Notes Introduction 1. Abha Dawesar, Babyji (New Delhi: Penguin, 2005), p. 1. 2. There are pitfalls when using terms like “gay,” “lesbian,” or “homosexual” in India, unless they are consonant with “local” identifications. The prob- lem of naming has been central in the “sexuality debates,” as will shortly be delineated. 3. Hoshang Merchant, Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Texts: New India’s Gay Poets (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 62. 4. Fire, dir. by Deepa Mehta (Trial by Fire Films, 1996) [on DVD]. 5. Geeta Patel, “On Fire: Sexuality and Its Incitements,” in Queering India, ed. by Ruth Vanita (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 222–233; Jacqueline Levitin, “An Introduction to Deepa Mehta,” in Women Filmmakers: Refocusing, ed. by Jacqueline Levitin, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), pp. 273–283. 6. A Lotus of Another Color, ed. by Rakesh Ratti (Boston: Alyson Publi- cations, 1993); Queering India, ed. by Ruth Vanita; Seminal Sites and Seminal Attitudes—Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia, ed. by Sanjay Srivastava (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004); Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India, ed. by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005); Sexualities, ed. by Nivedita Menon (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2007); The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India, ed. by Brinda Bose and Suhabrata Bhattacharyya (King’s Lynn: Seagull Books, 2007). 7. Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted, “Introduction,” in A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism, ed. by Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. xv–xvi (p. xv). 8. Quest/Thaang, dir. by Amol Palekar (Gateway Entertainment, 2006) [on DVD]; The Journey (Sancharram), dir. by Ligy J. Pullappally (Millivres Entertainment, 2004) [on DVD]; My Brother Nikhil, dir. by Anirban Dhar (Four Front Films, 2005) [on DVD]; 68 Pages, dir. by Sridhar Rangayan (Humsafar Trust, 2007) [on DVD]. 9. Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 166 ● Notes 10. Ibid., p. 154. 11. John De Cecco and John Elia, “Introduction,” Journal of Homosexuality, 24, 3/4 (1993), 1–26 (p. 1). 12. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume One: The Will to Knowl- edge, trans. by Robert Hurley (London: Penguin, 1998). 13. David Halperin, “Is There a History of Sexuality?” History and Theory, 28, 3 (1989), 257–274 (p. 257). 14. W. C. Harris, Queer Externalities: Hazardous Encounters in American Culture (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009), p. 25. 15. Gopinath, 2005, p. 12. 16. The term “nonheteronormative”, positioning itself outside the precepts of a society that understands sexuality as dimorphic, does not have universal relevance in India. 17. Merchant, 2009, p. xix. 18. Teresa de Lauretis, “Habit Changes,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 6, 2–3 (1994), 296–313 (p. 296). 19. Sanjay Srivastava, “Introduction,” in Srivastava, 2004, pp. 11–48 (p. 28). 20. Gayatri Reddy, With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). 21. David Eng, Judith Halberstam and José Esteban Muñoz, “Introduction,” Social Text, 23, 1–17 (p. 3). 22. Lisa Duggan, “Making It Perfectly Queer,” Socialist Review, 22, 1 (1992), 11–31 (p. 26). 23. However, many self-identified “queer” people had used the term with more positive valences well before 1990. 24. Leo Bersani, Homos (London: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 56. 25. Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 215. 26. David Eng, The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), p. 26; p. 34. 27. Spivak defines this as the “strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest.” Gayatri Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. by Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 205. 28. Harris, 2009, p. 13. 29. Ibid., p. 179. 30. Yonatan Touval, “Colonial Queer Something,” in Queer Forster,ed.by Robert K. Martin and George Piggford (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 237–254 (p. 242). 31. George H. Franks, Queer India (New Delhi: Cassell & Co., 1989), p. ix. 32. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). 33. Dennis Altman, Global Sex (London: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 34. Reddy, 2005, p. 221. 35. Foucault, 1998. Notes ● 167 36. Reddy, 2005; Shivananda Khan, “MSM, HIV/AIDS and Human Rights in South Asia,” Naz Foundation International Publications, 2004 <http://www.nfi.net/NFI%20Publications/Essays/2004/MSM%20& %20Human%20Rights.pdf> [accessed 4 December 2010]; Ashok Row Kavi, “Kothis versus Other MSM: Identity versus Behaviour in the Chicken and Egg Paradox,” in Bose and Bhattacharyya, 2007, pp. 391–398. 37. Suparna Bhaskaran, Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/national Projects (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 8. 38. Ruth Vanita, Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 39. Khush, dir. by Pratibha Parmar (Kali Films, 1991). 40. Shivananda Khan, “Making Visible the Invisible,” Naz Foundation Inter- national Publications, 1993 <http://www.nfi.net/NFI%20Publications/ Essays/making%20visible%20.pdf> [accessed 3 January 2012] (p. 2). 41. Khan, 2004, p. 2–3. 42. See Ruth Vanita, Gandhi’s Tiger and Sita’s Smile: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Culture (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005). 43. Lawrence Cohen, “The Kothi Wars: AIDS Cosmopolitanism and the Moral- ity of Classification,” in Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality, and Morality in Global Perspective, ed. by Vincann Adams and Stacy Leigh Pigg (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 269–303. 44. Jeremy Seabrook, Love in A Different Climate: Men Who Have Sex with Men in India (London: Verso, 1999), pp. 1–2. 45. Bhaskaran, 2004, p. 103. 46. Paul Gilroy, Small Acts (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1993), p. 61. 47. Ibid., p. 62. 48. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), p. xxix. 49. Chong Kee Tan, “Transcending Sexual Nationalism and Colonialism: Cultural Hybridization as Process of Sexual Politics in ’90s Taiwan,” in Postcolonial, Queer: Theoretical Intersections, ed. by John C. Hawley (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), pp. 123–137 (pp. 124–125). 50. Chris Berry, ‘Asian Values, Family Values’: Film, Video, and Lesbian and Gay Identities,” in Gay and Lesbian Asia: Culture, Identity, Community, ed. by Gerrard Sullivan and Peter A. Jackson (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2001), pp. 211–231 (p. 212). 51. Marwan M. Kraidy, Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2005), p. vi. 52. See Charles Stewart, “Syncretism and its Synonyms,” in The Creolization Reader, ed. by Robin Cohen and Paola Toninato (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 289–305. 53. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw, “Introduction,” in Syncretism/Anti- Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, ed. by Stewart and Shaw (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 1–26 (p. 10). 168 ● Notes 54. Plutarch, Moralia, ed. by Jeffrey Hendersen, trans. by W. C. Hembold and others, 16 vols (London: Harvard University Press, 1917–1939), VI (2005), p. 313. 55. The Liddell Scott Dictionary defines “philia” as “friendly love, affectionate regard, fondness, friendship, distinct from eros.”¯ 56. The Liddell Scott Dictionary defines this as “love, mostly of the sexual passion.” 57. Plutarch, Lives, ed. by Jeffrey Henderson, trans. by Bernadotte Perin and others, 11 vols (London: Harvard University Press, 1917–1938), V (2005), p. 384–385 58. E.g. “Men condemn ...the inconstancy of boy-lovers. They say that such friendships are parted by a hair.” See Plutarch, Moralia, ed. by C. P. Goold, trans. by F. H. Sandbach and others, 15 vols (London: Harvard University Press, 1917–1939), IX (1999), p. 433. 59. N. K. Das, “Introduction,” in Culture, Religion, and Philosophy: Critical Studies in Syncretism and Inter-Faith Harmony, ed. by N. K. Das (Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2003), pp. 1–23 (p. 23). 60. Ram Puniyani, Communal Politics: Facts versus Myths (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003), p. 13. 61. Chris Berry and Fran Martin, “Syncretism and Synchronicity: Queer ‘n’ Asian Cyberspace in 1990s Taiwan and Korea,” in Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, ed. by Chris Berry, Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 87–114 (p. 89). 62. Ratna Kapur, “A Love Song to Our Mongrel Selves: Sexuality, Hybridity and the Law,” Social Legal Studies, 8, 3 (1999), 353–368. 63. Eve Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 64. Raj Rao, The Boyfriend (New Delhi: Penguin, 2003), p. 193. 65. Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (New York: Palgrave, 2000). 66. Ibid., p. 25. 67. Leonard Zwilling and Michael Sweet, “The evolution of third-sex con- structs in ancient India: a study in ambiguity,” in Invented Identities: The Interplay of Gender, Religion and Politics in India, ed. by Julia Leslie and Mary McGee (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 99–132. 68. Leonard Zwilling and Michael Sweet, “ ‘Like a City Ablaze’: The Third Sex and the Creation of Sexuality in Jain Religious Literature,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 6, 3 (1996), 359–384 (p. 383). 69. Vatsyayana, Kamasutra,