BHUPEN KHAKHAR (1934-2003)

(Text for Lalit Kala Akademy's Portfolio on the artist: a bit scrapy, but can't help that: Pl. do send Comments)

The significance of Bhupen Khakhar within the history of modern Indian art is manifold. Foremost is the fact that he was the first Indian artist to make use of the much undervalued, hybrid visual culture of the popular art language. Firstly, this enabled him to subvert the dominant purist vales in art, particularly abstraction. Secondly, it helped him to pictorially translate his peculiar relationship and concern with the people of common class. From this position he became the foremost Indian artist to represent, or more accurately to narrate the life of the common milieu through painting. Art historically, Khakhar’s involvement with common people and their culture has generated an artist who is perhaps the first Indian painter who reckoned with hybridity of Indian culture, and this defined the quest for Indian identity in art from a totally unexplored premise. Above all these, what deserves special attention is the fact that he became the first Indian artist to have disclosed his homosexual orientation through paintings. He deeply explored this aspect of life which indeed determined the aesthetic and thematic of his entire oeuvre.[1](1)

Through out his career Khakar assumed strategies that could flaunt the established mainstream through playful, often surprising and unusual, if not odd, pictorial delineations and narrative incidents. Undoubtedly, he remained one of the most meaningfully outspoken artists of our times. This is so since his disarming honesty, sensitivity and directness in life and artistic expressions constantly threatened the limits set by different established canons. Doing so much – from writing short stories and dramas to painting, printmaking, installations and sculpture, he lived a life of an ordinary person among common milieu, constantly undermining aura and greatness. The major difference here is that as an artist he was utmost honest and careful in representing the nuances of his experiences that lent a transparency to all his expressions. Khakhar’s art enabled him to play between the irreconcilability of the lived and the impossible. Mundane activities, ordinary way of life and the imagined worked hand in hand and lend a totality of experience that covers almost all aspects of life. But, indeed, in all these it is the irreverence, and the transgressive potential of being a gay man that became his central strategy and the strength, and his extraordinary ability to be different among his contemporaries.

In all these, Khakhar’s artistic persona is closest to the 19^th century company/bazaar painter and his art; hybrid, inadequate or even funny and odd at times. At the beginning, this enabled him to effectively overcome the technical limitations and inadequacies of an untrained painter, which however came to be canonized as the strength of his language and aesthetic. Here, two pointers offer entry into his artistic world. First is his marked difference from his contemporaries that began manifesting from the time of Group 1890 where J. Swaminathan along with other younger artists from Baroda and elsewhere came together in dealing with questions primarily related to Indian cultural identity. Significantly, these had overlooked Khakhar’s anxiety and search in the direction of a distinct self and subjectivity, and it’s lived historical reality. On the contrary, he had been keenly interested in the Pop movement in Europe and USA at least partly due to his predilection and interest in the category of popular, and for the so called debased taste. With hind sight it is possible to say that Khakhar was one of the most western oriented artists in the mid-1960s. Secondly, although he was taking cues from it, it was nevertheless his search towards a true modern Indian expression and an acute sense of middleclass Indian historical reflexivity and uncanny sensitivity, with which he painted pictures that brought to the fore the long discredited popular visual culture into use. It’s meek voices from the margins of history, filtered and re-configured through the mundane realities of the day-to-day in his paintings, indeed did have the strength to overturn the puritanical cultural postures of the established bastions of art making. He was the one who asserted this aspect of the cultural history as the most valuable historical experience, to be reckoned, to be politically worked with, and to be used against dominance within the contemporary cultural politics. Through these engagements he also made his technical limitations of an untrained artist a force and strength.

Significantly, in 1961 Bhupen Khakhar migrated to Baroda from Bombay at the suggestion of his painter colleague Gulammuhammed Sheikh. This was after he began practicing a full-fledged Chattered Accountant’s career, which he continued simultaneously along with making art till late in his life. It is in Baroda that he began doing art with historical reflexivity, which he did along with a course in Art Criticism (1962-‘64) in the Dept of Art History of the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University of Baroda. Using ‘god pictures’ in calendar and posters, and deploying graffiti, his earliest set of works in the mid-1960s were in paper collage mode combined with enamel paint, which gained him the reputation of India’s first ‘Pop artist’. His contact with the young English artist, Jim Donavan, who lived in Baroda at that point in time, enabled him to take serious interest in Pop art movement. As a result, J. Swaminathan who led the Group 1890 excluded Khakhar from its 1963 exhibition on the grounds that he indulged in outlandish kitsch. However, by the time he participated in the group exhibition Place for People in 1981 with his celebrated paintings You Can’t Please All (1981) and Celebration of Guru Jayanti (1980), he was already an established painter, if not canonized, and was recognized as an avant-garde painter attributed with great historical significance.[2](2)

Since the late 1960s, linking to the nineteen and early twentieth century hybrid style of Indian painting which demonstrate hybrid mixtures of ‘native’ and European pictorial elements, Khakhar began working out a combination of popular realism and dramatic, romantic, picturesque way of painting pictures. It is through the genre pictorial themes Khakhar systematically began portraying the world of common man. Themes and titles such as Parsi Family (1968) and Barber’s Shop (1972), and using oil on canvas, these developed a definitive and elaborate representational strategy by the later part of 1970s. In painting such as Janata Watch Repairing (1972), Factory Strike (1972) and Man with Bouquet of Plastic Flowers (1975), the totally un-academic treatment of the figures, particularly the large heads and the stiff, thin, yet heavily clothed limbs however infuse an iconic presence to the protagonists. Sharp, dramatic contrasts of bright and dark colors inspired by the popular art, and the stiff, sharp tonal gradations and the smoothened floating shiny surface of these paintings still look empty and vacant, and a somber and sad mood too is obvious in these. Further, paintings such as Portrait of Shankarbhai V. Patel Near Red Fort (1971) offer the viewer various possibilities for interpreting the artist’s subjective persona through allegorical and metaphorical readings.

Khakhar eventually ‘came out of the closet’ by gathering his strength for a gradual disclosure from the international gay liberation movement, especially its manifestations in the field of art in the 1980s. His stable friendship with Vallabhdas Shah helped him to do so, and simultaneously his mother’s death also freed him from familial restrictions. Khakhar’s 1979 visit to England had been significant for him where he saw homosexual men living together, and also, gay exposure in art particularly that of David Hockney’s life and works had been instrumental in his ‘coming out’. While it actually happened frontally, at this time, one can not ignore a certain earlier modes of disclosures and expression through which he communicated his insuppressible desires. The unique portrayal of closeted gay desires in the 1970s takes expression in a painting such as Portrait of Shri. Shankarbhai Patel Near Red Fort. Painted rather flatly in the Indian miniaturist style within the norms of indigenist turn of the period, in this work the stern profile of the old man, the object of artist’s desire, is juxtaposed with an inviting still-life of fruits that are laid-out over a carpet in front of a garden. Perhaps, it is the confidence that is derived from the coded messages of such works which gave him the language to represent a gay man’s desires and sad loneliness more overtly in his other paintings of those early years. Bolder are the paintings such as Man Eating Jalebee (1974) and Man with Bouquet of Plastic Flowers. Certain experiences of loneliness, anxiety and alienation are manifest also in an oblige way in works such as the Factory Strike and in the Man Wearing Red Scarf (1981). In most other paintings of the 1970s where men are alone, or when the central character is presented within a context, what looms large is the silent and tensed uneasiness – which he suggests through the peculiarities of figurative disposition, such as the facial or gesturel delineation. However, the yearning for the loving companionship of the young for the older mates is treated more obviously in Ranchodbhai Relaxing in Bed, (1975). Yet, concealed gay desires are revealed only in hindsight. At the same time, as he was representing hidden gay desires, Khakhar also deflected them by painting ‘serious’ themes such as Factory Strike, Assistant Accountant – Mr. I.M. Patel (1972) and Mukti Bahini Soldier (1972). The gay orientation of such works is much more subtle and can go unrecognized. But it is important because the desire and the absence of the object of desire are suggested only gesturing them. Apart from the overt signs of homosexuality - gestures suggesting holding of genitals, and protagonist’s gaze that indicate uneasiness, murky sadness and confusion is surely of a gay persona who resist disclosure.

Truly ambitious and outspoken are Two Men in Banaras (1982) and Yayati (1987) which he painted with exuberant, subversive sexual strength and confidence while frontally disclosing his sexual identity. Here, the virile male in relation to the passive partner was a major theme, and Khakhar continuously represented himself as the effeminate, desiring and submissive lover. His painting You Can’t Please All (1981) already asserted his power as a gay man in public disclosure. But, the illustration of the power relation is seen first in the painting Two Men in Banaras where he represents himself with a certain shame (note the hidden face) as the older lover (the persona of the artist is marked without doubt), subordinated by the young, macho and aggressive partner. Soon enough, with Yayati he celebrates this mode of subordination through a mythical allegory of the resurrection of the old man by his youthful and angelic, younger lover.

Starting with his early collages (1965) through Celebration of Guru Jajanti, Two Men in Banaras and paintings such Sakhibhav (1995), religion and sexuality is a theme Khakhar explores centrally. Searching into history for evidences and legitimacy for ones identity and its reflections in ones surroundings, he locates it within the popular congregational Hindu religious traditions and practices, which allows certain mediated permissibility and anonymity in practicing erotic play. Three points are significant here. Firstly, trying to find legitimacy for his personal experiences within the spaces offered by his religious background, Khakhar simultaneously also moves away significantly from the private/autobiographical to such nebulous public domains as religious practices. Secondly, through the internalized clashes in relation to the desire and conflicts, and subversions that manifest in paintings as a consequence, perhaps as a desired transgression of power relation, these sometimes emphasize the superior power and sometimes the weakness of the subordinated self. Thirdly, and more definitively, Khakhar resolves to show that the caring and obedient lover can poke fun at the macho man, yet they sooner short-circuit into the ambivalence of the thematic of his paintings and in linguistic terms of their visualization. The intertwining of these matrices makes his art a very complex play of power positions in relation to the public domain and the contemporary religious politics. Although his imagery is neutered of specificity in terms of above, indeed they are associated with the broader nebulous category of religion and myth, but it was not religion per se that excited his imagination. It is the specific play of sexuality that underlay the Hindu myths, stories and icons that he constantly explored.

And from the mid-1980s onwards, Khakhar at times celebrates or at times speaks of the tragic fate of both partners. The power of disclosure in such works are in stark contrast to his early works of 1970s which have certain timid finality because they pretend the detachment of an observer-voyeur, and inhabit a space between the observer and observed, and surely feared to be a participant. From the very first painting of definitive disclosure, You Can’t Please All, all the paintings Khakhar painted until the late-1980s, he showed some ambivalence in specifying the flow of power within in narrative. Instead, he deployed the symbolic, metaphoric and allegorical modes, to heighten this ambivalence and these works become multi-edged.

By the late 1980s and early 90s, his works begin to become open-ended and enigmatic. He devised new pictorial ways, often to subvert and ridicule the stronger companion by exposing the tragedy of his much desired and sexualized partner through a language that objectifies the ambivalence and the bizarreness in such encounters found in paintings such as Ghost City (1992) and An Old Man from Vasad Who had Five Penises Suffered from Runny Nose, (1995). In these works, he moved away self-consciously from the question of power relations, a theme with which he had been working earlier. The enigma of real life experiences, the moments of belief and disbelief, decisions about fighting or ignoring a hostile world, whether to take the encounters with the partner seriously or otherwise are also elements that are present both in his literary narration[3](3) of this time as well as in his paintings. In paintings these, questions are translated into painterly disjunctions, unfinished conjunctions of pictorial spaces or through various modes of collage. Towards the end of his career he painted human bodies that were violated by disease, war and violence, interspersed with the experiences of tender, fearless calm. Paintings such as Beauty is Skin Deep Only (2001), Bullet Short in the Stomach (2001) and paintings such as Gray Buddha (2001), and Golden Curtain (2001) points to such an oscillation between violation of body and meditative calmness.

Khakhar’s untutored, candid best as an artist is preeminently are also exemplified in his sketches; a practice he maintained throughout his career as a matter of discipline. These, on one end functioned as a ready pool of visual notations, which he sometimes used discreetly in instances while visualizing his more ambitious creative endeavors. However, often sketched out in total abandon in the spirit of a stranger-traveler-voyeur in sightseeing; peopled or not, these sketches served the immediate purpose of sheer pleasure and visual experience to the painter. This, in fact, is physically manifest in the way he candidly and casually drew, arranged, or shaded the scenery. And significantly, such sketched-in locales often functioned as fertile site-memories in their reuse, or in their role in devising metaphoric scenarios that often background his largely figurative oil and watercolor painting and print output.

Real to life figuration, the very tangible aspect of the personas and distinct “characters”, does occupy a central iconic presence throughout his oeuvre. Sketching primarily served the function of recording his keen observations. His susceptibility to the life of people at large lent an authenticity to these; at times a few of them reveal the playful imaginations of indulgent sexual self seeing reveries, often they seem too real to be in reality. Drawn while day-dreaming sitting in his studio/home, or while in his many travels, particularly to small pilgrimage towns and country sides, it is in sketches that Khakhar’s vulnerabilities are best exposed. With their disarming simplicity and directness, they are the closest to his watercolors and prints. While oil paintings are passionately labored and are even anxiety ridden, worked-over for long periods of time, the occasional travel and sketching, and watercolors eased him, often lending them an uninhibited disarming wit, spontaneity, even an uncanny quirkiness and bizarre realness.

Khakhar surely imagined a language of ambivalence and lived an open-ended life; a language of life and art that were born from meekness and unsure commitments and its repressed cavernous secret practices. An adventurous thinker, Khakhar the radical, who remained one of the most challenging artists of our times in a global context, his art in fact enabled him maintaining certain continuity and consistency; a thread that linked his various other endowers. In this sense his art, particularly the pages of his sketchbooks could be also seen in the light of a compensation of a special kind; the lack of a dearest friend, for it is in the absence of a beloved companion, he recorded, commented, and humored himself. In that sense, only a very few other artists in our time have drawn resources from one’s self as effectively, and melodramatically, and as intriguingly as Khakhar. To that extent, his art is a true testimony to his self and his life.

Shivaji K Panikkar

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[1] For a detailed reading of life and works of the artist see, (1) Gulammohammed Sheikh (ed.), Contemporary Art in Baroda, Tulika, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 166 to 170, (2) Timothy Hyman, Bhupen Khakhar, Chemould Publications and Arts, Mumbai, 1998, (3) retrospective exhibition catalogue essay by Geeta Kapur, Bhupen Khakhar, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, September, 2002, pp. 26-48.

[2] See the chapter titled, ‘View from the Teashop: Bhupen Khakhar’, Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, Vikas Publications, New Delhi, 1978.

[3] Seen across in all Khakhar’s short stories/play (as in ‘Pages From a Diary’, Ref: Yarana: Gay Writing from India, (ed), Hoshang Merchant, Penguin Books India (P) Ltd., New Delhi, 1999, pp. 34-36), the aspect of bizarre in his fiction writing helps to read his paintings; where the painterly disjunctions and discontinuities he narrates in paintings in his fiction becomes a parallel to the middle classes irrationality, passion and craziness he narrates. Khakhar’s short stories/play are also published as an anthology in English, Bhupen Khakhar, Katha, 2001, and in Ruth Vanita Saleem Kidwai (ed) Same-Sex Love in India, Macmillan India Ltd., Delhi, 2001, (first published in 2000, St. Martin’s Press, Palgrave), A Story, pp. 294-297.

From Structural Queerphobia to Queer Political Assertions: Indian Cultural Practices -

(The paper Presented by Shivaji K Panikkar at SEXUALITY AND FAITH: A FAITH-BASED PERSPECTIVE, CONSULTATION, Chennai, India, (Asha Niwas,9 Rutland Gate 5th street,Chennai-600006), November 12-13, 2009, Sponsored by: Concern for AIDS Research and Education Foundation, India, In association with: Center For the Church and Global AIDS, USA)

Definitions: The term ‘queer’ traditionally referred to effeminate men, and implied derogatory connotations such as ‘strange’, ‘unusual’, or ‘out of alignment’. In the contemporary international activist context the term assumes an unprecedented positive assertion against such derogatory usages. Used as a synonym for LGBT (persons of gay, lesbian and bisexual sexual orientations and transgender anatomy and sexual preferences) ‘queer’ is an inclusive, unifying sociopolitical umbrella designation for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, transsexual, intersexual and genderqueer, or of any other non-heterosexual sexuality, sexual anatomy, or gender identity. Within it, queer also includes asexual and autosexual people and gender normative heterosexuals whose sexual orientations or activities place them outside the heterosexual mainstream such as BDSM practitioners (compound acronym derived from the terms bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism) or polyamorous persons.
Text Image: queer definition
Queer is a preferred terminology used by activists belonging to any of the above designations and ‘queer culture and practices’ refer to the commonly shared cultural production done by or/and shared by all or one of the above categories.
Text Image: Queerphobia
Queerphobia can be defined as the irrational fear and aversion or intolerance of non-heterosexual orientations and practices or behavior, and to queer people, which is perceived to fall out side the traditional gender role expectations. For varied reasons, the assumption is that heterosexuality is the only acceptable sexual orientation. Queerphobia is based on prejudice, similar to racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and structural patriarchy and sexism. In day to day life queerphobia is experienced in ways ranging from cracking jokes directed against non-hetero normative sexual identity and activity, to harassment and physical violence.
Introduction:
My recent research had concerned with understanding the interface and the dynamics between queer activism and queer cultural practices.
Image: Early Issues of Bombay Dost.
Ashok Row Kavi captures the significance of the moment of origin of gay activism in India thus: “By then, in April 1990, the first copy of Bombay Dost had hit the city like a ton of bricks… The first issue was historic in more than one… Bombay Dost was not just a news letter but a movement by now. It was nearly an year since we had started off as an underground sheet for the gay and lesbian community but it represented something much more. Bombay Dost was a life boat for many people who thought they had no one to turn to… the torrent had started! Those first letters were like winged messengers from my huge new family spread over the subcontinent…. India’s gays were like swans swimming in a dream waiting for that magic touch to wake them up…”[1]

It is only in the past over four decades that identifiable queer activism and its expressions in various field of art are publicly visible anywhere in the world.
Image: Bhupen Bhupen Two Men in Banaras, 1982, &You can’t Please All,
Image: Fire
Image: My Brother Nikhil
Image: Dostana
Image: Same Sex Love in India
Yet another area that came into existence in the recent past is writing queer histories, as a matter of feeding into the legitimacy to queer existences and as a matter that strengthen the political conviction and faith in queer activism.
Image: Khajuraho
Image: Khajuraho
Although I don’t intent to dwell deeply into the on going historical research, it has generally accepted that there had been no evidence of extended history of persecution of queer practices in the pre-British or pre-modern India. On the other hand we have inclusion and subsumption of the queer practices as minor, inconsequential or irrelevant aspect of life, or the "benign neglect" as Sudhir Kakar Calls it. [2]
Image: Same Sex Love In India & Yarana
While on one hand reclaiming a past has been significant with publications such as Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History,[3] assertions of its contemporary manifestations in Yarana: Gay Writing from India,[4] has provided major fillip to the movement, these apart from asserting the claims of the past crucially also contest the commonly prevalent myth that gay experiences and expressions are vices that developed in the western societies and imported to India.
The modern queerphobia in education, law, and polity can be traced back to the British colonial rule.
Image: IPC 377
Western educated modern Indians inherited the Judeo-Christian ideals of the British times and disowned indigenous traditions that contradicted these ideals. In keeping with the pre-modern traditions of shame, there are adequate evidences of these originating in the general queerphobia and in relation to being identified as queer, but not in relation to sexual acts or queer erotic experiences.
Image: Yarana Quote
To quote Hoshang Merchant, “India’s Hindu culture which is a shame culture rather than a guilt culture, treats homosexual practice with secrecy but not with malice. Many educated Indians confuse ‘homosexual’ with ‘eunuch’. They think homosexuals lack sexual organs or cannot sustain erections. Many homosexuals are forced to live with eunuchs if not become eunuchs through castration.”[5]
From the above address point that is informed by contemporary queer cultural field, queer history and queer activism, I propose on one hand to address the aspects of the structurally ingrained queerphobia, and on the other the negotiations and strategies adopted in the contemporary Indian queer cultural and art critical practices, and in relation to religions. Focusing on the range of strategies in the creation of queer culture, the presentation attempts to throw light upon the different shades of queerphobia from various quarters of society.
The presentation invokes queerphobia, or let us say from the mild practices of ‘denials’ and ‘cover-ups’ or ‘closeted-ness’, ‘deflections’ as some might call it, to outright hostility and violence. These are often seen as facilitated by contemporary Indian cultural field too.
Text Image: Articulating Innocence as Against Activism
Articulating Innocence as Against Activism:
Image: Ramesh Pithiya, Is Anal Sex Legal?
Image: Ramesh Pithiya, Is Anal Sex Legal?
Image: Ramesh Pithiya, Is Anal Sex Legal? (Detail)
Image: Ramesh Pithiya, Is Anal Sex Legal? (Detail)
Image: Ramesh Pithiya, Is Anal Sex Legal? (Detail)

The verbal poster by Ramesh Pithiya is fairly simple and stark, as it reads thus “Question - 1: Is Anal Sex Legal?” The floral decorations twists and turns as it imitate and mock the sacred scriptural forms. The adjacent work with the same title is an illustration and the celebration of the very act, which ironically and irreverently and as a matter of fact, illustrates that which is verbalized. Is there is a childlike innocence as Pithiya imitates the title, “is anal sex legal? It surely is innocent, playful and blasphemous simultaneously, but is it a self questioning in the process of ingrained experience of queerphobia? It possibly is.

What intrigues and delights or pleasures me, while its theme is carnal, it is also its lyricism and austerity, if not the near spiritual experience that Ramesh’s work tries to invoke… its images of loving care while making love, like those seen in the medieval miniature illustrations mixed with contemporary pornographic images – is filled with a religiosity that the love making theme suggests… that it resonates belief and resounds love.
Text Image: Michel Foucault
What Michel Foucault has said becomes handy here to think further: “One of the concessions one makes to others is not to present homosexuality as anything but a kind of immediate pleasure, of two young men meeting in the street, seducing each other with a look, grabbing each other with a look, grabbing each others’ asses and getting each other off in a quarter of an hour. There you have a kind of neat image of homosexuality without any possibility of generating unease, and for two reasons: it responds to a reassuring canon of beauty, and it cancels everything that can be troubling in affection, tenderness, friendship, fidelity, camaraderie, and companionship, things that our rather sanitized society can’t allow a place for without fearing the formation of new alliances and tying together of unforeseen lines of force.”[6]
Thus, in an innocuous manner, and with all its mock seriousness Ramesh celebrates the forbidden pleasure, while poking playfully at the IPC 377. I also would like to suggest that there is a subtle twist in the way the category of religion and spiritual is used in these works, and when put across in public space becomes a political statement.
Image: Family
While talking about pleasure and the political purpose, let me make my presentation further personalized, by stating that Ramesh Pitjhiya is my lover, and we had been sharing a roof and our resources, and we jointly parent a teenage young man who lives with us. We, three live a happy and fulfilling life indeed.
Image: Ramesh Pithiya, Is Anal Sex Legal?
Now, the innocence, lack of guilt, and avoidance and unawareness of legal and political implication is an essential aspect of living homosexual pleasures in India and the artist is able to objectify this. On the other end, the central activist pre-condition is the belief that ‘queer’ are a true minority, and crucial to this is based on the fact of choice of ones sexual preference, which inevitably is a personal right to begin with, but do not however remain there since sexual fulfillment often has to be achieved through social contract. While other minority positions which are largely conferred to a person at birth and passed through family, and thus socially visible, they do not necessarily have to go through the ordeal specific to gays; of ‘coming-out’, or to declare ones sexual identity. The gay identity politics thus functions mainly within the yardstick of the ability of the person to ‘come out of closet’ which by itself is a matter considered as a major accomplishment, which is often accompanied by pain and embarrassment considering the strict constraints that the Indian convention bound, religion dominated patriarchal family system. Moreover, the Indian gay minoritarian liberational politics is hinged itself precariously upon the very restrictive conditions of the Government and the legal injunctions. The legal limitations apart, the fear of social ostracism, stigma and discrimination combined with homophobia, heterosexism, heterocentrism and compulsory heterosexuality, queer identity politics indeed is a fragile field compared to that of other minoritarian struggles. However, despite all these limitations it is quite heartening and inspiring that the queer identity politics in the country is in place today and it is able to make its presence felt legally, socially and politically.

Text Image: Strategies: Confrontation, Subversion, Shock to Careful Negotiations

Range of Strategies: Confrontation, Subversion, Shock to Careful Negotiations
It is within the above context of phobia, discrimination and oppression we have to view the queer cultural production. In this regard modern queer artists work with certain limited options; they can either choose to shock through subversive and transgressive images, or can undertake careful negotiations in order to generate empathy and support. Both these are options within cultural activism.
Image: Bhupen Two Men in Banaras
Image: Tejal, Hijra Fantasy Series
Image: Fire
Image: Ramesh Pithiya, What is your Perversion?

Or, artist may choose to do careful negotiation.
Image: My Brother Nikhil
Image: Jehangir Jani Pink Sun
Text Image: Queer and Religions

Queer and Religions:
As people living in modern societies, queer people also relate to religions on the basis of their individuality and purpose.
Image: Bhupen Khakhar, From the River Yamuna

As a maker of art the gay persona of Bhupen Khakhar related to Hinduism in a very special way.

Image: Bhupen Two Men in Banaras

Through Two Men in Banaras, religion and gay sexuality is a major theme Khakhar explored. Searching into the history of ones identity and its reflections in ones life and around, he locates it in the popular Hindu religious traditions, practices and congregations. With this three directions are achieved by Khakhar: firstly, trying to find legitimacy for one’s gay desire within the spaces offered by the religion, he simultaneously also significantly moved away from the private/autobiographical to public domain. Secondly, the internalized conflict due to the shift in his sexuality in relation to the desired virile man, it manifested in paintings, perhaps, as a subverted power relation; sometimes emphasizing the power and sometimes the weakness of the subordinated self (Mark the hidden face of the artist persona). Thirdly, Khakhar finally resolves to show the caring and obedient lover – the Kothi to mock at the macho man. The intertwining of these private matrices makes his art a very complex play of positions in relation to the public domain of religion and being gay.

Image: Bhupen - Yayati

Although his imagery are neutered of specificity in terms pf above, indeed they are associated with the broader nebulous category of religion and myth, but it was not religion that excited his imagination. But it is the specific play of sexuality that underlay the Hindu myths, stories and icons, that he constantly explored.

Image: Jehangir Jani Iconography in Transient Times

Younger contemporary Jehangir Jani’s installation Iconography in Transient Times and Peer too deals with religious premises. He foregrounds the over-disputed terrain of religious faith as Jani speaks of healing power of faith by threading together fragments; of Koranic verses, a rosary, blood and surgical gauze. His conflicted relation with the religion into which he was born is resolved in several different ways as also the threat that is inherent in the politicization of religions and the experience of violence at home and elsewhere.

Through art making, Jani plays out a role similar to a Sufi/Peer by transgressing dogma as he lifts himself out of a burdensome authoritarian, rule of scriptures. These work has allowed Jani to engage with various stigmas and oppressive social hierarchies while allowing him to yearn and speak in a universal language about wide ranging concerns such as love, death, renewal and resurrection from his own specific local realities. The installation re-created a total sensorial environment with sounds and sights and the presence of body allusions – body casts, cast body parts, a cloth covered corpse, pink lamps flickering through simulated TV screens, sounds of ritual breast-beating and invocations written to God. These became signs of desire, betrayal, death and the hope of resurrection, all weaved together with the shade of gay-ish pink, an ironical marker of the maker’s sexual identity.

Image: Jehangir Jani, Peer
Image: Jehangir Jani, Peer
Image: Tejal Shah - Yasoda

The need for integrating oneself into religion and ones culture is exemplified by the work You too can touch the moon - Yashoda with Krishna by Tejal Shah. When a Hijda is asked to imagine herself in her ideal role she pictures herself as the mother of load Krishna.

Religion thus is very important for all, including to the queer. However, for any one who lives alterity, the nation state and religious institutions fail to create the crucial support. The obsolete Penal Code 377 considers such alternative practices unnatural, and the nation thus weighs heavily on people who do not live heterosexuality. The religious institutions turn their faces away. Thus, sexual minorities are compelled to question and reject religions, communities and systems and ask if there is any accommodative and empathetic space within for them. To “normal” families, they ask “will you consider us equal to yours”? To the parents, young people of such identity keep pleading to be exempted from conventional expectations. To history they ask where, when and how have we been, and to what all kinds of acceptance, discriminations, hostilities, annihilations and erasures have we been subjected to? This is a quintessential problem of the queer identity issues in relation to religion and culture, having to deal and exist within the mainstream/heterosexual life and the world of art. The crucial empathy towards differences is lacking every where and as a result the minor is compelled to display and protest on the streets their suppressed anger and frustrations.
[1] Ashok Row Kavi, ‘The Contract of Silence’, in Yarana, ed. H.Merchant, 1999, pp. 20-21.
[2] “In ancient India, homosexual activity itself was ignored or stigmatized as inferior, but never actively persecuted. In the dharmashastras, male homoerotic activity is punished, albeit mildly: a ritual bath or the payment of a small fine was often sufficient atonement. This did not change materially in spite of the advent of Islam, which unequivocally condemns homosexuality as a serious crime. Muslim theologians in India held that the Prophet advocated the severest punishment for sodomy. Islamic culture in India, though, also had a Persian cast wherein homoeroticism is celebrated in literature. In Sufi mystical poetry, both in Persian and later in Urdu, the relationship between the divine and humans was expressed in homoerotic metaphors.” Sudhir Kakar , Homosexuality And The Indian - India has a tradition of benign neglect of alternate sexualities, http://www.littleindia.com/news/145/ARTICLE/1835/2007-08-17.html

[3] As for the gay cultural initiatives in India has definitively been open to the influences from the West. Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai (ed), Same-Sex Love in India, Macmillan India Ltd., Delhi, 2001, pp. xx-xxi (first published in 2000, St. Martin’s Press, Palgrave).

[4] Hoshang Merchant, op.cit.

[5] Hoshang Merchant, Yarana: Gay Writing from India, Penguin Boks, 1999, p. xii.
[6] (Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth- part II, (the interview with Foucault tiled Friendhip as a Way of Life, by R.de Ceccaty, J. Danet and j. Le Bitoux, originally done for the French magazine Gai Pied, which appeared in April 1998) (ed.) Paul Rabinow, (trans. Robert Hurley and others), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997, pp. 136-137.)

Project Proposal: Title: Towards an Understanding of the Interface between Gay Activism and Cultural Practices

Background:
The ongoing LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) activism in India is over two decades old which coincide with gay cultural practices. These seek to actively define the political, social and legal issue of the queer rights, particularly the battle against IPC 377. Such activism and cultural practices are coeval with the expansion of queer theory and critical studies in the West. In India too, this has found few, but enthusiastic support across a number of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. These initiatives have not only expanded the scope of queer cultural studies and activism but also have posed crucial challenges to the established theoretical/conceptual paradigms of gender and sexuality.

It is to be noted that for various reasons the queer activism that is in vogue today in India is primarily focused on health and jurisprudence. While considering that these are very important focuses, the present research intends to highlight the need for raising conscientious awareness among the community about its cultural achievements and in the public realm at large. In that sense, the direction of the present research is towards exploring a possibility of creating a future center for documenting, archiving, research and promoting queer cultural practices in India.

Scope and Objectives:
Located within the above context, the proposed research intends to undertake an assessment of the affect of gay activism on cultural practices in India. Proposing to work within the fame of socio-politico activism, it aims at documenting and developing critical insights into the area of gay cultural initiatives in the fields of visual art, literature, cinema, theatre and performance. The proposed hypothesis is that the prominent writers and artists gathered their strength from the gay liberation movement, and the significant intervention in the cultural field by them is primarily activist in nature. The central activist principle in all these is the belief that gays are a minority and crucial to such a position is the fact that although one’s gender and sexuality inevitably is a matter within the personal, they have social and political implications, since sexual gratification and gender disposition often have to be achieved through social contract, political and legal sanction.

One of the specific objectives of the proposed research will be to understand and historically relate gay activism and cultural production so as to understand the indistinct-able and yet not too obvious interrelation between gay activism on the one hand and the field of art making and reception on the other. The formulation ‘the indistinct interrelation’ defines the nuances of a not so obvious problematic between creative arts and the gay political movement which is as yet an under-theorized area within queer theory. However, it is apparent that art making/viewing and activism are deeply implicated into one another. The qualification ‘indistinct’ because any queer “speech-act” in the dictum of Michael Foucault and “radical re-signification” according to Judith Butler (Bodies that Matter, 1993) that arise within art, seems to belong to activism, yet in actual practice (high) art primarily functions within a small section of the elite class for various non-activist purposes, and the objects made as art, literature, performance or cinema do not prima-facie become socio-politico-activism. On the other hand, the category “the queer art” itself does not seem to have come into existence as far as the mainstream contemporary Indian context is concerned. However, it needs to be noted that within the definitive terms of activist radicalism, it is to the credit of the artist who have explored the personal, and have become the voice for the community.

Through the quest for a queer speech, and as a radical practice what is thought through with definitive subversive tools are some of the quintessential problems and dynamics that control and direct gay identity issues in relation to high art – questions of doing art while having to deal with and exist within the mainstream/heterosexual world; to live an alternative life, to demand equal rights, and to live with art making as one’s vocation. In this regard gay artists can be seen at crossroads; on one hand making choices between one’s political concerns, creating meanings, choosing materials, forms, and aesthetics, and on the other, acting in conjunction with the minoritarian political identity. From within the above indicated problematic the present project also intends to interrogate so as to check out if in particular ways (high)art produced by gay people are tamed to fit neatly with-in the high art realm.

Methodology:
The proposed project entails traveling to Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata and a few other places if the need be, so as to (1) document the activist initiatives of various NGO, community and other such organizations and (2) to interact with members of the gay community on the key issues of cultural production and its affects. The project will undertake interacting, interviewing and documenting the work of prominent artists in the above centers. Considering the specific mediumistic specificity of different cultural productions, the attempt would be to understand and articulate the modes of reception of cultural production and the production of meanings.

Within the specific scope of the proposed research, interviews on the above defined premises with writers such as Raj Rao, Hoshang Merchant and Mahesh Dattani will be undertaken. On the similar lines interviews will be conducted with film director Onir Ban, performer Astad Deboo, and visual artists Sunil Gupta and Jehangir Jani. Video- graphed excerpts of the interviews will be edited and put together as a documentary that will throw light on the interface of activism and art.

Outcome:
The present researcher in the course of last over five years have published and presented on public forums on prominent visual artists who have dealt with gay thematic in their works, and the proposed research project is expected to enable further publications of a few essays and/or publication of a book.

The present research intends to highlight the need for raising awareness among the gay community about its cultural achievements and in the public realm at large. The direction of the present research is also towards interacting with prominent members of the gay community regarding a possibility of creating a future center for documenting, archiving, promoting research and enabling queer cultural practices in India.

Prof. Shivaji K Panikkar
Ph: +91-265-2792254, Mobile:0-9898403097,
Email: shivji.panikkar@gmail.com

Project Proposal: Title: Towards an Understanding of the Dynamics in the Formation of the Queer Identity and Art in India

Background:
The ongoing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) activism in India is over two decades old. While activism seeks to actively define the politico-social and legal issues in relation to minority,[1] professional art production by queer artists function mainly as a catalyst in the formation of queer social identity[2] in the public realm. Internationally, such activism and art making are coeval with the expansion of queer theory, critical studies, curatorial practices, art exhibitions and publications. In India while literary research has reclaimed the histories of homosexuality and homoeroticism through publications,[3] certain interventional publications have focused on contemporary texts and thus have provided a major fillip to activism and aesthetic premises.[4] The central principle in all these is the fact that queer population is a discriminated, disadvantaged and legally vulnerable minority in India. Although often argued erroneously as a matter of private choice, the sexual fulfillment of the queer are subject to socio-politico-legal sanction, which make the present queer cultural expressions diverse, inchoate and riddled with complexity. While there had been a certain enthusiasm for queer cultural production by few queer art professionals; visual, literary and performative including film, many others who are otherwise queer, prefer to remain closeted.[5] On a closer scrutiny it is possible to also identify those who happily remain closeted in their art expression and those who are not so closeted and yet prefer to deflect the attention over to other aspects of their works. While this so considering the problematic of coming out of closet, however, it is a fact that historically queer activism and cultural production exist in tandem with each other and have proved to be most productive in certain instances. Importantly, prominent LGBT writers and artists gather their strength from the movement within and outside the country for LGBT rights,[6] and have definitively proved to be a significant intervention into the mainstream cultural field.

Objectives:
The proposed research intends to study the historical dynamics of the emergence of queer identity through art making. In that sense, the direction of the present research is towards exploring a possibility of speaking of the kinds of work being done by queer artists, writers and performers within the dynamics of closet and out of closet, and within and without the fame of socio-politico-legal activism. On a broader level it aims at documenting and developing critical insights into the area of LGBT cultural initiatives in the fields of visual art, literature, cinema, theatre and performance. While some artist’s works are primarily activist in nature, few others inscribe or encode sexuality tangentially and few others remain primarily committed to the formal and aesthetic premises. How and why of such instances will be probed into as part of the proposed project. The research will also investigate into the question of specific strategies of representation used by various creative persons in relation to issues of identity formation. Since the category “the queer art” itself has not yet seem to have come into existence as a valid category as far as the mainstream contemporary Indian context, the research will also look into such questions.

The project apart from enabling to produce a report and a paper is part of larger projects. These are: (1) Conceptualizing a curatorial concept for an art exhibition based on the research (2) The documentation, insights and the exhibition will form a part of a proposed queer cultural institution: ARQ: Archive, Research and Queer Cultural Practice – the concept note of which is attached along with this.

Methodology:
Apart from library work, the proposed project entails traveling to Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata and a few other places if the need be, so as to document the works, interact and interview LGBT artists in the above centers. Considering the specific mediumistic specificity of different cultural productions, the attempt would be to understand the production of queer art and the production of meanings. Within the specific scope of the proposed research, interviews on the above defined premises with writers such as Raj Rao, Hoshang Merchant and Mahesh Dattani will be undertaken. On the similar lines interviews will be conducted with film director Onir Ban, performer Astad Deboo, and visual artists Sunil Gupta, Ajay Sharma, Abir Karmarkar, Inder Salim, Kanak Shashi, Tejal Shah, Nandini Das, Jehangir Jani, Ramesh Pithiya, Pankaj Gupta, Anita Dube, among others as the research moves.


Prof. Shivaji K Panikkar
Ph: +91-265-2792254, Mobile:0-9898403097,
Email: shivji.panikkar@gmail.com
[1] Particularly significant is the battle against Indian Penal Code 377.
[2] The term ‘queer’ traditionally referred to effeminate men, and implied derogatory connotations such as ‘strange’, ‘unusual’, or ‘out of alignment’. In the contemporary international activist context the term assumes an unprecedented positive assertion against such derogatory usages. Used as a synonym for LGBT (persons of gay, lesbian and bisexual sexual orientations and transgender anatomy and sexual preferences) ‘queer’ is an inclusive, unifying sociopolitical umbrella designation for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, transsexual, intersexual and genderqueer, or of any other non-heterosexual sexuality, sexual anatomy, or gender identity.
[3] Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, (ed.), Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, Macmillan India Ltd., Delhi, 2001, (first published in 2000, St. Martin’s Press, Palgrave).
[4] Yarana: Gay Writing from India, (ed), Hoshang Merchant, Yarana, Penguin Books India (P) Ltd., New Delhi, 1999.
[5] Literary figures: Raj Rao, Hoshang Merchant, performers, theatre persons and film makers/directors: Astad Deboo, Mahesh Dattani, and Onir Ban, visual artists: Bhupen Khakhar, Sunil Gupta, Jehangir Jani, Tejal Shah among others.
[6]Arguably two organizations spearhead in this matter; InterPride coordinate and network gay pride events worldwide, and International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) addresses human rights violations against LGBT and HIV people.

Revised Concept Note: ARQ: Archive, Research and Queer Cultural Practice

The proposed national center - ARQ: Archive, Research and Queer Cultural Practice[1] will aim at: (1) archiving histories of the Indian queer culture and practice, (2) enable queer creative person’s professional practices, and (3) promote critical thinking and creative skills among the Indian queer community. It is a well accepted fact that the ongoing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LBGT) activism in India is over two decades old.[2] In the 1990s and through the present decade, significant formal or informal LGBT groups and at instances of political formations or/and reach-out-publications had emerged in the major Indian cities and several small towns.[3] Significant also are similar developments from other Asian, and South-Asian Diaspora in the West.[4] Of these, some of which are still functional and some either disbanded or dormant, have pursued several lines of action - in the areas of mental and physical health, jurisprudence, and community identity; running help lines to creating common platforms for queer people to discuss common problems. At the top of their agendas, most organizations also sought to actively define the political, social and legal issue of queer rights, particularly the battle against IPC 377.

Currently there is no single organization or agency in the country that link queer history, activism and culture. The proposal keeps in view these along with multiplicities of practices and modes of functioning of the communities. ARQ[5] will avoid a singular privileged queer category or norm, and the proposition for an integrated national queer center is based on democratic principles. Since queer experiences are varied and specific in different subject locations and positions, the question of regional, religious, class and caste differences and identities would be a necessary framework that will guide the mode of archiving and interpretation. This will have to be so in a country like India, and in that sense the proposition is based on certain pragmatic concerns, such as the extend of national level spread and micro level reach, diversity and detail. Such micro histories would enable the queer community to challenge the available histories which exclude them from the ambit.

The central principle in all these is the fact that queer population is a discriminated, disadvantaged and legally vulnerable minority in India. Although often argued erroneously as a matter of private choice, the sexual fulfillment of the queer are subject to socio-politico-legal sanction, which make the present queer culture diverse, inchoate and riddled with complexity. Concurrent with health and legal activism is the trajectory of LGBT cultural production by professionals; visual, literary and performative including film.[6] Activism and cultural production exist in tandem with each other and have proved to be most productive in the recent past. Importantly, prominent writers and artists gather their strength from the movement within and outside the country for LGBT rights,[7] and have definitively proved to be a significant intervention into the mainstream cultural field. Similarly, literary research has reclaimed the histories of homosexuality and homoeroticism through publications,[8] and certain interventional publications have focused on contemporary texts and thus have provided a major fillip to queer activism and aesthetic premise.[9]

Yet another premise that ARQ will be concerned is of queer theory and critical studies, which grew out of the broader area of Cultural Studies. Writings of theoreticians such as Michael Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler have shown that mainstream ideologies and theories are constituted by and constitutive of heterosexual norms, giving rise to Queer Studies as a specialized area of expertise in the West. In India too theoretical interventions have emerged though publications and a couple of university departments offer courses in queer studies, primarily in relation to literature.[10] Arguably, Queer Cultural Studies was shaped in critical dialogue with existing disciplines such as philosophy (in France), sociology and film theory (in the UK), history, literature and political theory (in India), political theory and sociology (in Japan and Korea), jurisprudence and anthropology (in the USA). In India, these have found enthusiastic support across a number of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.[11] These initiatives not only expanded the scope of queer studies and activism but also have posed crucial challenges to the existing theoretical/conceptual paradigms of gender and sexuality.

The ARQ is primarily envisaged as having two major focuses as follows. (1) To create a platform for historians, theoreticians and cultural practitioners to undertake the production of historical and critical knowledge with regard to queer communities and cultures and to present such works. (2) To promote creativity among the queer population in general as well as in relation to community health (mainly around the medical discourse on HIV, STI) and mental and physical wellbeing; in promoting artistic/creative involvement as a therapeutic means towards psychological integration and a measure of instilling the concept of beauty, self-esteem and self-worth.

In practice, focus one would concentrate on the work of academics and artists and there would be an extremely conscious effort to break down the barriers produced by the elitist nature of high art and also between vernacular, metropolitan and international academia. Focus two would draw people from diverse backgrounds and effectively work against class, caste and other boundaries which foreclose the possibilities of a communitarian consciousness and also prevent access and usage of resources and methods according to the hierarchical systems.

Objectives: (a) ARQ aims at archiving queer histories and to build-up a visual and print archive in the form of books, journals, photographs, films, videos, private documents etc. The focuses of the archive will be to document and archive (1) queer biographies in India (2) the history of queer activism in India (3) the visual and textual historical evidences and data (including oral histories) in relation to queer life and cultural expressions in different historical periods in India (4) building up a resource library equipped with books, journals and ephemeral documents like reviews, brochures etc. (b) ARQ envisages making varied queer experiences as a source of institutionalizing debates on activism, to propel it into a mature arena of learning sharing and creating a culture of positive affirmation. It aims at undertaking cultural initiatives and interventions in the area of queer life, health and art. It will function as a platform for the queer community to view, interact and engage in cultural production, and will offer possibilities of critical engagement by (1) holding workshops in artistic media like literary, visual and performance art, including video and film (2) holding regular seminars and conferences in the area of queer studies, health and creative expressions (3) conducting special therapeutic cultural, creative and recreational programs for the health affected queer population (4) holding exhibitions, exposures and festivals of art, performances and films.

The objectives of ARQ are to enable understanding of specific conditions in which certain kinds of queer cultures are produced within specific internal dynamics and polemics: (1) To create resources and space for archive and research of queer histories and practices in India and elsewhere. (2) To promote, frame and socially and publicly make available the cultural initiatives and creativity of queer persons/organizations. (3) To inculcate and nurture creative skills to enable queer self-expression. (4) To promote critical thinking among queer people. (5) To enable exchange of knowledge through international collaboration and exchanges in the fields of culture, sexuality and health.

Work Plan: At the outset, contacts will be made with various LGBT organizations/individuals and creative organizations and persons so as to research on their work, past and present projects and to seek support and collaboration, and to seek thinking together in the direction pursued by ARQ. This and the rest of the plan will be subject to the availability of funds.

Prof. Shivaji K Panikkar

[1] The term ‘queer’ traditionally referred to effeminate men, and implied derogatory connotations such as ‘strange’, ‘unusual’, or ‘out of alignment’. In the contemporary international activist context the term assumes an unprecedented positive assertion against such derogatory usages. Used as a synonym for LGBT (persons of gay, lesbian and bisexual sexual orientations and transgender anatomy and sexual preferences) ‘queer’ is an inclusive, unifying sociopolitical umbrella designation for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, transsexual, intersexual and genderqueer, or of any other non-heterosexual sexuality, sexual anatomy, or gender identity. Within it, queer also includes asexual and autosexual people and gender normative heterosexuals whose sexual orientations or activities place them outside the heterosexual mainstream such as BDSM practitioners (Compound acronym derived from the terms bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.) or polyamorous persons. Queer is a preferred terminology used by activists belonging to any of the above designations and ‘queer culture and practices’ refer to the commonly shared cultural production done by or/and shared by all or one of the above categories.
[2] The earliest mobilization of community action began in Bombay in 1989-90 with the publication of the newsletter Bombay Dost. From the period prior to this, scattered textual references and oral narratives are found in connection with informal circles of friends of varied queer denominations.
[3] Some of these are Red Rose (New Delhi), Fun Club (Calcutta), Friends India (Lucknow) and Garden City Club (Bangalore) and through mid 1990s and early 2000s many more such initiatives were undertaken namely, Sneha Sangama, Good As You, Sabrang (all in Bangalore), Humsafar Trust, Udan, Khush Club (all in Mumbai) Council Club (Calcutta), Humrahi, NAZ Foundation (New Delhi) Gay Information Centre (Secunderabad), Men India Movement (Cochi), Expressions (Hyderabad), Sahayak Gay Group (Akola), Asara (Patna), Sathi (Cuttack), Lakshya, Parma and Vikalp (Vadodara) etc. See Sherry Joseph and Pawan Dhall, ‘No Silence Please, We’re Indians! – Les-Bi-Gay Voices from India’ in Different Rainbows, (ed.) Peter Drunker, Gay Man’s Press, UK, 2000,. p.161
[4] These are Trikone (USA), Khush Khayal (Canada), Shakti (UK), Samakami(USA), South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (USA) and Dost (UK). See Ibid.pp. 157 to 178.
[5] ARQ will be pronounced as Arc, which means (1) part of the circumference of a circle or the other curve (2) Electric, luminous discharge between two electrodes.
[6] Literary figures: Raj Rao, Hoshang Merchant, performers, theatre persons and film makers/directors: Astad Deboo, Mahesh Dattani, and Onir Ban, visual artists: Bhupen Khakhar, Sunil Gupta, Jehangir Jani, Tejal Shah among others.
[7] Arguably two organizations spearhead in this matter; InterPride coordinate and network gay pride events worldwide, and International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) addresses human rights violations against LGBT and HIV people.
[8] Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, (ed.), Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, Macmillan India Ltd., Delhi, 2001, (first published in 2000, St. Martin’s Press, Palgrave).
[9] Yarana: Gay Writing from India, (ed), Hoshang Merchant, Yarana, Penguin Books India (P) Ltd., New Delhi, 1999.
[10] These are University of Pune, Pune (Maharashtra), Central University (Hyderabad) and Yadvpur University, Kolkata.
[11] For instance see The Phobic and the Erotic, (ed), Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2007.

Top Article: It's About Choice, The Times of India – Opinion, 23 September 2009

What could cause the Darul Uloom Deoband and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind to join forces with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad? Answer: homosexuality, which according to all of the above should be severely punished by the law. Sikh and Christian bodies are also negative about repealing the parts of Section 377 which criminalise homosexuality. Joining them is a motley group of godmen, astrologers, politicians and now even a child rights group, the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights. Such a grand alliance is bound to make any move to decriminalise homosexuality a political hot potato, even if that is what the Indian Constitution's guarantee of equal rights to all citizens demands. Not surprisingly the Union cabinet played safe and lobbed the ball back to the Supreme Court, when asked for the government's position on whether gay sex ought to be legalised or not, following landmark legislation by the Delhi high court which declared much of Section 377 unconstitutional. When India, in general, is keen to protect minorities of all sorts, what is it about this particular minority the homosexual community that presents seemingly intractable problems? It's that homosexuals snap the bond between sex and procreation, invoking the spectre of individual pleasure that exceeds any collective, utilitarian ethic. The interesting thing about Section 377 is that it outlaws not just homosexual behaviour, but most forms of heterosexual activity that even lawfully married couples engage in. The only kind the law permits is that with direct procreative potential. Canute-like, Section 377 attempts to lock sex into a utilitarian grid. Historically, most societies have sought utilitarian control over sex. Religions, especially proselytising ones, would like to multiply their numbers. Thus the biblical injunction to go forth and multiply. Socialism enforces an all-embracing altruism. According to its calculus individual pleasure can open the floodgates to selfish bourgeois vices. That's why most communist countries brutally suppressed homosexuality. Ditto for fascist states. Authoritarian societies, in general, tend to see homosexuality as disruptive of social order and cohesion, a quality they prize above anything else. Early industrial capitalism, too, would like to expand the labour force to multiply production and profits. That gives it an interest in encouraging procreative heterosexual behaviour and driving homosexuality underground. It's only in late 20th century, post-industrial capitalism predicated on consumption as much as it is on production that the equation begins to shift. With the modern consumer, individual pleasure matters and choice comes into play. Procreation and perpetuation of race/religion/society/nation aren't everything. Add to that the green imperatives of the early 21st century, and growing populations with expanding ecological footprints even begin to look menacing. The principle of choice can also extend to sexual lifestyles. Homosexual activity has been around for ages. But the notion of 'lifestyle', a peg on which one hangs one's very identity, emerges only under modern consumer capitalism. One can 'consume' alternate sexualities. In that context the emergence of sexual minorities is a marker of ongoing globalisation. It's no accident that with liberalising and globalising tendencies washing up on Indian shores, the question of gay rights has come to the fore as well. Take the gay pride parades which are being held in more and more Indian cities, reaching Bhubaneswar and Chennai this year. The annual parades are held in sync with similar events in cities across the world, and commemorate the Stonewall riots that took place in New York's Greenwich village in 1969. On June 27 of that year police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the area. While such raids had been routine, on that occasion the crowds fought back and the neighbourhood erupted in riots and protests for the next few days. That event sparked the worldwide gay liberation movement. No wonder that Bhim Singh of the Jammu and Kashmir Panthers' Party describes the movement to legalise homosexuality as an "American invasion". It's the 1960s that mark the shift to post-industrial capitalism, spurred by the global communications revolution which began that decade (causing Marshall McLuhan to quip, famously, that electronic technology was contracting the world into a "global village"). According to social thinker Anthony Giddens the communications revolution dating from the 1960s ushered in a more radical and thoroughgoing modernity than that of the Enlightenment, touching the core of private life and incorporating what he calls 'emotional democracy'. This is associated with the rise of new social movements that emphasise life politics (to do with private life) rather than emancipatory politics (to do only with public institutions). When Vikram Seth and others wrote an open letter addressing the government and judiciary, urging the overturning of Section 377 which "punitively criminalises romantic love and private, consensual sexual acts", quite apart from the utilitarian value of combating HIV/AIDS, it's also the private rights of the citizen that they are concerned to defend. It's time for the state to treat Indian citizens as adults, moving away from the patron-client relationship preferred by our political and bureaucratic elites.

ARQ: Archive and Resources for Queer Culture & Practices:: The Concept: Shivaji K Panikkar

Background: The ongoing queer activism in India is over two decades old. The earliest mobilization of community action began in Bombay in 1989-90 with the publication of the newsletter Bombay Dost. However, from the period prior to this, scattered textual references and oral narratives are found in connection with informal circles of friends of varied queer denominations. In the 1990s and through the present decade, significant formal or informal gay, lesbian and transgender groups and at instances of political formations or/and reach-out-publications had emerged in the major Indian cities and several small towns. Significant also are similar developments from other Asian, and South-Asian Diaspora in the West. Of these, some of which are still functional and some either disbanded or dormant, have pursued several lines of action - in the areas of mental and physical health, jurisprudence, community identity and artistry; running help lines to creating common platforms for queer people to discuss common problems. At the top of their agendas, most organizations also sought to actively define the political, social and legal issue of queer rights, particularly the battle against IPC 377.

Concurrent with the above is the trajectory of queer cultural activity by visual artists, writers, theatre activists, performers and film makers. Some literary activity has reclaimed the histories of homosexuality and homoeroticism through publications, and certain other have focused on contemporary texts and thus have provided a major fillip to the movement. Arguably, prominent writers and artists gather their strength from the liberation movement, providing significant intervention in the cultural field. The central principle in all these is the belief that queer is a true minority and that the fact of gender and sexuality inevitably is a personal matter which has political implications since sexual fulfillment and gender disposition have to be often realized through social contract and acceptance. It is also to be conceded that the present queer culture is diverse and the scenario is of much incoherence and inchoateness.

Coinciding with the above is the expansion of queer theory and critical studies, which grew out of the broader area of Cultural Studies. This has been enabled by the writings of theoreticians such as Michael Foucault, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler. While this has developed as a specialized area of expertise in the West, in India too theoretical interventions have emerged though publications and a couple of university departments offer courses in queer studies, primarily in relation to literature. Arguably, Queer Cultural Studies was shaped in critical dialogue with existing disciplines such as philosophy (in France), sociology and film theory (in the UK), history, literature and political theory (in India), political theory and sociology (in Japan and Korea), jurisprudence and anthropology (in the USA). In India, these have found enthusiastic support across a number of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. These initiatives not only expanded the scope of Queer studies and activism but also had posed crucial challenges to the existing theoretical/conceptual paradigm of gender and sexuality. More than many ways these initiatives has also exposed the fact that most of the radical ideologies and theoretical apparatuses are constituted by and constitutive of the heterosexual norms.

Scope: Making an area for research and documentation by itself, the relevance and value of the above outlined history is to locate the appropriate context for proposed futuristic national nodal center – ARQ: Archive and Resources for Queer Culture and Practices.[*] The ARQ will be a concerted effort in archiving histories that includes varied queer practices, identities and categories; of gay, lesbian, kothi, bisexual, hijda, transgender, intersexes etc. This inclusive approach will under-grid archiving and inform research. The ARQ will also promote and instill critical thinking and creative skills among the queer communities.

It is a fairly apparent fact that currently there is no single organization or agency in the country that link queer culture, sexuality and health. The proposition for a nodal centre is however not to reduce the multiplicities of practices and modes of functioning of the communities under a singular privileged norm or agenda. The proposal for an integrated national center should be understood in terms of democratic principles. Since queer experiences are varied and specific in different subject locations and positions; the question of regional, religious, class and caste differences and identities would be a necessary framework that will underwrite the mode of documentation and interpretation. Such micro histories not only enable the Queer communities to challenge the grand history which exclude them from its ambit of enquiries but also enable ARQ to uphold the spirit of multiplicities and to establish a critical relationship with the local, regional, national and/or the international models. This will have to be so in a country like India, and in that sense the proposition for a nodal national centre is based on certain pragmatic concerns. The ARQ is primarily envisaged as having two major focuses as follows:

(1) To create an international level platform for historians, theoreticians and cultural practitioners to undertake the production of historical and critical knowledge with regard to queer communities and cultures and to present such works. (2) To promote creativity among the queer population in general as well as in relation to community health (mainly around the medical discourse on HIV, STI) and mental and physical wellbeing; in promoting artistic/creative involvement as a therapeutic means towards psychological integration and a measure of instilling the concept of beauty, self-esteem and self-worth.

In practice, focus one would concentrate on the work of academics and artists and there would be an extremely conscious effort to break down the barriers produced by the elitist nature of high art and also between vernacular, metropolitan and international academia. Focus two would draw people from diverse backgrounds and effectively work against class, caste and other boundaries which foreclose the possibilities of a communitarian consciousness and also prevent access and usage of resources and methods according to the hierarchical systems.

Aims: (1) The ARQ aims at archiving queer histories and build-up a visual and print archive in the form of books, journals, photographs, films, videos, private documents etc. The following will be the focuses of the Documentation Center:

Documenting and archiving queer biographies in India and elsewhere
Documenting and archiving the history of queer activism in India and elsewhere.
Documenting and archiving the visual and textual historical evidences and data (including oral histories) in relation to queer life and cultural expressions in different historical periods in India and elsewhere.
Building up a resource library equipped with books, journals and ephemeral documents like reviews, brochures etc.

(2) ARQ envisages making varied queer experiences as a source of institutionalizing debates on activism, to propel it into a mature arena of learning sharing and creating a culture of positive affirmation. It aims at undertaking cultural initiatives and interventions in the area of queer life, health and art. It will function as a platform for the queer community to view, interact and engage in cultural production, and will offer possibilities of critical engagement as following:

To hold workshops in artistic media like literary, visual and performance art, including video and film.
To hold regular seminars and conferences in the area of queer studies, health and creative expressions.
To conduct special therapeutic cultural, creative and recreational programs for the health affected queer population.
To hold exhibitions, exposures and festivals of art, performances and films.

Objectives: To enable understanding of specific conditions in which certain kinds of queer cultures are produced within specific internal dynamics and polemics.
To create resources and space for documentation and research of queer histories and practices in India and elsewhere.
To promote, frame and socially and publicly make available the cultural initiatives and creativity of queer persons/organizations.
To inculcate and nurture creative skills to enable queer self-expression.
To promote critical thinking among queer people.
To enable exchange of knowledge through international collaboration and exchanges in the fields of culture, sexuality and health.

Work Plan: At the outset, contacts will be made with various queer/LGBT organizations/individuals and creative organizations and persons so as to research on their work, past and present projects and to seek support and collaboration, and to seek thinking together in the direction pursued by ARQ. This and the rest of the plan will be subject to the availability of funds.

Prof. Shivaji K Panikkar

[*] Note: ARQ will be pronounced as Arc, which means (1) part of the circumference of a circle or the other curve (2) Electric, luminous discharge between two electrodes.

India Art Summit Presentation

Subversion, Perversity and Resistance - Art as the Domain of Cultural Difference - Shivaji K Panikkar
Note: Through out the presentation the text and visuals I would be showing make parallel narratives, most of the times visuals are not illustrations but are reflective of multiple interrelated concerns.

I should confess that it was rather difficult to workout a presentation on the basis of the proposed title and on the basis of the brief concept note that accompanied. My presentation stands re-titled: now it reads as Art as the Domain of Cultural Conformity: Resistance, Subversion and the “Perversity” Trouble.
My rationale in doing so is: rather than contemporary Indian art is a domain of asserting real differences with any revolutionary consequences, given its mode of working within the limited elite territory, it is a domain of conformities. Within it, the possibilities of resistances and subversions do exist, but these system immanent practices do not ever allow the structure to be jeopardized, or completely subverted.
I also beg to differ with the interpretation of the word “perversity” in the circulated note which is thus: “Perversity reads as a deliberate resistance to guidance and order. The term ‘perversity’ denotes in one of its meanings a figure or image in which the right and the left directions of the original are reversed, such as an image seen in a mirror. Thus the central elements of an ideology or practice may be reversed and the rejected or the marginal brought to the centre.”
“Perversity” is a preposterous concept, a negative value used against sexual minorities, and it arises out of the common sense notions of “normal” and “natural”.
The formulation “Perversity reads as a deliberate resistance to guidance and order” derives from the heterosexist notion of subjective determinism of the individual against the superior guidance and order. The term in the proposed title pre-supposes and is expected that the speaker speaks from the perception and position of conforming to the dominant mainstream. The specific way the term is articulated in the proposed title reflects the painful and vicious injustice of naming non-hetero-normative practices as “perversity”; calling it abnormal, unnatural, deviation, queer and aberration or whatever, which reflects stigmatization.
It is another matter, and that in fact belongs to the field of political activism that this stigma is internalized and used against the oppressors as a subversive, transgressive strategy.
The presentation proposes to interrogate the normative binary categories: conformity vs. subversion, normal vs. perverse, and compliance vs. resistance in relation to commonplace perceptions and queer activism.
Simultaneously, I want to historically relate these to queer/gay activism and ‘high’ art practices drawing on specific examples. One of my intensions is to understand the indistinct-able and rather closeted interrelation between queer activism on the one hand and art on the other.
My conclusion would be a suggestion as to how the mainstream art world accommodates, tolerate or even make provision for the unacceptable through assuming certain strategies of subsumption through the process appropriation and inclusion. What emerges from certain specific minoritarian dynamics thus gets reduced to fit neatly into the nationally established canons. The presentation will argue that the need for a collusion of the subversive into the national mainstream, and tame the perverse is the need of the elite capital and its assertion of authority over the resistant and the subversive.
Image: MF Husain, Bharat Mata and Saraswati.
Cultural Practices and Subversion/Transgression: Sexuality is the embodiment of morality in our public discourses. In a country where there is a predominant correlation is expected to remain between morality, various religious values and beliefs and sexual practices, the secular freedom of expression enshrined in the constitution that is held together within the political economy and a politics of sexuality, the reality of accepting ‘queer’ (LGBT) as a real difference, and if that can even be tolerated in its own terms is a vexed question.
Image: Cinema Poster: Fire
How is its illegitimacy dealt within the field of “high Art” is a moot question that is addressed in the following.

Image: Savi Savarkar, Manu (being urinated upon)
Generally, through large part of 20th century, subversion/systematic inversion is taken to mean attempts at overthrowing structures of authority, and within art history of overthrowing established neo-classical cannons – thus the whole history of modern art anywhere would be the history of subversion. Perhaps, there was only a single genuine systemic subversion in modern art that is significant to be noted which is by Marcel Duchamp, who perversely undermined the difference between non-art and art. His intellectual “perversity”, so to say, turned art into a kind of perverse, nonsensical theory or conceptual glibness. Almost a hundred years since then the contemporary art often display “perversion” – a masquerade of philosophical puzzles - and a good deal of contemporary art is of no interest to anyone except its narcissistic practitioners and enthusiasts. We know that everyone else goes to the movies; where looking is openly sexy, often obscene, which unabashedly satisfy the perverse impulses.[1]
Image: Tejal Shah, Dejeuner sur L'herbe
For the Indian contexts, all attempts in overthrowing western hegemonic artistic modes in 20th century in general could be convincingly described as resistance and subversion. More specifically, I consider subversion as a practice that entail activities of treason, sedition, sabotage and espionage, meaning surreptitious attempts at eroding the basis of belief systems of the contemporary status quo by the activist-artists in relation to the struggle of minors in the civil society. Taken in that spirit, the implication would be that there will have to be far too sparse claimants for the category of subversive.
Image:, Tejal Shah, Dream, Hijra Fantasy Series
In terms of paradigmatic shifts, and in a broader sense, subversion is applied to all or most post-modern and post-structuralist critical practices making the category rather broad based rather than specific. Owing greatly to Antonio Gramsci in theorizing cultural hegemony, the contemporary feminist, queer and other minorities - their political struggles and social practices, which is a response to discrimination and/or criminalization based on gender, caste, race, sexual preference in countering dominant cultural forces, or cultural hegemony such as patriarchy, brahmanism/castism/racism/ conservatism, which often use rebellious strategies in cultural practices, may be convincingly argued to be more appropriately called subversive.
Image: Tejal Shah - Waiting I & II.
Normal/Perverse in Relation to Conformity/Resistance: Culture specific normative conception of perversity or deviation is considered in opposition to the notions of orthodox and normal, and most often used to describe sexual behaviors, particularly homosexual that are seen as abnormal or excessive. All these terms of references seem to lead us to the social perceptions and notion about queer/LGBT communities and lives, and their political, legal and social resistance movement for equality, acceptance, inclusion and right to live with dignity.
I quote Nivedita Menon with regard to the notion of ‘normal’ in relation to ‘natural’, “The assumption is that "normal" sexual behaviour springs from nature, and that it has nothing to do with culture or history. But if we recognize that sexuality is located in culture, we have to deal with the uncomfortable idea that sexuality is a human construct and not something that happens "naturally."[2]
It is possible that this shift from `natural' determinism to `cultural' determination with regard to construction of gender or sexuality or subject is based on simplistic `nature' vs. `culture' binary. And as activists would like us to believe that the subject, gender or sexuality is a product of nature and culture and all the politics based on either–or logic is futile.
Jack Derrida points out that "There is no nature, only the affects of nature: denaturalization or naturalization." (Donner le Temps). Derrida seems to argue that there is no “nature” that one can lay claims on as pristine truth or reality, but, what exists are only affects of nature. Following Michael Foucault, the term queer – a term that indicates degradation - has been turned into an affirmative set of meanings through the speech-act. What are the conditions and limits of such a reversal is one of the significant questions, which may be irrelevant to the present context. However, it is significant to note that Judith Butler calls this “radical re-signification” (Bodies that Matter, 1993) and what is produced of speech-act is discourse which carries the discursive power. Denaturalization and naturalization happens due to discursive practices. How they converge or confront as forces and as an accumulated effect at a historical point in time and work as restraining or as enabling practice is what is of relevance in the present context.
Image: Bhupen Khakar, From the River Yamuna
According to R. Raj Rao: “One of the implications of subversive or transgressive sexuality is that one is not looking for sexual compatibility and intellectual compatibility in the same partner… Hence, subversive or transgressive sexuality rejects the twin myths of monogamy and fidelity. It endorses the idea of multiple partners and celebrates promiscuity, which it does not view as infidelity…”
Image: Inder Salim, Yesterday Evening when I had Almost Nothing to do
Image: Inder Salim, This Ink for the White of my Eyes
“The mantra of subversive, transgressive sexuality may be said to be ‘more the merrier at whatever cost’, while its methods might include hooking, seduction, the roving eye and sexual favours. Subversive, transgressive sexuality also pits lust against love, only to abjure the latter… it approves flings, affairs and one-night stands… it recommends all forms of sexual activity…”[3]
Image: Bhupen Khakhar, Orgy & From the River Yamuna
“…in queer theory, the anus is not an orifice in the body for the discharge of excrement. Like vagina in feminism, it is a political site, with all its implication of entry, exit, surrender and feminisation of the male body.”[4]
For those who self-consciously, socially and visibly choose to practice transgressive or subversive sexual life, the support of nation state in terms of its laws is crucially absent – on the other hand it criminalizes such acts. The nations obsolete Penal Code 377 considers such practices “unnatural”, and as a consequence inevitably such pejoratives weighs heavily on people who do not live “natural” (hetero)-sexuality and thus discriminate those who practice modes that are outside the norms determined by heterosexuality.[5]
Image: Dostana Poster
Given the intolerance, homosexuality however is a lived reality in contemporary life, as in the past, and responses of it are reflected in cultural field as well. It is encountered often in popular cinema, definitely tolerated and even enjoyed to a certain extent, but as part of entertainment often made a target of contempt and derogatory treatment, and definitively kept out at a safe distance from serious engagement. It is not allowed in anyway to jeopardize and corrupt the higher status of heterosexual, patriarchal social order, practices, norms and canons.
Image: Still from My Brother Nikhil
It is against this background, we have to see the presence of queer activism in India, which is more acute in the recent past.
Image: An Activist at Queer Pride March 2009, & Yuva Magazine, 2009
Image: Queer Pride March, 29th June, 2009, New Delhi
Activism:
Image: Bombay Dost Magazine Early issues
Image: Bhupen Khakhar, Two Men in Banaras & You can’t Please All
It is only in the last little over four decades that the homosexual persons are able to form an ideological alignment and collectivity against particular legal injunctions, social taboos, cultural stereotypes, religious oppressions and matters of their health.[6] As far as India is concerned, the act of coming together of those who practiced minor sexual life was signaled in Bombay in the year 1989-90 with the publication of the quarterly news letter Bombay Dost.
Image: Bombay Dost Magazine issues
Ashok Row Kavi captures the significance of that moment thus: “By then, in April 1990, the first copy of Bombay Dost had hit the city like a ton of bricks… The first issue was historic in more than one… Bombay Dost was not just a news letter but a movement by now. It was nearly an year since we had started off as an underground sheet for the gay and lesbian community but it represented something much more. Bombay Dost was a life boat for many people who thought they had no one to turn to… the torrent had started! Those first letters were like winged messengers from my huge new family spread over the subcontinent…. India’s gays were like swans swimming in a dream waiting for that magic touch to wake them up…”[7]
Image: Hamsafar Trust Brochure
Significant in this context are the formation of South-Asian collectives and reach-out-publications from the USA and Europe from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.[8]
Image: Bhupen Khakhar, Two Men in Banaras & You Can’t Please All
The central activist pre-condition is the belief that ‘queer’ are a true minority, and crucial to this is based on the fact of choice of ones sexual preference, which inevitably is a personal matter to begin with, but do not however remain there since sexual gratification often has to be achieved through social contract. While other minority positions which are largely conferred to a person at birth and passed through family, and thus socially visible, they do not necessarily have to go through the ordeal specific to gays; of ‘coming-out’, or to declare ones sexual identity. The gay identity politics thus functions mainly within the yardstick of the ability of the person to ‘come out of closet’ which by itself is a matter considered as a major accomplishment, which is often accompanied by pain and embarrassment considering the strict constraints that the Indian patriarchal family system. Moreover, the Indian gay minoritarian liberational politics is hinged itself precariously upon the very restrictive conditions of Government and the legal injunctions. The legal limitations apart, the fear of social ostracism, stigma and discrimination combined with homophobia, heterosexism, heterocentrism and compulsory heterosexuality, gay identity politics indeed is a fragile field compared to that of other minoritarian struggles. However, despite all these limitations it is quite heartening and inspiring that a gay identity politics in the country is in place today and it is able to make its presence felt legally, socially and politically.
Images: Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History & Yarana: Gay Writing from India,
As for the gay cultural initiatives in India, particularly with regard to the visual and literary fields, it has been definitively been open to the influences from the West. While on one hand reclaiming a past had been significant with publications such as Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History,[9] assertions of its contemporary manifestations in Yarana: Gay Writing from India,[10] has provided major fillip to the movement, these apart from asserting the claims of the past crucially also contest the commonly prevalent myth that gay experiences and expressions are vices that developed in the west societies and imported to India.
The Invisible Made Visible: Art and Activism
Image : Sunil Gupta, After George Platt Lynes – Nudes with a Twist
Arguably, Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003), Sunil Gupta (b. 1953) and Jehangir Jani (b.1955) had gathered their strength from the activist international gay liberation movement, especially its manifestations in the field of art in the early to mid 1980s. Khakhar’s 1979 visit to England had been significant for him where he saw homosexual men living together, and also, gay exposure in art; I presume that David Hockney’s life and works had been particularly instrumental in Khakhar’s ‘coming out’. Khakhar eventually “came out of the closet”: his stable friendship with Vallabhdas Shah helped him to do so, and simultaneously his mother’s death also freed him from familial restrictions. This actually happened frontally, and with aplomb.

Younger contemporaries of Khakhar, Gupta and Jani’s involvement with the high art coincides with the rise of more self-conscious gay activism internationally and within the country. In 1972 as a graduate student at McGill (Canada) Gupta joined the first gay students organisation, "Gay McGill", after he graduated from Royal College of Art London in 1983 started a Black/Asian photography group called Autograph which was followed by a gay group, after contacting HIV-AIDS in 1995 and joined a voluntary service, the Terence Higgins Trust as part of their "Buddy" programme and continued to have association with London LGBT Pride committee. From 2004, living in Delhi, he had been involved with two activist groups; Nigah and Naz and his work with Nigah is based on cultural activities, that has led to organizing Queer Festivals.
Image : Jehangir Jani, Sahmat Olympus,
Image : Jehangir Jani, Box of Pansies
While Jani throughout remained an active member of the Hamsafar Trust, the Mumbai-based community organization, he also seriously engaged in art making,
Image : Bhupen Khakhar, J. Jani and Sunil Gupta.
While Khakhar’s representations are based largely on his experiential realm and so autobiographical, Gupta and Jani position themselves deliberately away from the possibility of mere representation of gay experiential realms within the paradigm of ‘out of the closet’ and are based on identity politics. It is significant that on the one hand they stand comfortably within the layered discourses around the phenomenology of gay experiences, but on the other they crucially and critically engages with the socio-political structure(s) that under grid and discriminate the lives of the sexual minority. Thus their art is double-edged; while uninhibitedly representing the experiential realms of the sexual subculture they also assert their political resistance. These are particularly significant since minority sexual identities, the protest of the subterranean culture and the propaganda value have yet to be seriously registered in public view as significant positions of difference that make valid claims for equality and dignity.
Image : Sunil Gupta & Bombay Dost Page of HIV
Gupta’s and Jani’s simultaneous positioning as artists and activists enables them to assume a strategy with regard to political implication of representation. Right at the outset, displacing the habitual heterosexual expectations about human figuration they draws on a vehemently assertive self-image into the visual field – an oddly-displaced and a tortured image which is reclaimed from a humiliated hinterland’s margins that speak oral histories.
Image : J. Jani, Pink Sun
Image : J. Jani, Pink Sun
Manoeuvred to assert the frontal, iconic presence, Jani’s sculptures ironically objectify the minor within minority, namely the persona of kothi[11] through their odd and obvious effeminate bodily shifts and inflections. Characteristic traits of the body in movement are transcribed onto their masculine/non-masculine body which spreads over un-idealized or even unattractive flesh.
How do we understand the nature of the indistinct-able interrelation between queer activism and art?
The formulation ‘the indistinct interrelation’ seems to capture the nuances of an almost not so obvious relationship between ‘high art’ and the queer movement which is as yet an under-theorized area within queer theory, but art and activism can be seen as deeply implicated to one another. The qualification ‘indistinct’ because any queer speech-act, arising within high art, seems to belong to activism, yet in actual practice high art is primarily functions within a small section of the elite class for various non-activist purposes, and the objects made as art does not prima-facie become socio-politico-activism. On the other hand, the category “the queer art” too does not seem to have come into existence. What I am implying here is that there is a particular way through which queer art is tamed to fit neatly with-in the high art realm, about which it may not be possible to elaborate presently.
However, it needs to be said that within the definitive terms of radicalism, it is to the credit of the artist to explore the personal, and become the voice for the community. The quest for a queer speech and as a radical practice what is thought through with definitive subversive tools are some of the quintessential problems and dynamics that control and direct gay identity issues in relation to high art – questions of doing art while having to deal with and exist within the mainstream/heterosexual world; to live an alternative life, to demand equal rights, and to live with art making as one’s vocation. In this regard gay artists can be seen as at crossroads today; on one hand making choices between one’s political concerns, creating meanings, choosing materials, forms, and aesthetics, and on the other, in conjunction, his minoritarian political identity. Though sexuality undoubtedly could be central to their works and thus become art’s operational symbolic capital; however these artists understandably reject or resist a reductive readings which see their art productions being merely operative within either the elite/high art sphere or in the field of activism. Simultaneously, an artist like Jani also wonders if his works will speak of anything significant even after the issues of identity politics get over in the course of time.
Image :Ramesh Pithiya, What is Your Perversion?
I would like to point out that an enormous significant per-formative act has been already accomplished by artist-activists, and for an young artist like Ramesh Pithiya, there is no need for being defensive anymore, but it is time to turn around and ask assertive question to the heterosexist world, What is your Perversion ? It could be anything.
[1] Ref. notes from Donald Kuspit, Perversion in Art, Magazine.

[2] “Section 377: How Natural is Normal?”, in The Phobic and the Erotic, Edited by Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2007, pp. 339-340.

[3] Introduction, in Whistling in the Dark: Twenty-One Queer Interviews, ed. R. Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, 2009, page XVI – XVII.

[4] Ibid.
[5] Indian Penal Code, Section 377 reads thus: “whoever voluntarily has sex against the order of nature with man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years.”

[6] It is significant that although the term gay was not coined until 1869, the use of the term to signify homosexual identity anywhere in the world is only in the last thirty five or forty five years.
[7] Ashok Row Kavi, ‘The Contract of Silence’, in Yarana, ed. H.Merchant, 1999, pp. 20-21.
[8] Prominent among such collectives are Trikone (USA), Khush Khayal (Canada), Shakti (UK), Samakami(USA), South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (USA) and Dost (UK). See Sherry Joseph and Pawan Dhall, ‘No Silence Please, We’re Indians! – Les-Bi-Gay Voices from India’ in Different Rainbows, (ed.) Peter Drunker, Gay Man’s Press, UK, 2000, pp. 157 to 178. Around the same time came-up Red Rose (New Delhi), Fun Club (Calcutta), Friends India (Lucknow) and Garden City Club (Bangalore). Through mid 1990s and early 2000s many more such initiatives and formations took place, and particularly significant are those which were formed in small towns.[8] Today there are organizations such as Nigah and Naz in Delhi, and many more spread across the country. These agencies apart from running help lines and creating common platforms for gays to meet and discuss the commonly faced problems, had been also systematically working in the areas of mental and physical health. On the top of their agenda had been also defining the political identitarian issue of gay rights, particularly significant is the legal battle against IPC 377.

[9] Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai (ed), Same-Sex Love in India, Macmillan India Ltd., Delhi, 2001, pp. xx-xxi (first published in 2000, St. Martin’s Press, Palgrave).

[10] Hoshang Merchant, op.cit.

[11] Termed as kothi in Indian gay parlance, an effeminate gay male’s identity is abusively referred to by various [contemptuous] names such as chhakka, fairy, sissy, queen, pansy etc.
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