by Ratna Kapur
This paper primarily intends to throw light on the postcolonial reading of the legal engagements of sexual subgroups that depicts the complex layering of sexual subjectivities in a postcolonial context, which are not captured in a straightforward ‘lesbian’ or ‘gay’ reading. The use of the term ‘sexual subaltern’ in this paper is mainly intended to capture this complexity. Through the discussions on the engagement of the sexual subaltern with law, the author draws on subaltern scholarship to provide a more complex articulation of the position of the sexual subaltern as well as the relationship between law and the subject. The first part of the paper, briefly
discusses the explosion of homoerotic imagery, literature and sex talk in the context of sexual subalterns in postcolonial India, to illustrate that the voice of the sexual subaltern is being gradually accommodated within the postcolonial discourse, and that the public space has become more amenable to sexual subaltern claims and practices. However, any declarations of victory, especially after the historic Naz Foundation judgment, may be somewhat premature. The second half of the paper analyses tolerance is constituted in postcolonial India, and excavates the historical and politically discursive character of tolerance. The author explores how suggestions for expansion of the majoritarian religious moorings of tolerance, or for adopting a more political conception of tolerance, are still unable to displace dominant understandings of culture or disrupt normative sexuality. Instead, sexual subalterns are still treated as a ‘perversion’ to be tolerated within the framework of liberal democracy, and where tolerance is deployed to deal with the excess that formal equality has failed to accommodate.
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(Submitted by Harsh Kapoor)