Browsing by Author "Thompson, Emma"

My dissertation examines two queer activist organizations in northern India and analyzes the ways they deploy the languages of secularism in order to understand the activists’ relationship to secularism and Hindu nationalism. The two organizations are Awadh Queer Pride (AQP), which is non-religiously affiliated and based out of Lucknow, and The Queer Muslim Project (TQMP), which is based out of Delhi. In using the term “languages of secularism” I move away from a state-focused approach to secularism studies to instead ask how the tropes and discourses surrounding secularism, like a notion of tolerance based in an underlying claim to common humanity or the insistence that religious differences are simultaneously trivial and immutable, figure in the work of queer activists. Central to my use of the term is the acknowledgment that these tropes and discourses are inconsistent and even at times contradictory. Comparing the two groups’ usage of the languages of secularism helps uncover the ways that secularism impacts both religious and non-religiously affiliated groups and illuminates how the tropes surrounding secularism impact activists’ relationship to religion. Furthermore, I situate both organizations within the context of rising Hindu nationalism in India and global economic pressures. While both groups draw on languages of secularism in their activism to combat Hindu nationalism, invoking secularism poses different risks given their differing relationships to religion. In exploring the varied ways that both groups make use of sometimes contradictory languages of secularism, I ask three interrelated questions: 1) how do queer activists in northern India use languages of secularism? 2) how might we define the different languages of secularism and their effects? 3) how are languages of secularism imbricated in and resistant to Hindu nationalism? I draw on court cases, newspaper articles, speeches, ethnographic work, and analysis of the groups’ social media posts to answer these questions.