queer masculinities

152 Queer Masculinities, 1550–1800
ing’ (34). The focus on his youth cannot be denied. It is possible that
the relationship continued beyond Ayaz’ youth, but this was not
revealed, as an ideal, to society.
The word launda, according to Chatterjee, may have been used to
represent slaves as well as boys. 46 Chatterjee suggests that scholars have
misunderstood status-differentiated male homoeroticism (e.g.
master/slave relations) as age-differentiated. Chatterjee argues that
slavery has been overlooked as part of the identity of the beloveds of
Urdu ghazal – and beloved slaves were, amongst others, ‘deprived of
their masculinity, agency, and adulthood in historical pasts’ (73).
Socially accepted or tolerated homoeroticism could have been simultaneously
age- and status-differentiated, however. The idealized relationship
of Mahmud and Ayaz is portrayed as both.
A letter of the poet Ghalib that reflects upon ‘boy-love’ in 1861 Delhi
has not been used to date (that I am aware of) as evidence. It may help
to resolve controversy surrounding the age-stratification of South Asian
male homoeroticism:
Listen to me, my friend. It’s a rule with men who worship beauty
that when they fall in love with a youngster they deceive themselves
that he’s three or four years younger than he really is. They
know he’s grown up, but they think of him as a child. 47
The transgression of boy-love, according to Ghalib, occurs in a state of
denial. Ghalib does not here comment on how long such a relationship
might last, but he does imply that differentiation is drawn, with the lover
thinking of the beloved as a ‘child,’ even if he is really a young man.
Hindus, hijras, and the forfeiture of masculinity
Hindu societies do not appear to have celebrated age-differentiated
homoeroticism like their Muslim counterparts, though they appear to
have tolerated it in some forms at least. According to the ancient Kama
Sutra (2.6.49; 2.9) and its medieval commentary, oral homoeroticism
was more accepted in pre-Muslim South Asia than anal intercourse. In
the nineteenth century, Richard Burton noted that pederasty was permitted
amongst Muslims and Sikhs in Northern India, and ignored in
Southern India and the Himalayas. 48 He writes: ‘Hindus, I repeat, hold
pederasty in much abhorrence and are much scandalized by being
called Gánd-márá (anus beater) or Gángú (anuser) as Englishmen
would be’ (237). Burton seems to equate pederasty with anal inter-