The rise and rise of queer literature in India

'Rosabel has recently been freed from almost three years of misery in the Persian Gulf, where her sisters, now 9 and 14, are still hostages of their father, who refuses to accept that a lesbian can also be a good mother' reads one of the many pieces in the third Gaysi Zine, an annual magazine dedicated to queer literature.

The Gaysi Zine, the third edition of which launched on November 15, saw the light of day due to a crowd funding initiative with Wishberry; they raised Rs1.6 lakh in 28 days. Nearly all of the money went into publishing and distributing the magazine. Considering the magazine's theme for this year is 'timelessness', makes it ironical that the project had to be crowd-funded. Nevertheless the black-and-white magazine, featuring photo essays, letters, poems, recipes and erotic art, is finding many takers, reflecting a larger trend in the nascent queer literature genre.

"Our online bookstore has seen a 30-40% increase in the number of buyers every year," says Shobhna Kumar, who started Queer Ink to publish and retail queer literature in 2010. "Besides, their (buyers') spending power has increased by 200 per cent."

But this was not always the case. Before she launched Queer Ink, Shobhna went looking for queer literature for nearly a year, but couldn't find a single store stocking such books. "People think queer books are all about sex. I wanted to change that image," she says. "Besides, I realised that people were ashamed of asking booksellers for literature on this subject. I created a website and a small bookstore in my office where people could buy anonymously."

Kinjal Shah, CEO of Crossword chain of book stores reiterates this. "There is not much out there available in the Indian market, and we haven't seen much demand either," says Shah. "If there is a demand, we would be happy to cater but I think this subject is not much spoken about."

Not finding books on bookshelves in stores however didn't mean that we lacked the material for it. In fact, Indian mythology is full of characters and tales that fight into the queer slot. In his book Shikhandi and other tales they don't tell you, mythologist Devdutt Pattnaik lists 30 tales from Indian mythology that have existed for thousands of years. From Shikhandi in Mahabharata to Shiva who is known as 'Ardhnareshwar' for including the female in his male body, Pattnaik has written about queer literature from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and China among others.

Similarly, when Ruth Vanita stepped out with Saleem Kidwai to author the book Same sex love in India — a literary history, they found queer literature dating back to at least 2000 years. "Telugu readers told us there is nothing on the subject in Telugu, which of course is not true," says Vanita, who now teaches Liberal Studies at the University of Montana, US. "We were told the same for Kannada until it turned out that a person saying this had himself written on the subject in Kannada."

Pattnaik stresses that these stories have not been languishing in the dark. "People have chosen to not see them even though they are very much in the light," says Pattnaik.

Kartika VK, publisher and chief editor at Harper Collins, admits that there are gaps in the queer literature market "but writers are more willing to experiment" and "are less averse of being seen as queer writers".

Priya, the chief editor of Gaysi Zine, testifies to this. "We have moved ahead of just writing about our identity and sexuality. We have many straight writers too and a lot of content that straight people would be interested in," says Priya, adding that 600 copies of the magazine have been printed this year.

Most of the little that we do have in queer literature is in English, which is translated into hindi and Marathi to satisfy regional demand. "Our Hindi and Marathi books are mostly out of stock," says Shobhna, who is inundated with manuscripts and proposals and sees a promising trend of rising queer writers and acceptance by readers.

Antaranga (Marathi) - Bindhumadhav Khire
Facing the mirror - Ashwini Sukthankar
Close to home - Parvati Sharma
Out! - stories for the new queer india - Minal Hajratwala
Same sex love in India - Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai