GENDER, SEXUALITY AND DISPLACEMENT IN THE PERIPHERIES OF INDIA: THE LANGUAGE OF RIGHTS

This seminar series will discuss two issues of paramount significance in contemporary India – the rights discourse of marginalised sexual identities, and that of Development Induced Displacement (DID) as they are unfolding in the peripheral regions of India under the current neo-liberal paradigm and an age of political polarisation. The entire seminar series will focus on case studies from the remote hills of Uttarakhand and Northeast India. While Uttarakhand would be discussed more in the context of displacement induced by development projects, Northeast India would be discussed w.r.t coal mining, and the ever-evolving queer rights discourse in the region. Experiences from the peripheries of India can provide significant insights into the widely discussed ‘diversity’ of India - especially to comprehend the magnitude of that diversity, and yet, how in several instances, even this acknowledged diversity tends to be homogenised to suit the meta narrative of society, history, culture and politics. While Northeast India and Uttarakhand will be major focus for all sessions, the seminar series will also draw connections between these two regions, as well as to the mainstream Indian reality of society and politics.

The four lectures will be titled as:

• The Deviants will be eliminated: Gendered constellations of women’s and queer rights at the periphery.
• From ignorance to resistance: Queer Movement in Northeast India
• Gender, Mining and Displacement in Matrilineal cultures: Case of Meghalaya in Northeast India.
• What are voices made of? Rethinking Development Induced Displacement of Indigenous tribes in Uttarakhand, India from a multi-stakeholder perspective.

Brief on the sessions:

• The Deviants will be eliminated: Gendered constellations of women’s and queer rights at the periphery:

This session will focus on the spectrum of gender and sexual identities, and how that determines the discourse of rights for each gendered identity depending on their acceptability in the social structure. We will discuss specific cases of gendered violence experienced by women and queer people in the Indian context, especially from the peripheral regions, and how the social and legal justice trajectory that unfolded in each case was significantly different depending on the person’s gender, cultural and regional identity. In doing so, we will connect these cases to the larger state of the legislations that attempt to address the issues highlighted in the cases in contradictory ways.

• From ignorance to resistance: Queer Movement in Northeast India

This session will move the discussion from the previous session towards understanding people’s resistance and attempts at securing their rights, especially queer rights. We will trace the trajectory of the LGBTQIA++ movement in Northeast India at the public domain, while also engaging with individual queer lives vis.a.vis the Northeast India’s embedded reality in militarism and, armed and ethnic conflict. We will analyse how the peripheral reality of Northeast India and the regions tensed relationship with mainland India, including the Central Government of India since India’s independence has created a complex discourse of rights that intersects with the perpetual state of armed and ethnic conflict in the region, increased militarism, and the isolated yet strategic geographical terrain that Northeast India is – isolated in terms of its distance from mainstream India, and strategic in terms of its multiple international borders that it shares for India with China, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

• Gender, Mining and Displacement in Matrilineal cultures: Case of Meghalaya in Northeast India.

This session will engage with how coal mining has radically restructured gender relations in indigenous tribal societies. Through an in-depth case study of the Northeast Indian state of Meghalaya, one of the few matrilineal societies of the world, we will analyse how people cope with conflicts in their perception of self, family, and society brought on by the transition from traditional modes of living to increased urbanisation, and how these experiences are different for men and women. We will look at the ways in which this gendered change is experienced inter-generationally in different contexts of people’s lives, including work and leisure activities. We will also investigate people’s attitudes towards matrilineal structures and their perception of change on matriliny where a masculinised mining economy has played a role in building their view of their matrilineal tradition.

• What are voices made of? Rethinking Development Induced Displacement of Indigenous tribes in Uttarakhand, India from a multi stakeholder perspective.

By taking the displaced community of Lohari village in the Himalayan tribal belt of Uttarakhand as a case study, this session will discuss the issue of development induced displacement in Uttarakhand in India from the perspective of the displaced community, the hydropower project developer, and the state. We will discuss the intersectional nature of the displaced community and how that has shaped their resistance movement for resettlement and rehabilitation. We will also discuss the political history of the displaced community with the state in the light of the currently electorally charged environment in the region, and how that influences their process of resistance and negotiation with the project developers and the government. By engaging with these questions, we will try to arrive at a layered understanding of the different factors that shape the interaction between the people, state, and project authorities as well as among themselves in a DID situation in the contemporary India.