Maya Sharma: The chronicler of unprivileged queer life stories

Maya Sharma

Maya Sharma is the author of two pathbreaking books Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India (Yoda Press, 2006) and Footprints of a Queer History: Life-Stories from Gujarat (Yoda Press, 2022). She is one of the few people who work with and documents the lives of queer people outside the metropolises and non-literate communities.

It’s a daunting thing to present a synopsis of decades of fieldwork, still, to summarise her work, Sharma says, “It was based on my personal journey of seeking out a community and finding validation in the society at large.”

“I had ended my marital life when I began working on my first book. Living in changed circumstances, I now saw how privileged my position had been. Though considerably reduced from my earlier status, I was still better off as a middleclass woman,” she adds, sharing that the loss of such privileges brought home a profound realisation of the lack of resources and power, which working-class and oppressed-caste women are faced with every day. “This understanding and the fact that we as a community longed to see ‘others like me’ bonded us profoundly,” she says. This was perhaps the path that paved the way for listening and writing stories in the safe space of friendships and relationships.

Identity and choice

“At that time (the '90s), we used the word lesbian,” Sharma continues. “But it wasn’t an accepted word then. The women I met used the word ‘Saheli’ for [identifying] their relationships. The affirmation of female friendship within the larger society provided security and allowed for intimate sharing. And this tradition finds expression in songs, stories, and rituals that validate their relationships. Friends are known to have their Saheli’s name tattooed where generally a husband’s name is embossed; they exchange saris and make vows for a friendship that lasts a lifetime.”

Furthermore, Sharma talks about the different ways in which some women sought autonomy. She tells me that “women who resisted marriage to assert their choice went to traditional and non-traditional religious spaces. The latter space, mostly the outcome of the Bhakti movement, allowed Dalit women and men a space that the traditional religious congregation did not provide. It also enabled women to join sects such as Ramsnehi.”

Sharma emphasises that these are not isolated stories. Mention of such women in the narratives of single women and in oral storytelling — tales of magic or birth/rebirth stories, which are used to explain the presence of transmasculine and transfeminine persons — is in abundance. This is why Sharma feels there’s a need to “move away from cities, as it not only provides a different perspective but putting together stories of urban and rural tribal areas also helps us to get a far more complex picture of queer people.”

Contemporary language politics

Most indigenous South Asian queer people don’t necessarily find visibility in and identify with any of the letters in the LGBTQIA+, which is a West-influenced vocabulary. In this sense, what role does language play in forming identities?

“Globalisation and growing visibility of the queer community have ushered in a terminology that may be seen as ‘western’ indeed. As activists, we are also responsible for bringing the vocabulary of LGBTQIA+ in our work within our communities, but this does not necessarily mean that the words we use are an exact fit of our realities and identities,” Sharma says.

According to her, we adopt a language and infuse our own meaning into words. “Language is like clothes. We make it our own as per our needs. Sometimes, we uniquely use words, while other times their usage can be universal. Language is in constant flux: it’s changing and evolving. To talk of West-and-East binary is to limit and stagnate our understanding,” she concludes.

Regarding identities, Sharma notes that the word “Rangeeli” was used for women who loved women in some parts of northern India, while words like “Babu” and “Bhai” are prevalent for transmasculine people. “Also, I think when a word is used as a ‘noun’ and when it’s a ‘verb’ also creates confusion. There’s a particular incident where I used the word ‘trans’ and someone said that it’s disrespectful to use it as a standalone word without the addition of ‘person’. I couldn’t even point out that the people I work with use just that for identifying themselves. Anyway, people have multiple identities, that constantly intersect, changing the nature of our identities. We approach the State using a specific identity because the laws do not take [into] account the queer identities.  Though in everyday life it’s helpful to recognise the multiplicity of identities an individual bears,” she says.

Reading silences

How was Sharma able to penetrate the most intimate spaces of these people to tell their stories? The space, she says, wasn’t readily accessible. “It was a gradual opening. Also, a person opens up because there’s an innate need to share, and for me, it was the same need that propelled me to listen and write these down as our community’s history,” she adds. She also loves to leave the ambiguity some stories carry.

“Paying attention to the silence in a narrative is important, too,” Sharma says, adding, “It’s also a way of resistance. It signals that this door is closed. You can sense it through one’s body language. The whole air gets taut. For example, when I was documenting Bittu’s story, while describing his life on the streets, he suddenly stopped talking. I didn’t probe further. I knew instinctively where it was going, and I don’t want to trigger anyone’s painful memory, especially people assigned female gender at birth. So, you don’t only read the silence but also participate in that silence. Also, similar experiences facilitate one’s ability to read silences. Sometimes they may not be similar but the emotions they evoke may be similar. Then there are cultural silences—those that arise from superstitious and gendered belief systems, but they exude a tension that’s left for you to decipher and decode.”

Hungry storyteller

Decades ago, when India still criminalised its sexual minorities, working with women who loved women and men who had sex with men must have been difficult but now that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code no longer exists, did something change in the way Sharma and her colleagues operate? “Fear of being harassed reduced,” Sharma notes.

“Section 377 was mostly used against gay men and transwomen. It was just a tool to extort money and harass queer people. For women, reality differs though. As working-class women, their access to the public sphere exists but control over their sexuality acts as a hindrance to expressing their choice. It’s interesting how in this debate of criminality and homosexuality women who love women became invisible. In my view, Section 377 did not impact the community in the same degree as the 2014 NALSA judgment and the Trans Act did.”

Same-sex marriage

“I can’t wrap my head around it (legalisation of same-sex marriages),” asserts Sharma. “Perhaps, people who’re demanding it are from a privileged background. There are many queer people out there who have shown an alternative way of living together like Maitri Karar, which is not effective nowadays, but people still get this agreement made. It’s like the rent agreement: It’s a declaration that these two people are in a relationship. I feel a contract like that is better than an unequal heterosexual marriage, which by design rests on hierarchy. Not only that we must also redefine family. Again, Bittu’s story is a case in point. When his partner died, their child’s custody was hotly debated. Families are by and large defined by blood, kinship ties; that must change, I believe.”

Now that unprivileged people have access to smartphones, the internet and owing to a battery of queer content their way, it must be easier to facilitate a conversation in such backgrounds? Sharma says this is a welcome change but while she finds accessibility to be a big gain, she isn’t sure about the impact of the consumption of cliché-driven Bollywood-style queer narratives. She may like to document this someday but as of now, her desire is to write about her mother and about beautiful old buildings and the people who live in them.