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2 Comments

  1. // If everything is fair in love and war, they are even more fair in the war for right to love! No doubt its a war and blood will spill. We need to prepare ourselves for that.//
    What a vision! Loved reading it, beautifully written.

  2. This was a good post, thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I have been a part of the Kolkata pride walk for several years, and every year I hear comments like “why do some people need to dress or behave like that”, usually directed against people in drag. There even have been organised efforts to ban certain gestures (like the ‘thikri’ or loud clap used by Hijras and some Kothis, Trans-identified people, etc.) from the pride walk on grounds of their alleged “indecency” or disreputability. All of these testify to how much we often internalise the norms of society and strive to appear as “normal” by those standards, rather than critiquing and transforming them. And a lot of these standards of so-called normalcy are not only homophobic/transphobic but also classist, setting a standard of “decency” and “respectability” as per middle or upper class norms.


    Orinam Editors Note: See Aniruddha Dutta’s insightful essay Kotis and Sexual Politics in Eastern India published in Samar Magazine (2008) for more details.