Queer India Archives

Queer India Archives places histories of LGBTHQIA + Indians within India’s history. It will facilitate public engagement about the diverse gender and sexuality communities to ensure we don’t repeat past injustices with our family and friends. We believe it is time to make ourselves visible and celebrate our Pride with family and friends across borders.

We are:

Recording oral histories and conducting interviews

Digitising objects of importance to the person and places about queer-India

Producing documentaries, publishing literature, and exploring other creative forms

Making a searchable database of all recorded and created information for public dissemination.

Defining frameworks for enabling the culture of archiving and dissemination 

To know more about the project, visit: https://queer-ink.com

It has been slightly over a year since we started working towards setting up the Queer Ink Archives, now to be called Queer India Archives. Collectively, we promised to archive the lived histories and journeys of pioneering individuals, institutions, and initiatives to mainstream queer histories of India. In this process, we have been recording oral histories, collecting and digitising physical archives, as well as mapping the metadata for creating a digital archive.

Right from inception, we have also been preparing for a community-based approach to archiving and curating such diverse narratives. Queer India Archives has already collaborated with seven contributors across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, and the USA. 

The frameworks are being put to test by different team members and capacity-building sessions have also been facilitated so that the archive-building exercises remain decentralised. Ethical frameworks have been critical to this initiative and are under continuous exploration.

At every step of the way, we have engaged with a series of critical questions, like: What does it mean to curate an archive of queer lives in India? Who should be curating such archives? How could the archive-building exercises subvert existing forms of cultural narratives across the South Asian context? 

How does an archiving project contribute to the movement for representation, reclamation, and resistance? We intend to engage in a series of open dialogues, wherein more community members can contribute to this discourse and thus, shape the path ahead for Queer India Archives.