Exploring Queer and Trans Community Building in Post-NALSA and Post-377 India: Insights from Sayantan Datta, Neha Mishra, and Dr Pushpesh Kumar

Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice,Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP), Krea University, Neha Mishra, Assistant Professor of Practice, Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP), Krea University and Dr Pushpesh Kumar, Associate Professor; Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, co-author a paper titled Queer and trans community building in post-NALSA and post-377 India: a critical reflection, published in the Community Development Journal (Oxford University Press).

In this paper, the authors trace (a) the challenges faced by queer and trans communities and (b) challenges to queer and trans community building in contemporary India by tracing recent developments in the contexts of health, public policy, jurisprudence, social institutions, education, popular culture, and the precarity of gender and sexually transgressive communities during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. They also look at narratives of hope that demonstrate how queer and trans people in post-legal reform India continue to build enabling and affirmative communities in the face of an increasingly neoliberalizing country. This article serves as an introduction to the upcoming special issue of Community Development Journal (Oxford University Press) of the same name, edited by Dr Pushpesh Kumar, Sayantan Datta, and Neha Mishra.

Read the paper here.