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This article, following the tenets of research review, analyses non-fictional, primarily, research and activism-oriented literatures produced in Bangla in the last three decades that inaugurated a knowledge paradigm catering to LGBIHTQ+ identities, politics and cultural expressions in Bengal. While assessing the  a priori  conditions that facilitated the emergence of these literatures, with a superior knowledge of what queer studies entails today, I shall retrospectively review the newsletters and little magazines in Bengali that made an appearance from the beginning of the 90s till about the middle of the 2000s – the formative years of the LGBIHTQ+ political discourses – opening conversations around queer lives within Bengali print cultures. In the last part of the article I shall focus on the works of two researchers in particular – Niloy Basu and Ajay Majumdar. The three books they co-authored –  Bharater Hijre Samaj/The Hijra Community of India  (1997; new edition 2020),  Purush Jokhon Jounokormi/When Men Are Sex Workers  (1999; new edition 2021), and  Samaprem/An Equal Love  (2005), and Niloy Basu’s recent monograph  Launda Dancer: Onyo Hijreder Bhinno Bhuban/Launda Dancer: The Other World of Other Hijras  (2020) – have played a crucial role in widening the world of queer lives, from a perspective never explored before in Bangla.  Samaprem , in particular, in its encyclopaedic expanse, now holds an important place in the arena of queer book culture in Bengal. However, all these books are also problematic when deconstructed painstakingly within the discursive field of contemporary queer theory. The article will assess and critique these four books, while making an attempt to understand their historical significance in writing and reinforcing the LGBTIHQ+ movement in Bengal.

Writing the LGBTIHQ+ movement in Bangla: emergence of queer epistemologies in Kolkata in the early days of queer political mobilizations