I am a student pursuing a Master's in English and Cultural Studies at Christ University, Bangalore. This digital archive is part of my course, Urban Narratives. The very reason for the research is, whenever I attempted to fetch the literature on "violence inside the LGBT community," Google's SEO automatically suggested "violence in LGBT". This indicates the absence of even basic research on violence inside the community. Just because populist queer communities demonstrate their unity through protests and other forms of expression, it should not silence the violence and abuse within the community. It should not limit the possibility of questioning the inclusivity of such spaces.
The evolution of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, and transgender culture over the past 50 years in many major cities have a direct correlation with urban life. Urban life facilitates the possibilities for the emergence of identity-politics-focused movements and their urban spatialization (Doderer). The queering of urban spaces is connected to questions of identity and difference, body and sexuality, as well as everyday existence and social life, with the economy, culture, and politics of community building — in fact, to the entire thematic spectrum of resistance to sex and gender normativity.
Bangalore is a metropolitan city which has undergone several social and cultural changes with the expansion of MNCs and IT sectors. The city has become a hub for Multinational firms like Google, Goldman Sachs, Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft. With its expatriate population, Bangalore is more relaxed with its LGBT inclusiveness. Despite all political struggles, the city has found its way and is striving to find more ways to create safe spaces for queer individuals. The cosmopolitan urban space of Bangalore enables LGBTQ individuals to live their lives to the fullest, explore their (sexual) identities, organise themselves collectively, and become publicly visible and appropriate urban, societal, and political spaces.
Speaking of the LGBT history of Bangalore, "Good As You (G.A.Y.)", the first cultural forum to promote safety, queer acceptance and equality, was initiated in 1994 by a small group of gay individuals. Following that, "Sangama", an NGO for sexual minorities, was established. Several other organisations such as "Swabhava", "Jeeva", "WHAQ!", "Maya for Women" and "Samara" were set up in and around Bangalore. "Queer Campus Bangalore" was established as a support group and safe space for non-conforming youth. There were/are many events happenings around the city, including "Bangalore Film Festival", "Pink Divas" and "Bengaluru Namma Pride March". There are notable cafés, clubs and bars that include people from all individualities.
LGBTQ communities have a long history of establishing safe spaces where they can see themselves reflected, feel safe from harm, and receive support from the community. However, some from underrepresented castes, religions, and ethnic groups reported that they had to look for and sometimes even make their own unique safe spaces that reflected intersectional experiences of marginalisation. The factors of caste, religion, ethnicity, and urbanity added new layers of complexity to the Indian queer context. (Moitra et al.) Queer spaces are frequently portrayed as or expected to be caste-free, despite caste being a significant source of conflict in India.
The idea that these queer spaces are inherently "safe" ignores or obscures the possibility of violence there. By concentrating on the failures of heterotopic spaces, we can better understand the various forms of violence that are active and successfully reproduce and sustain those imaginaries operating in larger national and global contexts. Examples of these larger structures operating in heterotopic spaces include exclusions based on class, caste, gender, age, and language. Many queer people are primarily looking for locations free of the violence they regularly encounter when they search for "safe spaces."
This research aims to investigate and archive the spatial production processes (i.e., the creation, maintenance, occupation, and traversal), along with the characteristics of emerging queer spaces in Bangalore, to inquire about the safety inside and outside the community. It further problematizes the politics of the so-called 'queer safe places' and unveils the illusions of urban inclusivity. This digital archive will explore how urban environments facilitate the formation of emancipatory movements based on identity politics and strategies that transcend binary gender dualism.
Doderer, Yvonne P. "LGBTQs in the City, Queering Urban Space." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 35, no. 2, 2011, pp. 431–436., doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.01030. x.
Moitra, Aparna, et al. "Negotiating Intersectional Non-Normative Queer Identities in India." Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2021, doi:10.1145/3411763.3451822.