India's Illicit Sexualities: Disruptive Queer Representations in Film and Fiction

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This project explores how queer Indian texts disrupt identitarian and aestheticcategories in light of India's criminalization of "unnatural sex" (IPC 377). The term "queertexts" as used here refers to cinematic or literary works which implicitly or explicitlychallenge colonially enforced notions of normative sexuality and gender. The objective hereis to read these texts and subtexts comparatively through several lenses, including censorship,legal prohibitions including Section 377, and the temporal and geographic positionalities ofthe texts. These queer narratives will thus be looked at as a methodological tool of resistanceagainst restrictive notions of sexuality. The project asks whether these texts served as a purelydestabilising force, or whether the failure of these texts to essentially abide by a monolithic,sequestered, and constrained queer Indian identity speaks to the impossibility of constrainingthe "unnatural" in itself.