A Discordant Harmony – A Critical Evaluation of the Queer Theory from an Indian Perspective (Published)
Queerness or rather queer sexuality in India has always been the favourite child of debate and discussions. Queer identity in India has always suffered through the dilemma of to be or not to be. As Dasgupta puts it, “Identities are complicated to begin with and become more complicated when relating them to nation and sexuality”. Given the diversity of India in terms of not only culture but ethnicity as well, Indian sexual identities are the product of “Mulipicitous effects and perceptions of tradition, modernity, colonization and globalization” (Dasgupta) that are more often in conflict with each other than in a harmonious synthesis. The main argument of this paper is to trace a lineage of queerness in India both in terms of its representation in literature by analyzing The Editor (1893) and The Housewife (1891) by Rabindranath Tagore; Lihaaf (1941) by Ismat Chugtai; and R. Raja Rao’s The Boyfriend (2003), and how it prevailed in reality or the societal perception of the same. Providing a literature review by building a bridge in between the ancient and the contemporary India, the paper attempts to trace the missing links of when and how queerness went behind the curtains only to reappear in front of a more complicated, confused and probably a more rigid audience
Keywords: Cross-Dressing, Gendered-Behavior, Hindu Mythology, Judith Butler, LGBT, Mainstream, Queer, Subaltern, Tagore.