How the Kama Sutra and colonial legacy still impact the sexuality of young Hindus today

When lawyer-turned-fashion designer Lokesh Kashyap came out to his parents as bisexual, he was met with two types of confusion.

His mother asked if Lokesh had “a problem having sex”, while his father thought it meant something else entirely.

“He confused it with me being trans[gender],” Lokesh recalls.

In the family’s homeland of India, there is a community known as hijras — people whose sex was assigned male at birth, but who identify as female or non-binary.

“That was the only concept of ‘queer’ I had in my life growing up,” says Lokesh.

India officially recognises transgender people, including hijras, as a