Sexual states : governance and the struggle over the antisodomy law in India

Acknowledgments vii Part One. Introduction 1. Governing Sexuality, Constituting States 3 2. Engendering Social Problems, Exposing Sexuality's Effects on Biopolitical States 24 Part Two. Sexual Lives of Juridicial Governance 3. State Scripts: Antisodomy Law and the Annals of Law and Law Enforcement 49 4. "Half Truths": Racialization, Habitual Criminals, and the Police 74 Part Three. Opposing Law, Contesting Governance 5. Pivoting toward the State: Phase One of the Struggle against Section 377 101 6. States versus Sexuality: Decriminalizing and Recriminalizing Homosexuality in the Postliberalized Context 126 Afterlives 150 Notes 165 Bibliography 193 Index 211

In Sexual States Jyoti Puri uses the example of the recent efforts to decriminalize homosexuality in India to show how the regulation of sexuality is fundamentally tied to the creation and enduring existence of the Indian state.