This project takes the city of Calcutta, West Bengal, India as its empirical base to critically examine its non-inclusive and majoritarian character. Calcutta, which was the capital of British India during the colonial period offers an incredible multicultural spectrum in which people of different colour, religion and linguistic affiliations live together. Therefore, Calcutta is often flaunted as the cultural capital of India because of its high education rate, artistic sensibility and progressive cultural milieu. However, when it comes to polysemic gender experiences, Calcutta, which is figuratively called the City of Joy, fails to offer much to be euphoric about for its Queer population. Barring a handful of elite educational institutes and service sectors, Calcutta does not visibilize a robust Queered environment, conducive for its LGBTQ members. This project inquires into specific case studies of homophobia and caste-religion-discrimination, witnessed in university campuses, urban transport avenues and government office facilities to understand how urban infrastructures in Calcutta respond to the question of Queer.

CV

Swati Guha, an award-winning Bengali litterateur, has also been an academic administrator. Currently, she is the Director of the Institute of Language Studies and Research (ILSR) in Kolkata. Previously, Dr. Guha was the Director of the Nazrul Centre for Social and Cultural Studies at Kazi Nazrul University. She combines her creative and academic writings through cross-disciplinary approaches. Her fictional world is animated by her academic-administrative fieldwork in urban and remote locations, involving subalternized women and issues of development. Her creative oeuvre has focused on the intersection of gendered narratives and social power dynamics in India.

Citation

Swati Guha, “Queering Calcutta: Postcolonial Urban Space and Gender Diversity “, insightOut. Journal on Gender and Sexuality in STEM Collections and Cultures, 2 (2024), S. 59-66, DOI: 10.60531/insightout.2024.2.9