Why casteism remains the Indian queer community’s Achilles’ heel

While the queer community appears as a unified monolith from the outside, the concept of caste still dictates everything from the possibilities of desire to the circles you can enter

“Only Thakurs. Only Rajputs. Only masculine men. No fatties, chubbies, bald or black guys.”

You only have to briefly glide across queer dating apps in India to have a peek into the black heart of the queer community here. Caste considerations reign supreme and often go unnoticed and unacknowledged by its pallbearers.

Kanan, a 29-year-old product developer based in New Delhi, was acutely made aware of where he stood in “the social order of things” after his first date when he was only beginning to understand his sexuality. He insists I interview him in the same café.

“When you hear someone saying they don’t remember all their dates because they have dated so much, that’s a privilege,” he says. “Many of us cannot afford to forget our dates because of the way they change us forever, change how we look at ourselves.” The date Kanan is referring to seemed to have it all: a steady gig at a policy think-tank, parents who supported him, and seemingly well read.

“Then he asked my surname,” he recalls. “That should’ve been the red flag but he proceeded to give his unsolicited two cents on how reservation has no place in the 21st century. I could’ve just ignored him as a random troll if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d really, really liked him.”

Kanan wanted to reason with his date; he didn’t want to give up this easily. Maybe he was just misled by his parents from an early age? What he said next truly broke Kanan: “Dalits are actually safer when they have their own segregated spaces in villages and cities.”

In the sanitised quarters of the Indian queer community, intersectionality remains a distant dream. In 2015, a privileged caste ‘equal-rights’ activist from Mumbai mimed and mocked three Dalit queer persons who dared to assert their identity at the Delhi Queer Pride parade.

A sense of self

Even beyond the romantic spaces of desire and longing where casteism rears its ugly head, Shripad, a poet, says that casteism often manifests in subtle ways, even when it comes to friendships.

“When people ask you about your interests, or judge you on the way you speak English, that’s when caste becomes implicit,” he says. “Our apps make it possible for someone from the slums of Dharavi to match with someone in Colaba. But how does this work out?”

In queer circles, it is no coincidence that even groups of friends “resemble” each other. The recent poster of Zoya Akhtar’s Indian adaptation of TheArchies was scoffed at for having rich, star kids who all look like the same shade of an iced latte.

One of the “queer friends” that Shripad made through Instagram told him how he hated living in the Dadar locality of Mumbai, given its proximity to the annual Ambedkarite celebrations. “It troubled him that the Dalit folks created so much noise in that area; he even said how they just shit everywhere.”

In many ways, Shripad saw this coming. But he hopes that he was introduced to the hierarchical world of queerness in a safer way. “I didn’t have to see the things I did at just 17 on these apps. All of this contributes a great deal to construct a sense of who we are and who we want to be for a long time,” he says.

Another way in which Dalit queer people, and even Muslims or other minorities, are reduced to their identity is in the way they are fetishised. A friend of mine shared a viral post about this guy who only wants to have sex with people from the Scheduled Castes and Muslims, he says. “So it’s also about the way you are reduced to your identity.”

Often, particularly in urban queer spaces, caste masks itself under seemingly innocent questions. When I shared the premise of this article with an upper caste, queer man, by adding that casteism is queer India’s biggest problem, he simply responded by saying: “Is it really the biggest problem? I thought we needed legalisation of marriage the most.”

Structural biases

To understand how Dalit queer people are marginalised within the community, it becomes important to trace the evolution of the internet too — who gets the platform, who gets to speak, who gets to socialise.

According to Dr Dhiren Borisa, a Dalit queer activist and geographer who obtained his PhD from the Jawaharlal Nehru University on “queer cartographies of desires in Delhi,” and currently works as an assistant professor at Jindal Global Law School, understanding “access” remains paramount. “For indigenous people, the internet came very late to us, so we often find ourselves ill-equipped in the ways in which we keep ourselves secure. Since we were never factored in to be in those spaces, none of those app algorithms really work for our security.” He further elaborates on how Dalit and Muslim minorities might be fetishised for their “sexual powers” in such spaces but still be deeply ostracised within the community in the outside world.

“It’s a tricky situation, you see? Caste complicates desires and it seems that desire and disgust work simultaneously in queer spaces.” Borisa cites the instance of a Facebook post he came across in 2015 where a Dalit queer man shared his thoughts in broken English on the wall of “the biggest queer support groups” at that time:

Being gay is dangerous. But being a chamaar or bhangi makes it even more so.

“For someone who understands intersectionality, this statement makes perfect sense,” he says. “But the comments on that post were horrific — improve your English and then talk about caste and why don’t you kill yourself first, caste will automatically go away.”

It appears that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for upper-caste queer folks to understand what Borisa said, thact caste will always complicate desires. Even when you are your horniest, it seems that the caste will never fall to the wayside.

Whenever any conversation about caste in queer spaces takes place, the most common refrain by the most “well-meaning” queer activists is usually how one must stick to one agenda at a time. No need to dilute and diverge the queer movement. Or as my friend had said, shouldn’t we be talking about marriages?

This blog by Moulee for NewsMinute perhaps includes the best rebuttal: We will call you out when you oppress us. And that doesn’t mean we are diverging ‘our’ queer movement. We are just steering it in the right direction.

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