LGBTQ Activisms and Hindu Nationalism in India: An Ethnographic Inquiry

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dc.contributor.advisorDavid Murray
dc.contributor.advisorRadhika Mongia
dc.contributor.authorShraddha Chatterjee
dc.date.accessioned2023-08-04T18:13:08Z
dc.date.available2023-08-04T18:13:08Z
dc.date.issued2023-08-04
dc.date.updated2023-08-04T18:13:07Z
dc.degree.disciplineGender, Feminist and Women's Studies
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractContemporary Indian society is marked by increasingly violent majoritarianism that is redefining India as a Hindu nation. In recent years, the heightened persecution of religious minorities and an ever-expanding definition of “anti-national” has justified violence against a widening range of people. Paradoxically, in this atmosphere of shrinking public freedoms and increasing state-sanctioned ethnic violence, there has been a simultaneous expansion of LGBTQ representation in mainstream English media and nominal advancements in LGBTQ rights. As a result, a distinct form of LGBTQ support for Hindu nationalism has become popular, even as other LGBTQ activisms have amplified their efforts to resist Hindu nationalism. Within this context, this dissertation examines how and why LGBTQ activists support and resist Hindu nationalism, and how this reconfigures what it means to be queer in Hindu nationalist times. I address these questions through a queer feminist digital ethnography of LGBTQ activists in New Delhi and Mumbai, conducted between February and October 2020. My ethnographic findings indicate that LGBTQ support for Hindu nationalism is often advanced without Hindu nationalist support for LGBTQ rights. Based on this, I argue that what we see in India is aspirational homonationalism, where Hindu nationalist rhetoric is buttressed in the present to accrue LGBTQ rights and inclusion into the nation in the future. Further, LGBTQ complicity with Hindu nationalism signals deeper desires for national belonging, especially when juxtaposed against the persistent claim that homosexuality is “alien” to Indian culture. My findings also demonstrate that LGBTQ activists resisting Hindu nationalism are amplifying these efforts despite experiencing the larger atmosphere in contemporary India as dangerous and stifling. Queer feminist and Dalit queer and trans* activisms, in particular, resist the underlying narratives of LGBTQ inclusion that support Hindu nationalism, rejecting the violence of Hindu nationalism in the process. I conclude that LGBTQ complicity with, and resistance to, Hindu nationalism maps onto existing antagonisms between gay rights activisms, queer feminisms, and Dalit queer and trans* activisms. As aspirations for homonationalism become more deeply rooted within LGBTQ activisms, and as its critiques become more stringent, Hindu nationalism deepens pre-existing fissures within these activisms by becoming another axis of difference in larger struggles over what LGBTQ activisms should fight for, and what LGBTQ lives should look like.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/41408
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectGender studies
dc.subjectCultural anthropology
dc.subjectSouth Asian studies
dc.subject.keywordssexuality
dc.subject.keywordsgender
dc.subject.keywordsnationalism
dc.subject.keywordsIndia
dc.subject.keywordsLGBTQ
dc.subject.keywordsanthropology
dc.subject.keywordsqueer
dc.subject.keywordsfeminism
dc.subject.keywordsSouth Asia
dc.subject.keywordshomonationalism
dc.titleLGBTQ Activisms and Hindu Nationalism in India: An Ethnographic Inquiry
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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