Desire and Its Discontents: Queer Politics in Contemporary India

Has the queer movement’s politics in India escaped the combined onslaught of neoliberalism, Hindutva and brahminism? What has this triad done to queer politics in the wake of the ‘reading down’ of India’s sodomy law? Has the decriminalization of adult, consensual and private sex, depoliticized the queer movement? Is the queer movement immune to casteist, sexist and religious prejudice? In the aftermath of the failures and triumphs in the historic Naz, Koushal, NALSA and Navtej judgements of the Supreme Court of India, the essays in this volume engage in a counterintuitive interrogation of the prejudiced dimensions of the mainstream queer movement in India. The essays offer insights into the ways in which new forms of queer solidarities, mobilizations and imaginaries are resisting and subverting the movement’s tacit and overt alignments with neoliberalism, Hindutva and brahminism.