Mario da Penha

My essay on the #BharatJodoYatra has found a home on Sabrang, thanks to @TeestaSetalvad. I write about walking as a queer man with an intellectually disabled brother & my many conversations on the road with folks in Vidarbha, including @RahulGandhi. 🇮🇳🏳️‍🌈 sabrangindia.in/article/road…

Friends in #Pune and around: Tomorrow, I will speak to students at @FLAMEUniversity on "Queering the Indian Archive". The talk will feature highlights from my course on queer Indian history, which I have now offered at several institutions. Please do register and attend: forms.gle/qipxMYPt8AJDGpHw8

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ It has now been six months since the passage of the Transgender Amendment Act. All around us, we see trans folx who are struggling: struggling to have their documents authorized, struggling to receive gender affirming treatment, struggling to keep their sanity alive, struggling – in the face of the government’s monumental gaslighting of their identities – to comprehend what their futures hold. There is no end in sight to their pain. What is the way forward that we, as the queer community have charted? What is our plan? Much like our activism 25 years ago, we have begun with appealing to the courts, and demanding that our constitutional protections be upheld. This is a good start, and it is an important fight. But it cannot be our only field of struggle against this unjust law. These are fascist times. We will have to correct some of the wrongs thrust on us by fascists at the federal level, by undoing those wrongs in the states. Therefore, some of the effort that we as LGBTQIA+ Congress workers have set out for ourselves is to encourage friendly Congress representatives and governments to clean up the garbage that the RSS-BJP has created nationwide, at least in the states in which we hold power. In the last few months, we have dialogued with the legal representatives of these states to support the trans petitioners in the Supreme Court. That conversation is ongoing. Another avenue for our efforts will be to build a popular movement against the RSS’ efforts to disenfranchise India’s trans citizens. The franchise has often only narrowly been linked to voting rights, but we see enfranchisement as covering every aspect of what it takes to make a citizen in this country. The Transgender Amendment Act is an attack on the idea that transgender people are Indian citizens. Gender markers appear on all forms of our national identification. If the government can steal your ability to say which gender you are, it has effectively undone your citizenship. It has made you a subject. But transgender folx are not the only people whose citizenship is under threat today. We have seen the scheming ways in which the RSS-BJP has tried to steal the franchise of Muslims and the poor through the SIR process. The effort to make Muslims into subjects has been ongoing since the days of the Citizenship Amendment Act. All these Amendment Acts. In Act after Act, Indian citizens are being amended into subjects. The farm laws were an attempt to render the decision-making powers of poor farmers obsolete. We fought against these attempts at involuntary subject-hood, and we will fight against the Transgender Amendment Act as well. In our long fight against Sec. 377, one of the things we did successfully as a queer community, was to build bridges with those who were not queer – to ask them why the fight against this law was their fight too. Allies were essential to our struggle then. When we won, lost, and eventually won the case against Sec. 377, allies celebrated with us, and shared our pain. They made our lives a conversation on the evening news, in tea shops, and on the dining table. They ensured we were not forgotten. This effort of making allies worked well for us the last time. We have to work at it again. Six months have passed. This event is a modest effort at building those alliances once again. If you are in Bengaluru, please sign up and join us tomorrow!

ABBA's "Arrival" is such a soaring, elegant, and majestic tune, that it may well have made an excellent national anthem for a worthy country. Here, the Dutch National Military Tattoo performs it during the grand finale of their annual show in 2009. Happy weekend! 🥰

A giant has passed. I was never privileged enough to be one of Sumit Sarkar's students, but I am eternally indebted to his craft, which has made me a better historian. Every scholar of India's past, who studies those on society's margins, is beholden to how he opened up the field to the necessity of listening to their voices. Via Tanika and Bhochka, I was grateful to be in his wider ambit. Their loss must be great indeed. My heart goes out to them both.

It is my great honor to welcome Rachana Mudraboyina, Kali Sidharth Medepalli, and Deepthi Sirla as office-bearers within the @ProfCong #LGBTQIA+ Domain. All three are accomplished community activists and entrepreneurs. Rachana (she/her) is a transgender rights activist, advocate, and community leader with extensive experience in trans health, human rights, policy advocacy, and livelihood development. She will lead our work and engagement with the socio-cultural transgender communities across India. Kali (she/her) is a transwoman who works across communication coaching, leadership development, community building, and human rights advocacy. She is our youngest recruit, and will help us build dialogue on queer issues with Gen Z. Deepthi (she/her) is a social impact leader, human rights advocate, and community organizer with experience in grassroots development, advocacy, and inclusive empowerment. She will lead our work in Telangana. Welcome to the team, folx! It's great to have you all on board. @Rachanamudra