Hetero-Patriarchy and its Discontent: A Study of Modes of Resistance Among Khasi LGBT++ Against Historical Erasure

The Khasi community is a tribal community in the North-Eastern Region of India. Due to the intersection of many political, geographical, historical and cultural factors, the Khasi people exist at the margin of the power discourse in India and as such the Khasi LGBT+ community is being rendered doubly invisible due to this intersection. Moreover, heteropatriarchy and nationalism have effectively silenced queerness. This paper aims to show how queer people resist against heteropatriarchy's systemic invisibilization of queerness. This paper argues that due to the prevalence of heteropatriarchy, only certain types of sexual and gender norms are permitted. Society assumes that such sexualities are nothing but Western imports and have no place among the Khasi. This paper shows how a Khasi identity is constructed which results in the silencing of the queer people. Queer visibility, however, resurges in the 21st century and queer people adopt different modes against such systemic discrimination. One of them is through writing in blogs. Another is through queer solidarity get together where queer people "queerify" well known mainstream establishments and through gay pride march. While these acts are not without detractors, they finally bring homosexuality into the limelight, disrupting community's identity.