Who do we see when we think of an Indian queer person? Whose voices are centred and who has to blend in quietly? Whose queerness makes the cut?
The most that many dominant, urban queer spaces in India can manage to address is the concept of intersectionality. Tote bags quoting Maya Angelou’s “We are not free until we are all free,” or lapel pins of Ambedkar placed next to a pride flag, often represent the outer limit of savarna queer politics. This frequently produces a performance of inclusivity— an image of joy, safety, and community—without sustained engagement with how caste continues to structure access, voice, and legitimacy within queer spaces themselves.
Queer spaces and collectives do offer a great deal, particularly to students and young people newly arriving at an understanding of their gender and sexuality. These spaces promise, at the very least, that one will not be discriminated against for being queer. They offer affirmation, vocabulary, and recognition. For those raised in unsafe or hostile environments, queer spaces can feel like the first place one can rest. Yet inclusion alone cannot be mistaken for equality. Formal membership does not automatically guarantee fair treatment, equal benefits, or the absence of hierarchy. Being allowed into a space does not mean being centred within it.
Queer theorists have long challenged the notion of complete internal solidarity within these spaces. The histories of the modern LGBTQ+ movement are rooted in bars, discos, urban commercial spaces, and academic institutions in the West. Though often well-intentioned, this meant that institutionalised queer theory and politics were disproportionately shaped by the people with access to capital–wealthy, white, cisgender men. In Fear of a Queer Planet, Michael Warner includes a correspondence touching on this: “As a gay man of colour, I find certain aspects of my identity empowered within the space of an ethnic family, and others negated within the same space. I fall in between a split between the ethnic family and the white gay man.” The problem, then, is not difference, but which differences can define queerness.
This early shaping of queer movements offers an explanation for the racism that has historically marked queer spaces. Asian-American men were stereotyped as passive or feminine, and Black men marked as aggressive were not marginal accidents but structural outcomes of who was allowed to shape queer desire and politics.
Social movements often arise from shared experiences of structural inequality, insufficient access to resources, and collective identity. During the AIDS crisis, discrimination and state neglect were experiences that cut across queer communities. In contemporary India, however—particularly within elite urban, savarna-dominated spaces where decriminalisation and corporate anti-discrimination policies are increasingly the norm—queer spaces function less as sites of survival and more as sites of identity formation.
This idea of collective identity comes with several nuances. Many queer spaces attempt to build community through cultural experiences and queer media. The savarna queer community here often remains blind to the role caste has played in shaping their queer experience. Wattpad and AO3 crushes, Tumblr conversations with other savarna queers, and eventually coming out at home are some of the narratives I have encountered repeatedly. They find solidarity in the freedom of performing their queerness—through thrifted clothes, niche artists, and cultural references. Silently, there is little space for inclusion for an Indian queer not already acquainted with the queer movement via their networks, early internet access, and wealth. A standard of queer episteme, sensitivity, and ‘style’, achieved through your upper-caste background, becomes the norm. You risk being seen as insensitive, uncultured, or unsure of yourself.
A savarna friend once told me that his mother would rather he be gay than marry someone from a “lower” caste. This is telling. As Akhil Kang argues, caste works through ideas of purity and pollution, and queerness is absorbed into this logic. A savarna gayness can be accommodated as long as it does not threaten caste boundaries. The “dirty” queer, then, is not the gay son, but the Dalit partner.
Yashica Dutt speaks of the performances a Dalit must make every day, particularly in savarna spaces and educational institutions. Being Dalit is a constant performance of class, culture, and effortless wealth. The same is true for the Dalit queer.
Indian queer histories existed long before contemporary movements—Hijras and other gender-diverse communities have lived and been marginalised for centuries. Yet it was only with the influx of Western frameworks that sections of the savarna population began to make peace with queerness. “Queer” became upper-caste queer, no longer poor, lower-caste, or “abnormal.” It became acceptable.
Warner denounces queer political aspirations that restrict themselves to anti-discrimination. The politics of a queer planet, he argues, must be far-reaching—encompassing healthcare, care for the elderly, housing, and access to rights. What savarna queer spaces in India often miss is the disproportionate access within the queer community. Realities of social exclusion, acceptance at home, and lived queer experience are ruled out. Being queer itself becomes tied to savarna experience, and so being a political queer becomes tied to savarna political aspirations.
This is not to scorn queer savarnas as immoral. There is a recognition of caste as an institution that needs to be abolished. But Dalit political aspirations are not placed at the forefront.
Much of this engagement appears to stem from savarna guilt. Often, the only intersectionality offered is one that imagines the Dalit queer solely as a victim—a fictionalised figure living on the edge of poverty and violence. Kang critiques intersectionality itself when it freezes Dalit queerness as suffering rather than agency.
Assertions against caste oppression, patriarchy, and heteronormativity are not new. In recent years, certain articulations of Dalit identity have taken the form of pride. Ginni Mahi speaks of the importance of overcoming the shame attached to her caste and asserting pride in being called a Chamar. The transformation of shame into assertion disrupts norms in deeply queer ways.
One of the anxieties that Dalit queerness produces is the expectation that queerness must come from certain imagined bodies and performances. It ignores the possibility that anti-caste struggle itself is inherently anti-patriarchal and anti-heteronormative.
Within university queer spaces, therefore, what we need isn’t just inclusion. It is reckoning with the terms on which Indian queerness exists.
Read Also: Taking off the Blindfold : Uncovering Caste in DUSU
Image Credits: Times of India
Anjali Paruvu
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