Description
The book argues that there is no monolithic homosexuality; there are only homosexualities, that is, there are as many reasons for being gay as there are gays. Some people are born gay, some have gayness thrust upon them, and some do, indeed, achieve great gayness. Representation of homosexuality/homoeroticism, as it is understood today, is thus a western import. The act and public/social discourses on same-sex love are still illegal; according to many, it is against the Indian ‘tradition’; a sense of ‘history’ is seriously problematic when we dig out for a past tradition of homoerotic love and desire. Hoshang Merchant, through an examination of texts, films, and poetry, attempts to analyse and crack the codes of sexual (mis)conduct in contemporary India, giving short histories of the fate of several gay writers and explaining the difficulties of ‘coming out’.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Queering India Introduction
Book I: Book of the Self — Introduction 1. Subterranean Sex in the Subcontinent: Is Homosexuality ‘Indian’? (Personal Essay) Appendices : (a) Homosexual/ Dalit Literature (b) Transforming Pedagogies: (c) Gays with Critical Disability
Book II: Book of the World — Introduction 2. Indian Narrativity: Fiction, Film, Theatre 3. Urdu Gay Literature: Poetry 4. Hindi Gay Literature 5. Gay Theatre 6. Gay Films Appendices (a) The Eunuch Festival of Aaravan (b) Transsexual Hosts on TV Talkshows (c) The Pakistan Poet as Eunuch: Ifti Nasim (d) Gender-fuck in Namdeo Dhasal’s ‘Gandu Baghicha’ (e) Jameela Nishat: Muse as Poet (f) Rukmini Bhaya Nair’s ‘Hermaphrodite’ (g) Satish Alekar’s Begum Barve
Book III Book of the Soul — Introduction 7. Sultan Padamsee: A Pioneer Gay Poet? 8. The Strange Case of Jehangir Bhownagary (1921–2004) 9. Adil Jussawalla and R. Raj Rao: The Politics of the Avant-Garde 10. Agha Shahid Ali’s Gay Nation 11. The Anxiety of Coming Out: Vikram Seth 12. Suniti Namjoshi 13. Dinyar Godrej and Ian Iqbal Rashid 14. The Art of Bhupen Khakhar
Afterword: My Poetry
Postscript: A Note on the Structure of this Book
Hoshang Merchant is India’s pre-eminent voice of gay liberation. Born in 1947 to a Zoroastrian business family in Bombay, India, he graduated in 1968 with a major in English and a minor in the culture of India. On his mother’s side, he descends from a line of preachers and teachers.
Hoshang holds a master’s from Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA. At Purdue University, Indiana, USA, he specialized in the renaissance and modernism. After leaving Purdue in 1975, Merchant attended the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Centre, Massachusetts, USA, and lived and taught in Heidelberg, Iran, and Jerusalem, where he was exposed to various radical student movements of the Left.
He has studied Buddhism at the Tibetan Library, Dharamshala, India, and Islam in Iran and Palestine. Since 1979, seventeen of his books of poetry have been published. He recently retired from the University of Hyderabad, India, after twenty-six years of teaching.
