This project is situated within two longer histories in New York City: that of the South Asian diaspora, and that of the queer South Asian community. One story is impossible to tell without some grounding in the other.
We offer our gratitude to Sva (an organizer in SALGA and Youth Solidarity Summer in the 1990s) for sharing their recollections in oral history format. The excerpts from their oral history help tether this exhibit in not only the archives, but also in firsthand memory.
For an earlier twentieth-century history of South Asian immigration in the United States, you can read fellow LHP Youth Researcher Arun’s exhibit, found here.
One of the biggest critiques against queer South Asians — both from within the South Asian community and from outside — is that queerness is an infiltration of South Asian culture by “western perversity.” This overlooks the reality that South Asian queer people have existed and been documented for centuries. They may be found in the archives using different labels that describe the spectrum of sexualities seen in the South Asian community, such as shomo-kami (homosexuality) or hijra (a centuries-old community of transgender, intersex, or eunuch people). These labels, which account for more fluidity than the fixed categories of “gay” and “lesbian,” were used frequently within queer South Asian community and/or activist spaces, as well as in the names of queer South Asian activist groups that emerged in the late twentieth century.
Queer activism in New York City, when — and if — historically acknowledged, has traditionally had a white face. Queer history in NYC often begins and ends with the Stonewall Riot in June of 1969, in which a racially diverse group of queer and trans New Yorkers defended themselves against a violent police raid. Stonewall was a watershed moment for queer visibility and for gay activism. But a queer history that erases much other than Stonewall and ACT UP’s public protests during the AIDS crisis is not a representative one. South Asian queer activists were thinking about many of the same queer issues facing their communities as their counterparts, including how to organize against and address the AIDS crisis. (A new oral history project by Nikhil Patil, “Excerpts from an Epidemic: Documenting South Asian American Narratives from the Early Years of the AIDS Crisis in the United States,” represents an important attempt to place South Asians within the history of the United States’ response to AIDS.) Where they often diverged from activist groups with large white memberships was their focus on specific, intersectional issues: forming community, interrogating questions of caste and class in their organizing spaces, and visibly celebrating a culturally specific queerness.
"I came to New York in the fall of '97 [from Atlanta]. By then, I had already been meeting people in SALGA through national HIV/AIDS organizing and hearing about them through networks, [Trikone in Atlanta, another queer South Asian organizations], and newsletters."
The fight for representation for Desi queers has spanned decades within New York City. Both nationally and in NYC, specifically, queer South Asian organizations emerged as important hubs for queer cultural production, activism, and solidarity in the 1980s and 1990s. Importantly, as more groups began to form, they served as models for others to follow in their footsteps. Trikone — which directly translates to “triangle,” a reference to the Nazi effort to identify and eliminate queerness through the marker of the upside-down pink triangle — was one of the first queer Desi organizations to emerge. Originally started in California’s Bay Area in 1986 as a newsletter for queer Desi news and events in the area, Trikone would eventually expand into other national chapters, as well as a social services-oriented group and a magazine. Shamakami, another short-lived but impactful group, was a Bangladeshi organization primarily oriented around South Asian lesbians. Numerous other groups existed, both for short periods of time and over multiple decades. This project will primarily focus on the South Asian Lesbian Gay Association (SALGA), a non-profit, volunteer organization based in NYC, working to bring awareness and aid to those who identify as queer and South Asian.