The queerness of desire

Our society may forbid transgressive desires, but it has non-hesitatingly preserved such expressions in murals, paintings and artifacts since time immemorial. While Shiva’s Ardhanareswara captures the synthesis of masculinity and femineity, the stone carvings in Khajuraho temple reflect protofeminist past that is quintessentially queer. The fascinating thing about queerness is that it permeates time. Either it is suppressed by societal norms or expressed as myriad human desires, but an ounce of femineity or masculinity is present in each one of us. It emerges and locates itself when the time is compatible. Queerness manifests itself as a gender identity that is beyond societal norms. It is as normal as breathing because human bodies and minds do not fit into prescribed templates of gender identity. 

Due to rapid social, economic and political change the world is going through, many of the traditional gender binaries have been rendered increasingly dysfunctional and obsolete. Even in ancient, medieval, and early modern times, polyamory, polygamy, and polyandry were well recognized. Draupadi may seem the only polyandrous woman in mythology, however, the polyandrous practice has been real across many communities in the subcontinent. Polyandry, the keeping of multiple husbands, was permitted in the remote mountain regions as late as the 19th century. Anthropologists have come up with socio-economic reasons for such arrangements, but ‘human desire’ has been the pivot that sustained these relations.

Ancient mythology is full of gender fluidity. Gods have been included; divinities transcend their gender. Shiva is often depicted as hyper masculine whereas Vishnu is quite feminine to start with. These are predominant examples but social practices relating to gender identities had a subculture that persisted through ages. Indian society was pretty cool about it but to the prudish Victorian eyes this was scandalous. As a consequence, the colonial rulers conveniently erased south-Asian queer sub-cultures. Colonial authorities passed a posy of laws to criminalize them, and the society was indoctrined to think of the past as necessarily regressive.  

A doctorate from the University of Strathclyde, Sindhu Rajasekhran considers herself ambiguous and acknowledges the decriminalization of Section 377 which spared the headache of justifying her being what she claims to be – sapphic, fluid, ambiguous, bisexual. Digging deeper into the subject of gender identity she found that gender fluidity is not a foreign fad and the fact that it doesn’t easily fit into the Victorian idea of gender binary led to its decolonization. Forbidden Desire places the categories of gender identity in cultural perspective. She further argues that queerness has the potential to dismantle patriarchal patrons, and perhaps the predominant reason for the new gender identities (LGBTQ+) yet to gain social acceptance. 

It goes without saying that patriarchy is petrified of gender fluidity, because it alone has the potential to dismantle hierarchical pyramids. The patriarchy is built on a solid foundation of masculine thinking, which fetishizes the feminine. As androgyne expressions are gaining widespread recognition, there is a reason to believe Rajasekaran’s assertion that future is turning femme. It is so because long forbidden (and suppressed) desires are beginning to surface. In this context, she believes that mxn could be the right gender expression that is neither man nor woman. With this being the new perspective, everyone is free to express in a manner that reflects their true selves.

Queerness isn’t out of the ordinary. It doesn’t confirm to prespecified choices and neither confine to established customs and practices. It is a period of destabilization in traditional gender roles and relationships. Forbidden Desire is a new way of approaching big questions about existence and the societies we create(d), then and now.

Forbidden Desire 
by Sindhu Rajasekaran 
Simon&Schuster, New Delhi. 
Extent: 238, Price: Rs. 799.

First published in Deccan Herald

Empire of extraction

By the turn of the current century, a 3-degree rise in a cocktail of temperature and humidity will make life unbearable for at least 3.25 billion people. By that time the monsoon cycle will be completely unpredictable, and glaciers will be viewed digitally. Much would get changed and doomsday models would erect dreadful scenarios. Nothing of the kind may happen, climate change skeptics argue. For such a change unlikely to occur, the world’s governments had agreed to keep global temperature under check from being heated beyond additional 1.5 degrees C.  

Far from mitigating an increase in temperature, the world has already heated up by over 1.4 degrees from pre-industrial times in only a decade since the world’s governments had agreed to keep heating to 1.5 degrees. Recent unprecedented floods across South and Southeast Asia may have been consequent to rise in global temperature. Much worst seems to be in store as the last two years were second or third hottest year on record. Escape from the emerging devastating reality, that is inching closer, is by no means compelling. 

Abrupt changes in climate have acted on the world being molded to serve human needs and desires. Yale University historian Sunil Amrith argues that the human destruction of nature began a long time before the industrial revolution, and which accelerated thereafter. Seeds of such transformation were sown as early as the year 1200. The Charter of Forests, issued by England’s King Henry III in 1217, acknowledged human freedom to exploit natural resources like the soils, forests, and water. Till the advent of industrial revolution, the benign climate and rainfall allowed both imperial and colonial forces to clear land, expand cultivation, and build cities. 

Industrial revolution fueled the energy-hungry economic systems that turned nature into lifeless commodities. The unshackling of fossil energy bolstered a way of seeing the world in which freedom defied any limits on what is possible for human beings to do and to make. The Burning Earth is an environmental history, in author’s view all history is environmental history, that includes both environmental effects on societies and those societies’ impacts on the environment. Taking an appropriately long view the environmental history, which is nothing short of history of the world, the long and continuous struggle for the want and desire has driven a large part of the human impact on the rest of nature. 

Amrith views the three distinct time zones in global history. From such events as the charter that led to wide-scale deforestation; the invasion of central asia and western eurasia by Mongols; and the importation of rice from China are significant global changes. Around the same time, the colonial powers initiated the slave trade which deprived the enslaved freedom as well as their vital links to land and food sources. Christopher Columbus and other Iberian conquistadors brought with them both war and deadly diseases that wiped out most of the Aztecs and Incas. All this led to many habitats vanished and species declined across the world.

All of these events speak of want and greed. Be it extraction of global trade in gold; the emergence of leading financial center; and centuries of fossil fuel dependence. However, the contest for resources increasingly now includes water. Gaining a handle on the planetary crisis is complicated by the fact that the wealthy nations have precious little moral high ground to occupy in making the case that the poorer nations need to stop their clamoring demand for wealth. 

The Burning Earth presents a far-reaching survey of the central role played by human want and desires in the destruction of the planet. As things stand, the human attempt to script and harness nature would grow more elaborate in centuries to come. In this expansive narrative, Amrith narrates how the humans not only transformed matter by taking control of technology but got transformed in return too. It is an epic exploration on human want and desire, leaves the reader with no real clarity on why everything continue to be like that and how things will ever change.  

Written with passion, the narrative is insightful and empowering. Getting slowly sucked into the world of technology; the compelling question remains whether there would be space and scope for freedom and democracy?  

The Burning Earth 
by Sunil Amrith
Penguin, New Delhi
Extent: 418, Price: Rs.799.

First published in Deccan Herald on March 1, 2026.