Description
Book SynopsisQueering India provides an understanding of same-sex love and eroticism in Indian culture and society. The essays focus on gay and lesbian life in India to provide a comprehensive look at a much neglected area.
Trade Review" Queering India provides a fascinating, livley, and historically grounded discussionof the impact of same-sex love on Indian culture. Spanning a range of disciplines, these essays shatter the myth that homosexuality is a Western or Northern experience. This is an excellent collection"
--Urvashi Vaid, co-editor of CreatingChange: Public Policy, Sexuality, and Civil Rights."
"Ruth Vanita's wonderful project bears fruit. She has assembled a superb collection of essays that establish the queerness of desis, the sexual struggle of Indian history. Queering India will annoy the despots, but forces of desire do not give in without a few good books."
--Vijay Prashad, author of The Karma of BrownFolk."
""Queering India" offers exactly what the best scholarship is supposed to. The book contains an impressive variety of ways to view a vast array of experiences, expressions, and perspectives on the lives of a complex and diverse part of the world. This collection will undermine any shallow assumptions or stereotypes one might hold about sexuality, gender, and daily life in South Asia"
--Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Copyrights andCopywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How itThreatens Creativity."
Table of ContentsIntroduction by Ruth Vanita. I. Colonial Transitions 1.The Politics of Penetration: Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code 2. Sultan Mahmud's Make-Over: Colonial Homophobia and the Persian-Urdu Literary Tradition 3. Doganas and Zanakhis: The Invention and Subsequent Erasure of Urdu Poetry's "Lesbian" Voice 4. Alienation, Intimacy, and Gender: Problems for a History of Love in South Asia 5. Eunuchs, Lesbians, and Other Mystical Beasts: Queering and De-Queering the Kamasutra II. The Visions of Fiction 6. Loving Well: Homosexuality and Utopian Thought in Post/Colonial India 7. "Do I Remove My Skin?": Interrogating Identity in Suniti Namjoshi's Fables 8. "Queerness All Mine": Same-Sex Desire in Kamala Das's Fiction and Poetry 9. Homophobic Fiction/Homoerotic Advertising: The Pleasures and Perils of Twentieth-Century Indianness 10. What Mrs. Besahara Saw: Reflections on the Gay Goonda III. Performance Pleasures in Theatre, TV, and Cinema 11. A Different Desire, A Different Femininity: Theatrical Transvestism in the Parsi, Gujarati, and Marathi Theatres, 1850-1940 12. Queer Bonds: Male Friendships in Contemporary Malayalam Cinema 13. "I Sleep Behind you": Male Homosociality and Homoeroticism in Indian Parallel Cinema 14. Queer Pleasures for Queer People: Film, Television, and Queer Sexuality in India 15. On Fire: Sexuality and its Incitements 16. After the Fire: Smoldering Questions about Representation
