Caste and Queerness in Hindu India: Examining how Human-More Than Human Relations Shape Learning Spaces

In the aftermath of the Section 377 judgement that decriminalized homosexuality in India, the positioning of Hinduism as historically welcoming and accepting of queerness has swiftly pervaded the Indian landscape. While a useful shift in the public sphere, the intersectional axes of caste, gender, and sexuality within everyday learning spaces is still fraught. In this paper, I examine how the cultural practices of caste-privileged and straight Indian teachers were privileged and shaped learning spaces. Drawing on Indigenous, queer feminist and feminist new materialist theories, the intra-action analysis methods developed in this study trace how dominant communities' ways of knowing become inscribed into the meaning that everyday objects in school spaces take on, making invisible, queer ways of knowing and being. This work offers an approach to examining precolonial histories that shape learning spaces in India towards fighting against the rise in Hindu nationalism.