QAMRA

The Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) is a physical multimedia archive of individual and collective narratives of the queer movement in India. The archive seeks to preserve and collect these memories in order to safeguard the rich and diverse histories of queer lives, reflect on how the past can offer insights to the future and to serve as a repository for activists and community members to use in sustaining and building the queer movement in India. The material includes legal documents, books, newspaper clippings, photographs, sound recordings, letters, personal memorabilia and moving images donated by different individuals and organisations.

Since 2020, QAMRA is an independent project located at the National Law School of India library, Bengaluru and hence is referred to as QAMRA Archival Project at NLSIU. QAMRA is responsible for raising its financial resources, while the University provides infrastructure. This association hopes to further the preservation and research outcomes from the holdings of the archive. Read more about our history here.

Vision and Mission

QAMRA intends to be a ‘living’ archive – not just to recreate nostalgia but giving meaning to this nostalgia, grief and memory into something present and active. The material in QAMRA is about the public history of the movement, but the focus is also on the private lives of individuals, of which there is very little existing documentation.

QAMRA aims to —

Collect, document and preserve multimedia archival material relating gender, sexuality and legal issues of queer lives in India.
All material shall be acquired by the archive free of cost from individuals, families, organisations and from the public domain for the purposes of education, research and awareness.
As a repository of narratives, its aim is to enable and further conversations around the history, present, and future of the Indian LGBTQIA+ community. Aid efforts in queer rights activism and advocacy, as well as acting as a resource base for students, educators, artists, and scholars working in the area of gender and sexuality.
As a primarily physical archive, be a space dedicated to practices and dialogues around the documentation and preservation of India’s contemporary queer history.

OUR COLLECTIONS

MAYA SHARMA AND THE INDIRA PATHAK COLLECTION

Learn more about our Collections here.

QAMRA EVENTS

Remembering Priya Thangarajah: A Queer Feminist Festschrift

Ten years ago, we lost Priya Thangarajah — an aspiring young lawyer and activist who had worked both in India and her native Sri Lanka, on issues of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, violence and human rights — when she took her life. Priya was a graduate of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, and Georgetown University, Washington DC, where she was also a Fulbright Scholar. To commemorate her life and work, this Human Rights Day, we will revisit three reports Priya authored during her lifetime. Specialists will offer contemporary reflections on the themes they cover, to create a festschrift, a selection of deliberations on her legacy as a scholar.

This will be a hybrid event, with the in-person component at the National Law School, and a virtual arm on Zoom.

When: Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 5pm onwards

Where: Ground FloorConference Hall, Training Centre, NLSIU Bengaluru

RSVP here!

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Watch the trailer from the T. Jayashree Collection at QAMRA!