GLR November-December 2025

gets to be sexy?” Historically, the Sahibi River was a natural, seasonal (rain fed) river originating in Rajasthan, flowing through Haryana, and entering Delhi before merging with the Yamuna. The zine says that people seek respectability and access to expressing their queer desires by shunning their association with the Sahibi, claiming instead that they live in affluent areas like Ra jouri Garden and Punjabi Bagh. “These are not mere queer ne gotiations of the city,” the text of the zine says. “These parts of the city saturate with the sounds of police sirens, disputes, vi olence, and theft—elements that etch a narrative of criminality onto the bodies of Dalits, shaped by the colonial legacy of caste and carcerality.” India’s legacy of discriminating against the Dalit trans people dates back to the colonial era. The British regime criminalized the gender-nonconforming people who were from marginalized caste groups under various laws, including the Criminal Tribes Act Amendment (1897), which specifically targeted the Hijra community, a group of trans, intersex, or eunuch people who are acknowledged as a third gender. Under this law, Hijras were criminalized merely for existing in public spaces, stripped of the right to wear feminine clothing, perform, or engage in liveli hoods like badhai (ritual blessings at births/weddings). Of course, the caste system long predates the arrival of Eu ropeans, but colonial codification of caste hardened its divisions into law, which was reinforced by a Victorian morality that pathologized both caste-marginalized livelihoods and non-nor mative genders and sexualities. Consequently, Dalit trans femi nine people were doubly targeted, as we have seen in the case of Radhika. Although pre-colonial South Asia had ambivalent but rec ognized spaces for gender-variant communities ( Hijras , Jo gappas , Aravanis , etc.)—who were often tied to temples, ritual economies, or localized patronage systems—colonial moder nity dismantled these communities, which were criminalized and labeled as “immoral.” And these violent markers of target ing trans people continue today. It hasn’t been long since the colonial law criminalizing homosexuality was turned down by the Indian Supreme Court, in September 2018. § W HILE THE LAYERS of marginalization endure, one visionary from India’s freedom struggle is credited, and for good reason, with fighting against caste and gender oppression: B. R. Ambed kar (1891–1956). In an article for The Scroll , writers Swarupa Deb and Aniket Nandan write that Ambedkar believed in socio political transformations that could overhaul an exclusionary and oppressive social structure. For him, a just society ensures equal opportunities, social justice, and dignity for everyone, ir respective of caste, gender, or ethnicity. Ambedkar also co wrote India’s constitution with other visionaries and pushed for caste-based reservations that continue to benefit and uplift op pressed people from Dalit communities to access education. However, the intersection of sexual and caste identity con tinues to evade mainstream discussions. The zine not only brings this crucial discussion to the fore while outlining the urban spaces that clearly divide people by caste, gender and class. It also brings together ten Dalit Bahujan queer people and, through examining their experiences of moving around

§ F OR D ALIT TRANS PEOPLE , the promise of safe spaces often re mains conditional, fractured by the same structures of privilege they sought to escape. Mapping a city through these identity markers reveals a lot about how the geography of a city is sharply marked by who gets to live where and navigate which places, and how those who try to break into places not originally meant for them are treated with disdain. This is one reason why the movement of Dalit trans people across urban spaces is that much more important and even urgent. It is with this thought of mapping and reimagining Delhi through the lens of trans people belonging to Dalit Bahujan communities that Dalit queer activist and geographer Dhiren Borisa curated and edited, along with Dhrubo Jyoti, Prateek Draik, and Project Mukti, Across the Nala [Sewage Drain]: A Queer Dalit Bahujan Zine of Stories from Delhi . The zine ex plores a complex range of queer imagination and desires of Delhi while sharing a range of vulnerabilities that Dalit queer people feel in different parts of the city. “ Across the Nala attempts to think of queerness from the oth erwise,” said Borisa, an assistant professor at the Jindal Global Law School who teaches courses on gender and sexuality stud ies. “It is about imagining spaces of freedom and negotiating queer cartographies through a lower caste and working-class mi grant background. What the city offers them in terms of desire and what it does to that desire. It also explores if cities are also aspiring bodies like us and if they are sexy, then who within it

A Suggestion for Gays Something to do, when you are young: Rent a cottage with a little lawn. Live in it At least one summer, preferably in a place Which has very hot summers. The landlord will send a teenage boy To mow the lawn. If you are lucky, You will be at home and hear his whirr. Go to the window. See if he has taken His shirt off. Summon your courage And go out with an offered glass of water. Nothing else will most likely happen. But you will smile at this when you are old And may recall how In college you rented another cottage With a little lawn. A mower three years Younger than you became a very close friend Because he also wore no shirt. Their lithe torsos Were both deeply tan. In neither case Did you do them harm. Nor they, you. J ONATHAN B RACKER

TheG & LR

22