Professional Documents
Culture Documents
KAUSTAV BAKSHI
The Prologue
Kaushik Gangulyís Årekti Premer Gôlpo effortlessly grabbed
headlines the very day it was announced. The shooting began on
17 August 2009, after the original title Chhåyå Chhobi was changed.
It was not only the first feature film on alternative sexualities
after the reading down of Section 377 of the IPC in a momentous
verdict given by the Delhi High Court, but it also marked the
acting debut of Rituparno Ghosh, speculations about whose
personal life concerning the film were rife among the Bengali
upper/middle class. The grapevine buzzed with rumours of how
Ghosh was preparing himself to play the transvestite protagonist
of the film. The elaborate cosmetic regime Ghosh undertook
often filled pages of newspaper supplementaries and gossip
columns. Ghoshís sexuality, till then much cogitated upon, was
eventually confirmed as it were. Ghosh and his inadvertent cross-
dressing gave the film a pre-release mileage that was quite
unforeseen. Simultaneously, the cast and crew publicized it in
the media, rather callously and loosely, as the first ìgayî Bengali
film, thereby breeding a ìqueerî confusion, which, as I would
argue, would be hard to purge.
The pre-release hoopla was further sensationalized when the
Nandan CEO, Nilanjan Chatterjee, demanded a preview of the
film on the grounds that ìhomosexuality is a new subject in films
and I need to go through it thoroughly to see how it has been
dealt withî1. The unexpected moral policing that Chatterjee
undertook came as a surprise to many, for the then ruling
112 ❖ KAUSTAV BAKHSI ❖
government, the Left-Front, was the only political group to raise
its voice in favour of the reading down of Section 377. It was
despite what many pointed out that no film was ever previewed
before it was screened at Nandan, and no such rules existed.
However, Chatterjee was unrelenting:
Iím not bothered about what the Central government has acknowledged.
The censor board checks for scenes that show frontal sex or violence, while
we preview films for their aesthetic value. Why just a Silver Peacock, even if
it had won a Golden Bear, we would have asked for a preview. Thatís the
rule at Nandan.2
Årekti Premer Gôlpo, however, is not concerned with all this. The
female impersonatorís sexuality and private life become the
114 ❖ KAUSTAV BAKHSI ❖
modern transvestite film-makerís domain of investigation. When
a journalist asks him whether he is making a film on the actorís
career or his sexuality, he cuttingly replies that he is not making
any ad-film on Viagra. The journalist then questions back, if he
has been making a film on Amitabh Bachchan, would the actorís
sexuality be of equal interest. The journalist who is prejudiced
and, to a certain extent, insensitive towards alternative sexual
identities, replies: ìObviously notî. He is further confounded
when Abhiroop retorts, ìWhat is so obvious about it?î For the
journalist, Bhaduriís sexuality is not ënormalí; Abhiroop is
infuriated and sarcastically castigates him for his callousness. But,
what Abhiroop himself does not realize is that, despite his empathy
for Bhaduri, he sees in the latter the potentiality of a good project:
Bhaduriís sexuality and sexual life become objects of inquiry for
him too. In other words, Bhaduriís self-confessed homosexuality
brings him under the surveillance of the modern day queer film-
maker. In The History of Sexuality: Vol. I, Foucault affirms:
We have become a singularly confessing society...[The confession] plays a
part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations,
in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and in most solemn rites: one
confesses oneís crimes, oneís sins, oneís thoughts and desires, oneís illnesses
and troubles; one goes about telling, with the greatest precision, whatever is
most difficult to tell...One confesses ï or is forced to confess.6
II
NOTES
1. ëNandan frowns on gay love storyí, The Telegraph, accessed 20 December
2010, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101220/jsp/calcutta/
story_13323403.jsp. 30 August 2011.
2. Ibid.
3. Chatterjee, Niladri R. ëìNow Iím Chapal Rani:î Chapal Bhaduriís
Hyperformative Female Impersonationí, Intersections: Gender and Sexuality
in Asia and the Pacific 22 (October 2009), accessed on 1 September 2011,
http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue22/chatterjee.html. 19 August
2011.
4. Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,
trans. Alan Sheridan, second edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1995),
❖ÅREKTI PREMER GôLPO❖ 125
p. 190.
5. Cressy, David. ëGender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern
Englandí, The Journal of British Studies 35.2 (October 1996), p. 440.
6. Foucault, Michel. 1976. The History of Sexuality: Vol. I, trans. Robert
Hurley, (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), p. 59.
7. I have borrowed the term ìqueer liberalismî from David L. Engís essay
ëFreedom and the Racialization of Intimancy: Lawrence v. Texas and the
Emergence of Queer Liberalismí. Eng studies the remarkable impact
of the June 2003 Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas, which
struck down Texasí statute that had labeled same-sex sodomy
unconstitutional. Eng identifies political and economic spheres that
formed the basis for ëliberal inclusioní of the queer, post Lawrence v.
Texas: ë...the merging of an increasingly visible and mass-mediated queer
consumer lifestyle (emerging post-Stonewall and ascendant during the
1980s and 1990s) with recent juridical protections for gay and lesbian
rights to privacy and intimacy established by the Lawrence v. Texas ruling
as well as Massachusettsí legalizing of same-sex marriage in the same
yearí (40). Although Eng is examining a specific American context, his
idea of queer liberalism may be applied to India as well. The reading
down of Article 377, the emergence of the open market that identifies
the queer as a potential consumer and the increasing visibility of queer
people conscious of their rights, particularly in the metropolisï all mark
a historical moment of queer liberalism.
8. Altman, Dennis. ëOn Global Queeringí, Australian Humanities Review
(July 1996), accessed on 12 September 2011, http://
www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-July-1996/
altman.html. 24 August 2011.
9. Virdi, Jyotika. 2007. The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as
Social History. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. p. 201.
10. Eng, David L. 2007. ëFreedom and the Racialization of Intimacy: Lawrence
v. Texas and the Emergence of Queer Liberalismí, A Companion to
LGBTQ Studies, eds. G. E. Haggerty and M. McGarry (Malden: Blackwell.
p. 43.
11. Chatterjee, ëìNow Iím Chapal Raniî: Chapal Bhaduriís Hyperformative
Female Impersonationí.
12. Ibid.
13. Sedinger, Tracy. ëìIf Sight and Shape be Trueî: The Epistemology of
Cross-dressing on the London Stageí. Shakespeare Quarterly 48.1 (Spring
1997), p. 69.
14. The formation of queer communities is but a recent social
phenomenon. The revolution in information technology and the
proliferation of countless social-networking sites have worked in its
favour. Both real and virtual queer communities have emerged across
126 ❖ KAUSTAV BAKHSI ❖
the globe. Although Bhaduri might have felt a sense of ëtogethernessí
with his fellow female impersonators, queer communities with clear
political agendas were non-existent, at least in Bhaduriís immediate
surroundings, at that time.
15. Ibid.
16. See Bhaduriís interview with Niladri R Chatterjee, ëI somehow think Iím
Ardhnarishwar: An Interview with Chapal Bhadurií, RADIX 2011 (46th
Annual Reunion) Dept. of English, University of Kalyani, pp. 17-23. In a
very candid conversation, Bhaduri not only talks about his sexuality
and acting career, but also recalls interesting anecdotes that are
unwitting insightful commentaries on the behind-the-scenes politics of
Bengali folk-theatre.
17. Please note, although the official subtitle of the film has Banaml
translated as ëGardener Divineí, the lexical meaning of Banaml is
ësomeone who wears a garland of wild flowersí.
18. Garber, Marjorie. 1992. Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety.
New York and London: Routledge. p. 16.
19. Ibid., p. 17.
20. Ghosh, Rituparno. 2010. ëPutulkhelar Itikathaí, Robbar, December 19.
p. 8.
21. Ghosh, Rituparno. 2010. ëInterview with Reshmi Senguptaí, T2, The
Telegraph, December 22. p. 8.
21. Butler, Judith. 1990. ëPrefaceí (1999) to Gender Trouble: Feminism and
Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge. p. xxvi.
22. Hazra, Anindya. 2011. ëAmra Rituparnoraí, Prakashye: Prosongo Jounota.
p. 6.
23. Local terms such as kothi, hijra, panthi, chapati, do-paratha, etc have been
inserted in the global acronym LGBT in order to challenge universalizing
tropes of sexual identities. The political reclaiming of such local terms
(which are also used as terms of abuse) has problematized the very
concept of identity.
24. Merchant, Hoshang. 2009. Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Texts: New Indiaís
Gay Poets. Abingdon: Routledge. p. xx.
25. Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety, p. 131.