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Queer Journeys
Interrogating the Past to Reimagine Futures
Speakers
Some histories vanish not by accident, but by design.
In the wake of colonial rule, Forbidden Desire unspools a compelling narrative of how British imperial power erased India’s far-reaching traditions of gender and sexual diversity. The book draws from feminist historiography, anthropology, South Asian queer theory, decolonial studies and the history of medicine and legislation to map the transformation of lives once lived in fluid, expressive spaces. Author Sindhu Rajasekaran invites us into archive after archive where nautch dancers, courtesans, trans and queer persons, ascetics and masculine women once existed beyond the binaries that later came to dominate.
In conversation with Arundhati Ghosh, this discussion will trace how colonial authorities turned indigenous multiplicities into “criminals”, folding ancient codes of desire into Victorian moral order: think of Section 377, the Contagious Diseases Act, and the Criminal Tribes Act.
More than a simple critique, the evening offers a chance to reimagine our futures by reclaiming what we were taught to forget.
Speakers
Sindhu Rajasekaran
Sindhu Rajasekaran is an author, academic & filmmaker. Her debut novel, Kaleidoscopic Reflections , was nominated for the Crossword Book Award. She has also written a collection of short stories, So I Let It Be , and the bestselling nonfiction book: Smashing the Patriarchy . Sindhu produced the award-winning feature film Ramanujan and is Curatrix at The Subjective Space . Her poetry and creative nonfiction have been published by renowned literary magazines such as The Room, Asia Literary Review, and New Writing Scotland . She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Strathclyde , where she was a recipient of the Dean’s Global Research Award. Her latest book is Forbidden Desire: How the British Stole India’s Queer Pasts & Queer Futures, published by Simon & Schuster.
