Reflections on “Being Queer” in Kolkata
Niharika Banerjea “To speak of sexuality, and of same-sex love in particular, in India today is simultaneously an act of political assertion, of celebration, of defiance and of fear” (Narrain and Bhan 2005, 2). Recent work exploring same-sex experiences in India emphasizes that lesbian and feminist causes must work together to respond to ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. This position raises several issues, among which the tenuous nature of same-sex experiences and the ongoing need seek a collective, critical community are abiding concerns. There is little published writing around queer middle-class women from India that takes reflexivity seriously as a method. Therefore my short essay takes the form of a series of self-reflective fragments that illustratethose moments of communitythat I experienced with women who self-identify as ‘samakami’. ‘Samakami’ is a Bengali term meaning same-sex desiring person. Rather than conceiving of community as a monolithic empirical unit of analysis “as points of arrival for our research agendas” (Green 2002, 521), I approach the term as emerging within the lived context of my interaction with same-sex desiring women in Kolkata. Kolkata The sights and sounds of the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass-the main thoroughfare in the city-on a June morning in 2009 does indeed have clarity. As the taxi speeds down the road, the dense summer air envelopes the weather beaten and the freshly painted residential apartments, the one manned retail store, the mall and gently pushes the masses of people – sweaty, crisply dressed, – onto their daily destinations. The public transportation is once again so conspicuous by its packed compartments. The newly designed buses are a reminder of economic liberalization, of hope for a once dying city and fear for its future. In this tropical city there is indeed an air of expectancy. Kolkata today is the juxtaposition of a pre and post liberalized economy, in its physical structure as well as social fabric. For someone like me whose personal history is entangled with the city’s pre and post liberalization history, it may be rather difficult to recognize all the signs of degradation and rejuvenation. But one change is unmistakable. There is an air of affluence in the place and a pride about the affluence. It shows itself in a plethora of various types of cars on the roads, of new buildings, restaurants, and the neighborhood stores packed with goods meant for personal grooming and household improvement-previously unavailable to the inhabitants of this place and the nation. The happy middle-class heterosexual couples staring down from the billboards are the new drivers of this economy. In a largely Hindu nation where the ideal “Hindu-nationalist citizen-body rests on the exclusion of Others who embody, albeit differentially, improper gendering, sexuality, and nationalization” (Bacchetta 1999: 151), what meaning does community hold for same-sex desiring women in the city? I cannot take Kolkata for granted. The city is too complex, too dense to be entirely familiar. Then again the tenuous nature of same-sex relationships (Vanita and Kidwai 2001) makes it hard to imagine a gay space in the city, unlike many cities in the global north. Thus, I am not in search for an enclave, but for a meaningful community at the very heart of the city. Academy of Fine Arts 2nd July 2009. A large group of people outside the Academy complex, the cultural hub of Kolkata, carrying various banners and posters celebrating the de-criminalization of homosexuality in India. Something changed that day. The High Court of Delhi ruled that the provision in Section 377 of India’s Penal Code that criminalises private consensual sex between same-sex adults violates the country’s Constitution and international human rights conventions. A group of people long considered a moral hazard and previously deemed shameful in public discourse was on its way to become an object of public discussion about human rights in the world’s largest democracy. Was this that moment where same-sex desiring people could officially reach out to the contemporary Indian public without discrimination or was it just the beginning of a new phase in the struggle to de-stigmatize same-sex relationships in the nation? The gathering at the Academy was an appeal to community, or rather the promise of a community that refuses to remain non-existent within the folds of the city, loving, laughing and seeking to change the norms of social interaction right at its heart. This collective was not a fiction, but a reality that with all its territoriality and face-to-face interaction became a site for political re-imagining. But many of us were careful not to conceive of it as an essential foundation. For those who do not live their sexuality as a fixed form of identity, community as a foundational entity is meaningless. The appeal to community therefore was an appeal for living with difference. Living with difference is “another way of thinking how it is that ‘the more than oneness’ of sociality requires new ways of living” (Ahmed and Fortier 2003: 256). Sappho Sappho is part of a long history of same-sex, particularly, lesbian activism in India. It formed in 1999 to claim recognition for lesbians in Kolkata.The first floor of a two-storied modest house in a middle-class neighborhoodin southeast Kolkata serves as its office. This location had indeed surprised me the first day I visited it. As the taxi slowly but surely made its last turn and stopped short of my destination, I asked myself: “how has Sappho managed to survive in this neighborhood for such a long time”? The taxi could not enter the small by-lane, so I got down and walked the last few minutes. There were no signs to indicate the presence of the organization. Was it possible to exist in a modest middle class neighborhood such as this? Didn’t the neighbors say or ask anything? What did the neighbors think that the office was about? The nebulous character of same-sex experiences in the Indian context is well documented (Khanna 2005; Vanita 2001). There is often an absence of explicit words in Indian languages to denote same-sex desires and relationships. Same sex-sexualities are possible