Queer Women and Habeas Corpus in India: The Love that Blinds the Law1

Abstract

The article employs the example of the use of the writ of Habeas Corpus in cases involving lesbian women in India. These cases, few and far between, provide a broad canvas to theoretically reflect on the relationship of the lives of queer women with the law as well as with the women’s movement and the queer movement in India. The article proposes a critical analyses of the way the law frames identities, struggles and movements and suggests possible direction for theoretical perspectives that take on this nexus and evolve a language that is closer to the reality of the lives addressed in legal, academic and activist work, with all its conflicts, contradictions and chaos.