Mahesh Dattani’s on a Muggy Night in Mumbai: A Queer Reading

Abstract

Abstract

The conspicuous absence of queer reading of the plays of Mahesh Dattani perhaps consolidates the assumptions that India is a tolerant nation and that urban middle class Indian society of which Dattani gives a potent portrayal in all his plays is inclusive in nature though preferring heterosexuality within marriage. A simplistic usage of the term 'queer' neglects its complex signification. When applied as a synonym for 'gay' or 'homosexual' the term queer fails to do justice to the political intervention it sets out to undertake and unfortunately ends up representing the very binary of homosexuality and heterosexuality that it tries to dissolve. Queer theory's emergence in Europe in the early years of 1990 was both an extension and a departure from gay and lesbian studies of the preceding decades. Deconstructive in spirit, queer movement encourages the study of gender and sexuality not from the angles created by patriarchal norms but from every possible side. The significance of queer theory remains in its examinations of social spaces, historical conventions and cultural institutions in the study