Manusmriti, Macaulay's 1860 Penal Code, Neoliberal India, and Queer Cinematic Subjectivities

Abstract

It is perhaps now, more than ever, in the context of the controversy around section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, inherited from Macaulay's 1860 British Sodomy Law, that it becomes crucial to recognize what instating the South Asian queer, unacknowledged by the Subaltern Studies Collective, can do for a discursive formation like subalternity that attempts to shift dominant epistemological paradigms holding structural inequalities in place. This paper draws on the precolonial Hindu customary law encoded in Manusmriti, Macaulay's 1860 British colonial penal code based on Victorian sexual mores, and their legacies in post-Soviet neoliberal India to examine the representation of queer sexualities in three films—Aarekti Premer Golpo, Memories in March, and Chitrangada.