Troubling Suicide: Law, Medicine and Hijra Suicides in India by Meghana Rao A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Center for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Meghana Rao 2017 Troubling Suicide: Law, Medicine and Hijra Suicides in India Meghana Rao Doctor of Philosophy Center for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies Collaborative Program, Center for South Asian Studies University of Toronto 2017 Abstract Attempting suicide is a criminal offense in India, although in the recent past there have been many public and legal discussions considering decriminalizing suicide attempts. How is suicide conceptualized within criminal law? What are the knowledges that inform the complex and shifting views, claims, and legal decisions that constitute the legal regulation of suicide, in India today? Informed by Foucauldian works on governmentality and biopolitics, postcolonial studies, sociolegal scholarship, and queer theory, this dissertation attempts to answer these questions by tracing the discourses that inform the regulation of suicide in India and showing how they are put together (or kept apart) in various legal and governance networks. In addition to a systematic, original study of how suicide appears in criminal court decisions, law reform documents, and proposed laws, this dissertation also studies the framing of suicide within psychiatric and psychosocial public mental health programming. Along with studying the framing and the governance of suicide within law and medical systems, I also study a kind of suicide that exists at the edges of both medical and legal rights systems: hijra suicides. “Hijra” is a gender/sexual identity specific to the South Asian region that ii does not necessarily fit well under the label of ‘transgender’ (a label that has come into prominence in Indian rights law in recent years). Based on my fieldwork in Bangalore, I study hijra suicides to demonstrate that these experiences exist at the edges of both public health programs and rights/legal discourses. In existing at the fringes of all current forms of governmentality, I demonstrate that hijras continue to exert their personhood through expressing their experiences with suicide, which makes the more general point that sociolegal studies of medical-legal assemblages should not be reduced to studies of successful governmentalization. iii Acknowledgments This dissertation was possible because of the help and support I received from many people throughout my PhD. My fieldwork experience was filled with joy and kindness I had not anticipated. For this I am immeasurably grateful to all my hijra and kothi friends and acquaintances in Bangalore who opened their homes and welcomed me with immense fun and warmth. Sometimes, it was an odd friendship because it was a temporary one. In these temporary relationships I received immense affection and trust. I would like to particularly thank Sonika for adding the much-needed giggles through our long bus and car rides across the expanding city of Bangalore. I am immensely grateful to my PhD supervisor Mariana Valverde. She pushed me to think deeper and outside my comfort zone. She constantly encouraged me to observe the contradictions and complexities inherent in my project. I thank her for teaching me to see creativity in what I was otherwise reading as mundane legal documents. These documents came to life through my conversations with Mariana. Furthermore, I thank her for her mentorship, which is often missing in academia. I find it very difficult to express in words the extent to which she has been an influence and inspiration through the process of this PhD. I would like to thank my Doctoral Committee members Naisargi Dave and Beatrice Jauregui for being supportive as well as demanding through the process of writing my dissertation. I would like to thank Naisargi for introducing me to the world of queer literature. This scholarship opened up ways of thinking that will stay with me forever. I would also like to thank her for consistently posing crucial, fundamental questions. Her questions and comments forced me to evaluate my assumptions, and pushed me to be a more sensitive thinker. I am iv grateful for Beatrice Jauregui for her meticulous reading of my dissertation drafts. She often saw significance in small details in my writing and nudged me to think further. Her feedback through the process of writing has been immeasurable. I was lucky to have such an amazing group of academics as my doctoral committee. I owe a great deal to my friends in India. I could not have asked for a better set of friendships to help me through the PhD process. Specifically, I would like to thank my friends Shilpaa Anand and Amit Upadhyay. Shilpaa, for introducing me to the world of history of medicine and medical anthropology, and for always being available to answer questions I had. Amit, for discussions on the history of civil liberties and human rights in India, which helped me understand my own argument better. Most importantly, I would like to thank them both for sharing several bottles of wine and hours of laughter in Bangalore and Hyderabad. I would also like to thank the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore for allowing me to squat in their office for several months during my fieldwork. Specifically, I would like to thank Lawrence Liang who made this possible. I would also like to thank others who were at ALF at the time: Arvind Narrain, Danish Sheikh, Darshana Mitra, Gowthaman Ranganathan, for making me feel welcome. In addition, I would like to thank Siddharth Narrain for renting me his beautiful home for the duration of my fieldwork. I would like to specially thank Lawrence Liang for all the humor, copious amounts of high quality tea, several book recommendations, and most importantly for answering many questions I had about the law and knowledge via international phone conversations. Thank you for being so wonderfully open hearted. To old friends in Bangalore, Ekta Mittal, Ram Bhat, Pallavi Chander, Aditi Krishnamurthy, Chaitra Badrinath, and Prakash Iyer, I would like to thank you all for making Bangalore always feel like home. I would also like to thank the new friends I made in Bangalore, v Niruj Mohan Ramanujam, Kabir Husain, Amit Singh, and Sandeep Krishna for making Bangalore so much fun. Your friendships kept me grounded through some difficult patches. I am ever grateful to friends in Toronto. I would like to thank Nishant Upadhyay for making copious amounts of chai and discussing everything under the sun. Preethy Sivakumar, for helping me get out of my PhD burrow and exploring art together. Özlem Aslan, for being a constant friend through the ups and downs of dissertation writing and for sharing her writing hole in Robarts Library when I needed to a place to put my head down and write. Ponni Arasu, although we did not coincide in Toronto as much as I would have liked, it was great to have a carefree friend to call anytime day or night. Jaby Mathew has been the person I have known the longest in Toronto and I will always remember our long and intense political discussions. I would also like to thank other old and new friends in Toronto—Deepa Rajkumar, Ritika Srimali, Jacob Nerenberg, Melanie Richter-Montpetit, Tania Tabar, Fraser Macpherson, Vivian Solana, Saafi Warsame, Asli Zengin, Akshaya Tankha, Atreyee Majumder, Sanchia DeSouza and Katie Mazer, your presence in the city made me feel connected to this otherwise alien culture. I would also like to thank Francis Cody and Bhawani Raman for being generous and opening their home in Toronto where new friendships were formed. As an international student, I was lucky to have found a place at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. People at the Centre were welcoming from the start and I knew I could always count on them when I needed help. International Development Research Center (IDRC) provided me a grant to conduct my fieldwork in Bangalore, India. Center for Contemporary Studies, IISC, Bangalore, generously provided me with a space to write and make new friends. This PhD would have been impossible without my family’s unflinching support and love. I dedicate this work to my father. From early on, he instilled in me an interest to read, learn, and vi think. Throughout my life, he has made it possible for me to explore various paths and has been a constant unwavering support. For this, and so much more, I am forever grateful. To my sister, Joe, I would like to say, thank you for the several hundred hours of phone conversations. It shrank the distance between time zones. If not for those conversations, I would not have had the humor or perspective I needed to survive this PhD. Thank you for being the source of strength whenever I felt the weakest. My brother-in-law, Yatin, thank you for all the delicious meals you cooked, for my first ever winter jacket, for buying me tickets to visit you guys in Palo Alto, San Diego and Boston, without these trips I would not have had a vacation during my PhD. Most importantly for being so warm and generous for all the years I have known you. To my niece, Avni, and my nephew, Kabir, I want to thank you both for unintentionally keeping me grounded in reality, absurdity and fantasy in equal measure. You both always remind me about what is truly important in life. I would also like to thank Aai and Baba for being supportive, while not entirely understanding the work I do. To Prasad Khanolkar, to use a cliché, no words can express the strength you have been in the last few years. Thank you for your patience, for listening to several mundane ideas about my project, for reading shabby drafts of my work, for understanding what is truly important for me.