Sexual States Governance and the Struggle over the Antisodomy Law in India

As I get ready to send this book out into the world, it brings a moment of pause, an opportunity to reflect on the journeys the book represents. One journey began when I first came across a brief blurb in 2002 that an organization called Naz Foundation had launched a public interest litigation against the antisodomy law in India. On the road, I came into contact with new communities, traveled to new sites and ventured into new arenas of fieldwork, which collectively inform the critiques of states and governance that are the focus of this book. Yet, even as this book draws to a close, the other journey, to decriminalize homosexuality, remains unfinished. The appeals to the Supreme Court are underway and it is unclear how and when the court will weigh in on the 2013 ruling upholding the antisodomy law. More heartening, though, the broader struggle for sexual and gender justice, of which the legal campaign against the antisodomy law was just one aspect, continues more energetically than ever before.