Queering India

Ruth Vanita is Associate Professor of Liberal Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Montana. She is the co-editor of Same-Sex Love in India: Readings fromLiterature (2000).

" 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."

• Introduction,Ruth Vanita,Part One: Colonial Transitions,1. The Politics of Penetration: Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, Suparna Bhaskaran,2. Sultan Mahmud's Make-Over: Colonial Homophobia and the Persian-Urdu Literay Tradition, Scott Kugle,3. Doganas and Zanakhis: The Invention and Subsequent Erasure of Urdu Poetry's Lesbian Voice, Carla Petievich,4. Alienation, Intimacy, and Gender: Problems for a History of Love in South Asia, Indrani Chatterjee,5. Eunuchs, Lesbians, and Other Mythical Beasts: Queering and De-Queering the Kamasutra, Michael Sweet,Part Two: The Visions of Fiction,6. Loving Well: Homosexuality and Utopian Thought in Post/Colonial India, Leela Gandhi,7. Do I Remove My Skin?: Interrogating Indentity in Suniti Namjoshi's Fables, Anannya Dasgupta,8. Queernesses All Mine: Same-Sex Desire in Kamala Das's Fiction and Poetry, Rosemary Marangoly George 9. Homophobic Fiction/Homoerotic Advertising: The Pleasures and Perils of Twentieth-Century Indianness, Ruth Vanita,10. What Mrs. Besahara Saw: Reflections on the Gay Goonda, Lawrence Cohen,Part Three: Performative Pleasures in Theater, TV, and Cinema,11. A Different Desire, A Different Femininity: Theatrical Transvestism in the Parsi, Gujarati, and Marathi Theaters, 1850-1940, Kathryn Hansen,12. Queer Bonds: Male Friendships in Contemporary Malayalam Cinema, Muraleedharan T.,13. I Sleep Behind You: Male Homosociality and Homoeroticism in Indian Parallel Cinema, Thomas Waugh,14. Queer Pleasures for Queer People: Film, Television, and Queer Sexuality in India, Shohini Ghosh,15. On Fire: Sexuality and its Incitements, Geeta Patel,16. After the Fire: Smoldering Questions about Representation, Monica Bachmann,Notes on Contributors,