When the Supreme Court in January 2014 refused to review its decision upholding the constitutionality of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, poet and novelist Vikram Seth sent his poem ‘Through Love’s Great Power’ to the editors of NDTV in an act of protest. The colonial era law criminalising consensual non-heteronormative love had been declared “unconstitutional” by the Delhi high court in 2009; its constitutionality was upheld by the SC in December 2013. Seth, who has never concealed his sexuality, has been for long one of the leading queer poets of the country.The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia Ed. Aditi Angiras and Akhil KatyalHarpercollins (July 2020)But, who is a queer poet – and what exactly is queer poetry? This, along with several other questions, confronted Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal, the editors of The World That Belongs To Us (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2020) – the first major anthology of queer poetry to be published in the country since the SC decriminalised consensual non-heteronormative love in 2018. “Is a queer poem written by a queer-identified person about ‘queer’ themes, whatever those maybe? Can a queer person not address those themes as well, in a persuasive manner?” write Angiras and Katyal – both are my friends – in the Preface to their book. A little later they declare: “Mostly, we have erred on the side of being catholic in our choices, of including rather than excluding.”The result of their decision is reflected in the anthology that refuses to be collared into common classifications of fame, style, subject or even language. So, while we have Vikram Seth, Ruth Vanita, Hoshang Merchant, Minal Harjatwala and Fatimah Asghar, there are many newer poets, and even some who have never written poetry before. There are some who identify as a man or a woman, others who use “they” as a preferred pronoun. A few who write in English – others in Bengali or Urdu or Gujarati or Malayalam, or maybe a mixture of languages.This democratisation of space and gender is a refusal to conform, a leap towards eschewing – to borrow from Seth’s poem ‘Dubious’ that inspires my headline – “the strict ranks of gay and straight”. And, isn’t that a perfect definition of “queer” – a celebration of newly found space and identity?Some of the poems also attempt to answer the question. ‘Queer as in’ by New Delhi-based Riddhi Dastidar negotiates with desires:Queer as in only at parties, as in only when drunk,as in only that one time at that party when drunk—she has a boyfriend in real life, you know.You know, queer as in not in real life.Photographer Raqeeb Raza, also based out of Delhi, demands in his eponymous poem: ‘What Does It Take to Belong?’Men who love menare Pakistani. The untouchables,refusing to clean them, are PakistaniAnd Abhyuday Gupta, in ‘Bildungsroman’, worries about growing up:When I was a child my greatest worryabout growing up was chest hairI was scared that they would danceLike unruly monstersand threaten to out meas a man.Gupta, his biography says, identifies to be agender/non-binary.Beyond the poems, however, one of the greatest pleasures of reading this book are the biographies attached with each poet or translator. One reads: “Shals Mahajan is a writer, activist, layabout, part feline, somewhat hooman, genderqueer queer feminist fellow who lives in Bombay but mainly in their head.” For the famous Urdu poet, Firaq Gorakhpuri, the editors provide an interesting biographical note: “In a 1936 essay, Firaq rebuked a contemporary critic irked by boy-love in ghazals by saying, ‘are you aware of Socrates’s autobiography, and his relationship with Alcibiades… Are you aware of Shakespeare’s sonnets … Have you heard Sappho’s name?’”While the publication of this book is a moment to celebrate, there is also a sobering thought with which it ends. The last poem in the book is ‘Rooms to sleep in’ by Ramchandra Srinivas Siras, who was professor of Marathi in Aligarh Muslim University. After being discovered in bed with a man, he was ostracised and harassed till he died, under mysterious circumstances, in April 2010. His life inspired the 2015 film Aligarh. This book is a testimony to the sufferings of every professor Siras, the bravery of everyone who dared to love even when it was a crime to do so.Uttaran Das Gupta’s novel Ritual was published earlier this year. He teaches journalism at OP Jindal Global University.
