Review

Reviewed Work(s): Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics by

Dave
Review by: Santhosh Chandrashekar
Source: QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking , Vol. 1, No. 1, “Chelsea Manning's Queer
Discontents“ (Spring 2014), pp. 212-215
Published by: Michigan State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/qed.1.1.0212

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((( BOOK REVIEW

Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics. By

Naisargi N. Dave. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012; pp. ix !
265, $84.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Naisargi N. Dave’s Queer Activism in India uses lesbian emergence as a way of

understanding queer activism as ethical practice, which is made up of three
affective exercises: challenging social norms, inventing alternatives to those
norms, and putting them into practice (). Dave argues that in confronting
and challenging normalizing processes, Indian queer activism invariably (and
partially) reproduces those very practices, thereby seemingly compromising
that which is most radical about activism. According to Dave, however,
this “norming” is an inevitable part of how activism unfolds; in encountering
new constraints, activists are forced to challenge them by partially embrac-
ing them, which results in new ethical engagements that lead to new
practices.
Dave traces the emergence of lesbianism through ethnographic work
primarily based in Delhi, but interspersed with short periods in other major
cities. She analyzes the ways in which queer and feminist organizations and
movements grappled with who could— or, more important, could not—
stake claim to being the authentic lesbian subject. Dave argues that these
organizations understood the emerging lesbian subject as either a political
identity that challenged heterosexism (the proper lesbian subject) or as a
psychosexual subject of desire (the improper one), but one that rarely
embodied both dimensions.
Through a reading of the letters that the Delhi-based lesbian network,
Sakhi, received from women who were attracted to other women—most of
them asking for the addresses of lesbians that Sakhi refused to provide—Dave
demonstrates that Sakhi delimited “lesbian” to mean only those who could
inhabit the subjectivity as a terrain of politics but not one of pleasure. On the
other hand, Sangini, an internationally funded helpline and support group,
believed that women’s same-sex desire had traditionally articulated itself



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 Book Review ) 

within a “poetics of silence” (): those gender-segregated spaces under

Hindu patriarchy where homosociality thrived. This afforded lesbians the
perfect cover to express their desires without attracting the punitive gaze of
Hindu patriarchy. Although Sangini was not averse to the conception of
lesbianism as a political project, Dave argues that there was resentment that
groups such as Sakhi and CALERI (Campaign for Lesbian Rights, an
organization of lesbian and straight allies), had rendered lesbianism too
prescriptive at the cost of repressing the affective dimension.
Dave demonstrates that this cleaving of the Indian lesbian into proper and
improper subjects resulted from negotiations with mainstream Indian feminist
movements that lesbians had been forced into. This split was also the result of
tensions that arose after an emboldened Hindutva (Hindu right-wing) move-
ment mobilized around the controversial film, Fire, by projecting queers as
“other” to the nation. Indian feminists had historically relied upon representa-
tions of “real” Indian women as victims of poverty and lesbianism as a bourgeois
luxury that was out of sync with the reality of these women. This rendered the
“Indian lesbian” as the impossible subject of Indian feminism. As a result, Dave
argues, lesbians were forced to demonstrate their “Indianness” by linking lesbi-
anism and “Indian” in an embrace that created serious conflict between lesbian
groups. Although this framing of “Indian” and “lesbian” as not inherently
antagonistic categories of identity challenged the Hindutva movement’s queer-
bashing, Dave notes that this was a risky venture because the emerging category,
“Indian lesbian,” alienated feminist and queer constituencies who rejected the
primacy of the nation-state. However, Dave cautions us that considering all
iterations of “India” as coinciding with the Hindu Right’s interpretation of it
would be to ignore the ethnographic details of everyday life in which activists had
to embrace categories such as the nation (or the category “Indian”) to challenge
the limits of sexual acceptance.
Dave explores the unfolding of activism by examining the conflicts that arose
around law as the subject of queer activism. Dissension surfaced between
different feminist and queer groups after Naz Foundation (India) Trust, a NGO
working in the area of HIV/AIDS advocacy, submitted a public interest litigation
seeking the reading down of the anti-sodomy legislation (Section ). This
initiative raised concerns among feminist and queer groups about the effect that
legal activism would have in reinforcing the private–public distinction (as the
reading down would only decriminalize private, adult consensual sex), thereby
endangering those who have sex in public places. In addition, this legal initiative
coincided with an intervention by some feminist groups to make sexual assault
laws gender neutral, in order to allow for the prosecution of offenders in same-sex

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 ( Book Review

relationships, which aggravated the conflicts between feminist and queer groups.
Dave convincingly argues that although this crisscrossing of issues posed a
potential minefield for activist groups— often finding themselves at odds with
their own core beliefs and witnessing their own lines of solidarities and differ-
ences rapidly shift—it led to an eventual mobilization against Section . She
observes that this possible containment of radicalness signified by an engagement
with the law is, in fact, productive of new ethical engagements and thereby a
critical part of how activism unfolds.
Although Dave’s work is a valuable addition to scholarship on South Asian
queer formations, a key methodological absence is the lack of critical reflec-
tion on the transnational politics of her ethnography. For instance, the
author notes: “To my surprise, neither did my Indian origin advantage me
nor did my American birth seem to disadvantage me in the field” ().
Although this may be true, not theorizing racial and national belonging
becomes a glaring problem when contrasted against the experiences of Cath,
a British (white) lesbian living in New Delhi, who was not allowed (by
members of women’s groups) to attend a key meeting of the National
Conference of Women’s Movements on the grounds that she was not
“Indian.” Dave’s work could have benefitted by unpacking how racial
“belonging” structures Indian queer activism.
In addition, the law as the subject of queer and feminist activism brings up
the question of the place of law and the (postcolonial) nation-state in queer
liberation. Dave demonstrates that Indian queer activism has had to contend
with the nation-state in its quest for acceptance. But her analysis could have
been strengthened through an engagement with critiques of the law as the
central subject of queer activism, including homonormativity, which looks at
the norming of queer identities and activism through their synchronization
with heteronormative standards. Although the United States and India
inhabit radically different contexts that make any straightforward compari-
sons impossible, Dave notes that Indian queer activism has borrowed exten-
sively from transnational queer struggles. In this context, how can we make
sense of Indian queer investments in the law, given that the law has also
emerged as a major subject of Western queer struggles (as evidenced in the
debates over marriage equality)? In addition, what are the links between the
reading down of Section  and the transnationalization of the Indian
economy, the latter being mired in liberal notions of freedom and equality?
Despite these issues, Dave’s work is a welcome addition to the burgeoning
scholarship on South Asian queer populations.

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 Book Review ) 

NOTES

. Reading down refers to a court circumscribing the meaning of a statute to a narrow

interpretation.

Santhosh Chandrashekar
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
USA

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