Katyal, Akhil (2011) Playing a double game: idioms of same sex desire in India. PhD Thesis, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies). https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/13103/ Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Playing a Double Game: Idioms of Same Sex Desire in India Akhil Katyal Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in South Asian Studies 2011 Department of South Asia School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 1 Declaration for PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: Akhil Katyal Date: 10th August, 2011 2 Abstract This thesis argues for the multiplicity of idioms of same-sex desire in modern India, treating ‘homo-sexuality’ as only one of them. Moreover, it argues for the fundamental doubleness of the specific historical idiom of ‘sexuality’ itself, that is, its ability to always leave room for manoeuvre, discrepancy and mixture. This thesis, in looking at the human actors in the drama of ‘sexuality’, that is, at the debates and strategies of the editors of the books on ‘queer politics’ and ‘gay writing’, at the overwrought profiles of the individual users of gay social networking websites and at the tactical personal narratives written for sexuality-based activist publications, argues that each of these actors use sexual identity in a double way. Their strategic decisions, their everyday lives and their texts, make it clear that sexual identity does a particular work for them without overdetermining their self-images, either exhaustively or consistently. I see this necessary distance between the adoption and the use of sexual identity both as deeply political and as a valuable analytical point. In modern India, numerous idioms of same-sex desire, such as that of baazi (habit, addiction) which I elaborate at some length, of friendship, of masti (fun, play), of love, among others, are simultaneous to and relate to the idiom of sexuality. I look at how these relations actually get worked out in texts, in politics and in social lives, which are full of concerns of and beyond sexual desire. This thesis moves from a conceptual sublimity to everyday practice and it uses the latter as a vantage point to revise the idea of sexual identity from being a limit, a marker, a stigmata to being a form of play, a tool, a double game. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...7 1. Disjointing Contemporary India: Idioms of Same-sex Desire - An Introduction ...8 (i) Why the Double Game? Why Doubleness at All: A Conversation with akshay khanna.8 (ii) Eleven Flashpoints: What Contemporary? Which Modern? ...21 (iii) Nigah in Delhi Sexuality Politics, or, Disjointing as Method ...46 (iv) Disjointing as Method: Outlining the Chapters ...54 2. Laundebaazi: Of Habits, Politics and Modernity in North India ...64 (i) Why Laundebaazi? ...64 (ii) Baazi ...66 (iii) Laundebaazi ...74 (iv) (Launde)baazi as a Political Metaphor ...85 (v) The Contemporaneity of Baazi ...96 3. On Planet Romeo: Indian Men as Migrants, Gay, Lovers and Friends ...111 (i) A Short History of Planet Romeo ...111 (ii) The Internet as Form ...113 (iii) Figures on Planet Romeo and Why a Study of Figures is Important ...122 (iv) The Migrant ...128 (v) The Gay ...139 (vi) The Lover ...148 (vi-a) The Jostling Repertories of Love: The Case of the Ghazal ...161 (vii) The Friend ...166 (vii-a) The Jostling Repertoires of Friendship: The Case of Masti ...178 4 (viii) Conclusion ...185 4. The Art of Personal Narratives: Sexuality and Story-telling in Activism …187 (i) Sexuality: What the word has been upto …192 (ii) What has Homosexuality got to do with telling stories: After Freud, and, The Everydayness of Sexuality in Political Activism …204 (iii) The Art of Personal Narratives I: The Many Legacies of Sexuality …223 (iv) The Art of Personal Narratives II: On the Inconsistent Text …240 (v) Final Remarks …249 5. Gay Writing and its Doubleness ...252 (i) The Mourning ...252 (ii) Hoshang/Shahid, or, What is Gay Writing? ...253 (iii) Why Only Gay Folk can write Gay, Or, The Exceptionalist Art of Gay Writing ...256 (iv) Why Only Gay Folk do not write Gay, Or, The Anti-Exceptionalist Art of Gay Writing ...266 (v) Literary Fame and ‘Gay’ Writing as a Marketing Gamble ...274 6. Doubless as Politics: Final Remarks ...285 Bibliography ...294 List of Figures 1. Chaklet Advertisement, in Ugra’s Dilli ka Dalal, June 1928. …109 2. Chaklet Advertisement, in Ugra’s Chand Haseenon ke Khutoot, December 1928. …110 3. Planetromeo Home Page …186 5 For Lalita Kartik Nigah 6 Acknowledgements First of all, biggest thanks are due to my trinity of supervisors. For her enthusiasm about this work that equalled mine, for promptly commenting on my drafts, and for her exciting ideas, Caroline Osella. For her careful and close readings, for making brilliant suggestions that have altered the shape of several portions of this work, and for her comments that kept me on my toes, Francesca Orsini. For dealing with my thesis-related and unrelated rants for three years, for salvaging unsalvageable sections, for her warmth and ideas, and most for keeping the excesses of my prose in check, Amina Yaqin. For their love, their constant guidance and for keeping track of everything I am upto, my teachers and my friends Vaibhav, Teja, Brinda, Suroopa, Tapan, Sumit, Kadambari, Shivani and Vebhuti. For filling up my three short years in London with lasting friendships, craziness and love, I owe thanks to Vasugi, Sahana, Richard, Jean-Philippe, Rahul, Mridhula, Neil, Kit, Shalini, Anushay, Hasan, Raj, Sahil, Sikandar, Inayat, Shamira, Tim, Lucrezia, Chloe, Pawas, Mary and Eddie. This thesis emerged from and in a sense returns to the queer activists in Delhi. For everyone in Nigah who over past several years have given me friendship and family, I owe my motivation and my politics. It is because of them that the city that I migrated to for education became the city that I find myself most driven by, most at home. Three years back, I began writing this thesis when I was almost entirely steeped in the queer activist language and work of Nigah. This thesis then is both a stock-taking and a persistence of that work in Delhi. To Pavitr, Deepti, Anusha, Akshara, Gautam, Ponni, Mario, Priya, Sunil, Sidhartha, and to friends of Nigah, Mayur, akshay, Arvind, Pramada, Jaya and Lesly, I dedicate this work. For her love that carried me through college, for her encouragement that made me write, and for her incomparable strength that persisted through her last days, I owe this work to Lalita. For his friendship, his cheer but most of all for his patience, I owe this work to Kartik. 7 Disjointing Contemporary India: Idioms of Same-Sex Desire - An Introduction ‘ देख- ’ (‘Before looking for parity, we must take stock of all the disparities’) – Ismat Chughtai (1998: 205)1 Why the Double Game? Why Doubleness at All: A Conversation with akshay khanna One of the last works that I read while writing this thesis was another thesis by a friend akshay khanna.2 In my early years of being part of ‘sexuality’ activism in Delhi, akshay was someone I knew of partially, someone that my other activist friends knew better, someone with whom they had spent a good deal of time debating about their everyday political choices as activists, working on petitions, thinking through strategies, organizing protests, he was someone whom they had loved, fought and bantered with and listened to. In those years, between 2006 and 2008, akshay was in and out of Delhi doing fieldwork for his own PhD thesis that he was to submit later in Edinburgh as A Refracted Subject: Sexualness in the realms of Law and Epidemiology.3 The thesis reflected akshay to the bone, someone who I had come to know a little better during my years in London, it reflected his passion and politics, and above all, his 1 All Hindi words and passages in this thesis, written or quoted in the Devanagiri script, have been supplied with my own English translations, unless otherwise mentioned. When Hindi words are transliterated using the English Roman script, they have been consistently italicized. Often Hindi quotations appear in the transliterated English form in the original. These have been retained as transliterated and have been supplied with my own translations. 2 The choice of the lower case letters for his name is akshay’s own. It is, I presume with some confidence, part of his abiding experimentation, as will become clear in the discussion of his work, with the common markers that designate the self and how we use those markers in our day to day lives.