America
Indian student gets US fellowship for LGBT research in Tamil Nadu
By
By Arun Kumar Washington, July 1
An Indian student has
received an LGBT scholarship from California University to investigate
how political tensions have led to the proliferation of new notions of
sexual identity in Tamil Nadu.
"The movements taking place in
Tamil Nadu right now draw on LGBT rights language, but they also draw on
a lot of other histories," says this year's winner Shakthi Nataraj, an
anthropology PhD student at UC Berkeley.
She is one of the three
recipients of the Philip Brett LGBT Studies Fellowship launched in 2009
to honour Philip Brett, a pioneer of lesbian and gay musicology, who
taught at Berkeley from 1966 to 1991, Nataraj grew up in Chennai, and
spent time around nonprofits that focused in HIV and gender issues
because of the work her mother did, according to a university release.
As Nataraj grew older, she reconnected with the LGBT community in Chennai.
Gradually, gender and sexuality rights became her work, and pursuing a PhD in the field offers an alternate way to engage in it.
Attending
Berkeley, she said, has allowed her to explore her interests and to
meet a cross-section of students who have taught her about issues of
gender, sexuality and race in the American context.
"It's the
dual belonging to the worlds of academia and non-academia that is both
the biggest challenge and the most rewarding part of this whole
experience," Nataraj said.
It is from this background that Nataraj approaches her LGBT research in Tamil Nadu, the release said.
As
part of her research, she is examining how Indian courts struggle to
reconcile notions of "Indian culture" with transnational human rights
commitments.
For example, in December 2013, India's Supreme Court
upheld a colonial-era law criminalising homosexual intercourse and
then, just months later, issued a judgment affirming transgender
identity and rights.
Indian members of the LGBT communities,
Nataraj said, are "paradoxically hailed as both rights-bearing consumers
and atavistic criminals."
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])