Rukman Banka, Week 13

The Phobic and The Erotic: Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India

The author argues about the complicated and a questioning situation of contemporary concept of sexuality in Indian culture currently. She argues a wide range of writings to critique and inquire into the nitty-gritties of the problem. Among other things, it critically examines the various modes through which colonial discourse and the post-colonial nation-state shaped the construction of sexuality in India. The struggles against right-wing protesters and the debate around Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalizes “unnatural sex”, the laws governing censorship and ‘obscenity’ contextualizes the theory of the author. The struggle against the imposition of normative and ‘clean’ sexual environment is a part of the larger struggle against the dystopia of a Hindu nationalist state that regards the expression of desire by women and sexual subalterns as “Westernization” and “against the Indian Culture”. This work by Nivedita Menon invites us to participate in a process of questioning that includes our carefully constructed “self-good” and accept the “unnatural”.