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DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2024.2.9| GUHA: QUEERING CALCUTTA_ INSIGHTOUT 2(2024) 62 presence of opposition from a large section of its population. The city of Kolkata is known for breaking down the fringes and leading the way to transform India’s LGBTQ+ scene. Despite its cosmopolitan outlook and mul­ticulturalism, Kolkata still remains non-in­clusive and infrastructurally a hostile or unfriendly place to transgender people and other members of the queer community. How do we explain this contradiction? As an intellectually vibrant city, it would be expected to advocate the queer cause. This project explores these Indigenous zones of approval and practices of queerness in pre-modern or precolonial Bengal, which celebrated the state of being queer in mythic ontologies, literary articulations, foundational texts and other forms of cultural practice, and investiga­tes the extent to which this acceptance and these spaces are being reclaimed. Queerness and the mythic space Homosexuality was not outlawed in precolonial India. Similarly, for thousands of years, the“Khwaja sira” or hijra community has been recognised in South Asia as a“third gender”, playing an important role in the region’s social and political history. 1 Records and ac­counts from the Mughal Empire and even before that demonstrate that members of the queer community were invited to sing and dance at festivals, weddings and other celebratory occasions. They also served as advisers to the Mughal court. However, this culture of acceptance and advocacy began to erode follo­wing the gradual depletion and erasure of local or Indigenous epistemic practices of queerness under the prolonged impact of colonialism which saw a col­lective“amnesia” affect many erstwhile epistemes in South Asia. 2 Numerous depictions of queer lives and ideologies can be found in Indian mythology, epics and many foundational texts. The term Ardhanareswar (amal­gamation of both the male and the female self) was mentioned in different Puranas which are foundatio­nal religious texts of India. 3 The concept of the Ard­hanariswara connotes an androgynous composite of the Hindu mythological figures of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati. Some important Bengali medieval and modern texts also depicted queer subjects and protagonists, including Annadamangal by Bharat Chandra, Shibayon by Rameswar Bhattacharya, Lor­chondrani by Doulat Kazi, Chandimangal by Mukun­daram Chakrabarti, Hasuli Baker Upakatha by Ta­rashankar Bandyopadhyay, Mayamridanga by Syed Mustafa Siraj, Bramhabhargab Puran by Kamal Cha­kravarti, and Holde Golap by Sapnomoy Chakrabar­ti. Even a highly celebrated Indian epic text, the Ma­habharata, contains verses and portions that clearly advocate and approve of the queer. 4 Identical views and perceptions can be found in other influential re­ligious texts like Chaitanya Charitamrita (composed in the 1590s). 5 In the late fourteenth century, India and specifical­ly Bengal saw the rise of the highly influential and popular Vaishnava religious order which was radical 1 See M. K. Dutta, Pakhi Hijrar Biye (Kolkata, 2021), A. Majumder and N. Basu(eds.), Bharater Hijre Samaj (Kolkata, 2011) and M. Rintu and H. Moktar, Hijreder Atmakahini (Bangladesh, 2024). 2 H. bin Sabir,“Colonial Hangover: LGBT Rights in the Subcontinent”, The Cornell Diplomat, https://journals.library.cornell.edu/index. php/tcd/article/view/583/575(accessed 17 Jul. 2024). 3 N. Yadav, Ardhanarisvara in Art and Literature (New Delhi, 2001) . 4 V. S. Sukhthankar(ed.), The Mah ā bh ā rata: Text as Constituted in its Critical Edition(Poona, 1972). 5 S. C. Majumder(ed.) SriChaitanyacharitamrita, Krishnadas Kobiraj Goswami Birochita (Calcutta, 1941); A. K. Bandyopadhyay, Bang­la Sahityer Sampurno Itibritto (Calcutta, 1966).