ABSTRACT
The year 2017 marked the 25th anniversary of the passing of activist Dominic D’Souza, who succumbed to AIDS-related complications briefly after being diagnosed as the first person in India to have become infected with HIV. On this anniversary, as in the past, D’Souza’s death was used as a platform for gay rights in India, not least because of the film My Brother… Nikhil (MBN; 2005), allegedly the first in India to depict a gay story. Yet D’Souza never claimed to be gay, and the film does not acknowledge the use of the activist’s life story in its credits. Using the director’s admission that MBN was nevertheless inspired by D’Souza’s life and legacy, this chapter examines it as a quasi-biopic that employs the struggles of the AIDS activist to champion the rights of middle-class gay men in India while failing to represent the larger political ramifications of AIDS advocacy. Alongside this, the essay also recoups the figure of D’Souza as a Goan person to consider what this could mean for the possibility of queer activism beyond the limitations of nationalism.
