Queer Activism in India
A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics
Naisargi N. Dave
Dave’s book chronicles the activities of Delhi-based lesbian organizations that emerged at the turn of the 1990s and their role as support groups, coalition partners, and public interlocutors. Two moments of high-visibility activism are studied: the controversy around Deepa Mehta’s film Fire (1998) and the campaign to decriminalize homosexuality. The more quotidian sites of study include letters written by women to the lesbian group Sakhi in the 1980s and phone calls made to a helpline run by another group, Sangini. Inspired by the ‘affective turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, the book maps activist interventions onto the emotional landscapes of intra- and inter-group dynamics. Positioning herself as a ‘participant observer’ (p. 24) during fieldwork, Dave does ‘all those things that activists do – attending meetings, joining in protests, and spending hours at a computer jointly composing e-mail messages, press releases, funding proposals, and mission statements’ (p. 24) in order to imbibe the ‘dailyness’ (p. 24) lived by her subjects. The upshot is mixed.
The loosely framed research questions coupled with an abstract engagement with the idea of ‘affect’ blurs the lines between an academic enterprise and the musings of an activist. Therefore, when Dave’says she seeks to understand lesbian activism as an ethical practice through the ‘effect of three affective exercises’ (the ‘problematization of social norms,’ ‘the invention of alternatives to those social norms,’ and the creative practices of the ‘newly established possibilities’), (p. 3) we are no wiser at the end of the book about what that really means. To reflect on the limits and possibilities of ‘rendering real’ (p. 33) an imagined world is certainly worthy but not when it is accomplished at the cost of assuming a consensus about ‘social norms.’
Therefore, when in opposition to ‘coming out’ (whose assumed universalism the author legitimately challenges), ‘leaving home’ is posited as ‘a more salient rubric’ (p. 214) for Indian lesbians, we wonder why this idea is spared scrutiny. As the lives of many lesbians show, ‘leaving home’ is not a precondition to inhabiting radical worlds. Inexplicably, the book is reluctant to historicize or contextualize ‘lesbian emergence’ (p. 22) in the 1990s. The oracular significance placed on a handful of activists ends up occluding a significant prehistory while leaving unacknowledged the tremendous diversity among lesbian women with regard to caste, class, ethnicity, language, religion, and geography. Long before self-identified groups came into existence, informal groups of lesbians convened regularly, built networks of support and solidarity, and made public interventions. A historical moment is always more than the sum of a few agentive individuals. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, gays and lesbians were becoming increasingly visible in dance, theater, film, fiction, and poetry.
In the 1980s, the women’s magazine Manushi carried poems, stories, and reports about lesbian love and life. Ruth Vanita, then co-editor of Manushi , remembers feeling exhilarated after a watching a stage performance of the magical lesbian fable Naya Gharvas (A New Domesticity) by Vijay Dan Detha. The story was translated and published in Manushi , causing much excitement among lesbians. In 1998, Manushi (now reduced to one editor) viciously attacked Fire and decried the very lesbian emergence it had once supported. Marking a radical break with the past, the 1990s inaugurated a new era, characterized by both exhilaration and anxiety. The liberalization of the economy and the deregulation of the media catalyzed large-scale cultural transformations. Moral panics gripped the public even as the ever-expanding networks of satellite television circulated unprecedented amounts of sexual speech. Sexual rights activism, of which the lesbian emergence was a part, gained momentum from these contradictory forces.
Dave’s description of the 1990s as ‘a time and place of often violent cultural conservatism’ (p. 17) is therefore only partially true. Ethically, the book raises a number of questions. With only a few exceptions, people are identified by their real names. Are we to assume that the range of people who have been quoted, or whose ‘structures of feeling’ (p. 9) have been described, have all consented to being thus represented? How, for instance, is consent received when one attends calls on a helpline? Are the callers, who are sometimes in great distress, told that their confidences might find their way into a PhD dissertation? During the Section 377 hearings, one activist tells Dave that the lawyers fighting the case are motivated by donor funds. The lawyers are identified by name, but since they do not have a chance to respond, an insinuation is left hanging in the air. More troubling is the discussion of the ‘Pune Controversy,’ in which a lesbian group falls out with its parent body. The author never imputes blame on either party, but self-admittedly gives more space and attention to the discontent expressed by the spokesperson of the lesbian group. The parent groups equally significant position (‘We certainly didn’t fire anyone because they were lesbians; but we certainly did hire women because they were.’) (p. 222) is carried not in the main text but the footnotes. A project that is driven by narratives of the self, friendships, and intimacy demands even greater rigor and self-reflection. Dave’s claim that she was neither advantaged by her Indian origin nor disadvantaged by her American birth, but prequalified for trust by her queer identity, does little to enhance discursive complexity.
Limitations notwithstanding, Dave’s book, with its anecdotes, observations, and rich endnotes, will no doubt add to our understanding of urban lesbian activism while compelling us to reflect about methods and ethics in the age of ‘affect.’ ~ Shohini Ghosh, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 73, No. 1 (FEBRUARY 2014), pp. 271-272
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Details
| ISBN | 9780822353058 |
| Genre | Asian Interest; LGBT Studies/Social Sciences |
| Publication Date | 2012 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press |
| No. of Pages | 265 |
| LoC Classification | HQ75.6.I4 .D38 2012 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Good |
| Subject | Lesbian activists – India; Lesbianism – India |
| BookID | 10267 |
