Explained : Menaka Guruswamy and the Limits of Representation Politics and Its Impact

Mamata Banerjee being greeted by Menaka Guruswamy during a sit-in protest against the alleged arbitrary deletions from post-SIR electoral rolls in West Bengal, in Kolkata on March 6, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Manvender Vashist Lav/PTI

The All India Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) decision to nominate senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy for the Rajya Sabha was widely portrayed as a historic moment for progressive politics in India. With her election now confirmed, she has become the first person from the LGBTQ+ community to hold a seat in the Indian Parliament. However, beyond the celebratory headlines, her candidature warrants closer scrutiny.

Critical theorist Nancy Fraser discusses the recognition–redistribution dilemma in one of her seminal works. One of the key facets of her argument is that oppressed groups, including those defined by gender or race, suffer from both cultural misrecognition and economic maldistribution. She terms these “bivalent collectivities”.

Economic maldistribution stems from the political-economic structure in which certain forms of labour are undervalued and often unpaid. Even within the category of paid labour, there is a hierarchy that privileges labour performed by men over that performed by other genders. Cultural misrecognition, on the contrary, is rooted in social patterns of representation. Homophobia and sexism, for instance, lead to the ostracisation of oppressed genders. The vilification of Pride parades in Indian cities as a threat to “local culture” is a classic example.

Fraser argues that since these are two distinct forms of injustice, they require two different sets of solutions. However, liberal politics often privileges symbolic representation. As a corollary, redistribution claims tend to recede. Recognition thus becomes a tool weaponised by political parties to shrug off the burden of governance, specifically the responsibility of implementing targeted welfare policies for the upliftment of marginalised sections. The repercussions of this are particularly profound in India, where economic inequality remains historically high.

Fraser was later critiqued by Iris Young, who argued that this dichotomy is artificial and that “Fraser exaggerates the degree to which the politics of recognition retreats from economic justice”. The case of Menaka Guruswamy, however, raises specific contradictions that Young’s optimism may not fully cover.

Contradictions around the nomination

First, in 2023, her decision to represent the RSS in the Supreme Court drew widespread criticism. Appearing alongside Senior Advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, she opposed the Tamil Nadu government’s refusal to grant permission to the RSS to conduct route marches in the State. Justice V. Ramasubramanian, who was heading the two-judge Bench, was reportedly caught by surprise and remarked, “I thought you were appearing for the other side.”

It is no secret that the RSS and its affiliate organisations have expressed regressive views on homosexuality and actively opposed the plea to legalise same-sex marriages in India. A 2023 survey published by Samwardhini Nyas, an affiliate of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti (the women’s wing of the RSS), noted that many doctors and allied medical professionals believe that homosexuality is “a disorder” and that it will increase further in society if same-sex marriage is legalised.

Intersectionality has long been a principle within the queer liberation struggle. and the RSS and its affiliates have long been at the forefront of targeting minorities in India. The Centre for the Study of Organised Hate’s 2025 report notes that “RSS-affiliated VHP [Vishva Hindu Parishad]-Bajrang Dal have remained the most dominant organisers of hate speech events. Their activities show a steady and sustained increase over time, from 216 events in 2023 to 279 events in 2024, and rising further to 289 events in 2025.”

It is also worth noting that Guruswamy possesses significant social and economic capital. As one of the country’s leading advocates, she had the agency to decline a brief for an organisation whose core ideology stands in direct opposition to the queer liberation she represents.

In another instance, when the Telangana government decided to auction 400 acres of forested land adjacent to the University of Hyderabad for the construction of IT parks, Dr. Guruswamy’s role again proved controversial.

Students of the University of Hyderabad were at the forefront of a struggle to protect Kancha Gachibowli, one of Hyderabad’s last remaining urban forests and home to numerous bird, mammal, and reptile species. Several reports indicated that students were dragged, beaten, and forcefully pushed into police vans while protesting the arrival of bulldozers in the area.

Defending the State’s stance in the Telangana High Court, Guruswamy backed the government and submitted a preliminary report on behalf of the police, alleging that the case was being distorted through fake news which, she argued, was “being used to break up the social fabric”. She sided with the State against a grassroots environmental struggle led by students.

Optics of representation

Beyond the individual, one must also examine the Trinamool Congress, the party that nominated and successfully elected Guruswamy to the Rajya Sabha. Several critics have pointed out that the TMC has not done enough to improve the material conditions of the LGBTQ+ community in West Bengal despite being in power for multiple years. The State still lacks comprehensive, State-specific anti-discrimination policies governing private-sector hiring or housing for the LGBTQ+ community. Returning to Fraser, by nominating Guruswamy, the TMC’s politics appears overly reliant on the optics of representation while leaving questions of redistribution relatively untouched.

To be clear, this critique is not a personal indictment of Guruswamy. It is a reflection on the limitations of identitarian politics. Representation alone cannot be the end goal, especially in a country like India where caste and class location determine who gets recognised in the first place. If recognition does not lead to redistribution, the dilemma Fraser warned about remains unresolved, and justice remains out of reach. One can only hope that now that she sits in the Rajya Sabha, Guruswamy uses her position to narrow that gap.

Harsh Mamnani is a freelance writer.

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