Indian Drag King Bidisha Mohanta Upends Gender Norms

This piece was originally published in Rebel Girls’ Boundless magazine on 20th December 2019. Cover image is designed by Elisa Macellari .

There is a photograph of a woman flinging a pale-colored shirt in absolute abandonment, displaying her naked torso and bound breasts. She is wearing a white dhoti. Her hair is a classic undercut swipe. A tuft of curl that mimics the anatomy of a wave, rests on the crown of her head. Her arms are sinewy; shoulders broad, armpits unshaved. The woman’s kohl eyes gaze resolutely into the distance. 

The photograph, piercingly intimate and poignant, is of Bidisha Mohanta. She belongs to a small, almost invisible, coterie of young, queer women who are exploring drag in India. The photograph’s caption reads, “We were all born women, if you had to take a look at our biological sex. Who we are today is not what we chose to be, but what we were always meant to be…We are women if we want to be, we are men if that’s what we feel we are, we are warriors.”

Bidisha. Photo by Ayu Bhagat.

Mohanta (who goes by the stage name, Bidishah) has an uncompromising bravura. A year ago, at 21, she gave her first drag performance at an all-inclusive nightclub called Kitty Su in New Delhi. Among a parade of flamboyant drag queens—men dressed as women, who perform in vibrant costumes, tight corsets and beehive wigs—performing that night, she was the solitary drag king. This imbalance echoes the situation pan-India, where kings (women performing as men) have largely remained absent from conversations involving the art form and quietly exist at the margins of a historically marginalized subculture. 

The Desi Drag Kings pose in Goa, India. Photo courtesy of Bidisha Mohanta.

The Kings’ cavalcade

Mohanta established Desi Drag Kings in June 2018, a home-grown tribe of women who are putting an Indian spin on drag in photoshoots and, occasionally, on stage. Desi means indigenous in the Indian language and while drag kings are commonly associated with multi-hued tuxedos, poppy bowties, and shiny shoes, the Indian kings strut in dhotis (an unstitched men’s garment knotted at the waist), kurtas (knee-length shirts), turbans (headwear), and juttis (footwear). There is a powerful twofold rebelliousness at play in Desis’ dress, one which bends gender and challenges the notion of clothing that is universally associated with kings. 

India has had an abraded history in relation to LGBTQ rights, where homosexuality is still frowned upon. It was only on Sept. 6, 2018 that the country, in a landmark move, decriminalized same-sex relationships. It would be obvious, then, why conversations around drag rarely exist. In India, drag is often considered to be a cheap source of entertainment, since queer and non-binary individuals still face severe criticism and are not accepted in certain parts of society. 

However, in the Indian pantheon of gods and goddesses, Ardhanarishvara is an androgynous Hindu deity who is half-male (god Shiva) and half-female (goddess Parvati). In colonial India, some male actors played female parts, since women were not allowed to act on stage or in films because it reflected poorly on their moral character. In 1913, Anna Hari Salunke became the first female impersonator in Indian cinema, starring in the country’s first full-length feature film, Raja Harishchandra. 

There have also been accounts of Indian actresses performing male roles. “Female impersonation continued well into the 1930s on the stages of western India, whereas in Bengal, actresses replaced boys and men in the 1870s,” wrote University of Texas history professor Kathryn Hansen. The Desi Drag Kings continue India’s tradition of gender-bending performance, though outside of the world of traditional film and theatre at niche LGBT clubs. 

Mohanta reasons that society is generally been more accepting of femininity as  spectacle. “Drag queens are more popular because femininity in the entertainment industry has always been really celebrated. Often, also objectified and hypersexualized.” Women who embrace masculinity are looked at as a threat, she said. “If a woman is a tomboy or is proud and vocal, people feel uncomfortable.”

Bidishah in drag at Kitty Ko, Bangalore. Photo courtesy of Bidisha Mohanta.

Coming into her own

Doing drag was a precocious move for Mohanta, who was born in the small town of Sodepur, outside of Kolkata. “It was very difficult for me when I was growing up because there was no one around me whom I could relate to,” she said. “There was no one who was like me. I always knew my sexual orientation…but I thought I was the only one.” 

Mohanta was a reticent child, but singing offered refuge. It was only when she decided to pursue music abroad at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore that she was surrounded by creative people and things swerved in a different direction. “That’s when I began exploring myself—who I was, who I wanted to be, my sexuality—everything,” she explained. 

At the institute, Mohanta met her then-girlfriend, Pauline Perrin, a French fashion design student who encouraged her to start the Desi Drag Kings project. “I am personally captivated by Indian ethnic wear, with its saturated colors, shiny textures and a sense of majesty,” Perrin said. “India has a long tradition of gender-bending culture, but it isn’t affiliated with the modern image of queerness. Such a beautiful heritage should be kept alive by all people, including modern and queer. For that reason, it was crucial for us to bring this project to life.” 

The Desi Drag Kings did their first photoshoot (on a shoestring budget) in Goa, a small Indian state known for its nightlife and beguiling beaches. “We literally roamed about the streets to find scenic locations where we could shoot,” Mohanta recalled. “We had our costumes; our breasts were bound, I had my shirt unbuttoned, my jacket was unzipped, we had facial hair. That was a lot of fun.”

Desi Drag King Teenasai Balamu. Photo courtesy of Pauline Perrin.

Perrin remembered how Mohanta appeared the first time she embraced her drag persona, which altered her body language. “Bidisha is already very confident with her appearance as a masculine woman. Dressing her up as a man didn’t change her level of confidence, but it did change her attitude,” Perrin said. “I saw her inspecting herself in the mirror—even more than usual—large movements, flattened chest out, lower and louder voice. Bidisha in drag has a grandiose and theatrical masculinity.”

The group of five women got permission to shoot at an old colonial home but shortly after the photoshoot began, they were requested to wrap up quickly and leave the premises. “[The owners] perhaps thought that ‘something fishy’ was going on; that we didn’t seem ‘normal’ to them. But we took it in our stride—it is something that people [in India] don’t see every day. People get freaked out, so we can’t blame them,” said Mohanta.

Destabilizing “normal”

A young, emerging musician with a remarkable throw of voice, Mohanta feels that she would’ve been more “accepted” in music, if she had just let her hair grow beyond the rim of her ears, if she traded her pants for taffeta skirts, or if she sat demurely and kept her voice in check. “Even my dad comments at times at how short my hair is,” she said, laughing. “He says, ‘How will people accept you? Why will people want to come and listen to you sing?’ But, I don’t care if people don’t listen to me sing just because I have short hair, or because I am vocal about who I am.”

“Why should I compromise my self-expression? It won’t make me happy as an individual and my happiness matters.”

There is a strong, defiant sense of purpose in her voice. She wants to re-sculpt the narrative associated with the LGBTQ community. When Mohanta became a finalist on Season 8 of India’s Got Talent , she decided to come out on national television and give her community greater representation in the media. She then released a music video—perhaps one of the first in India—depicting a woman expressing her love to another woman. 

The drag universe has its own politics, wherein men’s performances as women (queens) are favored over women performing in drag (kings). These subcultural politics are reinforced by mainstream Indian society, which disavows masculine women and crossdressing but has historically, culturally, and legally made allowances for men’s sexual performativity (for instance, “hijras” or eunuchs). Being a queer, female performer, therefore, brings an extra layer of challenge.

“I’ve seen so many men feeling threatened by my masculinity,” Mohanta said, adding that she wants to dispel such feelings through drag. “I want to challenge those insecurities because playing around with gender can definitely confuse a lot of people, but from this confusion you can learn a lot about yourself and social conditioning.”

Although drag is performance art, it isn’t mainstream in India yet, and thrives exclusively in the private spaces of an eclipsed community. Sakshi Juneja, co-founder of the Gaysi Family, a popular online platform for the queer South Asian community, feels that drag offers so much to the queer community. “Drag is a lot more than just putting across your feminine or masculine qualities. It is also about being rebellious. You feel very empowered, because you are doing something which is so frowned upon, which you would otherwise not do.”

Mohanta feels “liberated” and “powerful” when she is on stage, and believes drag has the potential to empower a lot of queer women if it’s given a chance by mainstream audience. “People need to see [more of] us in the media, so that they know that we exist and this is normal,” Mohanta said.

Currently, she is the only woman from the Desi Drag Kings performing on stage. Spaces that are supportive of the LGBTQ community are hard to come by and, as a result, auditions are difficult to land. And “in order to perform, each king needs to audition at venues like Kitty Su first,” she said. 

Since its inception, a few more women have approached Mohanta to become a part of Desi Drag Kings. However, it will take some time before the project gathers momentum as people slowly become more vocal about their idenities in an India where homosexuality is newly legalized.  

The future for the Desi Drag Kings seems promising though. “I want to bring the girls together for another photo shoot, definitely before the end of this year,” Mohanta said. “I also want to help more women explore drag through different methods; I want to teach them techniques of binding their breasts and so on.” 

Mohanta also intends to introduce Desi Drag Kings in her music videos to create a bolder representation of the drag king subculture.