“A rebellious attitude is encouraged towards Indian traditional beliefs and societal systems. Excessive individualistic and unruly ideas are being promoted in the name of freedom. In the name of love, the entire production gives the message of indiscipline to the youth and to get alienated from societal values.”
This is an excerpt from a letter written by Sanskar Bharati, the arts promotion branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing, Hindu-nationalist volunteer paramilitary organization. The RSS is also affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s ruling Hindu-fundamentalist political party, which has controlled the nation for the past decade under the rule of prime minister Narendra Modi. The letter was addressed to Jawahar Kala Kendra, a theater in the BJP-controlled state of Rajasthan, about a show that was set to be performed there on April 26, 2025.
What was the show? A romantic dance narrative choreographed by popular dancer Jainil Mehta exploring the subtleties and complexities of every romantic relationship. The catch? The romance depicted was gay.
Censorship is perhaps becoming a new normal for artists in India. Mehta found a new venue, presented his work in Jaipur on April 26, 2025, and continued with his tour, in the hopes that the government or any of its arms would not attempt to censor his final show in Bengaluru. But this new normal is a product of the state, its limbs, and the discourse it has created surrounding the arts and their purity.
When I was 16, I came out to my dance teacher of 12 years. I told her that I did not always feel seen or accepted in the world of Indian classical dance, silently pleading for her to tell me that she would fight for me, that there was a way to be queer and an Odissi dancer, that what I was feeling was real, and that she could help me through it. Instead, I was essentially told that my feelings were ludicrous because I lived in the Bay Area, that India has a long history of queerness, and that coming out and dancing as an openly gay person could cheapen my dance.
Let’s ignore the Bay Area thing and begin with the ways Indian history is invoked to erase today’s homophobia. I have written about this before—last year, when India refused to recognize same-sex marriage as legal marriage, I spoke about how “queer” religious figures like cross-dressing gods and gender-bending spirits deflect attention away from homophobia in the present. But beyond simply deflection and distraction, I’d argue that these discourses actively erase homophobia and its violence in the present.
That’s what I think my teacher wanted to do, though she would probably not be able to articulate that purpose explicitly. The invocation of Ardhanariswara in a conversation can successfully erase all of the realities of homophobia faced by desis because of the power which these images have been imbued with, and the ways in which we have been taught to never criticize our own culture. Preservation rather than interrogation. We must carry our traditions forward, especially in the diaspora, where they are supposedly viciously being persecuted by bigots from all sides. Our great genderfluid culture is safe for all queer people, and questioning it would be sacrilege. After all, Hindu religiosity is implied when culture is spoken of in the first place.
But when we are the homophobic bigots ourselves, this attitude prevents us from recognizing or seeing that within ourselves and shuts down anyone who might make that claim. Culture is weaponized masterfully to erase the very real violence of homophobia and transphobia—our culture’s value is so enshrined in our collective desi consciousness that any criticism is seen as treasonous to the entirety of the cultural community.
Culture cannot be countered, religious tradition cannot be questioned, and when those institutions are invoked and imbued with a magical myth of queer-friendliness, queer people are voiceless against them. If you argue that the existence of a crossdressing god Vishnu doesn’t mean that desis just magically aren’t homophobic, suddenly you are labeled as trying to divide the community, bringing Indians down, and trying to enforce wokeness upon a perfectly queer-friendly community. This discourse is especially potent in the diaspora, where Indian culture gains an especially unquestionable quality when pitted against the homophobia (and culture more generally) of the American nation state. When Indian culture can be seen as a progressive, “eastern” alternative to the evils of the West, it can gain a certain spiritual perfection in the minds of many. And that makes it all the more difficult to question, interrogate, or ridicule.
In short, the past erases the present. Invocations of a past golden era of culture (sounds kinda like a slogan on a red hat) obscure the realities of bigotry and violence in the present. Through claims of an ancient queer-friendly culture, the homophobia of now can be written off.
This discourse is at odds with Hindu-fundamentalist ideas in India that clearly view queerness as a pathogen, something that is not a part of our culture but rather denigrates it and taints it. Sanskar Bharati’s letter to Mehta captures this sentiment, invoking tradition and positioning queerness at odds with tradition, values, the family, and the sanctity of Indian culture. Tradition and culture are invoked again, but this time, queerness is in irreconcilable conflict with it. Queerness is not embedded within our traditions, but rather an external force that is viciously working against tradition, culture, and good values. The gays will destroy society, according to the subtext of the Sanskar Bharati’s letter, and queerness is a modern, rebellious (code for western) import. Notions of decolonization are subtly implied, and anti-West sentiment oozes.
So which is it? And how can we deal with these complexities and paradoxes? Perhaps first off, we have to sit with this contradiction. I have seen many conversations about desi homophobia shut down before they can reach any sort of productivity with: But our culture is sooooooooo queer; it was just because of the British that India has these laws now. Clearly, Indians are homophobic today, and the ruling Hindu-fundamentalist Indian-nationalist political party is openly homophobic, censoring queer arts and refusing to recognize same-sex marriage. Blaming the British and enshrining our “queer traditional culture” continues to erase the homophobia that uses that very same culture and the same anti-British sentiment as fuel. And privileged, upper class, upper caste, cis-het desis monopolizing the majority of these conversations does nothing to help—and creates diasporic echo chambers that simply laud India for its supposed homonormativity, while queer people are conspicuously absent from the discussion. Anti-queer violence is erased, and myth is reproduced.
We see this discourse at work in the Instagram comments of Mehta’s announcement of the cancellation of his show; one commenter wrote, “Did we just forgot that Hinduism speaks about a 3rd sex? Have we forgotten our own religion where it speaks on this within the gods? In the Mahabharata Krishna transforms into Mohini to marry Aravan.” This comment illustrates the dissonance of this contradiction between the marginalization faced by queer people in the present and the mythic cultural reverence for queerness that we have been taught to believe. And it is at the site of this contradiction that culture, hegemony, and religion always win, and erase the narrative that contradicts their proclamations.
And thus, in the diaspora, we must re-evaluate our relationships with culture, cultural promotion, and the bodies that claim to be serving these ends. Are they really? How much cultural promotion can we engage with when the organizations that promote our culture do so on an exclusive, heteronormative, conservative, Hindu-fundamentalist basis? How do we retain our cultural identities against the American mainstream while also criticizing the evils within our cultural institutions? Where do we strike this balance?
I don’t have answers—I feel like I live in and wrestle with these contradictions every day. I simply invite more of you, especially my fellow desi-Americans, to do the same. Perhaps before blindly rushing to defend or endorse Indian values or cultural traditions, we can all think a little more critically about the discourse we are truly entering into.
Akhil Joondeph is a member of the Class of 2026 and can be reached at ajoondeph@wesleyan.edu.
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