Dr Ketki Ranade, author of Growing Up Gay in Urban India – A Critical Psychosocial Perspective

In developmental psychology or childhood studies literature, particularly research on childhood and child rights in India, the lesbian, gay or queer child is invisible. There is the normative and universal narrative of childhood – the child within the family unit, innocent and uncorrupted by socity, cared for by the mother in the domestic, private domain. This child is an adjunct of the heteronormative family and their identity is subsumed within that of the family and their ethnic community. In contrast to this normative/ read as ‘normal’ child are the narratives of the ‘other’ children; those outside of the family unit and in need of state intervention, protection, objects of state welfare (Balakrishnan 2011). Multiple identities have been ascribed to such ‘deviant’ children within development literature and state policy.

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