Beyond the rainbow: queer activism, colonial legacies, and violence in Bangladesh

It is 2016, and the murders of Xulhaz Manan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, two prominent LGBTQ+ activists in Bangladesh, sent shockwaves across the country and beyond. Their deaths underscored the fraught entanglements of queer activism, religious extremism, and colonial legal legacies in South Asia. Mannan, the founder of Roopban, Bangladesh’s first LGBTQ+ magazine, and the organiser of the country’s inaugural Rainbow Rally, directly contested the enduring criminalisation of homosexuality under Section 377 of the British-era Penal Code. On the tenth anniversary of the killings, this article critically situates these murders within broader debates on LGBTQ+ rights, postcolonial governance, and the politics of sexuality in South Asia. Furthermore, it examines the paradox wherein the perpetrators, articulating their actions as a defence of cultural and religious values, are themselves implicated in a form of decolonial resistance.