Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society

by Vanita,Ruth; Vanita,Ruth

• ISBN13: 9780415929493
• ISBN10: 0415929490
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-11-16
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Little is known about same-sex love and eroticism in Indian culture, but this once forbidden subject is slowly receiving more attention. Here for the first time, this largely uninvestigated area of Indian culture is uncovered in Vanita's provocative collection of original essays. The topics are wide-ranging, covering film, literature, popular culture, historical and religious texts, law, and other aspects of life in India. With a comprehensive scope, contributors discuss a diverse range of examples, including the recent controversial lesbian film, Fire; a case of same-sex love and murder in colonial India; homophobic fiction and homoerotic advertising in current day India; and queering the Kama Sutra.Queering Indiaprovides a profoundly important new understanding of gay and lesbian life.

Author Biography

Ruth Vanita is Associate Professor of Liberal Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Montana

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(14)
Ruth Vanita
Part 1: Colonial Transitions
The Politics of Penetration: Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code	15	(15)
Suparna Bhaskaran
Sultan Mahmud's Makover: Colonial Homophobia and the Persian-Urdu Literary Tradition	30	(17)
Scott Kugle
Doganas and Zanakhis: The Invention and Subsequent Erasure of Urdu Poetry's ``Lesbian'' Voice	47	(14)
Carla Petievich
Alienation, Intimacy, and Gender: Problems for a History of Love in South Asia	61	(16)
Indrani Chatterjee
Eunuchs, Lesbians, and Other Mythical Beasts: Queering and Dequeering the Kama Sutra	77	(10)
Michael J. Sweet
Part 2: The Visions of Fiction
Loving Well: Homosexuality and Utopian Thought in Post/Colonial India	87	(13)
Leela Gandhi
``Do I Remove My Skin?'': Interrogating Identity in Suniti Namjoshi's Fables	100	(11)
Anannya Dasgupta
``Queernesses All Mine'': Same-Sex Desire in Kamala Das's Fiction and Poetry	111	(16)
Rosemary Marangoly George
Homophobic Fiction/Homoerotic Advertising: The Pleasures and Perils of Twentieth-Century Indianness	127	(22)
Ruth Vanita
What Mrs. Besahara Saw: Reflections on the Gay Goonda	149	(14)
Lawrence Cohen
Part 3: Performative Pleasures in Theater, TV, and Cinema
A Different Desire, a Different Femininity: Theatrical Transvestism in the Parsi, Gujarati, and Marathi Theaters, 1850-1940	163	(18)
Kathryn Hansen
Queer Bonds: Male Friendships in Contemporary Malayalam Cinema	181	(12)
Muraleedharan T.
``I Sleep behind You'': Male Homosociality and Homoeroticism in Indian parallel Cinema	193	(14)
Thomas Waugh
Queer Pleasures for Queer People: Film, Television, and Queer Sexuality in India	207	(15)
Shohini Ghosh
On Fire: Sexuality and Its Incitements	222	(12)
Geeta Patel
After the Fire	234	(11)
Monica Bachmann
Notes on Contributors	245	(2)
Index	247