In 1991,Henri Lefebvre argued that space is not neutral and is, instead, a social product that is ‘political and strategic’. A glaring example of this can be seen in Hansal Mehta’s 2015 film, Aligarh. The movie’s plot borrows from the life and suspension of a Marathi professor from Aligarh Muslim University after a sting operation discovered him having consensual sexual intercourse with a ricksha-wala. Functionally and legally, a sting operation is referred to as a deceitful exercise carried out to catch someone committing a crime. Though the film is based in the wake of the decriminalisation of LGBTQ+ communities, it is evident that the exercise wasn’t accompanied by destigmatisation.

The movie begins in the late hours of a North Indian winter night, in the silence that comes when even the loyal neighbourhood dogs retreat to rest. One cannot help but wonder – what kind of subjects operate in the shadows of ‘respectable’ society? What forces compel them to?

Borrowing from Halberstam’s arguments about queer subjects and the “ways they live (deliberately, accidentally, or of necessity) during the hours when others sleep and in the spaces (physical, metaphysical, and economic) that others have abandoned…”, one can begin to understand the use of this particular time and space by our protagonist, Professor Ramchandra Siras (played by Manoj Bajpayee). In fact, to borrow words from Apurva Asrani’s (who also is the story and screenplay writer of the film) poem “O Beloved Moon” a tribute to Professor Siras.

“…we will dance as shadows dance, to the songs of nightingales. We will touch as shadows touch, becoming one in the midnight sun. Oh beloved moon, fear not the dawn that separates us, for we will meet again, when the world goes to sleep.“

Operating with an insolence that could only be fueled by heteronormative moral policing, six men break into his house at night with a camera and a stick. They record Siras and his partner’s intimate moments and beat up his partner, whose caste location make him an ‘easier’ victim. After the sting operation meant to ‘expose’ him, Siras becomes justifiably paranoid and retreats entirely into the privacy of his house, partly perhaps to save face and possibly as an attempt to reclaim his private space that had been so brutally invaded earlier. Privacy or private space, as argued by Lidia Sciama, provides broader connotations for both communities and individuals. For instance, while women have been historically exiled to the private realm, their male counterparts can access the freedom and benefits the public space confers upon them. Similarly, while some persons are able to enjoy the privileges of living, in every sense of the way, in the public realm, some have to retreat to the private. It is important to note that while physical and metaphysical space has historically been successful in offering some solace to those who operate outside of heteronormative boundaries, it has also served as the stage of continual attack and erasure. As such, space, especially queer space, is closely linked with the subjects that inhabit it and perform in a myriad of ways to make and remake this space. It has been argued that the queer use of space and time emerges in sharp contrast to the existing heterosexual and family structures. Borrowing from Halberstam’s 2005 book, In a Queer Time and Place, one could even say that queerness itself and not just queer space can be defined by its opposition to traditional temporal imperatives. It, therefore, becomes critical to evaluate and understand such metaphysical interactions to be able to preface our understanding of how different bodies-especially those that exist on the peripheries of respectability, is constructed.

For instance, when his friend, Sridharan (K. R. Parmeshwar), comes to visit, he warns Siras to stay away from the campus – inevitably revealing the societal sentiment that space is conditional. The university premises where the professor taught for more than two decades and chaired the Department of Modern Indian Languages was now out of bounds for someone who had been branded as deviant. A few scenes later, Sridharan even goes on to say that doing nothing was the best option since any more trouble would mean that the little space Siras might get would be lost as well (‘society main jagah nahi milegi‘). Despite the bleakness in his statement, it does set the tone for the rest of the film. As an attempt at erasing Siras and, by extension, his queer identity, he was not only removed from the university space, but his name was also scratched off from the board that listed the chairpersons of the Department. This simple yet profound act underscores what Michel Foucault claimed more than two decades ago; homosexuality looms as a threat not as a ‘way of having sex’ but as a ‘way of life’.

However, despite his ill-treatment at the hands of the university administration, Siras did not waver for a moment in the pride he felt for a space he continued to call his, long after it had banished him. Paranoid, disturbed and uncomfortable due to the predicament he found himself in after the incident, Siras is uneasy in almost all settings, even in his own house. During a small queer party that a young lawyer takes Siras to, one can see him physically and metaphorically unclench. He was made to feel comfortable, cared for and accepted without conditions. For a rare moment, our protagonist seems to have found a space of one’s own.

Eventually, the story of his suspension reaches the desk of journalist Deepu Sebastian (Rajkumar Rao), who was the first to ask how anyone could invade Siras’ personal space without his permission. Over the course of the film, he repeatedly exclaims that the case was not about the professor being gay or straight but about six men entering his house without his consent. Interestingly, Deepu, who is a new tenant in a new city, is also shown to grapple with the lack of proper privacy and the invasion of his space. The consequent evolution of Deepu and Siras’ on-screen friendship is endearing, to say the least. However, despite the former’s attempts at uncovering the dark underbelly of the academic institution and the societal structures which not only permit but also encourage the invasion of Siras’ space, the professor is only given seven days to move out of his university-sanctioned housing after his ‘obscene’, ‘immoral’ and ‘disgusting’ conduct as it was described. Siras’ eventual move to a newer space is also indicative of the deterioration in his standard of living. When asked to vacate the new house after a few weeks as well, he becomes tired and desperate and only has one simple condition for the final move; that he would not be made to leave during the lease period. These transitions are heartbreaking and denote the evident change in his immediate spaces: from living in a reasonably respectable area to a rather cramped house where personal safety was of grave concern. The conditionality of space compels Siras to resign himself to whatever was made available for someone like him. In a later scene, he even tells Deepu he plans to move to America, a place that would accept “mere jaise log” (people like me).

He seems acutely and achingly aware of his outsider status in the community he inhabits. From being a Marathi professor in a majority Urdu-speaking city to living alone in a colony of couples, Siras was already the ‘other’ even before his sexuality was thrown into the mix. He believed that while speaking a particular language or being seemingly single could not provide grounds for removing him from his post, his queer identity -presented as morally questionable – was being employed to displace him. His distaste for this spills beyond the apparent injustice and to his general dislike for labels and defining a person using just one part of their identity. In several instances during the course of the film, Siras’ face takes on an immediate expression of annoyance laced with bewilderment when asked about him being gay or having a ‘lover’. He tells his new friend Deepu that he has a problem with this constant need to define and label love. In a beautiful moment shared between the two, Siras tells Deepu to instead search for true poetry and love in the silences and pauses between words. From his lawyer correcting him, “It’s “I am gay”, not “I am A gay.”” to his general dislike for being categorised in this manner, it is abundantly clear that Siras did not employ the word to understand himself or his desire. In fact, in one scene, he even asks how his feelings could be confined within a three-letter word when in fact, it was more profound and abstract – it was an uncontrollable urge. Dominant frameworks have successfully framed the gender and sexuality discourse into labels and established boundaries. Such categorisations, though helpful to some, have more often than not been successful in defining what is permissible and what has to be kept outside the mainstream space occupied by heteronormative ideals. Passed down from colonial practices for governing the Indian citizenry, such classificatory practices have made their way into modern knowledge systems and are more typically employed to label the transgressors – the ones that must be kept outside the heteronormative spaces since their very existence threatens to destabilise family and community structures. As a case in point, once Siras’ queer identity is exposed, he is immediately removed from the University space since his ‘immoral conduct violated not just the University but the moral code of his employers’. Being removed from the material space also came with broader implications; no longer a senior professor, with a part of his identity exposed without his permission, his life became a matter of public discourse, a reason to invade his personhood and dignity even while in court. He was asked questions such as “What else did you do? Did you pay him for sex? How were you still sexually active or getting erections at this age? Which one of you was the fucker in the relationship?”

While the act itself seemed to have shocked society, the fact that he was engaged with a lower-caste Muslim seemed to make it all the more scandalous. In questions like, “You are such a senior professor; how could you mingle with someone like him? What kind of friendship is this?” one can see deep-rooted casteist notions surface.

Siras eventually wins the legal case, with his suspension revoked, he celebrated the victory alone in a dingy house with plans to leave for a place which might be more accepting of him. Professor Ramachandra Siras was allegedly murdered in this same desolate house, a stinger in the movie that snatches away at the momentary sigh of relief the audience might have let out after worrying about Siras’ fate for the two hours of its screen time.

Even though it has been close to a decade since its release, the film’s message is as poignant as ever. From online spaces to their own homes, queer people have been subjected to widespread violence, which might manifest in different ways but exist nonetheless. Aligarh is one of the finer films to have emerged in Indian cinema in the past decade. It paints several sombre vignettes of how space, something we take for granted on most days, is directly proportional to respectability and is not as neutral as it might seem on the surface.