Aadhi translated by Shilpa Parthan

Aadhi (any pronoun) is a PhD student in Malayalam at the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala. Their research is focussed on developing queer readings of the literary canon considered central to the shaping of modernity in the Malayalam language. For the past two years, they have been engaged in legal action against their educational institution for casteist and queerphobic discrimination, also writing publicly about such issues in higher education. They frequently write and speak in public about the intersectionality of caste and queer identities in India, and the hijacking of the queer movement by India’s Hindu ethnonationalist regime. In 2022, they published their first collection of poetry, Pennappan [a derogatory term for feminine people perceived as men].

Shilpa Parthan (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her work looks at trans political mobilisations at a subnational level in India, focussing on the southwestern Indian state of Kerala, arguing that regional trajectories of trans and queer welfare politics draw from intersectional political milieus around caste, indigeneity, and feminisms. Her work has been published in TSQ, and she is part of the editorial team at Ala [Wave], an English-Malayalam blog on Kerala studies.