Calcutta Studies

  A Still from Gender Mela, 2022.   Aisarya Dutt Roy traces the history of P R I D E in Calcutta.  The city of Kolkata, with its effective organisation, mobilisation and community building since the early 90s, has been a pivotal site of a kaleidoscopic blend of queer voices and identities. While the post-NALSA (National Legal Services Authority vs. Union of India) queer-scape of the city in the last decade has witnessed a vibrant and outspoken assertion of queer identities intersecting with caste, religion, disability, age as well as mental health, the legacy in effect, goes back to the early 90s and even before. In August 1993, a small group of gay and bisexual men including journalist Pawan Dhall formed a queer support group called Counsel Club. Its biannual multilingual queer newsletter called Pravartak (renamed as Naya Pravartak in 1995) published letters from queer persons across the country and abroad (Dhall: 2020, 7-13). In an interview, D...

  In picture Central Calcutta Boarding House. Photo courtesy: Messbari Project. Shreya Das traces the history of Mess-bari culture of Calcutta.  The late nineteenth and early twentieth century Calcutta witnessed a rapid urbanization of the city. Hordes of people migrated from villages to this metropolitan city in the hope of securing a job under the colonial ruler. A huge number of students also came to the city to receive the modern British education to ensure jobs at clerical posts under the Raj. Several education acts (e.g. 1813, 1833, 1835, 1857 etc.) in the nineteenth century only confirm the British pet project of manufacturing “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” (Macaulay’s Minute, 1835). As a result, the institutionalization of the English education became necessary and several colleges were established in the major cities of India. Calcutta, being the then capital of India, became a field of experiment where t...