Beyond Privilege: Interrogating Exclusions and Hierarchies in Queer Politics in India

Abstract

This paper interrogates the elitist tendencies of the contemporary queer movement in India and asks whether queerness, as it is articulated in mainstream activist and academic spaces, remains a prerogative of the privileged. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theorization of discourse, power, and sexuality, it examines how structures of caste, class, gender, and religion intersect with sexuality in ways that dominant queer narratives have often ignored. The study situates the queer movement within both its historical and global contexts—tracing colonial criminalization of sexuality, postcolonial struggles around Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, and the rise of NGO-led activism in urban India. It argues that while the queer movement has advanced legal reforms and visibility, it has simultaneously reproduced exclusionary practices by privileging upper-caste, urban, English-speaking, and economically secure queer subjects, while marginalizing Hijra communities, Dalit queer activists, working-class LGBTQ persons, and rural populations. By comparing the Western bourgeois discourse of sexuality with Indian Brahmanical hierarchies, the paper demonstrates how elitist discourses shape both repression and resistance. Ultimately, it advocates for an intersectional and inclusive queer politics that learns from Dalit, feminist, and anti-caste struggles to build solidarities across axes of oppression. Only by embedding itself within the lived realities of India’s toiling masses can the queer movement transcend elitist limitations and achieve meaningful social transformation.

Keywords: Gender, Queer, Homosexuals, Discrimination, Sexuality