DOI: 10.1111/johs.12205 ORIGINAL ARTICLE “Where do all the lovers go?”–The Cultural Politics of Public Kissing in Mumbai, India (1950–2005) Sneha Annavarapu Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Abstract Correspondence Public expressions of sexual intimacy have often been sub- Sneha Annavarapu, Doctoral Candidate, ject to moral censure and legal regulation in modern India. Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, USA. While there is literature that analyzes the cultural‐political Email:
[email protected] logics of censorship and sexual illiberalism in India, the dis- courses of sympathy towards public displays of intimacy has not received as much critical attention. In this paper, I take the case of one representative discursive space offered by a popular English newspaper and show how the figure of the ‘kissing couple’ became an important entity in larger discussions about the state of urban development, the role of pleasure in the city, and the imagination of a “modern” Mumbai. “Public kissing is just not Indian”–Pramod Navalkar, Indian politician1 1 | INTRODUCTION In most Indian cities and towns, kissing in public places has been considered culturally inappropriate. The argument against men and women kissing, holding hands, and hugging in public is that it is culturally inappropriate, disrespectful to community standards, and downright ‘obscene’. Although recent protests and campaigns by urban youth2 have begun to offer a sense of organized resistance to traditional norms governing behavior in public spaces, it is common knowledge that couples engaging in ‘public displays of affection’ are often subject to moral policing by local police, political parties, and private citizens.