DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2024.2.9| GUHA: QUEERING CALCUTTA_ INSIGHTOUT 2(2024) 61Queer infrastructurein Kolkata is not justconfined to the elitezones of literaryfestivals and officialforums; in the quoti dian space too, thereare upcoming facili ties and placemakingefforts.therefore an ideal case study to explore thecurrent situation for the LGBTQ+ community– overthrowing colonial attitudes, recapturingprecolonial mindsets, and carving out postcolonial spaces.Methodologically, this article is premised onnewspaper reports, web portals and blogreports, empirical surveys, and conversations with different stakeholders. Most ofthe sources relied upon and cited here arevernacular texts and web-based reports asmainstream print media is slow to offer spacefor queer-related news, although slowly theyare showing willingness to accommodatenews reports on queer topics. The article relies on the reportage format to argue howthe queer space in Kolkata – in spite of manyhurdles – is slowly growing and how it is facilitating the queer community through the formation of infrastructural spaces. QueeringKolkata, this article posits, is still in its earlydays, but the process has begun and thereIntroductionare growing cases of acceptance and approval as far as the queer presence in the city space isThe broader purview of this paper comes within concerned. Needless to say, this is just a study thatthe larger rubric of Queer Studies and the urban captures this nascent stage and argues for a robustspace. Broadly put, this project locates and iden- future. Conceptually this paper structures the argutifies the question of queer in the South Asian city ment through the historicist perspective, locatingspace, namely in Kolkata, West Bengal. Conceptually the presence of the queer in precolonial mythicit argues the obscuring and rupture in queer prac- texts and cultural practices, which this paper argutices and traditions during the colonial period that es was erased and obscured through the arrival ofhad been present in the Indigenous epistemes and colonial rule and imposition of colonial epistemescultural traditions of Bengal. Kolkata, the erstwhile which elbowed out existing traditional epistemesCalcutta, was the colonial capital of India. It is also and intellectual practices. This is not to claim thatthe literary hub of India and is known for its diversity in ancient India or in precolonial Bengal there wasand multiculturalism. It has produced and nurtured a significant presence of queerness; my only subNobel laureates like Rabindranath Tagore, Amartya mission is to reclaim whatever space and traditionsSen and Abhijit Banerjee, philanthropists like Mother of approval were available in precolonial India andTeresa, filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, et cetera. Kol- specifically Bengal. In what follows we will see howkata, the City of Joy, is the quintessential synthesis the queer space in Kolkata is slowly growing andof cultural heritage and futuristic modernity and is establishing itself, even though there is a persistent
