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'I Try to Capture the Vulnerability of Lovers During Sex'

Bullied in school for being queer, this artist now posts pictures of naked Indian gay men.
Photo: Pulkit Mogha

Pulkit Mogha, 25, remembers the moment when he realised he was attracted to boys. He was 12 or 13 years old, reading Roald Dahl’s Boy and Going Solo, when he figured, “I was attracted to young Dahl.”

In school where “you are supposed to follow gender stereotypes”, he was bullied and called names; a distraught enough experience for any school boy, queer or not. In the school computer lab, through hidden searches on the internet after class, he stumbled upon gay porn, and found “other queer people in fake Facebook profiles.”

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Artist Pulkit Mogha dreams of a world of 'liberated contrasts' where censorship no longer exists.

Today, Mogha, living in “right-extremist dystopia” says he wants to imagine a “liberated contrast.” A place where nothing is censored. Nothing is taboo. Where queer people can be queer with no fear of retaliation or stigma. Having been bullied in school, he wanted to rebel. And that’s when Instagram became the laboratory for his plans.

Up Close and Personal: Pulkit Mogha's photo series on 'queer bedrooms in the city'. Image: Instagram

Mogha studied to become an architect, at School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi. He has since moved into policy and research, and currently works as a research associate with a Goa-based think tank. He has always been interested, he says, in gender and sexuality. He was also actively involved in QueerCampus, one of the few safe spaces for queer folks in its time (2011-2013). Mogha also takes photographs of Indian men on the side.

Right now, he is working on a photo series on “queer bedrooms in the city”, linking gay individuals and their private spaces to the city through their neighbourhoods. “You would expect this to be difficult, to convince people to let me inside their bedrooms to shoot, but it started with acquaintances initially. Then when I started posting pictures, it became something akin to activism and more people got in touch with me. They had never done anything like this before,” Mogha tells VICE.

His initial pictures were something like a close-up of a hairy thigh, he says. Then the pictures became more brazen. “I try to capture the vulnerability of lovers.” His Instagram account @SkintypeIndia was born from that project. “It was an attempt to channel the frustration—The first post was on January 8, 2018.” Each post, each picture has a Hindu name. And there is a reason behind that. Mogha says, “In this country, Hindu agenda runs strong. I want to link the queer bodies to that Indianness. I want to make sure that people know that queer presence is around, that it exists.” The bio of this account reads: “Pushing the homosexual agenda on pure, saffron minds”.

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Mogha uses 'very Hindu names' to caption his photos of queer Indian men. This image is captioned 'Shyama'. Image: Instagram

The latest post on the account is dated February 26 and it is a picture of an Instagram notification: “This post was reported”. The caption reads, “Thank you everyone that followed my posts here. This was mostly a project that came from my anger towards Right wing extremism in my country, India. I wanted to imagine an extreme left though (sic) details from my photos. The names in these posts don't denote the person in the photos but are important names inspired from the history of an extreme Hindu right-wing group RSS. I won't be posting here until more frustration brings me back. You can find me on my blog which will serve as my artist's page. @sanskari.queer

Mogha also runs two other Instagram accounts. @pulkitxmogha (his personal one) and @sanskari.queer (his artist account). These accounts are all about gay men, their “queer bodies” and “vulnerability.”

He says, “It is an act of rebellion.”

Mogha started experimenting with photography with his ex-partner “to capture personal moments.” “I posted some of those photos, keeping them mysterious [by zooming out the identifying details], on my initial Instagram feed @pulkitmogha,” he tells me. But that Instagram page was reported and taken down during Christmas last year.

"There are not many online spaces where South Asian male sexuality is a subject of discussion. I am trying to challenge that in my small way." Image: Instagram

Because of his pictures, Mogha has also had to face homophobic slurs and has been beaten up by people who took offence to his photos. In September 2016, at Saket Metro station, he met a man (his follower on Instagram) who started throwing punches at him. “I had posted an Instagram story (that had his location) and this man messaged me that he is nearby and that we should meet. I didn’t think twice because this was in an entirely public space and his past messages had all been well-meaning.” All along, the man had been voicing support for Mogha’s work on Instagram. “When I walked up to him opposite metro station, my ‘hi’ was met with punches from his end and soon his friend joined in out of nowhere and pushed me to the ground. Another man joined him and they started kicking me. They called me names, homophobic slurs.” There was a crowd of people on the other side of the road watching while they kept at it, and a police van was in view. “I was quite shaken up.”

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After that incident, Mogha tells me he stopped posting pictures for a while on his account. He also had to move homes from Saket to Green Park in South Delhi.

It was around the same time, when his first page was also taken down.

It’s not the first time his posts and accounts have been reported and taken down by Instagram. Mogha says, “Me and other POC artists have often seen online platforms like Instagram report and take down photos we post within their guidelines, while it allows bare white bodies in the same compositions.” He says, “This inherent bias is conditioned everywhere. A white body is seen as art but a brown body has to prove itself worthy of being art.”

Pulkit Mogha says his Instagram is where he wants to celebrate 'our desires and struggles.' Image: Instagram

He adds, “This country is not sex-positive. But I am.” He created a new personal page in January 2017. Through his photographs on other accounts that he now runs, Mogha says, he is trying to explore ideas of male sexuality in India.

His personal account now has a bio in Spanish “because I worry it might be reported again and taken down. Spanish, in the hope that an unsuspecting right-extreme audience might be fooled into believing that I am not from India and keep at bay.”

Follow Maroosha Muzaffar on Twitter .