The bitter resistance to Government’s attempt to introduce an adolescent education programme is symptomatic of the need to control and domesticate sexuality cordoning it off into the haven of community and tradition secure from the whirlwinds of globalizing influences. The silence enforced on matters of sex therefore serves to reinforce the power and legitimacy of accepted and established norms effectively denying difference and invisibilizing dissent. The repression unleashed on lesbian/gay couples in the subcontinent, the public outrage orchestrated by the Hindu Right against Deepa Mehta’s films Fire and Water, the concerted attempts by left groups to prevent a resolution on lesbian and gay rights at the conference on women’s movements in Tirupati in the year 1994 are indicative of the prevailing public disease with alternative sexualities and practices.
December 2007, volume 31, No 12