‘Gay Culture Rampant in Hyderabad’: Analysing the Political and Libidinal Economy of Homophobia

Jordan Osserman offers a case study of an event in India that ruptures assumptions about queerness and heteronormativity. In February 2011, the Telugu Indian news station TV9 aired a sensationalistic expose entitled ‘Gay Culture Rampant in Hyderabad’. In an unexpected turn of events that seemed to catch the network by surprise, the segment generated widespread opposition and outrage, culminating in an injunction from the News Broadcasters’ Standards Authority (NBSA) requiring TV9 to issue an on-air apology and pay a 1 lakh fine. The event became a flashpoint in the fast-moving history of queer India. Osserman examines the fantasmatic universe of queer criminality that TV9 constructed, in order to better understand how the production and dissemination of homophobic fantasy within a local context relates to larger geopolitical forces.