Ambiguous Sexualities and Pink Migrations: Politics of Sexualities, Regimentation and Control Among Gorkhas in Northeast India

Abstract

Military sensibilities inherited from the Colonial to the post-colonial state in India have vociferously engaged with regimentation and control. “Queerness” has been made invisible by Masculinities. Whereby patriarchally driven images of the “self” are injected in the ideas of “sacred and profane” of the communities cosmology. In the context of the Militarised Masculinities of Gorkha, one repeatedly hears of a “Bir Gorkha”, a “Gorkha Cheli Beti”, but never a Queer Gorkha. Contextualised to the “Gorkha”, Queerness or ambivalence in sexualities is an oxymoron. The chapter attempts to untangle the knottybraids of a Militarised Masculine Gorkha identity and problematise Masculinities and Queerness. It aims to unravel the circumvents, constrictions and contortions of sexual ambiguity among the Gorkha. The chapter attempts to weave the ethno-narratives of military services and other services among the sexually ambivalent native Nepali-speaking/Gorkha men in/from India’s Northeast. The Gorkha have multiple challenges to negotiate within the Northeast and outside the region. From being fetishised as exotic to erotic to “chinky”, the body becomes a site of a political struggle, reclamation and resistance. The discussion highlights the deeply webbed grids in Pink migration and the negotiations that the queer Gorkha engages in/with in new spaces through livelihood opportunities—that a Pink economy/Pink market promises. The urban spaces provide solidarity of a visible queer movement and avenues for community building and networking. In short, the sexually ambivalent are in the constant quest to seek spaces that provide an escape from one’s kin and region.