Anyone who’s interested in queer literature and the history of queer movement in India is unlikely to be a stranger to the body of work by Professor R. Raj Rao. Just as an example of Rao’s legacy and influence, his second novel Boyfriend was almost adapted to film by none other than Riyad Vinci Wadia, the trailblazing maker of bomGay, before the latter’s untimely death. In fact, to honour Wadia’s legacy and his contributions to queer Indian cinema, Kashish Film Festival instituted the annual “Riyad Wadia Award for Best Emerging Indian Filmmaker.”

In the anthology Whistling in the Dark: Twenty-Five Queer Interviews, Rao weaves together a narration with academic Dibyajyoti Sarma that spans three decades of unapologetic queer lives. It can be considered a text to understand queer lives in India better, similar to anthologies like Yaraana by Hoshang Merchant, Facing the Mirror by Ashwini Sukthankar, and Loving Women by Maya Sharma. However, what sets this anthology apart are the themes and profiles of its interviewees.

There’s an archival value to conversations with marginalised people who have been in different locations within any social justice movement  – whether they are at the forefront, in the background, staying away on purpose, or even opposing it. However, when we read books and stories, we rarely get to hear such voices from the ground. Their stories are erased or not considered crucial enough as part of ‘knowledge production,’ the business-like term for what we do through thinking, reading and writing. But these stories tell the complete story of a movement, which not only shows its highs but also its fissures. Rao’s anthology of interviews with artists, activists, poets, and more than that, common working-class queer people (mostly gay men) does precisely this. It talks about the difficult, intimate aspects of queer experiences which might not be considered respectable enough in many spaces of present-day queer politics. 

‘Respectability politics’ describes how marginalised people attempt to create or hold on to social capital through their assimilation with the law and conventional norms. It has long been a topic of contention in queer politics, with some queer folks wanting to be a part of larger cisgender heteronormative society without the risky “flamboyance” of queerness. It’s a question that has come up in India as well, with discussions on whether kink belongs at pride, and famously at previous Mumbai and Pune pride marches. In April 2025, when a reporter from Tehelka Digital News barged into a gay spa in New Delhi screaming “gande log, gande log (translation: dirty people, dirty people),” this debate was stirred up again. Dhiren Borisa wrote about this incident in a must-read essay where respectability intersects with law, class, and caste.

The open interviews in Whistling In The Dark reminded me of the podcast Making GAY History, where in each episode, there’s utmost honesty, ownership and passion around one’s ideas of queerness and living life. An interesting interview which is an example of this is with Marc Ohrem-Leclef, whose project Zameen Asmaan ka Farq (As far apart as the Earth is from the Sky) looks at affectionate acts between Indian men such as holding hands, among other intimate leanings. For Ohrem-Leclef, this language of physical touch offers new windows into understanding friendship, love, sexuality, and queerness between men in a largely homophobic society. In a way, this connects with what radical feminist theorist Marilyn Frye means when she says “heterosexual male culture is homoerotic, it’s man-loving” in her book The Politics of Reality.

The interviews in the book stretch across both urban and rural areas in Maharashtra, as well as outside India. Due to this, the interviews provide a deep, truthful, and at times, shocking insight into the kinds of queerness around us, perhaps in contexts different from us. We read about queer men forced into heterosexual marriage, queer men who oppose marriage, views on morality and sexuality, the politics of language, coming out in workspaces, queerness as choice/lifestyle, participation in public protest, and much more. While we are far from consensus in the present day on marriage equality, especially after the disappointing 2023 Supreme Court judgement; the arguments in the book outline the tensions between the notion of security typically associated with marriage, and the queer-trans critique which calls for extension of benefits one gets from same-sex marriage, such as maintenance, adoption, healthcare, and tax benefits to diverse forms of kinships. Just this month, a bench from the Madras High Court recognised LGBTQIA+ families under ‘legal jurisprudence,’ a sign that this conversation is far from settled. 

While the interviews form the base of the book, Rao’s introduction is crucial as a ready-reckoner for understanding queer politics in India. Told through his personal timeline since he started the Queer Studies Circle (QSC) in 1999, Rao writes about setting up a course on gay and lesbian studies at the University of Pune, and his engagement at various forums on queer rights and activism. Interestingly, the word that ended up being used for the course he set up was “Alternative Identities/Sexualities,” to avoid using terms like gay, queer, or lesbian. The “Certificate course on Law and Alternative Sexualities” that I attended decades later, in 2022 still holds a similar title. (Rao was one of the lecturers.) On its own, ‘alternative’ is a promising word as it highlights possibilities and the idea of not being restricted in one’s approach to gender and sexuality. But it also has a latent meaning - the resistance in coming to terms with lived realities as they are. 

Rao also connects the dots between criminality and marginalisation – significantly discussing how queer men from lower caste and class faced the worst of police violence on account of Section 377; the question of caste where caste becomes a focal point of desirability for gay men; and how this self-prepetuating cycle of crime and marginalisation exists in an absence of a system that focuses on prevention and rehabilitation. While not all interviews in the book directly address the caste question, there are excerpts where caste is intertwined with desirability – an argument which again reminded me of Dhiren Borisa’s articulation of caste on queer dating sites. The chapter on Prof. Ramchandra Siras is also a stark reminder of how caste and class work as a multiplier towards marginalisation of queer folks already under scrutiny from law and society.

In my reading of the anthology, my focus was also on workplace inclusion; especially in educational institutions. This comes out neatly through conversations with, and about Hoshang Merchant, Prof. Ramchandra Siras, and Thomas Waugh among others. Interviewees talk about being refused benefits because they’re part of same-sex couples; being denied accommodation as single, queer folks; the censorship of lectures and courses because of their gay themes, and  ostracisation after coming out. In the context of universities, this also reminded me starkly of reading Sara Ahmed’s Complaint which briefly discusses the usage of sexuality as a weapon of shame and othering, consequently, forcing people to resign. 

Another prominent theme related to inclusion is the politics of language. In many instances, we see that while queer people were drawn to support groups, the sense of alienation persisted, especially on account of not knowing English. So much of queer literature is written and taught in English that we don’t pay attention to languages where queerness exists but there’s no adequate word for queerness or gender. Through the book, we see examples of Spanish and Marathi as two such languages. Or when people go to a support group run by Humsafar Trust and are elated reading the Marathi section of their newsletter. This doesn’t mean there aren’t inclusive efforts. A few times, the Marathi newspaper Sakal comes up, and its sort-of agony aunt column called Sister’s Advice, which is a source of relief and confinement for many men to discuss their lives. This section also reminded me of the time when the Tamil Nadu government released this glossary for Tamil terms to address the LGBTQIA+ community and their closest English language words.

While this anthology is a must-read for anyone interested in queer history in India, one of its major missing aspects is a lack of voices from queer women, and trans and non-binary people; except a few at the end of the book which don't do it justice. On its own, however, this anthology is a terrific set of lived experiences of the lives of gay men in India and a reflection of how much has changed  – and how much is still to be done. 

Text by Rajeev Anand Kushwah. Rajeev is a researcher-writer interested in queer experiences, the feminist ethics of care, and masculinities.