Out! Stories from the New Queer India, edited by Minal Hajratwala, takes the 2009 reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal code by the Delhi High Court – a law that criminalises homosexuality – as marking the beginning of the 'New Queer India'. Out! takes the metaphor of the closet as its guiding imagery, and seeks to talk about queer lives in all their manifestations and ambiguities, however in or out of the proverbial closet they may be. Documenting a space outside the "magical gay ghetto" of Western queer fiction, Out! is filled with stories populated by "mothers, fathers, grandfathers and great-aunts, children, neighbours, and sometimes unlikely allies." On the other hand, Close, Too Close: The Tranquebar Book of Queer Erotica, edited by Meenu and Shruti, is populated by hands, tongues, bodies and a physicality that for many individuals is the beginning of their experiences of difference. In order to look forward, this book starts with desire, that through which "many people first know of their sexuality". In exploring the "less visible zones of queer sex writing from South Asia," Close, Too Close is a visceral journey that satisfies as it charts the shifting spaces of desire, difference, love and the emotionally aloof. Both collections are an invaluable addition to the growing corpus of literature, art, film and scholarship which takes Southasian queer lives as its subject.
New queer India?
But if this is the 'New Queer India', what is new about it? Are these books themselves a testament to things that could not have come before? The short answer seems to be yes. Yet the Supreme Court verdict of 11 December 2013 to uphold Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, overruling the Delhi High Court's 2009 decision on the grounds that "Section 377 IPC does not suffer from the vice of unconstitutionality," is yet another challenge to a 'queer India' entering another 'new' phase.