Rohit K. Dasgupta

‘Because even the placement of a comma might be important’ Expertise, filtered embodiment and social capital in online sexual health promotion

The Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) is a leading UK HIV and sexual health organization, and community outreach and support remain a key tenet of the charity’s philosophy. Outreach work includes campaign drives in bars, clubs and saunas, peer-led workshops, support groups, condom distribution in community venues and one-to-one intervention programmes to help raise HIV/AIDS awareness. But what happens to community activism and outreach when the community one seeks to engage moves online? In this article, we report on a study capturing the experiences of workers engaged in THT’s digital outreach service, Netreach. Using ethnographic and other qualitative methods, we identify the shifting nature of health promotion outreach work and the changes in expert–client relationship that occur when community outreach takes place on digital platforms. We identify how issues of (dis)embodiment, expertise and cultural capital play a role in determining the success – or failure – of online outreach work.

Articulating Dissident Citizenship, Belonging, and Queerness on Cyberspace

Abstract On December 11, 2013, the Indian Supreme Court reinstated Section 377, which criminalizes sexual acts “against the order of nature.” This article is a meditation on the acts of individual and collective resistance undertaken by dissident citizens (Sparks) in order to challenge and articulate strategies to intervene and critique the State and civil societys role in this decision. Activism is the study of the relationship between the virtual and the actual (Dave). Using three case studies, this article examines how dissident, queer citizens attempt to create queer counter-publics on digital space, thereby claiming a performative and participative form of citizenship. I extend Daves study of activism by drawing upon a range of experiences of activists and civilians “within the field” alongside the digital articulation and assimilation of these movements.

Remembering Benedict Anderson and his Influence on South Asian Studies

This article was written shortly after the death of Benedict Anderson. It contextualizes Andersons contribution to studies of nationalism and the Global South, particularly Asia. It then revisits some of the key debates of Anderson’s scholarship and its particular significance and importance to the study of South Asia.

The world of Rituparno Ghosh: texts, contexts and transgressions

In this article we introduce the queer Bengali auteur Rituparno Ghosh (1961–2013), who had a significant role in reviving the Bengali film industry that was going through a dark phase for a little more than a decade. As an iconic feminist film-maker and queer cultural figure, Ghosh has been an influential icon within Bengal and more widely in India and the diasporas. In seeking to examine his vast oeuvre of work we focus on its various elements. First, we examine Ghosh’s feminist position, and how he shocked his middle-class audience through his transgressive discourses. Second, we investigate the influence and inspiration he received from figures such as Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore. We argue that Tagore’s sensibility and philosophy imbued all his films. In doing this he was also uncritically referencing the other great Bengali film-maker Satyajit Ray. Third, an examination of Ghosh is incomplete without referencing his uninhibited performance of queerness both in his films and in the public domain. Over here we look at his final queer film trilogy but also the impact he left on Calcutta’s LGBT community. Finally, this article ends by focusing on Ghosh’s legacy on other Bengali film-makers.

Parties, Advocacy and Activism: Interrogating Community and Class in Digital Queer India

New media and the internet have had a significant impact on the queer community in India. From cyber-activism challenging media and political discourses on queer identity to providing a social space for interaction and dialogue (Roy 2003; Shahani 2008), they have been instrumental in the growth of the ‘marginalized’ queer community in the country. This chapter draws on and develops research on online queer communities (Campbell 2004; Mowlabocus 2010) and examines a Facebook group for queer individuals in Kolkata, India as a ‘community’. My intention in this chapter is to see how a sense of community is created and expressed and even critiqued within this specific group. Spaces such as this not only challenge institutional normativity but also offer an alternative to the NGO-led queer support model so prevalent in India. Using a Facebook group called Pink Kolkata Parties (PKP) as a case study, this chapter will be looking at the intersection and tensions between class, gender and sexuality and how that inflects our understanding of community and more largely identity. The chapter will specifically explore how the notions of a queer youth community in cyberspace circulate and the mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion that govern the dialogue and interaction within this space.

Launda Dancers: the dancing boys of India

The tradition of men dancing in place of women (launda naach) has a chequered history in India. The dancers mostly come from poor families with a disproportionate number from West Bengal. They face significant violence, both at home and in their profession, for so much of identity in India is centred round the family and appropriate roles within the family. Launda naach offers a certain freedom as well as a measure of economic Independence. But it remains a narrow and limited space.

Transgender-inclusive sanitation: insights from South Asia

This paper provides insights from initiatives to include transgender people in sanitation programming in South Asia. Three case studies of recent actions to make sanitation inclusive for transgender people (in India and Nepal) are presented, accompanied by reflections and recommendations to guide future practice. Practitioners are recommended to: engage with transgender people as partners at all stages of an initiative; recognize that the language of gender identity is not fixed, varying across cultures and between generations; and acknowledge that transgender people are not a single homogeneous group but rather have diverse identities, histories, and priorities. The case studies aim to raise awareness of the diversity of transgender identities, exploring the needs and aspirations of transgender women, transgender men, and third gender people in South Asia.

Opening closets and dividing audiences: Rituparno Ghosh, the queer star of Bengali cinema

Abstract This article explores the Bengali auteur Rituparno Ghosh’s queer stardom. Through an exploration of his key films, writings, and television appearances we establish his socio-political significance in Bengal and beyond. We contextualise Ghosh’s work within the changing media landscape in West Bengal. The emergence of new satellite channels, print media, and corporate funding transformed Ghosh’s media presence and consolidated his position in the Bengali cultural imagination. Using grieving and mourning as conceptual devices this article argues that recognition of Ghosh’s queerness had wider implications around queer visibility, queer politics, and acceptance.

Intimate Subjects and Virtual Spaces: Rethinking Sexuality as a Category for Intimate Ethnographies

Social networking sites and digital technologies have created opportunities for young people in India to establish virtual intimate connections. In this article, the authors analyze the intimate exchanges between young men on two different digital platforms – Facebook and Planet Romeo. An analysis of the intimate virtual exchanges reveals technologies of queer neoliberal subject formation within contemporary India. Queer neoliberal subject formation refers to the emergence of a sexual subject of rights, one that is a consumer-citizen within the Indian free-market economy. The article highlights two ways in which bodies are being queered within present day India. First, the authors discuss the case of run-away young men, whose bodies are marked as failure, a kind of ‘delinquent’ subject by an ensemble of state and civil-society formations. The young men are escaping violence from male elders, and poor living conditions in peri-urban Kolkata. Their bodies come to signify a queer figure within neoliberal notions of success and enterprise. Second, they interrogate the ways in which homosexuality is an emergent juridico–political category in India. The Supreme Court of India ruling on 11 December 2013, which reinstated the anti-sodomy provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC 377), is the site for the sedimentation of ‘homosexual’ as a subject of legal rights. The homosexual is being presented as a subject of conjugal love. Conjugality is represented as a private good, as the right to consume intimacy within private space. Representation of intimacy and celebration of conjugal love is found through the growth of dating websites in India along with the proliferation of media texts such as memes, poems and illustrative images found online commemorating conjugality. Our ethnographic analysis of the virtual exchanges among runaway young men and young gay identified men reveal how neoliberal subject formation in India remains incomplete.

Online Romeos and Gay-dia: Exploring queer spaces in digital India

Rohit K. Dasgupta builds on the complexity of negotiating identity in public spaces by refocusing attention on the subversive potential of digital queer spaces in India. Academic discourses on queer sexuality in contemporary India have so far concentrated on textual, cinematic, and sociological representations, with little scholarship on the digital landscape and the various ways in which it shapes the construct of the queer male identity in India. Dasgupta examines how Internet and digital technologies, the media industry, and sociohistorical contexts provide a subversive space within which queer male identity is negotiated. Also offering an overview of media development in India, Dasgupta discusses queer representations in mass media and digital queer spaces in India, which are a consequence of the shifting political and social landscapes of urban and suburban India. Finally, Dasgupta reviews key debates in digital culture and queer studies, situating the Indian queer digital space within the intersection of globalization and postcolonial praxis.