Sexuality as an object of enquiry is relatively new in the Indian context and is not helped by the silence and violence around it. These come from a mixture of ignorance and fear, both of which have long histories in the subcontinent. A large part of the silence is perhaps because what would render it audible to us requires historical and linguistic knowledges we do not any longer have. The violence is a more visible history, marked on bodies, especially women’s bodies, and from the colo