The Queer Story of South Asia

Words by Vishavjeet Dhaliwal

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In the 1920s, travel posters, made for steamship lines and airlines, became extremely popular. The style changed notably in the 1920s, to focus attention on the product being advertised. The images became simpler, precise, more linear, more dynamic, and were often placed against a single color background. They conveyed a sense of power and safety – basically, what travellers were supposed to feel boarding liners and trains and visiting new destinations. (Available as print)

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The Queer Story of South Asia

The Khajuraho temple complex of Central India is famed for its beguiling collection of figural sculptures. Nestled in the hills of Madhya Pradesh, the Hindu and Jain temples are adorned with carved scenes of mythical tales and everyday life. And yet, it’s the minority of sculptures that are erotic in nature that have captured our gaze since the 9th century CE.

To modern eyes, scenes of passionate lovemaking, tantric positions, and dynamic group sex seem strange and even inappropriate as decoration for holy temples. They reflect the significance of Kama, the concept of sensory and aesthetic pleasure that forms one of four primary objectives of human life in Indian philosophy. To ancient Indians, sex was considered a crucial component of Kama, and was free from many of the shameful or sinful connotations that plague sexuality in Abrahamic cultures.

But what might seem even stranger to modern eyes is the image of a homosexual encounter among the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho. Tucked away on the exterior of the Kandariya Mahadeva temple, a male figure openly pleasures another male, flanked by two heavenly deities. The sculpture is brazen in its presence as a rare depiction of homosexuality in Khajuraho, but it also feels inconspicuous among the countless other sculptures.

This unusual image from the 9th century raises several questions about the perception of queerness in pre-colonial South Asia. According to members of India’s Hindu far right, same-sex attraction is “unnatural” and even “against Indian culture.” They perceive queerness as a modern phenomenon, the result of Western influence corrupting the traditional values of Indian culture and religions.

But take a look online and you’ll find various articles claiming that South Asians of the past not only tolerated queerness but openly venerated it in their mythology and culture. The liberal writers of these articles assert that negative attitudes towards queer people only developed during British colonial rule when Western anti-sodomy laws were baked into South Asian culture.

I want to uncover the real history of queer people and their reception in the Indian subcontinent. Were pre-colonial South Asians more permissive of different sexualities and gender expressions, or are we projecting our hopes onto the past? Would queer people be condemned to secretive, shame-filled lives, or would they find ways to thrive among the rest of society? And can we really blame the British for the rampant homophobia and transphobia we see across South Asia today?