How the UK-based newsletter ‘Shakti Khabar’ created ideas and communities among queer South Asians

Shakti [the first queer South Asian organisation in Britain] launched their newsletter Shakti Khabar (Shakti News) in 1989. We draw on the 17 issues of the newsletter published between 1989 and 1992, at the height of Shakti’s activity and activism. With a combined page count of well over two hundred pages (and well over 300 when combined with accompanying reports), Shakti’s publications contradict the myth that there is little or no material documenting the full range of political and cultural life and activism of queer South Asians in Britain in the 1980s. Collectively, the issues we looked at are held in the Camden Lesbian Centre and Black Lesbian Group (CLCBLG) Archive at Glasgow Women’s Library, Bishopsgate Institute (London) and the Bruce Castle Museum (Haringey Council, London).

We read Shakti Khabar in two ways: firstly, as Shakti’s own narrative act to fashion a queer South Asian identity from its location in Britain; and secondly, as part of a network of contradictory flows and transnational connections that contested what being queer and South Asian means. Despite the substantial interest in queer print culture, we were not able to find scholarly material that included considerations of Shakti Khabar. The return to black feminist print culture, especially from the 1980s, has...

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