Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2020. 145 pp. (B&W photos, illustrations.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-0857427434.
Pawan Dhall’s Out of Line and Offline: Queer Mobilizations in ’90s Eastern India is an endeavour to decolonize queer studies and situate queer activism in Eastern India. In doing so, Dhall positions the views of those integral to the movement, including himself. He elucidates how their roles were fundamental to the queer movement of the 1990s and discusses where these individuals are in their lives now. Dhall also provides the reader with the trajectories of the earliest support groups across Eastern India along with a timeline of India’s struggle to repeal Section 377.
Dhall’s own identity—being actively involved in the movement and forming Counsel Club, a Kolkata-based queer support group alongside four other gay and bisexual men in 1993—allows him to provide the reader with an in-depth narrative about their role to provide not only a safe space for queer people but as the name suggests, counselling as well. As membership slowly increased, so did the recurrence of Counsel Club member meetings. Mobilizing and offering counsel to queer individuals and their allies through these meetings allowed members to challenge stigmas, discrimination, and very often violence, which they contended in different spheres of their lives.
The distinctions and intersections present in queerness and queer identities are noticeably clear through the research conducted by Dhall for this book. Through footnotes, Dhall gives the reader a comprehensive understanding of relevant terminology. A footnote on the introduction page itself encourages the reader to be conscious of classifying terminology, stating: “these terms should, however, not be seen as ‘categories’ into which people can be conveniently bracketed … using gender or sexual-identity terms with Western roots as blanket expressions may be problematic. For instance, ‘transgender,’ ‘trans women,’ or ‘trans men’ may not be easy translations for many expressions of, and around, gender variance in India. Any usage of these terms in this volume is therefore not without qualifications” (1).
Dhall sources information from Pravartak, a multilingual journal he founded in 1991. This journal was adopted by Counsel Club as their in-house journal in 1993 and was in existence until 2000. This journal arrived at a time when portrayals of queerness and queer identities were scarce in Indian media, and so popular culture provided individuals with the opportunity to write letters and receive responses. Pravartak became a beacon for queer love and community.
This book is a fascinating study of archival material which is interspersed with images that allow the reader to visit the history of dissent and social movements by the queer community evidenced through alternative media sources, in this case the journal Pravartak and personal letters. The result reveals the multiple ways in which the queer rights’ movement grew to eventually put Eastern India on the queer activism map. It is important to note this activism was taking place during a time when the Internet was not readily available in India. The club and journal were novel ways to build a culture of collaboration among people who spoke different languages, belonged to a diverse range of ages and occupations, and also hailed from various geographical locations in Eastern India. The geographical location that Dhall focuses on—Eastern India—is also what shapes not only the identity but also the agency of the people whose lives Dhall explores.
The assemblages of history, identity, and queer activism provided in this book place the prolonged struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in India into perspective. Dhall’s book also brings to attention the power of community, allyship, and communication that developed through letter-writing and how they were instrumental in mobilization. This book is not just the story of the many individuals who were a part of the movement and where they are now, but also the author’s, which provides readers with a deeper understanding of how to use one’s identity and positionality while doing research. Dhall’s use of reflexivity is apparent throughout the book and the interviews, where he admirably places himself within this narrative. Although he commends the reading down of Section 377 in India, he questions why various laws in India still criminalize queer people.
Out of Line and Offline is the outcome of extensive, in-depth, and almost two decades-worth of research. Dhall challenges the idea of progressive development to have a foreign-to-Indian or urban-to-rural flow and the narratives he presents foregrounds this and draws attention to activism from below. The book breaks down the complexities of gender and sexuality in the Indian context; at the same time it brings into readers’ cognizance the prejudices and discrimination queer people in India still contend with regarding family, housing, insurance, property, and labour laws—as well as why some queer people choose marriage for survival and security. This book warrants interest from scholars and academics who study gender and sexuality and also deserves attention from other South Asia enthusiasts and scholars.
Rittika Dasgupta
Loughborough University, London