I wish I had time to go into more detail about the individual readings collected in this volume, rather than simply summarizing the explanatory material. But if you have any interest in finding out more about the rich history of same-sex relations on the subcontinent--especially before the colonial era--it would be worth tracking down this volume. The editors are working from within their own cultures and have personally created many of the translations included here.
I'm particularly happy to cover this book in the week before the podcast presents a story set in 10th century India involving a devdasi and a seamstress. Many of the themes discussed in Vanita & Kidwai's collection are present in the setting of Gurmika Mann's "At the Mouth", which I hope you will take the opportunity to listen to.
In many parts of the world, the cultural experience of same-sex love struggles against both local prejudice and persecution--often a direct consequence of colonialism, and not a "home-grown" attitude"--and against Western constructions of "the homosexual experience" that assume (or even impose) a specific type of cultural understanding, while excluding other ways of understanding same-sex love from the modern "queer" experience. It's a joy and delight to find scholarly work on non-Western histories that is written by academics working within their own cultures, who have managed to navigate around both types of challenges. Too often, that work is being done by a small number of scholar, and too often they are talked over by the Western queer studies establishment while simultaneously being ostracized by institutions in their own cultures who have yet to untangle the legacy of colonial prejudices.
And for me, in identifying publications to cover, the difficulties include identifying those scholars and their works in the first place, and struggling to have enough understanding to present them in the same critical fashion that I do the more euro-centric material. I'm always happy to take recommendations for publications on cultures and regions of the world that I haven't covered yet.
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