HOPEFUL RANTINGS OF A DALIT-QUEER PERSON, Dhiren Borisa
HOPEFUL RANTINGS OF A DALIT-QUEER PERSON
Dhiren Borisa*
Two years have passed by. Law, in a much-celebrated verdict, had acknowledged our sexual citizenship in India. Still, I am afraid, I can only represent an unpopular opinion in the queer movement. I can only share stories from the vantage point of a Dalit queer person. My humblest apologies if it doesn’t feel celebratory enough of Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India.1I want to put across that the LGBTQ+ movement or what has come to be known as the gay agenda works for us no different than the courtrooms that often acquit the perpetrators of caste violence inflicted on many in my community. Our lives beyond law are more complex and the tactical moves that lawyers adopt to win cases are often an erasure of these complexities.
So be it; in 2018, when this victory was achieved, let’s also remember which voices were foregrounded and which voices were removed from the petitions. Let’s recall how respectability was played up through the caste and class privileges of certain petitioners and howsex workers were asked to tone down, or better leave. What does it reveal about law and justice? What does it speak about rights and citizenship—about who can claim them? Indeed, what does it say about us as the queer movement?
Dhiren Borisa is an activist, queer geographer, and poet and currently teach gender at Jindal Global Law School. They are also an honorary visiting fellow at University of Leicester. Their research is situated at the intersections of caste, class, queerness,and the production of urban spaces of survival.