Rainbow Lit Fest 2023: Winners of the inaugural Rainbow Awards for Literature and Journalism announced

Rainbow Literature Awards 2023 winner Nonfiction category — Maya Sharma.

Chatterjee’s exceptional translation of Krishnagopal Mallick’s unique literary exploration of the same-sex desire and unhinged documentation of the personal Entering the Maze and Maya Sharma’s chronicling of the un- and underprivileged lesbians and transmen’s struggle for safe and secure queer futures in a strictly caste-heteropatriarchal society in Gujarat Footprints of a Queer History were announced winners in their respective categories.

Interestingly, both books highlight how the vocabularies to express queerness has developed. For example, Mallick’s life-writing though is uninhibitedly about bisexuality, the map of queerness and activities he discusses out about Kolkata in his writing wouldn’t appeal to “contemporary socio-political sensibility,” as Chatterjee puts in his introduction to the book. Similarly, in an interview with Moneycontrol earlier, Sharma had noted how women she met during his work on the book “used the word ‘Saheli’ for [identifying] their relationships” and vociferously argued that the West-inspired “words we use [aren’t] exact fit of our realities and identities.”

It must be noted that publishers of both these narratives are indie presses — a testament to the fact that while big publishing houses find it easier to bet on stories based on “numbers” and penetration of the market, independent presses are often driven by their passion to visibilise what is not mainstream.

Rangnekar, however, noted how this has changed. Over a telephonic conversation he shared that his experience organising the fest and awards was “incredible”. He continues, “We had close to hundred submissions across categories. Earlier, large publishing houses wouldn’t respond actively to publishing queer voices. So, keeping that context in mind, I was pleasantly surprised that almost every publishing house had a book in the gender and sexuality [genre]. Yoda Press and Zubaan were always [doing that work], but now everyone is keen and concerned. Also, I am glad that communities like the Mumbai Press Club amplified and supported us. To something that isn’t established, we were taken seriously. Our strong and diverse jury we played a major role in that, too. We definitely have potential to grow.”

In journalism, too, only a few platforms give space to queer voices, though it’s heartening that this gap is being remedied now with websites like queerbeat entering the landscape, doing incredible work. In an endeavour to highlight the efforts of queer journalists, RALJ also announced Features and Op-Ed awards.

Features shortlisted candidates were Akhil Kang for "Brahmin Men Who Love to Eat A**", Riddhi Dastidar for "Seen-Unseen", and Nolina Minj for "The Horrors of Queer Conversion Therapy in India", while "Queering Translation: Locating Queerness in Indian Languages" by Chittajit Mitra, "Why Saurabh Kirpal Needs to Be Appointed as Judge" by Kinshuk Gupta, and "Though Homosexuality Has Been Decriminalised, Two Incidents in Pune Show How Bias Still Prevails" by R Raj Rao were the finalists in the Op-Ed category.

Rainbow Literature Awards 2023 winner Features category — Akhil Kang.

Kang won for their incisive piece that sought to explore why an “entire caste of community which religiously abides by purity, anything but dirt and pollution, and [queer men] from that community enjoying, quite literally, a site of dirt and pollution” for it provided “an exciting opportunity for [them], a Dalit-queer thinker, trying to push thinking around caste through queerness.”

Rainbow Literature Awards 2023 winner Op-Ed category — Chittajit Mitra.

Mitra’s op-ed, which quotes a variety of translators and queer authors, tries to underline the need for queer people to tell their own stories. While it attempts at bringing home the point that lived experiences make for a convincing narrative, advertising the urgency for queer people to own and take up enough space to share their viewpoints and struggles is the principal takeaway.

Rainbow Literature Awards 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award winner Hoshang Merchant (Photo courtesy Akhil Katyal).

There was one more category, though non-competitive. Hyderabad-based poet Hoshang Merchant was recognised for his immense contribution to queer literature as he was conferred with the Lifetime Achievement award. With over 20 poetry collections to his credit and multiple academic meditations on desire, sexuality, and queerness Merchant edited the first major anthology on gay writing Yaraana: Gay Writing from India (Penguin, 1999). In 2011, however, the scope of the book was expanded to South Asia in its revised edition. The poet was present at the festival, surrounded and loved by queer people across generations.

While the confluence of letters, love, and language ended yesterday, it is truly a much-needed endeavour that one would like to witness each year, for it not only fills an immense gap in literary circles but also champions oft-forgotten and less-advertised queer people/voices.