Join us on 5th December for a conversation that travels through forgotten histories of desire, gender and freedom in the subcontinent.
About the Lecture
Long before Victorian morality arrived, people across India lived with expressions of gender and sexuality that were far more varied and fluid than the colonial archive suggests. Drawing from feminist historiography, anthropology, queer theory and her own archival research, Sindhu Rajasekaran traces how colonial authorities rewrote these realities. Laws were introduced to criminalise sexually agentive women and queer folks, while nautch dancers, courtesans, effeminate men, masculine women, trans people and even ascetics were marked as “deviants.”
This lecture explores how older prejudices fused with Victorian anxieties to reshape how intimacy and identity were understood in the region. By returning to the past with care, Sindhu invites the audience to imagine new possibilities for the future.
About the Lecturer
Sindhu Rajasekaran is an author, academic and filmmaker whose work explores gender, sexuality and the lived histories that shape us. Her research spans feminist historiography, queer theory, anthropology and the history of medicine. Through her writing and speaking, Sindhu brings sharp scholarship into warm, accessible conversation while connecting forgotten pasts to the futures we want to build.
About unLecture
unLecture brings experts out of classrooms and into cafés, bars and neighbourhood spaces across Delhi. Created by three friends from St. Stephens, Delhi who wanted learning to feel warm, social and alive. unLecture turns an ordinary evening into a conversation you’ll think about long after it ends.
Where it is
Address : Fort City Brewing, E-17, Market Ln, Hauz Khas Market, Block E, Hauz Khas, Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi 110016, India
Get directions