Gay Globalization Via Goa in My Brother… Nikhil

Abstract

‘Gay Globalization via Goa in My Brother… Nikhil’ examines the 2005 film, which was the first to have focused on homosexuality in India. Despite this claim, the film articulates gay subjectivity as emerging from a global, rights-based perspective, it is argued. Central to this analysis of the film is its setting in Goa which is employed as a site of liminality between ‘traditional’ India and global modernity. Goa is both cleaved to and from India as a whole by casting the former’s historical regionality through a misconstrual of its religious identities, as well as through references to colonial and alleged racial difference. The film’s basis for such differentiation is considered as being in large part due to Goa’s longer colonization by the Portuguese in comparison to the reign of the British in most of the rest of India. Modernity and diaspora are also explored as key features of the representation of Goa in the film, especially as they tie in to issues of gay rights. Further, the essay scrutinizes the parallels between the title character and the real-life inspiration behind the film, the Goan AIDS activist Dominic D’souza. In concluding, it is made apparent that the film centres gay male subjectivity while relegating Goan identity to an ambivalent marginality.