Part of: In-Group Queer Languages Beyond the West (Panel session)
Abstract:
What does it mean to be a secret language? Who decides the conditions and limits of this secrecy, and who these secrets could be shared with? Does the language need to remain secret, consistently and eternally, to retain its value for its speech community? Can a queer language, nurtured and developed in secrecy, exist and thrive meaningfully, presumably in a slightly altered sociolinguistic context, when the shroud of secrecy is lifted?
In this paper, I reflect on these questions in the context of Ulti, a secret language spoken by the hijra-koti community in West Bengal. Drawing from observations during my research with the community, various discussions with and comments by hijras and kotis on the subject, and recent events involving the introduction of Ulti to mainstream society by certain members of the community, I explore the various undercurrents of personal security, economic benefit, emotional connection, assertion of in-group identity, and politics of visibility shaping this conversation. I also engage with questions of ethics, accountability, rights, permission and responsibility that necessarily follow any conversation on academic research and/or fictional work on secret queer languages.
As the prompt for this panel suggests, the sociopolitical context in which Ulti exists “elide(s) binary understandings of secrecy and visibility”. It exists in liminal spaces between the hijra-koti community and mainstream society, camouflaged structurally and used strategically such that even when it is “revealed” in a certain conversational context, it is not necessarily visible to the public. The nature and extent of the revelation is conditional, controlled, and dependant on the context and interlocutors, ensuring that even when it is spoken (about) in public platforms, Ulti retains a certain level of secrecy to protect the linguistic and embodied autonomy of its speakers.
References:
Nandi, Enakshi. 2024. Embedding Subversion and Gender Identity: ‘Ulti’, The Secret Language of the Hijra-Koti Community. New Delhi: Tulika Books.
Janata Speaks. (2025, February 23). ভাষা দিবসে উদযাপিত হল আঁধারের ভাষা আড়ালের ভাষা
উল্টি ভাষা | Language of Closet: Ulti #languageday. [Video]. YouTube. ভাষা দিবসে উদযাপিত
হল আঁধারের ভাষা আড়ালের ভাষা উল্টি ভাষা | Language of Closet: Ulti #languageday
