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Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle Over the Antisodomy Law in India

Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle Over the Antisodomy Law in India

Author: Jyoti Puri
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822360438
Published In: March 2016
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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In Sexual States Jyoti Puri tracks the efforts to decriminalize homosexuality in India to show how the regulation of sexuality is fundamentally tied to the creation and enduring existence of the state. Since 2001 activists have attempted to rewrite Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which in addition to outlawing homosexual behavior is often used to prosecute a range of activities and groups that are considered perverse. Having interviewed activists and NGO workers throughout five metropolitan centers, investigated crime statistics and case law, visited various state institutions, and met with the police, Puri found that Section 377 is but one element of how homosexuality is regulated in India. This statute works alongside the large and complex system of laws, practices, policies, and discourses intended to mitigate sexuality's threat to the social order while upholding the state as inevitable, legitimate, and indispensable. By highlighting the various means through which the regulation of sexuality constitutes India's heterogeneous and fragmented "sexual state," Puri provides a conceptual framework to understand the links between sexuality and the state more broadly.

Acknowledgments vii

Part One. Introduction

1. Governing Sexuality, Constituting States 3

2. Engendering Social Problems, Exposing Sexuality's Effects on Biopolitical States 24

Part Two. Sexual Lives of Juridicial Governance

3. State Scripts: Antisodomy Law and the Annals of Law and Law Enforcement 49

4. "Half Truths": Racialization, Habitual Criminals, and the Police 74

Part Three. Opposing Law, Contesting Governance

5. Pivoting toward the State: Phase One of the Struggle against Section 377 101

6. States versus Sexuality: Decriminalizing and Recriminalizing Homosexuality in the Postliberalized Context 126

Afterlives 150

Notes 165