further noting the importance of seeking alternative forms of kinship: Yasaele ahile āfnae nām khojné tarkharmā chha tyo Ahile āfnae jāṭ khojné tarkharmā chha tyo…!! (Gurung Muskaan 2021, lines 31–32) That is why, they are now in the process of finding their own name They are now in the process of finding their own clan…!! With these lines, Muskaan concludes that Fulmāyā’s search for a new name and community, that is distinct from the heteronormative identity and world that she lives in, is the present state of affairs for queer individuals in the Hills, drawing attention to how being queer becomes synonymous with searching home. “Fyānkiyeko mānchhé” (2021) by Raju Poakhrel 7 In his poem, “Fyānkiyeko mānchhé” or “Discarded human” (2021), Darjeeling-­based poet Raju Poakhrel (b. 1996) writes about the otherization, discrimination, and dehumanization of intersex individuals in the Hills. As stated through the title, the motif of marginalization of queer people in Darjeeling is that of being discarded: “mānavtābāta pani fyānkiyo” or “cast out of humanity too” (Poakhrel 2021, line 5). Poakhrel writes about the absence of love and affection towards queer folx from both family members and society and talks about the hatred and discrimination they are subjected to instead (Poakhrel 2021, lines 2–4). While the poem could be interpreted as referring to the marginalization of all members of the wider queer community, in the last two lines of the first paragraph, Poakhrel establishes that he is writing about intersex folx: Bhāvilé nae fyānki diyeko uslāi purush ra streebeechko lingmā (Poakhrel 2021, lines 7–8) God has flung them in the gender between male and female Poakhrel also captures the patriarchal response to the birth of intersex children, which is most often negative:

236  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang ‘Ki yaslāi mār ki ta mar’ Bā-­ko yastae shabdlé fyānkiyeko ho (Poakhrel 2021, lines 10–11) ‘Either kill this or kill yourself’ [they] were discarded by very such words from their father This, Poakhrel writes, reduces them to a state similar to that of the abject and pushes them towards the margins of the society. He writes about how queer individuals do not fit into the heteronormative society by using the metaphor of a corpse to, perhaps, suggest that the dehumanization is such that they are rendered similar to dead corpses that do not fit within the dominant heteronormative society: Jasri sāhro chha purna samājmā apurna lāsh antāuna (Poakhrel 2021, lines 16–17) It is as hard as fitting an incomplete corpse in a complete society In the lines that follow, Poakhrel compares God to hijras and kinnars5 and uses the comparison to pose questions on the marginalization of such subjects: Sānae dekhi sundae āyeko hāmi daebkae ansh ré Yadi usko ansh apurna chha bhané Daeba khud purna kahān chha ra, Yadi usko ansh kinnar ho bhané Daebapani hijrā bhandā kam kahān chha ra (Poakhrel 2021, lines 18–22) Since we were little, we have been hearing that we are a part of God If their [the intersex folxs’] parts are incomplete God himself isn’t complete, If their [the intersex folxs’] fractions are called kinnars Then God too is no less than hijras Poakhrel humanizes the social status of intersex folx by asking why all types of human beings cannot be accommodated in a society made by humans, especially when it comes to fellow humans who do not fit into dominant constructs of heteronormativity. However, Poakhrel ends the poem on a hopeful note as he writes about a world that queer subjects have built, notwithstanding all its imperfections and despite being located in the margins (Poakhrel 2021, lines 30–34). This world, Poakhrel describes, is a world

Exploring Queer Literature  237 where discarded people, like the intersex folx in the Darjeeling hills, and even God, will be accepted irrespective of caste, race, or religion: Hé daeba Kunae din yo swārthko bhidlé tiraskār gari timilāi fyānkiyo bhané jānu uskae samājmā kul, jāt, dharm nasodhi swikār hunechhau, tyahān swikār hunechhau. (Poakhrel 2021, lines 34–49) Oh God If some day you are discarded in contempt by this selfish crowd, go to their society where without being asked about ancestry, caste, or religion you will be accepted There, You shall be accepted. Overall, Poakhrel’s poem manages to capture, in few lines, the state of transgender communities in the Hills’ society. He also presents contrasting worlds: the heteronormative society v. the society of the discarded and dehumanized where the latter has more humanity and acceptance than the former. Though showcasing the lack in terms of language when it comes to naming intersex folx in Nepali, the poem questions the farce of the heteronormative society and empathizes with the transgender community in Darjeeling, asking the readers to question, reconsider, and reconfigure ideas about queer individuals, their plight, and their position in society. “Sharad” (2021) by Lubina Kritika Dahal 8 In her poem titled “Sharad” or “Autumn” (2021), Darjeeling-­based poet Lubina Kritika Dahal (b. 1998) writes about a queer subject meeting a transgender person and ruminating about the experience. Having named the stranger Sharad (Dahal 2021a, line 8), the speaker then begins to describe the autumn season (Dahal 2021a, lines 9–15)—a period of transition and contradictions, providing a poetic metaphor for the in-­between-­ness of the transgender individual. The speaker finds a certain kind of belonging towards Sharad and describes Sharad and herself as almost reflections of one another. Due to the meeting with Sharad, the speaker becomes anxious about her own sexuality, making her come to terms with her own queerness and question the limitations of language itself and the role it plays in sexual identity. She doesn’t know what to introduce herself as: “Ké bhanera chināu ma āfulāi” or “How do I introduce myself?” (Dahal 2021a, lines 63), bringing out a very important aspect of queerness in the Indian Nepali-­speaking society: the injustice that the lack in the Nepali language has done to her fluid

238  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang identity. She informs, “Mero āmāko bhāshāmā mero samlaengik pahichān chhaena” or “My mother tongue does not contain my queer identity” (Dahal 2021a, line 62), while emphasizing how language gives validity to expression of love, in this case, queer love: “Māyālāi samājmā thāun dina, bhāshā chāhinchha / boli chāhinchha, vyakt garna lavaj chāhinchha” or “To give love a place in society, there is a need for language / A need for words, words to express” (Dahal 2021a, lines 68–69). Towards the end of the poem, the speaker questions the binaries of gender and sexuality and blames the differences and demarcations between gender and identity for the problems of queer people: Sansārlé banāyeko ling ra yoniko niyamharu beech (Dahal 2021a, lines 71) Lākhau lākhau raharlāgdo māyākā kathāharu shuru huna aghi yasari nae ki ta darlé ki ta karlé ki ta mauntālé marchhan hagi? Sharad…ani ma. Ma ani Sharad! (Dahal 2021a, lines 79–84) Between the rules of penis-­vagina made by the world Lakhs of stories of desire and love cease even before they begin out of fear or compulsion or silence, isn’t it? Sharad … and me. Me and Sharad! The poem ends with a repetition of the first paragraph of the poem for the second time, perhaps almost in an attempt to archive this meeting of two queer individuals that have been failed by the Nepali language. Though Dahal’s gaze in the poem is cis-­gendered and may lead the poem to romanticize transgender folx, the poem, in itself, manages to bring a unique take on how different types of insights into the world of contemporary queer literature in Nepali from the Hills by not only bringing in themes of queerness but also initiating a conversation on the need to revisit notions of sexuality and gender in Nepali language, literature, and society beyond the idea of third gender. “Hāmro ghar” (2021) by Rita Thakuri 9 Ghoom-­ based writer Rita Thakuri’s (b. 1962) short story titled “Hāmro ghar” published in Kulchiyekā Kopilāharu (2021), narrates the story of an intersex child and subverts the existing literary representation that only

Exploring Queer Literature  239 portrays stories of LGBTQ+ subjects as that of pain and suffering. The story concerns the lives of a married couple, Diwakar and Karishma, and their child who is intersex. Thakuri captures the shame and the disappointment that parents of intersex children experience and also makes a succinct and poignant commentary on the ways society and its grapevine perpetuate this shame: Karishmālé ‘tesro lingi’ santānlāi janmāyeko kurā pani chaetko dadhelo jastae salkindae nursing homedekhi gāun-­gharsamma faeliyera gayo. Samājmā yastae kurāharukae charchā paricharchā jortorlé huné garchha … pāchakko kām garchha. (Thakuri 2021, 36) The news that Karishma has given birth to a ‘third gender’ child spread like wildfires of spring from the nursing home to the houses of the village. Such things are discussed in society with much enthusiasm … such things work like digestion pills. However, contrary to the expected narrative of perpetuated shame and otherization for the queer subject and the family, Thakuri’s story showcases parents who do not succumb to society’s heteronormative pressure. In fact, they accommodate the changes in the sexuality of their child: initially, the child is named Prasanna (name for a male child) and dressed as a boy; however, when Prasanna starts identifying more with the feminine side, her name is changed to Prashansā (name for a female child) (Thakuri 2021, 37). The story reveals a different queer narrative: Prashansālé pani āfnā duvae āmābābubāta dherae nae māyā ra sneh pāi. Yastā ‘tesro lingi’ shishuharumāthi ghardekhi nae nānā prakārkā pratārnā ra tiraskārkā ghatnāharu huné gareko pani suniyo. Tara Prashansāko prasangmā kunae yasto ghatnā bhaena. (Thakuri 2021, 37) Prashansā received a lot of love and affection from both of her parents. Incidents of ‘Third Gender’ children being prosecuted and scorned at home were also heard, but such things never happened in the context of Prashansā. In addition to a narrative of acceptance, Thakuri also reimagines the state of intersex and queer individuals in Darjeeling, where they receive love and support, instead of hate, from their family and society. With support from her parents, Prashansā becomes a gazetted officer working for the government and receives respect and admiration from known and unknown people who might have earlier looked at her with either pity or scorn: Ahile gāugharmā … Prashansāko udāhran diyera āfnā nāniharulāi Prashansā jasto hunuparchha bhanera arti updesh diné garchhan. Pahilé tyahi Prashansāsita āfnā chhorāchhoriharu kheldā ānkhā tedo pārera “tyo chhakkāsita nakhel” bhanne ishārā garneharu … (Thakuri 2021, 38)

240  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang These days in the neighbourhood … they use Prashansā as a role model for their children, lecturing them to become like her. Earlier, they used to roll their eyes if they saw their children playing with the same Prashansā and used to gesture, “don't play with that chhakka”… This incident also reveals the hypocrisy prevalent in the Indian society in general and in the Hills in particular: class status often comes to matter in relation to acceptance of people pushed to the margins in various contexts of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, caste, religion, etc. The manner in which transgender and intersex individuals are scorned using words like “chhakka”6 and later praised for their class mobility also highlights how intersectional contexts come to crucially matter in relation to societal hegemony. Later, Thakuri, as the narrator, intervenes into the narrative and poses questions for the society in the Hills, asserting that queer individuals also deserve the same respect that cis-­gendered individuals receive. However, it must also be noted that Thakuri falls short in some aspects: first, Thakuri’s intersex character sees her own identity as an aberration: Āfu “tesro lingi” … prakritiko dosh ho bhanné kurā mānilinthi (Thakuri 2021, 38) Prashansā had accepted that her third gender identity is an error of nature. Furthermore, words like ‘adhuro’ or ‘incomplete’ (Thakuri 2021, 38) and ‘durbal’ or ‘weak’ (Thakuri 2021, 37) have been used to describe Prashansā, and throughout the story, queerness is mostly seen as a disability that cannot be avoided. Towards the end of the narrative, Prashansā opens an old-­age home, and Thakuri applauds “third gender” children who take care of parents in old age as opposed to cis-­gendered children who abandon them (Thakuri 2017, 38–39), indirectly showcasing the normative requirement of queer subjects to prove their contribution to the society in order to be deemed worthy of respect and acceptance. Nevertheless, Thakuri’s attempt to showcase and reimagine familial and societal responses to intersex subjects is commendable as the story not only poses pertinent questions to the readers but also targets its criticism at the heteronormative society in the Hills and the farce it thrives on. 0 “Hu ma samalingi” (2021) by Lubina Kritika Dahal 1 In her poem titled “Hu ma samalingi” or “Yes, I am a homosexual” (2021), Dahal talks about the ignorant misidentification and negative connotations associated with the heteronormative society’s gaze upon the queer subject. She vents that both the state and the society are unable to properly identify the queer individual. With respect to how diversity in queer identities in the hills is often stereotyped, in a negative context, she writes:

Exploring Queer Literature  241 Mero nāmlāi “chhakkā” bhanera gāli Mero pahichānlāi dui palta tāli Āfae mānav bandā-­bandae katā katābāta alikatilé chhutekāharu. (Dahal 2021b, lines 4–7) They curse my name as “chhakka” Two claps for my identity Trying to themselves become human, from here and there Those left behind by a fraction Dahal chastises the society in the Hills that fails to accord proper respect to members of the LGBTQ+ community. While highlighting how the lack of queer-­positive awareness leads to stereotyping of all queer individuals as hijrās, Dahal further rues how, “in this unfathomable, endless universe” of gender identities, the society in the Hills still lives in the ignorant “illusion” that “there are only two genders” (Dahal 2021b, lines 9–10). She criticizes the people of the Hills who, “stuck in the selfish, complex social web”, are “unable to free themselves from their own (imprisoning) thoughts” (Dahal 2021b, lines 15–16). This “selfish, complex social web” of the Indian Nepali society can also be considered through the lens of performative hypermasculinity. If the social construction of masculinity is “simultaneously a place in gender relations, the practices through which men and women engage that place in gender, and the effects of these practices in bodily experiences, personality and culture” (Connell 2005, 71), it becomes necessary to reconsider the martial identity of the “Gorkha man” constructed by the colonialists and internalized by the post-­Independence Indian Nepali society, when it comes to queerness. As such, it becomes especially challenging for queer men (who do not fit into this constructed hypermasculine idea of the Gorkha male) to accept, project, or celebrate their non-­normative masculinities, for any form of deviation from the normative model would result in social criticism, condemnation, and otherization. As such, it is understandable why an empathetic Dahal’s rage becomes more pronounced in the latter half of the poem where she refuses to be “debased from the level of human dignity”, the way most non-­normative, queer individuals in the Hills’ society are “kept in the margins” (Dahal 2021b, lines 50–53). The refrain “malāi chindenan” becomes a reminder for the readers that knowing is power. Through her evocation of her queer identity and declaration “Yes, I am a homosexual”, Dahal showcases the inherent power dynamic of naming queerness, transforming the non-­heteronormative “object” of ridicule into the social “subject” of self-­confirmation and recognition. In a society where gendered homophobia and queer-­negative stereotypes are prevalent, Dahal’s poem unsettles the reader into both acknowledging and pondering over the silence that has become normative for queer individuals in the Hills,

242  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang all the while lending a voice to the dire need for speaking up, making known, and discoursing about LGBTQ+ issues in the vernacular of/in the region. The last lines of Dahal’s poem echo a powerful call for queer self-­affirmation and celebration of non-­heteronormative identities through these bold words: Ta suna Sabaelé suna Hu ma samalingi! Yo sankirna sochko dabdabiko jagjagilé pal pal marera nabānchné ma. (Dahal 2021b, lines 44–49) So listen Everyone, listen I am a homosexual I am not going to live like I am dying every moment due to the oppressive awakening of this insularity While openly (pro)claiming queerness, the speaker asserts that she is not going to allow herself be a victim of the heteronorm that pervades and limits queer-­positivity in the Hills’ society and adds as such: Pachhi nahati ma bār bār japné chhu, bār bār fakālné chhu, bār bār barbarāuné chhu, bār bār bolné chhu bār bār kahāliné chhu. Ah hu ma samalingi. (Dahal 2021b, lines 56–62) Without backing off I am going to chant again and again, I am going to fling again and again, I am going to mutter again and again, I am going to speak again and again I am going to shout again and again Yes, I am a homosexual The poem ends on a strong note of queer-­positive assertion with respect to both outing oneself and accepting one’s sexual identity. Speaking, and in this case, writing, about queerness and non-­heteronormative sexualities in the vernacular renders the Butlerian stylistic repetition as performative,7 wherein poetry becomes personal, public, and sexual at the same time, making Dahal’s poem an especially evocative text.

Exploring Queer Literature  243 Conclusion Queerness and its representation in Indian Nepali literature has mostly been limited to the “third gender” and issues of samalaengiktā or homosexuality, which have been focused upon in the analyses provided in this article. However, it becomes especially important and necessary that multiplicity in LGBTQ+ issues, lives, and experiences get discussed among the reading public in the vernacular so that the discourse on queerness does not get limited to certain class contexts by virtue of being produced in English. The politics of representation becomes a contingent issue when it comes to the question: who writes about and for the queer subject in the Hills? Most of the writers included in this study do not identify as queer; as such, questions of representing queer lives in literature become subjected to the problematic inherent in the production and consideration of such texts as queer literature. The literature written before 2021 in the Hills, with respect to queerness and non-­heteronormative sexuality, focuses on issues pertaining to aspects of identity politics, questions of subjectivity, and the need to rethink queerness in the Hills. As such, representation, through literary texts in the vernacular, does provide a potent medium for the society to initiate discourse in this context and impact socio-­cultural outlook, a survey of which is beyond the scope of this article but is necessary. Though examples of queer writing in Nepali literature in India have been scarce, with the growing tradition of performative poetry in Darjeeling and Sikkim hills, themes of queerness in Indian-­Nepali literature have seen a surge. One thing is clear: there is an urgent need for more queer voices in the vernacular from the Darjeeling and Sikkim Hills, especially when it comes to younger writers–performers. Representation is also being seen through other forms of art. For example, Nepali-­language short films Mohan Ra Madan [Mohan and Madan] and Māyā [Love] from Sikkim are focussed on queer narratives set in contemporary Sikkim. Such representations in various other forms of texts, along with the literary, would provide a rich field of research in doing queer studies in the Darjeeling-­Sikkim hills in the future. Notes 1 Hereafter, unless otherwise specified, ‘the Hills’ refers to geographical regions of Darjeeling and Sikkim in general. 2 All poetry in this chapter has been used with permission. Translation of all texts from Nepali to English has been done by the authors. 3 We use the pronoun ‘their’ to represent the gender-­neutral nature of second person pronouns used in the Nepali language. 4 Tārey Bhir is a steep cliff and tourist destination in South Sikkim. 5 The terms hijrās or kinnars are used in the Indian subcontinent to refer to eunuchs, intersex, or transgender individuals. 6 The term “chhakka” is used as a derogatory word to refer to hijras in the Indian subcontinent. More ignorantly, it is also used to refer to anyone who exhibits any form of non-­heteronormative, queer behaviour.

244  Anil Pradhan and Pema Gyalchen Tamang 7 The idea that gender is constructed through repetitive performance is central to the concept of “gender performativity” in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). Butler avers that “gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” and that “the effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self” (2002, 179, emphasis in original).

References Butler, Judith. 2002. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Connell, Raewyn W. 2005. Masculinities. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Dahal, Lubina Kritika. 2021a. ‘शरद’. Tales in Two Language, 30 December, https:// talesintwolanguage.com/2021/12/30/शरद/ (accessed on 7 January 2022). Dahal, Lubina Kritika. 2021b. ‘हु म समलिङ्गी’. लुबिना कृतिकाका ३ कविता, News Cast Nepal, 7 August, www.newscastnepal.com/posts/30885 (accessed on 7 January 2022). Gurung Muskaan, Sharan. 2021. ‘फूलमायाकोचोट’. Samvaad Prativimba, 20 December. https://samvaadprativimba.in/फूलमायाको-चोट-­कविता/ (accessed on 7 January 2022). Manger, Avinam. 2020. Samanta. Ufirstmag, 20 October. YouTube. www.youtube. com/watch?v=oD2B1xsVPrU (accessed on 7 January 2022). Poakhrel, Raju. 2021. ‘फ्याँकिएकोमान्छे ’. Tales in Two Language, 4 October. https:// talesintwolanguage.com/2021/10/04/फ्याँकिएको-मान्छे / (accessed on 7 January, 2022). Pradhan, Nirvan. 2022. ‘“Inharu Jastai”: Gender Non-­Performativity in Anglo Indian Schools’, in Mona Chettri, K. Hima, and Nikita Rai (eds), Expressing and Experiencing Gender/Sexual and other Identities in the Eastern Himalaya, pp. 133–152. Gangtok: Rachna Books. Rai, Nikita. 2018. ‘Interrogating ‘Queer’ through Prajwal Parajuly’s Land Where I Flee’. Unpublished MPhil dissertation, Sikkim University. http://14.139.206.50: 8080/jspui/bitstream/1/6129/1/Nikita%20Rai_MPhil_2018.pdf (accessed on 7 January 2022). Subba Chhetri, Amala. 2019. ‘मेरोभागकोआकाश’. खोजी 4, no. 10(April): 49–50. Syangden, Norjang. 1989. कविताजस्तैकविताहरु:कविता संकलन. Varanasi: Prashant Prakashan. Tamang, Pema Gyalchen. 2020. ‘Living in the Hills: Visualising the Queer Perspective’, The Confluence Collective, 20 August, www.theconfluencecollective.com/post/ living-­in-­the-­hills-­visualising-­the-­queer-­perspective (accessed on 7 January 2022). Thakuri, Rita. 2021. कुल्चिइएका कोपिलाहरू: कथा संग्रह. Manipur: Gorkha Jyoti Prakashan. Thulung, Uday. 2017. अक्षरे खा: कथासंग्रह. Mungpoo: Sahitya Srijana Manch. Trikhatri, Mojesh Hriday. 2020. ‘Asamanyata’. Poeti Kosh, 26 July. YouTube, www. youtube.com/watch?v=-7cvM9gn_1g&t=64s (accessed on 7 January 2022).

13 Voices of Survival LGBTQ+ Representations in Literary/Cinematic/Creative Texts in Bangla Himadri Roy The final verdict of the Supreme Court of India on 6 September 2018, may have impacted the lives of the LGBTQ+ community all across the country. There is an entire morphological change in LGBTQ+ personagraphy and performativity in the sociological structures of this country. It is important to note that the paradigmatic shift had varied characteristics of representations from state to state. But in the case of West Bengal, the scenario had a different dynamics and claims of identity and solidarity has been undergoing several changes. The historical traits of libertine and struggle for independence under the British Raj has already paved the way for future Bengalis and Bengal. The cartographies of representations of the LGBTQ+ in Bengal addresses and portrays an expression of ruthless survival, abject emotional or haptic geographies, and the tussle between inclusivity and exclusivity, intellectual elitism and common mass, the urban and the rural. The queer gaze as against the cishetero gaze tries to come into terms with objectification and subjectification of the community that has been portrayed in different shades of aesthetics. The cultural preoccupation with normativity in Bengal had its own historical narratives, and the discourse analysis of such cultural representations of LGBTQ+ community are overlooked or overemphasized in their depiction. It is also important to note that LGBTQ+ has been used instead of queer with a purpose to not let the homogenization of subcultures of the community get amalgamated, instead this terminology will make it remain exclusive, and also their existential dynamics and essence of identity varies within the groups of the community that needs special attention. The history of Bangla bhasha is not the domain to discuss in this chapter, but what needs to be focussed is the language of the Bengali LGBTQ+ people. Queering the mainstream Bangla with words and phonetics of LGBTQ+ not only creates an intertextuality of struggling identity but also builds up a relationship with mainstream linguistic and semiotic structures of the contemporary Bengali socio-cultural constructions. This exclusivity of the community’s language obviously negotiates the cisheteronormativity with the homonormativity. The usage of queer words and phonetics in literature, cinema and other texts may be to some extent epistemological inclusion. But this step has undergone a phase of struggling survival through abusive and slang words DOI: 10.4324/9781003440536-19

246  Himadri Roy for the LGBTQ+ community, while in reciprocation the community formulated a coded language to use within the community so that the socio-cultural Bengal doesn’t decipher the meaning and interpersonal spaces within the syntactical structure of this exclusive bhasha. The realm of intersubjectivity and hegemonic consciousness of artists across Bengal have successfully addressed this metonymic and phonetic existence of the community. This chapter tries to unfold these linguistic and semiotic structures, and critically analyse the LGBTQ+ representations. Literary Texts For the last few decades the literature that represents the LGBTQ+ community has been limited. Numerous genres are there now for the readers—novels, short stories, dramas, etc. But here, the analysis will only be on novels, short stories and a play. Probably the territorial spaces are characterized through their representations from the rural articulations, mainly focussing on one group of the community—transgender; their existential identities, their key concerns and issues, adding new vocabulary in literary and cultural studies. Much later with the emergence of new literatures mainly blogs, personal biographies, social media confessional literature, and other forms of new media literatures created a space for all the other members of the community to be a part of the literary textual aesthetics. Syed Mustafa Siraj’s Mayamridanga (1972) creates a canonical history disrupting the concepts of normativity and gender performativity, situating it on a territorial landscapes of the Bengal’s hinterland (Aalcap), locating it in a creative space of much wider interdisciplinary range. The subjective relationship of the leader of the group of polli-gaan, Jhaksa, his wives and his newlove, Shanti. The rural tradition of female impersonators as ‘Radha’ in the socio-cultural norms of polli-gaan is the main theme here. Shanti Charan becomes Shanti Rani, and the guru (Jhaksa) takes pride in denaturalizing the biological specificity of the sexually differentiated body. The natural talent of gender performance enhances the transsexualized body of Shanti. In fact, Shanti uses the body as a catalyst for multiple erotic possibilities in the novel in desperation of attention for becoming famous. The personagraphy of Jhaksa creates a morphology of sexual normativity—practising polygamy as cultural tradition and popularizing the creative tradition of female impersonator. The novel is aesthetically woven with femininity, masculinity and transsexuality with emotional relationship amongst all in a utopian world of Bengal’s rural life. Moreover, the narratological framework with its linguistic structure carries the authenticity of rural Bengal. The transgender and pansexual representations have been exemplified with intersectional vision of Siraj. The novel has been adapted into theatrical and cinematic representations, which authenticates it to be the canon of LGBTQ+community of Bengal. It took almost two decades to re-establish this representational articulation of the transgender community through Brahma Bhargab Puran (1993)

Voices of Survival  247 by Kamal Chakraborty. The novel very interestingly creates a semblance of historicity and creativity. This is the first time a fictional novel has invocation to God and Goddess Ganesha and Saraswati, setting up a literary convention of appealing to a muse or deity as the Greek traditions followed, almost trying to appeal to the muse or deity to create a nomenclature of a literary classic. Chakraborty sets up the pace from the first scene itself to the last. The narratological structure follows a linguistic framework of colloquialism and gender embodiment. Heteronormativity and transnormativity have been blended so well that the readers get absorbed into the story and can relate it to their contemporary lives. The novel encompasses several transgender characters—Rambharose, Shabnam, Chameli, Golapi and others. The protagonist, Shashi Kumar, tries to fight for the transgender issues, social recognition, giving them due respect, and consider them part of the socio-cultural tradition. Although the demographical location of the novel is situated near Kolkata, the rural livelihood and the notional gender performativity have been highlighted in details. The deconstruction of the self-constitutive identity gets investigated through social expectations of gender performances and the cultural mechanisms to sustain the specificity of gender personagraphy. These have been portrayed in the exact manner in the contemporary times. The innovative creativity that Chakraborty makes the true voice of the ruthless survival of the transgender community have a literary aesthetics in the context of not only socio-cultural normativity but also conventional religiosity and mythological prejudices that circumvents the transgender in Bengal. Probably the degree of consciousness that can be assigned to Tilottama Majumder’s Chander Gaaye Chand (2003) is that of exploring the cultural variations of West Bengal from the North to the South of the state. It begins with linguistic variations of gendered language in the fish market. The scenario probably deciphers two prominent aspects of Bengal and its culture— outrageousness of egoistic individuals carrying manipulative marketing strategies and the other socio-psychological framework of the writing. Yes, buying and selling fish in a market requires the characteristics of bourgeois culture articulating dissociated aristocratic gastronomical taste through materialistic consumerism, cause the fish is Ilish (hilsa). The unquestioning bourgeois centric characteristics of an aggressive pastoralism are created through this onset scene. Majumder proclaims the literary authenticity through this, but what ruptures the narratological structure is its metaphysical semblances and metaphorical language. Queer linguistic theorist, Livia, argues that the biographical stances many a times superimposes the deployment of egoistic elitism when there are subtle differences between linguistic cultures of the same demography. Rather, put simply, settling the narrative structure with such depiction not only destroys the imagination of the readers but also reiterates the intellectual and scholastic superiority through intersectionalities of existence. This eroticization of the marginality makes the representation of the LGBTQ+ community appear victimized and vulnerable. The protagonist, Shruti, gets into such entrapment through homoerotic

248  Himadri Roy normativity of hostel life. The cisgender approach of the community is emblazoned through objectification of queer romance as scholastic metaphors. The simultaneous reduction of sexuality deconstructing the masculine culture at periphery and feminine desire as prominent self-identity. The bisexual character of Debarupa is shown as not only domineering but also epitome of libertine and absolute self-engrossed feminine identity. While her serenading lover, Abhrangshu, is a typical Bengali masculine representation and portrayed as a meek, soft-spoken, polite and obedient. The other roommate, Shreyoshi, has also been seen through haptic lens of existence. Although the subtle difference of homoerotic culture and homonormative culture couldn’t be demarcated, still this novel deals with at least the existential and cultural differences of North and South Bengal in a positive atonement and optimistic literary approach. But there was a huge gap of literary productions between Majumder’s novel and Holde Golap (2015), by Swapnamoy Chakraborty. This novel tries to break traditions of literary representations of the LGBTQ+ community. But instead of historicizing the agony and ruthless survival, he creates a narratology of history through another symbol of metaphysics. The historiographical narratology lacks the essence of literary aesthetics through its eulogizing intellectuality. Paradoxical imageries and intellectualized thoughts garner the narratological structure in such a manner that gender performativity and subjective representation diminishes into objectification of the transgender community. Major thematic structures of hyper-sexualization and stigmatization of diseases seem to be more of prophecies than a literary depiction. Chakraborty ruthlessly complicates the linguistic structure and tries to create an archaeology of extremely complicated thoughts of literature. Instead of representation through the narratological frame of queering the mainstream, it simply reiterates mainstreaming the queer. From the title itself, the symbolic significance justifies friendship and joy, but Chakraborty criticizes the relationship within the community as egoistic, coward, betrayal and jealous. The readers do have a glance of friendship all across the narrative structure, with glimpses of joy spread all across. But the atonement of egoism and jealousy portrays the community in such a lurch that the true sense of representation remains banal and highly intellectualized. The crudeness of polished language, the random usage of Anglicized Bangla words, and metaphorical imageries strangulates the main motive of the novel. Historicization of each and every group within the LGBTQ+ community seems to be an elite task of creative objectivity. Butlerean gender performativity and the personography of the protagonists get complicated and the real issues get submerged within this elitism through complex syntactical structure and random metaphorical imageries. Diseases, both physiological and psychological, concerning the LGBTQ+ people are overwhelmingly emphatic not in a literary sense but in a heteronormative way. The medical discourse takes over the narration through overdetermined transsexuality. The crucial differences between queer studies and transgender studies are

Voices of Survival  249 provokingly overlooked through the amalgam of everyone of the community. This literary representation is in fact, textually objectified, and lack of the phenomenologically heuristic transgender community make the book extravagantly a glory of intellectualized elites. The journey from Dulaal to Dulaali or Parimal to Pari seems radically operational. The separation of desire to ecstasies, failure to recovery, refusal to transitivity, assemblages to mutual constitution, and deconstruction to reconstruction—work in this novel from a cisgender heteronormative gaze. The depiction of gendered bodies is taxonomical and terminological instead of resistance and visibility of embodiment. The role of closet and trans identification are ignored to create a space inside the context of LGBTQ+ representation. An understanding of subjectivity is heteronormatively constructed, and there are no psycho-sexual interventions of narration, instead there are psycho-pathological portrayals of both transgender community and the queer community through Aniket, Pulak or Pawan. The imputations of hypersexuality and aberrant gender transgression are created through these cisgender characters—one who wants to explore the trans and queer world through heteronormative gaze, one who wants to boost up his egoistic elitism through research on them, and the other wants to satisfy the complex philanthropic attitude through providing socio-cultural space in the mainstream. Chakraborty makes his narratological structure through historicization and literary misrepresentation of the LGBTQ+ community. Giving transsexuality an archetypal storyline or the endurance of the transitivity and painful reconstruction or the normalizing the HIV could have done justice to the representation of the community. Although many literary critics consider this as a distinguishable literary text, trying to combine historicity and literature; but loses the track of both and collapses within intellectualism and elitism, and couldn’t portray the differences between the trans and queer community per se. Alokparna in her book Rano Biswas Karo Naam Noi (2019) deals with metaphysical structures of existence. The explorations of sexuality in the protagonist—Rano—and his friends seem to be dwindling between the psycho-sexual behaviour and the socio-cultural gender performativity. Although the aesthetics are gross and banal, there is still a literary aspect of meta texts within the narratological structure. The adolescents carry a fervour of eagerness and anxiety representing a typical Indian teenager with lots of curiosity and inquisitions. The personification of vegetables almost creates the prevalent food culture of Bengal and its people. Sommer, the food culture theorist, argues that using the cucumber as a literary metaphor almost euphemistically culminates the personality attributes and in this case it overemphasizes as more a cisgender metaphor than a queer metaphor. The socio-cultural fascination with food almost legitimatizes the dissident representations of the LGBTQ+ community of Bengal. Using vegetables as sexual metaphors varies from culture to culture, authenticates Varriano in his essay. With that in mind the queer presentation of the cucumber in Hindi-speaking region would be carrot or radish. Interestingly the queer sexual metaphors lacks its literary

250  Himadri Roy aesthetics in Alokparna’s work. The libertine attitude of Taru Mashi is the Bengali characteristics of subjective masochism—controlling, demanding and domineering. Her masochistic aesthetics conjoin the subverting masculine heterosexuality and the feminine essentiality. She re-inscribes the aestheticization of sexual desires of Rano in her way and the psychic configurations of Rano are interestingly emerged as submissive sexuality. The painful emotions of this character almost re-establishes the selfhood and identity through usages of paradoxical metaphors. The sexual scenes between her and the main protagonist are intellectualized and complicates it further with the strange imageries. The figurative language of narration lacks the philosophical understandings for the readers. Rano uses figurative imaginations of his cats, establishing his fetish perspectives and emphasizes the genitive power of socio-cultural normativism of LGBTQ+ people. It has been observed that the community, specially males, love cats as pets to overcome their loneliness and despair. The subservient performativity of Rano has been portrayed through the same light but more paradoxically. His belief and love for cats are considered culturally dissident, as the normative tradition considers cats as a bad omen in Bengal. It almost seems like Rano is a bad omen in his Biswas family. This characteristic of Rano seems Sedgwickean anti-identitarian in contrast to that of Taru Mashi but fails to justify the Butlerean philosophy. Rano doesn’t believe in any kind of constrictions within his desires and considers that adolescence is exploration of desires. But the portrayal of such sexual desires is lacking in the narratological structure of the novel. The ejaculation of semen is perceived through adulation and admiration by Rano, and the adrenaline rush seeing men is forcefully neutralized through metaphysical metaphors. His abhorrence towards gays, like Bablu or Pinaki, makes the portrayals more stringent and so the space of creative aesthetics is lost. The novel at the end fails to intellectualize imagination of creativity with an overdose of metaphorical imageries. All these three Bangla novels of this century seem to create a sense of metaphysical epoch of literature that represents the LGBTQ+ community. After the Bengal renaissance, the novels seem to drag the community back to its metaphysical space where the clash of science versus traditional knowledge becomes significant. Instead of progression towards modernism and post-modernism, the post-globalization of the literature in Bangla representing the LGBTQ+ community corroborates the entire essence into urban elitism and highly intellectuality, where the ignorance of the common people seem to be lost, rather pushed back to their peripheral socio-cultural space. Although they try to use banal wits, intersectionalities of the trans and queer community are situated in compartmentalized socio-cultural space in these kind of literary works. This stark, rigid boundary of such scholastic representations seems to be keeping the trans and queer community at bay through such egoistic elitism. But as a saviour, the short story writers from the rural spaces of Bengal gave their invisible, unrecognized voices a literary aesthetic and creative space of recognition for the community.

Voices of Survival  251 The genre of short stories of Bengal gives an established non-mainstream and non-normative voice and has adequacy of intersectionality and minorization. It is quite interesting to see that the elaborative embodiment has the essence to capture the reader within it and follows the narrative structures of short stories. Satyajit Ray, Samaresh Basu, Maheswata Devi, Ashapurna Debi have all reconstituted and reconfigured the sexuality in mostly heteronormtaive portrayals, but recently short story writers, bloggers and virtual story-tellers have composed some aesthetically creative literary pieces that are worth mentioning. Arijit Bhattacharya’s Uttaran deals with the pains of the traumatic experience of coming out and being abhorred by the family of Aakash. The polemics of sexual attraction is dealt with nuances of the relationship between Aakash and his boyfriend, Aditya. After Aakash decides to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. Aditya’s transphobia has been portrayed in the generative vexation of utopian projections and representations. He cannot accept Aakash’s transitional phase and leaves him. Later, two social workers, Narayan Chakraborty and Payal Sen, help Aakash with their emotional and moral support. The transformation of Aakash to Rupa, makes the individual acquire a sense of pride and self-acceptance. She continues her Bharatnatyam dance and becomes famous, and gets accepted in society and her family after her fame. This utopian conclusion may sound superficial, but the narratological structure makes the story engaging and it solves the purpose of the author. E Kemon Bhalobasha by Mausumi Pramanik deals with the story of Mitu, Debesh and Falguni. The story begins with the murder of Falguni himself. The relationship between Falguni and Debeshis at the forefront. Falguni was forced to lead a cisgender heterosexual married life, which he felt was unjust to him and his love for his brother-in-law, Debesh. The compulsive heterosexual matrimonial alliances are portrayed with magnificent literary aesthetics. Pramanik depicts the emotional and ephemeral relationship between the two male protagonists. Unacceptability of sexual orientation and socio-cultural traditions of gender performativity are the beauty of this story. The emotional turbulences of Debesh is represented in such a way that dual attraction of bisexuality comes upfront, while the clandestine relationship with his brother-in-law makes Debesh’s psychological enjambment more authentic. Falguni’s love gets overruled by the ­heteronormative gender performances and compulsive heterosexual engagements. The emphasis on gay and bisexual masculinity creates a literary aesthetics that seems to reach a point where Falguni is made to be victim of patriarchal heteronormative socio-cultural tradition and Debesh is shown with his incessant tussle between his cisgender approach to relationship and his unfathomable, homonormative, deep love for Falguni. Abhishek Jha’s Chlorosis deals with rural life and the struggling livelihood of villages in Bengal. Although the story revolves around Labanya, Popita Maai and Golap and their relationship, but it focusses mainly on the food cultural traditions of rural Bengal. Despite buying all organic vegetables and different animal products, Labanya is deprived of healthy food as her mother-in-law keeps

252  Himadri Roy emotionally torturing her and verbally abusing her most of time. Popita Maai treats her with gastronomic delicacies whenever they are together. The love and emotional dependency on each other seems so homoerotic that Jha’s taxonomization encompasses extra textual knowledge and food culture of Bengal in details. The rural homoeroticism semblances with the alignment with emotional pathos and self-determination. The rural household culture of kitchen and cooking creates a sensuality of relationship within that domain, and the morphology of depictions of taking bath are filled with sexual innuendoes. Jha justifies the title through the dehumanization of vegetables and aesthetic transformativity of homoeroticism of his protagonists. His other story Isboutoup also draws the same symbols and metaphors that the negotiating space between homoeroticism and homosexuality almost appears flimsy. Jha naturalizes the healthy ecological environment through his Isboutoup, her husband Jameer, and his colleagues, especially Gosainda. Although the story portrays the Muslim culture of rural Bengal bordering Bangladesh, the homoerotic culture, exuberance of heteronormative sexual discussions and embodiment of masculine prowess transforms and reconfigures the entire ecological demography into queer environmentalism. Jha’s both short stories focus on the food culture of Bengal that has been hardly portrayed; and the ecology and environment of North Bengal that has had almost no representation after the Bengal Renaissance. With the same intonation, Debargya Goswami’s Chokh also focuses on the North Bengal culture of homoeroticism and environmentalism but dealing with much younger generation. The protagonist, Lablu alias Tirthankor Burman, is compelled to work on meagre earning despite being an undergraduate and his sexual deprivation confuses his existential self-identity and creates a different kind of epistemological articulation. Goswami’s Shuwa also follows the same epitome of mainstreaming the homoerotic reliance on a healthy, ecological politics that is identity-based intersectionality and biopolitical desire of the LGBTQ+ community for survival. Goswami’s stories carry the North Bengal linguistic narratology, similar to that of Jha’s stories. Henceforth, the short stories of blogs and story-telling platforms of new media carry the nuances of realistic Bengal maintaining the narratological aesthetics of literary creativity through depictions of LGBTQ+ community of the rural Bengal. Most importantly, the intellectualized elite representations of later (contemporary century) novels have been exoticizing the marginalized voices of the LGBTQ+ community of rural Bengal, which the short story writers could do justice in true sense. In the same mood set by Kamal Chakraborty in his phenomenal work of historicizing the transgender community, Manoj Mitra in his play Chhayar Prashad (1997) deals with a spiritual love between a teacher and his disciple. Set at the backdrop of powerlessness of Mauryan Empire of Bindusar, his son Sumon under the guidance of Chanakyadev was learning the political polemics within the structure of powerful regality. The story sets the thematic narration of untouchability and casteism in the contextual voices of Butlerean performativity. The spiritual love between Chanakyadev and Sumon seems

Voices of Survival  253 to portray similarities with Amir Khusrau and Nizamuddin Auliya or JamaliKamali. The historicity of the contemporary context socio-political turmoil of the Kargil War, the play almost sets the pace of casteism and gendered voices of the marginalized people. Amidst these turbulent socio-political narratives, Mitra’s play seems to talk about homonationalist queer voices in the Indian context more than Bengal. The directly political effects of ecocoloniality, homonormativity and homonationalism are the only assertive voices of freedom and resistance against the cisgendered heteronormative hatred. The emotional storm of Sumon shown in the play is aesthetically created for subjectivity and integrity. The most pivotal part of such a relationship isn’t sexual nor erotic but quintessentially spiritual where the emotional dependence is so strong that banal essence of body seems non-existent. Mitra tries to encapsulate many contours of gender performativity and gendered identity. The various methods of story-telling has been quite popular since last few years. Magazines like Swikriti and others create literary space for writers all across Bengal. Popular websites for story-telling are gurchandali.com, aparjon.com, storymirror.com and many more, which also need mentioning here as they provide literature for the consumption of the general public. Different genres have been used to decipher the narratological literary representations of the LGBTQ+ community. The artistic creativity in Bangla literature gradually has positioned itself in such a narratology that the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community becomes authentic and mainstream. The cinematic texts carry forward this legacy with more emphatic spectatorship and wider appeal of all the social strata of Bengal. Cinematic Texts Nil Nirjone, released in 2002, directed by Subrata Sen, is claimed to be the first depiction of the LGBTQ+ community. Although the central theme of the film is about relationship, the LGBTQ+ relationship has not been portrayed with extensive screen time. The portrayal of the relationship of the two protagonists, Rashmi and Mou, played by Raima Sen and Mou, is not explicit but deals with certain embodiment ring to attempt a necessary polemic of post-modern narrative and objectivity of film representations of the community. It fails to get into the phenomenological inquiry of the community in an intersubjective structure, namely language and cultural homonormativity. It rather expresses the sexual dissidence morphing through subversions of heteronormative culture in the thematic structure of relationship. The non-verbal communications between the two seems a neo-liberal investments of eroticism; as portrayed in the film the way their happiness depends on each other is just an incisive visual representation of the community. The kinaesthetic and spatial entanglements are just representational gendered performances as the movie focusses with more screen time to the other relationships. Such lucid and bleak portrayals do make the topic more invigorating for spectators who create their equal sensations.

254  Himadri Roy The same director released another movie in 2012, Koyekti Meyer Golpo. The movie encompasses few girls staying together and their relationships that develops gradually. The flat where they stay is under the custody of a transgender woman. Beside this mere representation, the film portrays the livelihood of single women struggling to make life better in cities, who rather makes their lives more murky by entering sex-work. Almost towards the end, Subrata Sen tries to contextualize the idea of a lesbian relationship through verbal communications and for a very meagre screen time. The non-verbal communications have been more cisgender and heteronormative. The phenomenological reading of the frames where non-verbal communications take place seems positionalities of experimenting on non-normative identities, as it alienates the characters from the main structure of the story. But it turns out to be as a protective, normative and homely space in terms with the locationality of the sequences in the film. The gendered embodiment and performativity couldn’t create a queer dialectic, and in the attempt it rather ruptures into a symbolic order of heteronormative existences of femininity. 10th July was directed by Ratul Ganguly and released in 2013. This movie revolves around a bisexual man, Arko, played by Abhrajit, falling in love with his boss, Mridul, who has been portrayed as gay, played by Chiranjeet, suffering from myelodysplastic syndrome. The first sexual depiction of their relationship seems quite common as perceptualized by the heteroarchal society. Portrayed with very naive heteronormative gaze, it seems the scene was forced upon the characters through a weak narratological frame. At a party in Mridul’s house, Arko gets drunk and is not in a condition to go back home, and so he stays. In the morning he realizes that he had been seduced by his boss to have sex with him. This kind of hegemonic articulation creates an abhorrence towards gay men who are viewed as promiscuous individuals. In this narrative, the conscious horrific intersectionality of power and position makes Arko sexually exploited in this context. Such emotional abuse of the body by objectification and sexualization makes the cinematic aesthetics appear crude and bleak, and tends to generalize one kind of standpoint marginalization—abhorrence and hatred. Mridul struggles through his marginalized sexual identity as against political economic identity. To worsen the representations of the community, Mridul is shown as a diseased body who would require empathy from everyone he interacts with. Misrecognition of such manifestations of sexuality and disease is almost the prerogative of a heteronormative gaze and a haptic mode of spectatorial engagements. Ganguly’s film falls into pieces as a transgressive implication of all intersectionalities of sexuality and representations of the community. But at least Family Album, released in 2014, directed by Mainak Bhaumik, has positive LGBTQ+ representations. The film deals with the relationship and dark secrets of the protagonists and the society they live in. The emotional turbulence begins with the eccentric protagonist, Atrika, played by Paoli Dam, who is a photographer/photo-artist and portrayed with a high sexual libido. She comes across Rintu alias Moitryee, played by Swastika

Voices of Survival  255 Mukherjee, at the funeral of Atrika’s grandmother, where they instantly connect with each other over the poetry of Banalata Sen and later exchange messages on reading and interpreting the poetry of Bengal. The director uses the metaphor of literary aesthetics to build up the epistemological pride of cultural consumption. This essentialism of Bangla films had been questioning the heteronormative structure of subjective positionality of lesbians. After a few frames when Moitryee comes to meet Atrika at a dinner date, Atrika comes out to her as a lesbian. This creates a myriad form of Sedgwickean sexual libertine attitude of Atrika into an ideological subjective character and impacts the audience with homonormative narration. Mainak creates aesthetically the over-determined mechanism of subjective representation with cultural performances and gendered performativity. Critiquing about socio-cultural practices and perceptualizing the individuality on the basis of right and wrong continues in the film through a symbolic order of heteronormativity and social practices of human subjectivity. The kissing scenes are portrayed more with political authenticity to deal with non-normative subjects and displaces the eroticizing identity. Moitryee’s coming out to her boss seems an incorporation of the cishetero gaze to normative trajectories of relationship. The film’s end with dying by suicide almost makes it a necessity of social transformation of normativity, advocating the demarcation of public and private, individuality and sociality, intimacy, affection, romance and love through the depiction of socio-cultural inhibitions and prejudices. Mainak tries to portray a sensation of the heteronormative gaze of the representation of the community in the culturally richer, intellectualized spaces of Bengal. Raja Sen adapts Siraj’s novel Mayamridanga in 2016 into a cinematic text. Sen proves that the aesthetics of queer creativity is intersubjective and inter-representational. The fragmented emotions of the protagonists, Shanti, played by Goutam Halder, and Jhaksu, played by Debashankar, portray the performative experimentations and melancholic sufferings of the LGBTQ+ community. Although the fidelity part of adaptations remain true to the narrative technique, the cinematic language gets submerged into the exoticization of the community. The performative space becomes a multi-dimensional erotic space through gendering the mainstream and mainstreaming the LGBTQ+ people, and the aesthetic metaphysical understandings carry the rural livelihood in the same paradigmatic structure of the original text. The self-absorbed personagraphy of Jhaksu controls the frames in such a stringent manner that other protagonists could hardly negotiate the space of subjectivity and objectivity. Sen does a significant experiment that maintains the normalization of the epistemological understandings of the community as Siraj did in his literary work. To enhance the beauty of LGBTQ+ representations of Bangla cinematic texts, Kaushik Ganguly’s Nagarkirtan, released in 2018, stands apart. The film centres on the central character of Puti, alias Parimal, played by Riddhi Sen, and Madhu, played by Ritwick Chakraborty. Parimal from childhood

256  Himadri Roy is shown to be confident about his dissident sexuality. Although born as male, his gendered identity develops into transgender leading Parimal to justify his feminine essence and running away from home, and he takes shelter amongst the hijras of Hazra Lane, Kolkata. Gradually he transforms into Pari, and then to Puti, literally meaning a small fish that is devoured by many bigger fishes in the pond, but metaphorically along with the name, the other resemblances are revealed gradually in the film. Transsexuality has been portrayed with such a subtle sense of aesthetic beauty, that the transmogrification of Swapnamay’s literary representation couldn’t be parallel to it. Interestingly, even the Guru-Maa, Anjali, doesn’t force Puti to undergo sexual reassignment. But Puti always wanted to undergo the surgery to be a complete self at par with the neoliberal, heteropatriarchal avocation of socio-cultural production of contemporary Bengal. She falls in love with Madhu, a delivery boy with a local Chinese restaurant, who also plays flute in kirton/kirtan—devotional chants/songs devoted to gods/goddesses. One day they elope. Madhu, who happens to be from Nabadwip, takes Puti, dressed as a woman, to his home just a day before Holi, the festival of colours. She is well received and accepted as a ‘friend’ of Madhu. Madhu’s family is well respected in the locality since they sing devotional songs in the local temple and are known as kirtaniya poribaar. In the evening, the family goes to participate in the kirtan. Madhu’s elder brother plays the harmonium, the mother plays the kortaal (cymbaals), and Madhu plays the flute. The kirtan song that plays reminds Puti of her childhood and parents, and she breaks down. While crying, her wig falls off. The malappropriation of extra-objectified consciousness portrays the superficiality of haptic morphology. Full of guilt and shame, she runs away, leaving behind her mobile phone and the ladies’ bag. She vanishes off from the sight and thought of Madhu and his family. Madhu frantically searches for her and calls her mobile, which is answered by Madhu’s sister-in-law. He tells the truth thinking it is Puti on the other side. Madhu is then thrown away from his home, for bringing disgrace to the family name. While searching for Puti, Madhu keeps meeting people. And then he comes to know that a group of hijras had thrashed Puti. Every hijra group has their own demarcated periphery, where they earn their bread and butter, and no other hijra from another group can enter there and try to earn. This hierarchical structure of transgender power dynamics makes complications of individual identity and community identity. Hungry and dying out of thirst, Puti begs from a handful of local shops. The local group of hijra catches her, strips her, beats her black and blue and pours blue coloured water on Puti. The semblances of blue colour doesn’t only signify the symbolic sadness and gloomy emotions but also portrays the masculine dominion of socio-cultural traditions. The symbolic resemblance of blue is used as a metaphorical trope to exonerate the colour to Lord Krishna and is shown at many places—from Madhu with the flute to the blue body of Puti, from the clay idol of Lord Chaitanya to the devotional songs. The local cops interfere and take Puti under their custody. Madhu

Voices of Survival  257 runs to the local police station to release Puti. Before he can meet her, Puti hangs herself. Madhu is shattered. The movie ends with Madhu dressed up like a woman, entering the shelter home where Puti stayed. From the title of the film itself, it unfolds a tradition that is considered to be religious and pious. The desire of a LGBTQ+ person to be loved and have a family is well portrayed in the film. Kaushik Ganguly brings a magnanimous aesthetic reality in motion through the haptic morphology of representations of LGBTQ+ community. But standing with pride for the LGBTQ+ community is the phenomenal trilogy of Rituparno Ghosh’s aesthetic beauty of creativity. Although these films cannot be set in this categorization of chronological releases of cinematic representations of the community, Ghosh must be given special space for his artistic creativity and aesthetically beautiful films. Arekti Premer Golpo (2010), directed by Kaushik Ganguly, is the dynamic positionally of liminal space of a documentary filmmaker, Abhiroop Sen, played by Rituparno Ghosh, and Basu, his assistant, played by Indraneil Sengupta. Abhiroop travels from Delhi to Kolkata on a project to create a gendered personography of Chapal Bhaduri. The film shifts between the real Chapal Bhaduri and Abhiroop with his fantasy of Basu as Kumar. The relationship between the two is aesthetically edited in such a narratological transformation that the ontological schemas of existence of characterizations get problematized through gendered performativity of Chapal Bhaduri and Abhiroop. Ganguly’s work created a transcendental consciousness not only of gendered body and performance but also created a subjective normativism. The experimentation of complexities in relationship is enhanced through Rani alias Gopa, played by Churni Ganguly, and Tushar alias Uday, played by Jisshu Sengupta. The subtle differences of transvestites and/ or female impersonators with that of gay and/or bisexuality is in its morphology of representations through the intersubjectivity of gender, body and performance. The second in the sequel is Sanjoy Nag’s Memories in March, released in 2011. Rituparno continues to create aesthetic narratological structure of cinematic texts in such subjective elaboration of performativity and sexuality that his viewership encompasses not only the LGBTQ+ community but also to all Bangla cinephiles. The film depicts the psychological battle of coming out to a mother. The accidental death of Siddartha Mishra alias Babu compels his mother, Aarti Mishra, played by Deepti Naval, to penetrate his closeted life through incidental memories they shared. The semiotic analysis of the artefacts and symbols used in the film portrays the phenomenological understandings of the closet and disclosure of sexual identity. The communications between Aarti and Ornob, played by Rituparno Ghosh, is the queer version of socio-cultural redemptive power and aesthetic politics that normativity clashes of cisheteroarchal and homoarachal become evident. The authenticity of identity performances and gender performativity has been portrayed through psychological and spatial deconstruction. The positionality and locationality of reassuring

258  Himadri Roy homonormativity affect the socio-political dynamics of gendered existence and the morphology of closet. The secrecy of protective sanctity and its epistemological understandings seem to be at the spatial temporality of existence of LGBTQ+ identity. Nag makes a justified characterization by representations of subtle conscious and conscious perceptions of the community. The liminality of disclosure of sexual identity depends on time and space and the film creates that aesthetic with artistic beauty. The third and the last in this trilogy of LGBTQ+ representations is Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish, directed by Rituparno Ghosh himself, released in 2012. The film moves around the main protagonist, Rudra, played by Rituparno himself, and his struggling of his sexual identity, and his acceptability of relationship with Partho, played by Jisshu Sengupta. The cultural representations of performances and gendered bodies are the main narratological structure, complicating it with adoption of a child by the community in the context of not only Bengal but the entire Indian jurisprudence. The complexities of political correctness are portrayed through the introduction of a heteronormative protagonist, Kasturi, played by Raima Sen, who is also part of the team that Rudra leads as a choreographer. Within this narrative structure is the social institutionalization of drugs and its impact of psychological essentialism. The precise phenomenological rendering of performances has been deconstructed by Rudra through his tactile and kinaesthetic embodied performance movements and the spatiality of stage performances. The universal acceptance of gendering dance performances are the spatial body reciprocating the phenomenology of representations of LGBTQ+ in a more surrealistic manner, rather than making a direct, emphatic portrayal. In this film, their gendered performativity has been created aesthetically. The abhorrent prejudices germinated inside Partho seeing the transsexualized body of Rudra portray the heteronormative patriarchal gaze clashing with his bisexualizeddesire for a homosexualized body. Partho’sabhorrence seems justified in this contextualized compartmentalization of desire of the community through this complex temporality and reorientated visual aesthetics. The film is the best portrayal of a LGBTQ+ cinematic representation that not only intensifies through complexities existing with the community but also through the technological narrative structure. Other Creative Texts Female impersonators has been part of India since time immemorial, and Bengal wasn’t far behind, and the name that comes to mind is Chapal Bhaduri. The resistance to objectification of female impersonators created a praxis of understandings within the socio-cultural dynamics of Bengal. His popularity of mythological and religious depictions on stage made the spectators’ consummating gaze an awestruck one. This cultural tradition of Bhaduri continues its legacy still in a vanishing mode in rural Bengal, especially in the northern part of Bengal in places like, Binnaguri, Oodlabari,

Voices of Survival  259 Alipurduar, Haldibari, Coochbehar and many other places, although not in a  populous capacity but in small clusters of gendered performances. The  diminishing performing art that Chapal Bhaduri established probably doesn’t fit into the neo-liberalized choices and likings of the millennials and genzies, and in rural Bengal the technological fascination has predominantly contoured the LGBTQ+ performances as female impersonators into nothing more than just objectified performances for the popular gaze. Dance dramas have always been part of Bengalis cultural traditions. Rabindranritya, Gauriya/Gaudiyanritya, and other classical and folk dances are part of the rich cultural heritage that diffuses the boundaries of patriarchal performativities. Gendered performativity had been there for ages and Rakesh Ghosh adapts Siraj’s Mayamridanga into a dance drama, produced by Dum Dum Shabdomugdho Natyakendro, enacted in 2019. Shyamashish Pahari playing the role of Jhaksu carries the nuances of folk traditions in the dance and performing art of Bengal. Polli-gaan ritualistically dilutes the subtle boundaries of transsexual performances and cross-dressing performances. The conventional folk dances don’tcreate a stereotypical pantomime dame, rather they generate the feminine mannerisms through cross-dressing mannerisms. Shanti, played by Aninda Roy, carries the same feminine nuances of Butlerean gender performativity in this dance drama. It critiques the heteronormative dominion on the socio-religious situations of contemporary rural Bengal. Ghosh’s creation stands apart in creating counter-narrative of gendered bodies and performativity as being a dance drama the vision of spectators’ gaze and reciprocation was direct and immediate. This trait of immediacy in creative art enhances the hyperbole and eccentricity of rural Bengal. Probably these deliberations of gendered performances made Siraj’s novel a canon in the LGBTQ+ representation. The intertexuality of the novel, the intersubjectivity of the film and the transdisciplinary discourse of gender and performing art make Mayamridanga test the boundary of canonical text. Apart from this dance drama, Sapphire Creations Dance Company, a dance group of Sudarshan Chakrabarty tries to create an amalgam of folk, classical and contemporary dances through the embodiment of space and time. Indian Erotica: Vedas to the Millennium, Positive Lives, Rituranga are some of the best performances that have reconfigured and reworked the counter-narrative of gendered bodies and performativity. Most of the dance dramas that Sudarshan has created are those metaphors to problematize the legitimacy of relationship and existence of human life. The establishment of cult representations of the LGBTQ+ community has been enacted through evoked experiences and traces of human consciousness that deconstruct all narrative structures of performativity and existential minorization. The psycho-philosophical performances and semiotic representations have made his plays an archaeology of knowledge for performing arts of contemporary Bengal. Many critics have blatantly pointed out that they are made not for the rural Bengal, unlike Rakesh Ghosh’s adaptation of Mayamridanga,

260  Himadri Roy because the morphology of the haptics essence and existences are highly intellectualized and the lucid meaning gets embedded inside the complexities of dance performances that the common mass would have overlooked the innate inner aesthetic beauty. Art exhibitions are another arena of LGBTQ+ representations that need to be probed into especially of the artists that are borne in the flora and fauna of Bengal. It wouldn’t be wrong if someone points out that the artists trained in Kala Bhavana of Vishwa Bharati University, originally established by Rabindranath Tagore, acquire the plethora of knowledge to hone their artistic skills. In many cases, the visual artists of Bengal, like Anup Let, Rita Talukdar, Devina, Adil Kaleem, Sawan Taank and other young artists, create their own canvas with the morphology of haptics, epistemology of sexuality, ontology of dissidence of their inner struggles of being non-normative through their art. Apart from these artists, one of the many untrained Hostoshilpo artists, Uttam Chitrakar of Midnapore has unravelled the socio-cultural traditional paintings of Kalighat with his patachitra of trans people and queer love. May be this recent unconventional representation could make the intersectionalities of LGBTQ+ existence mainstream. Conclusion The domain of knowledge that gets represented is no more metaphorical and symbolic; the present post neo-liberal Bengal has deciphered the resistance and recognized the voices across the state. The gender and sexual identity politics of Bengal has a different essential relationship with the intellectual epistemology and phenomenological discourse, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ representations. Intersubjectivity is more prevalent, than just mere objectification, without intellectual temperament the rejection of translated conceptions and prejudices don’t bear any demographic autoethnographical study. The representations become significant with gender performativity and personagraphy of some LGBTQ+ people, like Rituparno Ghosh, Syed Mustafa Siraj, Chapal Bhaduri and many others. Probably that is why the state has included the villages, towns and other places which weren’t into the queer demography of the state for a long time. Pride marches of the community in Islampur, Siliguri and other places become successful with the sensation and awareness camps that the local NGOs work. These are noteworthy in creating spaces not only in national but international spectrum of the community. Capitalists, intellectuals and elites have their own methods of negotiating spaces in the state. Kitty-Su with its drag performances and stand-up comedy shows are some examples of consistent, identifiable and praiseworthy constructions of politico-economic measures to change the socio-cultural inhibitions of LGBTQ+ people of Bengal. Artistic aesthetics and creativity need to draw a semblances of all these subcultures of the community into their mode of representations.

Voices of Survival  261 Bibliography Aaron, Michele. Ed. 2004. New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader. Rutgers University Press. Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotions. Edinburgh University Press. Allen, Graham. 2007. Intertexuality. Routledge. Alokparana. 2019. Rano Biswas Karor Naam Noi. Aajkal Publishers. Arekti Premer Golpo. 2010. Produced by Tapan Biswas & Cinemawala. Directed by Kaushik Ganguly. Baker, Paul & Giuseppe Balirano, Eds. 2018. Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. Bal, Mieke. 2017. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. University of Toronto Press. Benshoff, Harry M. & Sean Griffin. 2006. Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America. Rowman& Littlefield. Bradway, Tyler & E. L. McCallum, Eds. 2019. After Queer Studies: Literature, Theory and Sexuality in the 21st Century. Cambridge University Press. Butler, Judith. 2007. Gender Trouble. Routledge. ———. 2011. Bodies that Matter: On Discursive Limits of “Sex”. Routledge. ———. 2018. Undoing Gender. Routledge. Chakraborty, Kamal. 1993. Brahma Bhargab Puran. Abhijan Publishers. Chakraborty, Swapnamoy. 2015. Holde Golap. Deys Publishing. Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish. 2012. Produced by Shree Venkatesh Films. Directed by Rituparno Ghosh. Coates, Jennifer & Pia Pichler, Eds. 2011. Language and Gender: A Reader, 2nd Edition. Wiley-Blackwell. Family Album. 2014. Produced by Friends Communication. Directed by Mainak Bhaumik. Frei, Dana. 2012. Challenging Heterosexism from the Other Point of View: Representations of Homosexuality in Queer as Folk and The L Word. Peter Lang. Goltz, Dustin Bradley. 2010. Queer Temporalities in Gay Male Representation: Tragedy, Normativity, and Futurity. Routledge. Goodman, Lizbeth & Jane de Gay. 2002. The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance. Routledge. Grandena, Florian & Cristina Johnston, Eds. 2011. New Queer Images: Presentations of Homosexualities in Contemporary Francophone Visual Cultures. Peter Lang. Hall, Donald E., Masculinities in Language and Culture Annamarie Jagose, Andrea Bebell & Susan Potter, Eds. 2013. The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Routledge. Hogan, Patrick Colm. 2011. Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. University of Nebraska Press. Juett, Jo Anne C. & David M. Jones. Eds. 2010. Coming Out to the Mainstream: New Queer Cinema in the 21st Century. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Koyekti Meyer Golpo. 2012. Produced by Algus Entertainment & Daag Creative Media. Directed by Surbata Sen. Krolokke, Charlotte & Anne Scott Sorensen. 2006. Gender Communication Theories & Analyses: From Silence to Performance. Sage Publications. Lindner, Katharina. 2018. Film Bodies: Queer Feminist Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema. IB Tauris.

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Index

Pages in bold refer to tables and pages followed by n refer to notes. Aandhar Kuthalir Duwar Bhangi 161, 170n11 Abdullah, Farooq 194 Abdullah, Omar 194 Abdullah, Sheikh Mohamad 188, 193–194, 200n2 Abroo, Shah Mubarak 128 Abu-Nuwas: “A Boy is Worth More Than a Girl” 118–119; “Ghazal Mozakkar (Masculine Ghazal)” 121; “Hum Bistari (bedtime)” 121; “In the Bath-house” 118; “Shab Basri (nightmares)” 121 Afridi, Jawed Khan: ‘Girls of the Hostel’ 11; Hostel ki Ladkiyan 117, 137 Afsar, A. 67 Agarwal, Amya 199 agender 38, 150 Agha, Wazir: “Literature and Sex” 137 Ahangar, Parveena 199, 201n19 Ahmad, Abul Hasan Mansoor: “Alf Laila-O-Laila” 135; Gurez 136 Akashitara: Nisiddha 11 Akashitora 107, 112 Akbar, Mughal Emperor 188 Akhtar, Salim: “Interpretation of Obscenity” 137 Akhtar, Sheen: “Lesbianism in Urdu Fiction” 137 akkuva/akua/bhabreshi (non-castrated) 5 Alam, Siddiq: “Tea pot” 136 Ali, Agha Shahid: The Country Without a Post Office 189, 198 Ali Baba 193 Alif: ‘Hosh ha’ 199 Aligarh 174

Alokparna 250; Rano Biswas Karo Naam Noi 249 alpasankhya: philosophical substance of 39–40 Amazon Prime 175 Ambedkar, B.R. 40; States and Minorities 39 Amrad-Parasti (Boy-Love) 128–129 Ananthamurthy, U.R. 204 Andaaz, Sufiyana 124 Anguila, Ernesto Vasquez del 12 Antardrishti 175–176 Aqil, Syed Mohammad 134 Aquil, Raziuddin: The Muslim Question: Understanding Islam and Indian History 127 Araki, Gregg: The Living End 173 Arekti Premer Golpo 257 Arfi, Irfan Ahmad: “Graffiti” 136 Armstrong, James 212 Askari, Mohammad Hasan: “Adab-oFunn mein Fahash ka Masla” 137; “Haramjadi” 136; “New poetry” 137; “Phislan” 136 Assam: communities of resistance, building 165–170; literature, homosexuality in 106; negotiation of queer identity in 158–170; queer cinema 172–173; queer literature see queer literature; resistance to language 161–165; transgressive sexuality 106–108; vernacular 108, 113 Attar, Farid Uddin 116 autonomy 16, 151, 154, 188, 207, 210 Awan, M. S. 67, 75 Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam 126

264 Index Azad, Maulana Mohammad Hussain: Aabe-Hayat 119 Aziz, Maryam: Tum sath rahna 137 Babar, Zaheer Uddin: Tuzk-e-Babri 123 Badhaai Do 174 badhai 5 Bahujan 39 Baishistha, Pranjal Sharma 11 Baker, Houston 6 Baloch, Akhtar: “Eunuch of India” 137 Banerjee, Sikata 197 Bangla texts, LGBTQ+ representations in 245–260; cinematic texts 253– 258; creative texts 258–260; literary texts 246–253 Barkakoty, Sujata 167 Barthes, R.: Rhetoric of the Image 167 Barua, Anupam Kaushik 175 Basumatary, Kenny 175 Basu, Samaresh 251 Baxi, Pratiksha 10 Bergman, C. 165–166, 170; Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistances in Toxic Times 161 Berintho 161; ‘Me’ 158 Betsky, Aaron 180 Bhaduri, Chapal 260 Bhairannavar, Kiran 8 Bhattacharya, Arijit: Uttaran 251 Bhattacharya, Monikuntala 107; Mukti (Liberation) 11 Bhaumik, Mainak: Family Album 254–255 bigender 38 bisexual 6, 32, 37, 54–55, 69, 108, 113, 136, 170, 172, 213, 248, 251, 254, 257–258 Bokhari, Pitras: “Chori Chuppe” 137 Bombay Talkies 174 Bora, Bipasha 106–108, 111–112; ‘Mou Makhir Xomrajya’ (The Kingdom of the Honey Bees) 11 Bourdieu, Pierre 21 Boyce, Paul 5, 62n3 Britzman, D.P. 17 Bucholtz, M. 67 Bulbul Can Sing 14, 175–179 bullying 165, 177–178 Bund, Aijaz Ahmad: Hijras of Kashmir: A Marginalised Form of Personhood 15 Butler, Judith 14, 180, 212; Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 244n7; Undoing Gender 214

Can Queer 2.0 164 Chakrabarty, Sudarshan 259 Chakraborty, Anup Shekhar: “Mawngkuahur in the times of E-Love: Sexualities, Regimentation, Control, Display and the Zo Queer” 12–13 Chakraborty, Debika 160 Chakraborty, Kamal: Brahma Bhargab Puran 246–247 Chakraborty, Ritwick 255 Chakraborty, Swapnamoy: Holde Golap 248–249 challa-wali 5 Chambers, O.A. 144 Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui 174 Chatterjee, Shraddha 41–42, 47n18 Chaudhary, Mehwish: Dil-e-Muztar 117, 136; ‘The Anxious Heart’ 11 Chaudhry, Rukh: Sahilon ke geet 137 Cherian, Jayan K. 10 Cheshire, J. 67 Chhetri, Amala Subba 223 chhibri (castrated) 5 Chin, Timothy 112 Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish 258 Chughtai, Ismat: “Lihaaf” 117, 134; ‘Lihaaf’ (The Quilt) 11 cisgender 67, 175, 180–182, 248–249, 251, 253–254 cisheteronormativity 35, 37, 40–42, 45n8, 242 Cole, H.W.G. 13, 143 collective trauma 199 contributory injustice 46n17 cosmopolitanism 227 counterpublics 1, 24n4 critical interpretative strategy 1, 45n1 critical regionalism 2 cross-dressing 88, 90–91, 97, 100, 133, 143–144, 214–215, 259 Cubonicks, Laboria 47n21 cultural chauvinism 33 cultural relativism 33 Cunha, Tristao de Braganza 207 cybercarnality 61 Daccani, Wali 124–126 Dahal, Lubina Kritika 223; “Hu ma samalingi” 240–242; Kulchiyekā Kopilāharu 238; “Sharad” 237–238 Daimary, Benjamin 179, 182 Dalit-Bahujan queer 106 Darjeeling and Sikkim Hills, queer literature in 223–244;

Index  265 “Asāmānyatā?” (Trikhatri) 230–232; “Ādhā Arth” (Thulung) 225–227; “Ek sānjh euti videshi paryataksita eutā cafémā?” (Syangden) 224–225; “Fulmāyāko chont” (Gurung Muskaan) 234–235; “Fyānkiyeko mānchhé” (Poakhrel) 235–237; “Hāmro ghar” (Thakuri) 238–240; “Hu ma samalingi” (Dahal) 240–242; “Mero bhāgko ākāsh” (Subba Chhetri) 227–230; “Samāntā” (Manger) 232–234; “Sharad” (Dahal) 237–238 Dar, Mohammad Sanaullah 134 Dasgupta, Rohit K. 62n2, 174–175, 216 Das, Himanshu Prasad 175 Das, Prakash 160 Das, Rima 14; Antardrishti 175–176; Bulbul Can Sing 175–179; Partha 175; Village Rockstars 176, 182 Das, Veena 169 Datta, Aniruddha 41–42 Debi, Ashapurna 251 De Certeau, Michel 9 Dehlavi, Ashraf Sabuhi: “Koil Zanana” 136 Dehlavi, Meer Amman: “Bagh-OBahar” 135 Deka, Mayuri 13 Deka, Prakash 14; Fireflies—Jonaki Porua 175, 179–181 deprivation 199; sexual 252 Devi, Maheswata 251 Devina 260 Devy, G.N. 20, 23 dhurani/ kandra/ khijrinda-wali 5 Dil Se 196 discrimination 10, 13, 64, 89, 103, 106, 108, 145, 147, 149, 164, 223, 235; against sexual minorities 4; gender 154n5; social 39 Dostana 174 Dotgay (.gay) Initiatives 159 Dotson, Kristie 33, 40 Doty, Alexander 106 ‘Drishti’ 13, 160, 164, 166–168 D’Souza, Dominic 217 Dutta, Aniruddha 5 Dutta, Geetali 11

effemimania/effeminacy 4–5, 14–15, 31, 88–89, 97, 101, 104n6, 128, 148–149, 151, 161, 174, 176, 178, 181, 187, 191, 194, 196–199, 212–213, 215–216 Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga 174 Elly, E.B. 144 E-Love 151–152, 155n29 Emisora de Goa 208 epistemic injustice 40, 46n17; definition of 33 eunuchs 64, 70, 103n5, 132–133, 137, 243n5 European Union: politics of anti-xenophobia in 46n12 Faiq, Nasim: “Kamzor tawanayee ki mazboot jakad” 136 Faiz, Faiz Ahmad: “Yeh Dagh Dagh Ujala” 133 Faizi, Attia 126 Family Album 254–255 Fanaa 197 “Farhang-e-Aasfia” 132 Farooqi, Saaqi: Aap Beeti/Paap Beeti 137 Farooqi, Shamsur Rahman: “Chun Khameer Amad Badast-e-Nanba” 137; Kai chand thay sar-e-Aasmaan 131 Farred, Grant 20 Fashion 174 Featherstone, Mike 165 Felski, Rita 24n4 female homosociality 41 female queerness 200 Fernandes, Kevin Frank: “In Search of the Queer in (Catholic)Konkani: Silence, Slurs and the Spectacular” 16 Firaq: “A Sincere Expression of Pleasures” 137 Fire 174 Fireflies—Jonaki Porua 175, 179–181 forced heterosexuality 15 Foucault, Michel: heterotopias 2; subjugated knowledges 24 Fraser, Nancy 24n4 Fricker, Miranda 32, 45n6

ecocoloniality 253 Edelman, Lee 47n20

Gandhi, Indira 194 gandu (man who is into boys/sodomite) 5

266 Index Gandunama—The Memoirs of Homosexual 127 Ganguly, Churni 257 Ganguly, Kaushik: Arekti Premer Golpo 257; Nagarkirtan 255–257 Ganguly, Ratul: 10th July 254 Ganjawi, Nizami 116 Ganti, Tejaswani 201n13 Gautam, Shivalal 160 Gay Icons of India 24n8 Geelani, Syed Ali Shah 200n2, 201n17 gender 108, 177; activism 107; agender 38, 150; bigender 38; cisgender 67, 175, 180–182, 248–249, 251, 253–254; confinement, resistance and queer 109–112; expression 64; identity 7, 64, 67; non-conformism 4; norms 106, 111; performativity 244n7; phenomenology 7, 32, 37; third 32, 37–38, 45n7, 67, 88, 103n4, 117, 238–240, 243; transgender see transgender (chhakka) gendered self 36–38, 244n7 genderqueer 7, 34, 38 gender turn (GT) 147, 154n5 Ghalib, Mirza 130, 187 ‘Ghar’ (Home) 165 al-Ghazali, Imam: “Kimiya-E-Saadat” 121 Ghaznavi, Sultan Mahmood 123 Ghosh, Rakesh 259–260 Ghosh, Rituparno 257, 260; Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish 258 Gippi 176 Global North: queerness in 41; white upper-class queer subjects in 41 Goa Rainbow Trust 217 Gogoi, Amrita Pritam 13–14; “The Many Bodies of the Vernacular: Negotiating Queer Identity in the Public and Virtual Domains of Assam” 13 golpos 106–107, 109–110, 112 Gopinath, Gayatri 24n7 Gorakhpuri, Firaq 124, 128–129, 133 Gorkhaland Movement 227 Goswami, Debargya: Chokh 252; Shuwa 252 Goswami, Mamoni Roisam: Udaybhanur Choritro [Udaybhanu’s Character] 162–163 Graeber, David 43, 47n19

Greens, James N.: Beyond the Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Brazil 215 GT see Gender Turn Guha, Ranajit 24n4 Gupti bhasa 64–65, 68; nature of 69 Gurung Muskaan, Sharan 223; “Fulmāyāko chont” 234–235 Haideri, Haider Bakhsh: “Tota Kahani” 134 Haider, Tasnif: “Literature, Amrad and Amanullah” 137 Halberstam, Jack 47n20 Halberstam, Judith 181 Hali, Maulana Aaltaf Hussain 119 Hall, Donald E. 172–173 Hall, K. 66–67; Queerly Phrased 65 Hameed, Sumera: Yaram 137 Hansen, Kathryn 216 Hasan, Mohammad: “Baat Uryani ki” 137; Delhi Mein Urdu Shayeri ka Tehzibi-o-Fikri Pas Manzar 122; “Masnavi Sehrul Bayan” 131 Hashmi, Noorul Hasan: Dilli ka Dabistaan-e-Shayeri 126; Dilli Ka Dabistan-E-Shairi 122 Hatim, Shaikh Zahuruddin 128 Hazarika, Anupom Kumar: “Queer Assam on Celluloid: Locating Queer Characters in Bulbul Can Sing and Fireflies-Jonaki Porua” 14 Hazarika, Bhaskar 175 Hazarika, Panchanan 11, 106–110 hegemonic epistemology 7 hegemonic globalization, definition of 24n6 hegemony 1–2, 6, 22, 51, 200n2, 233, 240 hermeneutic injustice 45n6; definition of 32–33 heteronormativity 17–18, 22, 49, 51, 53–58, 61, 105, 109, 154, 162–165, 191, 216, 223, 225–226, 228, 232–237, 239–240, 247–249, 252–255, 258–259; cisheteronormativity 35, 37, 40–42, 45n8, 245; heteronormative patriarchal structure 163; non-heteronormativity 62, 206, 223, 225–226, 229–230, 233, 241–243; racialized 55; social 231 heteropatriarchy 187, 191, 200, 218, 233, 256; heteropatriarchal Catholicism 16; neocoloniality of 4

Index  267 heterosexuality/heterosexualization 3, 52, 107–108, 112, 210; forced 15; masculine 250 heterotopias 2 hijra 4–5, 31, 37, 45n7, 103n5, 146, 168, 243n5, 243n6; community see hijra community, lingua franca of; identity 65; in Urdu literature 132–137; see also transgender hijra community, lingua franca of 64–80; ciphering key 73; conjectures 69–81; contemplations 69–81; critics on 65–68; emergence 70–71; geo-space and methods 68–69; morphologic properties 73–79; nature 69–70; paralinguistic Features 71–72; purpose 71; queer vernacularization 9–10; teaching/learning 72–73 Hijra Farsi 64–66, 68; adjectives 77, 78; adverbs 77, 78; as ciphering key 73, 74–75; conjunctions 78; determiners 78–79, 78; as full-fledged language 79–81; interjections 78; as lingua franca 72; morphologic properties of 73–79; nature of 69–70; nouns 73, 74–76; paralinguistic features of 71–72; prepositions 78; pronoun 75, 76; syntax 79, 79; teaching/learning of 72–73; verbs 76–77, 77 Hindi, Sheikh Mohammad Hayat 124 Hofman, S. G. 159 Holtzman, Dinah 174 homoeroticism 214, 252; homoerotic culture 248; homoerotic normativity 247–248; in Urdu poetry 126–132 homonationalism 22, 197, 253 homonormativity 245, 248, 251, 253–255, 258 homophobia 3, 10, 88, 106, 109, 113, 145, 154, 162–164, 173, 212, 214–215, 223, 233, 241 homopopulism 22 homoregionalism 23 homosexuality 1, 12–13, 31–32, 107–109, 111, 113, 174, 212, 252; lesbian 41; prevalence of 122; in Urdu poetry 117–118, 125, 130–131, 133–137 hooks, bell 218 al-Hubab, Waliba ibn 118 Hubbard, Phil 62n4 human sexuality 108, 112

hybridization 6 hypermasculinity 14, 161, 241 I Am 174 IDAHOTB see International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia Ideal Zo Christian State 145 immortality 119–120, 125–126, 129, 131–132 imperialism 197; conceptual 33; cultural 24n6, 40; linguistic 20 Indian Constitution: Article 370 17, 195; 8th Schedule 16, 20 Indian Erotica: Vedas to the Millennium 259 Indian Penal Code (IPC): Section 377 13, 23n3, 31–32, 145, 148 Indian sexual identities 105 Indigenous Action Media 46n12 injustice 96, 158, 234, 237; contributory 46n17; epistemic 33, 40, 46n17; hermeneutic 32–33, 45n6 International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOTB) 164 Internet: male same-sex sexualities in 53–58 intimacy 72, 93, 102, 111, 129, 152, 165–166, 225, 255; physical 122, 135, 147, 153 IPC see Indian Penal Code Irigray, Lucy 190 Ishq Al Niswan-O-Al Mardan 124 “Ishq-E-Amarad” 124 “Ishq-E-Niswan” 124 Ishtiaq, Farhat: Kuchh pagal pagalse hum 117, 137; ‘We Are Little Eccentric’ 11 Jaami, Maulana: Deewan-e-Jaami 115 Jab Jab Phool Khilay 196 Jahangir 123, 191, 194 Jain, Gayan Chand 131; Urdu Masnavi Shomali Hind Mein 122–123 Jalalpuri, Ali Abbas 123 Jalbi, Jamil: History of Urdu Literature 123 Jarman, Derek: Edward II 173 Jha, Abhishek: Chlorosis 251–252 jigry dost/yaar (two men as passionate friends) 3 Joel 207–208 jogins 5

268 Index Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander 176 Jonaki Porua (Fireflies) 14 Kaleem, Adil 260 Kalelkar, N.G. 206 Kal Ho Na Ho 174 Kalin, Tom: Swoon 173 Kalita, Indranee 169–170 Kandali, Moushumi: Tritiyottor Golpo (A Tale of Thirdness) 11 Kapoor and Sons 174 Kapoor, Shami 196 Karunanidhi, M. 10, 103n1 Karuppu Pirathikal 88 Kashmir, competing masculinities in 187–201; Afghan rule (1752–1819) 191; Dogra rule (1846–1947) 192–193; Sikh rule (1819–1846) 191–192 Kashyap, Aruni 11 Kataria, Vandana: Nobleman 176 Katre, S.M.: The Formation of Konkani 206–207 Katyal, Akhil 24n9 Kavi, Ashok Row 5 Keshavamurthy, Kiran: “Precarious Lives, Fraught Selves: Tirunangai Autobiographies in Tamil” 10 Khairabadi, Kausar 116 Khair, Abu Sayeed Abul 116 Khan, Mirza Yusuf 188–189 Khanna, Akshay 3, 5 Khan, Nawwab Dargah Quli: Moraqqae-Delhi 126–127 khasuas 5 Khatoon, Habba 189–190 Khayyam, Omar 119 Khire, Bindumadhav 7, 32, 45n4, 46n13; Indradhanu: Samalaingikateche Vividh Ranga 45n3; Partner 10 khoja (castrated) 4 Khusro 191, 193 Khusru, Amir 115–116, 125 Khusru, Nasir 116 kinnars 243n5 kliba (sterile) 4 Knopp, Lawrence 181 Kobita, Kotha Aru Eti Queer Xondhya (Poetry, Speech and a Queer Evening) 160 Kole, Subir K. 23n1 Konkani, as queer language 16, 206–209

Konkani Catholic community, queer in 204–218; Intruz 214–215; Nathalache Khel 215; Shigmo 215; silence 209–211; slurs and slang 212–214; spectacular 214–217; Yakshagana 216 Koovagam festival 70–71 kothis 4–5, 37 kotis 66 Koyekti Meyer Golpo 254 Kulick, D.: “Gay and Lesbian Language” 66 Kumar, Kishor: Randu Purushanmar Chumbikkumbol (When Two Men Kiss) 10 Kumar, Pushpesh 23n3 Kunju, Karichan: Pacittamanitam 10 Kurtbenny, Kur 210 Kusno, Abidin 14 laingik alpasankhya (sexual/gendered minorities) 7, 31–47; philosophical substance of 37–39; universality by translative possibilities 40–43 Laingik Bhinnata 40 laundebaaz 4 Lawrence, D.H.: Lady Chatterley’s Lover 224 Leap, W.: Beyond the Lavender Lexicon 65 legibility/illegibility 43–44 Legman, G.: The Language of Homosexuality 65 lesbian: homosexuality 41; identification 3; suicides 41 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) 105 lesbianism 11, 117, 133–135, 137, 182n2 Let, Anup 260 Leydon, John 206 LGBTQ+: community 223, 225, 257; representations, in Bangla texts 245–260 LGBTQIA+ community 159–160, 164–166, 168 linguistic imperialism 20 Livia, A. 67; Queerly Phrased 65 LOC Kargil 196 Loev 17 Lorrain, J. Herbert: Dictionary of the Lushai Language 143 love, virtual 124, 128 Lri:bang 164

Index  269 Lynd, Laurie: RSVP 173 Lynton, H. R. 66 MacIver, David R. 43 Mackie, Marlene 177 Maikey, Haneen 198 Main Khiladi Tu Anari 174 majoritarianism 1 Majumder, Tilottama: Chander Gaaye Chand 247–248 male homosociality 174 male same-sex sexualities, in non-metropolitan spaces 48–62; field sites and methodology 49–50; Internet 53–58; mobilities 58–61; regional geographies of sex 58–61; technology 58–61; visibilities 53–58 Malihabadi, Josh 133 Mallika, Vijayaraja 10 Manger, Avinam 223; “Samāntā?” 232–234 Mansoor, Abu 116 Manuchehri 116 Margarita with a Straw 174 masculinity 15–16; hypermasculinity 14, 161, 241; in Kashmir 187–201; masculine heterosexuality 250; militaristic 15 Masroor, Hajra 11, 135–136; “Til oot pahar” 135 Massey, Doreen 6 Masti 174 Mastoor, Khadija 11, 136 Matin, Iqbal: Charagh tahe dama 136 Mauzo, Damodar 207 Mayamridanga 246, 255, 259 Māyā 243 Mayuri Deka 161–165 McLaughlin, Thomas 6 Meer, Meer Taqi 129–132 meettha/chikna (homosexual male) 4 Mehbooba Mufti 194 Mehjoor 193 Memories in March 257–258 metronormativity 2, 14, 181 Milin Dutta 162, 170n6 Mill, John Stuart 46n16 MIM (Men Interested in Men) 146, 148, 153 Mishra, Jayaprakash 17 misogyny 14–15, 151, 161 Mission Kashmir 196–197 Mitra, Manoj: Chhayar Prashad 252–253

Mizgan 130 Mizo Students Union (MSU) 148 Mizo Upa Pawl 148 Mizo Zirlai Pawl 148 Mohamad, Bakshi Ghulam 194 Mohan Ra Madan 243 Mokkil, Navaneetha 14 Montgomery, N. 165–166, 170; Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistances in Toxic Times 161 Motschenbacher, Heiko 205–206 MoveMe 159 MSM (Men having Sex with Men) 146, 210 MSU see Mizo Students Union Mujhe sandal kardo 136–137 Mukherjee, Sujit 8 multilingualism 208 Munch, Christopher: The Hours and Times 173 My Brother Nikhil 174, 217 Nadkarni, A. 159 Nagar, I. 66–67, 75 Nag, Sanjoy: Memories in March 257–258 Naji, Shakir 130 Najmi, Ash’ar 137; Us Ne Kaha Tha 137 Nanda, S. 66 napunkshaka/jankha (incapable of reproduction) 4 Nasim, Ifti: Nirman 11 Nasim, Iftikhar 131, 134; “Apni apni zidagi” 136; “Hara Patta” 134; “Kaash” 134; “Kia Ghalib Gay Thay?” 130; “Kishwar Nahid keliye Nazm” 134; “kiya Ghalib Gay thay” 137; “A letter from Gayan Chand Jain” 137; “Manazatua” 134; “Mein andheron se darta hoon” 134; Narman 117; “Qalb-e-mahiyat” 134; “Safar mein ek raat ki kahani” 134; “Wast-e-Umr ka bohran” 134; “You should be proud of me, no regrets” 137 Nasreen, Nuzhat 160 Nath, Arup Kumar 11 National Health Mission 201n12 nationalism 188, 192, 195; cultural 196; Hindu 193; homonationalism 22, 197, 253; linguistic 34; masculine 198; proto-nationalism 144; residual 33; vernacular 23

270 Index nation-states 188 nativity 188 Natyakendro, Dum Dum Shabdomugdho 259 Nayeem, Chaudhry: “The Poet of Nirman” 137 Nehru, Jawaharlal 193–194 neocoloniality 1, 4 Netflix 175 NEthing: Queerscape 13 Nexus of Patriarchy 145, 148 Nilaya, Roshini 217 Nimayeel: “Lund ki pyasi rooh” 137 nirvanam 91, 93, 95 nirvani 5 Nobleman 176 Nomani, Allama Shibli 124 non-metropolitan spaces: characteristics of 51–53; definition of 50–51; male same-sex sexualities in 48–62 Noor, Nimra: ‘Turn Me into Sandalwood’ 11 North Sentinel Island 42 Novetzke, Christian Lee 9 Nowlan, Bob 172 nudity 129 Numani, A. S. 126 obligatory asexuality 15 Occupy Wall Street movement 39 ontological turn 47n19 oppression 34, 36, 43, 46n12, 88, 91, 99, 110–111, 172–173, 181–182, 192, 228, 230 original sin 12, 145 paan-wali 5 Pahari, Shyamashish 259 Palekar, Shalmalee 22 Pandit, Huzaifa: “The Many ‘Queer’ Silences: Competing Masculinities in Kashmir” 15–16 panthi/parikh/giriya/dhurani 4 Parry, N.E.: A Monograph on Lushai Customs and Ceremonies 143 Partha 175 Patel, Geeta 22 Peer, Basharat: Curfewed Night 198 Pereira, Jose 206 Phillipson, Robert 20 Pink Migration 149–150, 154, 155n20 ‘pink-washing’ 15–16, 197 Poakhrel, Raju 223; “Fyānkiyeko mānchhé” 235–237

‘political normative’ approach 45n1 pornography 129, 152 Positive Lives 259 Pradhan, Anil: “Exploring Queer Literature in Nepali from the Hills of Darjeeling and Sikkim” 17 Pradhan, Nirvan 223 Prakash, Tanjai: Kallam 10; Karamuntar Vutu 10 prakriti (feminine nature) 4 Pramanik, Mausumi: E Kemon Bhalobasha 251 prejudice 1, 32, 46n17, 89, 155n20, 223, 247, 255, 258, 260 Pride de Goa 217 ‘Pride Parades’ 151 proselytization 12, 144–145 prostration 129 psychosexual development 190 ‘Pubvate’ space 152 purush (masculine nature) 4 Queen, R. 68 queer: in basha literature 10–12; community 19–20, 22–23, 31, 40, 48, 53–55, 106–108, 162–163, 165, 168–169, 182, 223, 235, 249–250; definition of 172; expressions 2, 211; genderqueer 7, 34, 38; identities see queer identities; in Karnataka 48–62; in Konkani Catholic community 204–218; language 65; regional 17–18; silence 15–16; spaces 8, 105–106, 152–153, 180, 217; transqueer 22; vernacularism/vernacularization 9; see also individual entries queer cinema 173; Assamese 172–173; Bollywood 174–175; regional 174–175; queer identities 7–8, 13, 16, 18–19, 181, 226, 232, 238, 240–241; in Assam public and virtual domains 158–170; contested classifications of 2–6; in present-day Marathi language 31–47 Queer Kalam 164 queer literature 105–106; Andharatkoi Udaah Botaahot Koi Swadhin 107; Botahjaak 110; Judhor Anuchhed 109; Mou Makhir Xomrajya 108, 111–112; Nixidho 112; Xomudraxafen 107, 109–110; see also individual entries queerness 3, 7, 31; concept of 109–110; Marathi 8; in oxomiya society 107,

Index  271 110; in present-day Marathi language, need for 32–36; vernacularization of 6 queerplatonic relationship 47n18 Queer Pristhar Gungunani (Murmurs of the Queer Pages) 164 ‘Queer Public Sphere’ 153 Queerscape 158–159, 161, 165 Quraishi, Waheed 126 Qureshi, Asia Saleem: “Mujhe Sandal Kardo” 117; Nazuk hai Rishta Dil ka 117; ‘Tender is the Connection of the Heart’ 11 Rabindranath Tagore 260 Radio Ceylon 216 Rahman, Tariq: “Boy-love in Urdu poetry” 128 Rai, Mridu 190, 192–193, 200n2 Rai, Nikita 223 Raja Man Singh 188 Raja, Nabila Abr: Ab inkar ka mausam nahin, Titli ke rang utar gaye 137 Rajan, M. 66 Raja Sahab 196 Ram, Kanshi 39 Ramnath, Nandini 179 Ranbir Singh 192–193 Rangeela, Mohammad Shah 122, 126–127 Ranjit Singh 191 Rao, Raja 214 Rashid, Noon Meem: Bekaraan raat ke sannate ein 134; Gunah 134; Havaskari 134; Inteqam 134; Jo shayed Biwi hai 134; Khao piyo magan raho 134; Mere bhi hain kuchh khwab 134 Rasool, Sheikh 193 Razzaq, Salam bin: “Darmiyani sinf ke soorma” 136 regionalism: critical 2; homoregionalism 23 regional queer 12, 14, 17–18 “Rekhti” poetry 133 repression 181, 215 ‘Resisting Fascism building Solidarities: India: Kashmir and beyond’ (SOAS London) 197 Revathi, A. 87–88, 103n2, 104n7; The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story 10, 88–96 Reyaz, Fahmida 11 Rich, B. Ruby 173

Rituparna 162, 168–170 Rituranga 259 Rizvi, Zubair: Gardish-e-Paa 137 Rodricks, Wendell 217–218 Roja 196–197 Roy, Aninda 259 Roy, Himadri 17–18 Roy, Raina 41–42 Roy, Roshan 209, 211 Rum, Maulana 116 Russell, R. V. 5 Rutland, Barry 177 Saadi, Shaikh 115, 125 Sadiq, G.M. 194 ‘SAGE—The Barak Queer Collective’ 13, 159–160, 164 Saikia, Jayanta 11 sakhi (intimate friendship between two women) 3 Samutiram: Vada Malli 10 Santos, Boaventura de Sousa 2 Sapphire Creations Dance Company 259 Sardesai, Madhavi 208 Satchidanandan, K. 20 Satyajit Ray 251 Sauda, Mirza Rafi 131 Sayeb 116 Scarry, E. 161, 169 Scheduled Castes 39 Schneider, B. 216 School of Social Work: Queer Spaces Saga 217 Seabrook, Jeremy 12 self-rule 188 Sengupta, Jisshu 257–258 Sen, Raima 258 Sen, Raja 255 Sen, Riddhi 255 Sen, Subrata: Nil Nirjone 253 Sewharvi, Siddiqa Begum: “Tarey laraz rahe hain” 136 sex reassignment surgery (SRS) 93, 99–100 sexual: ambiguity 3, 79; bisexual 6, 32, 37, 54–55, 69, 108, 113, 136, 170, 172, 213, 248, 251, 254, 257–258; desire 49, 55–58, 60–61, 70, 90, 102, 135, 146, 150, 174, 214, 250; harassment 177; identities see sexual identities; non-conformity 6, 22; non-heteronormativity 225; normativity 15, 246; orientation 4, 7, 32,

272 Index 37–38, 65, 88, 106, 143, 146, 148, 150–151, 153, 178, 235, 251; talk 52; taxonomy 3; transsexual 179; sexual identities 3–4, 23n1, 32, 67, 105, 110, 166, 172, 237, 242, 254, 257–258, 260; in Assamese society 107–108; in Oxomiya Golpos 108–109; sexuality 4, 105, 107, 109–110, 112–113, 145–146; heterosexuality see heterosexuality/ heterosexualization; homosexuality see homosexuality; transsexuality 256; sexualness 3–4, 51–53 Shadani, Andalib: Tahqiqaat 125 Shahi, Mohammad 126 Shail, Khlid: “Historical Study of Homosexuality” 137 Shankar, S. 2 Sharma, Govinda Prasad 11, 107 Sharma, Maya 4, 19–20 Sharma, Rudrani: Tribhooj (Triangle) 11 Sheeraz, M. 67, 75 Shirani, Mahmood: Majmoa-E-Naghz 122 Shirazi, Hafiz 115, 119, 125 Shirazi, Saaadi 119 Shirin, Mumtaz: “Angrai” 135 Shivlal Gautam 162–164, 166–167 Sight and Sound 173 Silveira, Andy 210–211, 213, 218 Singam, Tanuja: An Autobiography: Tanuja, an Eezham Tirunangai’s Journey and Struggle 10 Siraj, Syed Mustafa 260; Mayamridanga 246, 255, 259 sissyphobia 148–149 SNS see social networking sites social activism 106 social discrimination 39 social networking sites (SNS) 159–160, 164, 169 sodomy 13, 120–121, 143, 145, 205 Sohail, Khalid: “Humzaad” 136; “Kachche Dhage” 136; “Lesbian and Gay” 137; “A Lesbian Letter” 137 Spivak, Gayatri 24n4 SRS see sex reassignment surgery Stegu, Martin 205–206 Stelder, Mikki 198 stigma 1, 3, 10–11, 23n3, 88, 96, 103 stigmatization 1, 3, 23n3, 31, 33, 65, 96–97, 103n4, 147, 232, 248 Stone, Sandy 179 subaltern 9, 21, 23n2, 24n4, 31; sexual 1

Subba Chhetri, Amala: “Mero bhāgko ākāsh” 227–230 Subh Mangalam Zyada Saavdhan 174 Sufism 115, 121 Suroor, Ale Ahmad 134 Swikriti 253 Syangden, Norjang 223; “Ek sānjh euti videshi paryataksita eutā cafemā?” 224–225; Kavitā Jasto Kavitāharu 224 Syed, Mufti 194 Synod Executive Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Mizoram: on sexual relationships 147 Taank, Sawan 260 Taban, Abdul Hayee 130 Tabassum, Wajida 11; Nath ka bojh 136; Nath ka ghuroor 136 Tagore, Sharmila 196 Talukdar, Rita 260 Tamang, Pema Gyalchen 223; “Exploring Queer Literature in Nepali from the Hills of Darjeeling and Sikkim” 17 Tanuja 104n7 An Autobiography: Tanuja, an Eezham Tirunangai’s Journey and Struggle 88, 96–103 “Tarikh-e-Farishta” 132 Taru Mashi 250 Tauches, Kimberly 177 Teere Sang 176 Tellis, Ashley 62n2 10th July 254 Thakuri, Rita 223; “Hāmro ghar” 238–240 Thatcher, Margaret 194 third gender 32, 37–38, 45n7, 67, 88, 103n4, 117, 238–240, 243 Thulung, Uday 223; Aksharrekh 225; “Ādhā Artha” 225–227 Tirunangai Tamil autobiographies 87–104; An Autobiography: Tanuja, an Eezham Tirunangai’s Journey and Struggle 88, 96–103; The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story 88–96 Tonini, Maria 8 transgender (chhakka) 4, 6, 9, 11, 23n3, 38, 41, 46n14, 64, 67, 70–71, 88, 96–97, 100, 103n5, 104n7, 104n9, 113, 134, 146–147, 163, 172, 213, 238, 240, 243n5; community 15, 65, 103n1, 103n4, 103n5, 179, 237,

Index  273 246–249, 252, 254, 256; identity 37, 68, 71, 133; transgenderism 90; see also hijra translatability 7, 33–34, 187 transqueer 22 transsexual: definition of 179; transsexuality 256 Treaty of Amritsar 192 Trikhatri, Mojesh Hriday 223; “Asāmānyatā” 230–232 tritiyaprakriti (people of third nature) 4 Tucker, Andrew 55–56 Uddan 176 Ulti bhasa 64–65, 68–69; as ciphering key 73, 74–75; emergence of 70–71; as full-fledged language 80; nature of 69–70; paralinguistic features of 71–72; purpose of 71; teaching/ learning of 72–73 Un freedom 133 Upekshit Laingik Samuday 40 urban dystopia 150 Urdu, and queer consciousness 115–138; Arabic and Persian connections 117–124; hijra 132–137; homoerotic Urdu 126–132; Sufi mystics 124–126 Vanita, Ruth 174 Varriano, John 249

Vasudevan, Ravi 201n13 Vasudhendra: Mohanaswamy 10 Verhoeven, Paul: Basic Instinct 173 Village Rockstars 176, 182 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 8 Waheed, Mirza: The Collaborator 198 Wani, Ashraf 188 Wong, Alvin K. 9 Xenofeminist Manifesto 47n21 Yes We Exist Campaign (2021) 164, 170n11 YMA see Young Mizo Association Young Mizo Association (YMA) 148 Zatalli, Mir Mohammad Ja’far 126–127 Zauqi, Mosharraf Alam: “Katiyain Bahnen” 136 Zauq, Mohammad Ibrahim 122 zenanas 5 Zia, Ather 189 Zimman, L. 67–68 Zo/Mizo language 143–155; exasperations 151; gender turn 147, 154n5; methodological and conceptual moorings 146–147; question of diversity 147–148; sissyphobia 148–149; webbed Zo queer 151–154