Status Updates From Majoritarian State: How Hin...

‘Hinduism is a religion, Hindutva is an ideology for political mobilization’, Romila Thapar contends. She writes: ‘Hinduism is a mosaic of belief systems, some linked, others not. Hindutva has the characteristics of a sect that reformulates selected beliefs to create in this case a socio-political organisation with an attempt at ideological coherence’.

The first targets of what we could today call 'queerphobic queer cleansing’ were the British themselves, beginning with the Imperial Army. For instance, as Ballhatchet notes, British administrators officially organised an Indian female prostitution apparatus to prevent same-sex acts between British soldiers. They preferred that British men engage in interracial extra-marital heterosex instead of intra-racial homosex.