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Queer Studies Easter
Symposium
Simposio de Estudios
Queer de la Pascua
Mexico City/Ciudad
de México
Abstracts/Resúmenes
de ponencias 2009
Between
the global rights discourse and local modes of agency:
Kothis at the borders of LGBT activism in India
Aniruddha
Dutta
Asian
Literatures, Cultures and Media
University
of Minnesota
Minneapolis
Estdados
Unidos
How do globalizing
discourses of sexual and human rights, which emphasize
the demand for equal citizenship and rights by LGBT
minority groups, come into friction with diverse modes
of sexual agency and identity in third world spaces? Are
these discourses uniformly colonizing and result in
misrepresentations of the concerned sections, or do we
have viable local appropriations in the service of
empowerment? What could be the tensions and frictions at
this ‘glocal’ juncture?
My paper seeks to
explore this crucial question by analyzing the complex
relation between non-governmental organizations working
on sexuality and human rights in India and their
‘target groups’, based on my ethnographic experience
with NGOs in Eastern India over the summers of 2007 and
2008. I worked with the ‘target group’ of the Kothis,
a rather loosely-defined section of lower-middle class
‘feminized’ homosexual males. In their everyday
lives, Kothis negotiate between middle class, gay-led
NGO structures and discourses and the lower class
subculture of the Hijras (a distinctive South Asian male
transgender group). I studied this hybrid border
position of the Kothis, between the local and the
global, to understand the tensions that split them
between NGOs and the Hijras.
Kothis appropriate
elements of the Hijra subculture to assert a public
sexual agency through a flamboyant performance of their
identity and sex appeal – including cross-dressing,
and even gestures of flirtation, in public spaces. The
NGOs are often critical of this, seeing it as
sensationalist or disreputable, thus not conducive to
the social integration of the Kothis into respectable
citizenship with its associated rights. Thus, though the
Kothis are attracted to the political possibilities of
the globalized citizenship and rights discourse, and
join pride marches organized by NGOs enthusiastically,
they can be excluded by the same discourse as improper
or politically immature subjects.
My research seeks a
viable, inclusive compromise at this juncture. I wish to
demonstrate how further implementation of activist work
should equalize NGO hierarchies, such that Kothis need
not forego their local lower class alliances to be fully
represented in globalized sexual rights discourses.
About Aniruddha
Dutta
Aniruddha Dutta is
pursuing his PhD in Asian Literatures, Cultures and
Media and is a MacArthur Scholar in Development Studies
and Social Change at the University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, U.S.A. He has also been active in working
for NGOs in India that deal with sexuality and health
related rights of GLBT groups. An active musician and
composer, he also tries to bring his art into his
activism and academics to devise effective methods of
awareness-raising and communication.
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