‘Gay Gaze’ and the refashioning of queer imaginaries in digital India

Abstract

The proliferation of internet access and digital technologies in contemporary India has reshaped the social role of the internet. Existing ethnographic accounts have demonstrated that digital platforms function as a key player in organising the often marginalised and stigmatised queer communities in the country. Building on this digital queer scholarship, this commentary analyses visual and textual archives that the internet makes available to gay men in India, helping them construct social imaginaries inaccessible to them in their immediate milieu. By offering a study of selected blogs and websites produced by and targeted towards gay men in India, we argue that a cultural studies perspective has valuable inputs to offer to the field of digital queer studies in India. We further theorise on the emergence and operation of a digital ‘gay gaze’ that turns the ‘male gaze’ upon the male body, mooring the political agency of same-sex desires through a cultural appropriation of online spaces.