Pune’s Literary Festival Amplifies LGBTQ Voices

September 11, 2017

Bringing out the LGBTQ narrative, stories and perspectives, The Pune International Literary Festival saw two interesting sessions on this subject. The first session saw eminent writer, poet and academic, R Raj Rao in conversation with Shobhna Kumar, founder of Queer Ink. The second session saw Kannada author, Vasudhendra, give a presentation on his semi-autobiographical novel, Mohanaswamy.

In the first panel, the participants discussed Rao’s new book, ‘Criminal Love?’, which is a compilation of the author’s essays in various journals and weekly columns. The book is primarily about queer theory, culture and politics in India.

“I am a criminal. I feel it is better to resist by being an outlaw. Initially there was no question mark after criminal love but the publishers decided to put it even though I disagreed,” he explains.

The discussion went further into analysing that Indians suffered from amnesia of their history. “Homosexuality was only criminalised after the British came in. We have the Khajuraho monuments and the Kamasutra. We need to mobilise public opinion on this. Homosociality has been very common. The friendship between the two main protagonists in Sholay is homosocial. In fact, films in which Amitabh Bachchan has been paired with a male lead have done much better than films with a female lead. It is so common to see men holding hands on the streets and walking.”

Vasudhendra’s Mohanaswamy is a book about the experience of a gay man in contemporary India. It is his first book in English that was translated from Kannada.

“I was in the closet for a very long time and struggled with depression as well. It was writing this book that healed me. Coincidentally, this book came out on December 11, 2013 when the Supreme Court reinstated Section 377,” he says.

Throughout his career, says Vasudhendra, he has seen a lack of literature and text on the LGBTQ subject in regional languages. “Many people think that homosexuality is a very upper-class phenomena but that isn’t true. Once the book released, I got calls from people in various parts of Karnataka who related to this story and had a similar experience. I realised that it was crucial for this kind of work to be read in regional languages. It makes a big difference.

My book later got translated to Malayalam and now even in Marathi.”