“I am what I am, so take me as I am”, resonates across the new ‘Rainbow India’. The strapping of human society based on sexuality was torn down and a new colourful shawl embellishing diversity was draped on India by the Supreme Court yesterday. It would be apposite to call the decriminalising of homosexuality a truly historic one. The judgement sounded a death knell to the saga of discrimination and inhumane oppression of the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, and Queer population of India. Their story has been a pathetic narrative of hiding, darkness, shame, and torture. Section 377 of the IPC criminalizes sexual acts considered ‘against the order of nature’. A product of Macaulay’s schizophrenic colonial literature, it has lived a great number of years to cause much displeasure. Independent India, promising liberty and equality did no great deed to cut this crass misnomer. Instead, this harrowing Victorian Era law was dutifully followed by the new rulers.
“Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights”
-Hillary Clinton
For over a century this has not been the case in India. The Victorian era legacy of herding homosexuals as criminals and mentally unstable continued in the ‘Libertarian’ era. Several lives were trapped in the dilemma of faking an identity in society and living as someone else within. The stigma regarding the acceptance of LGBTQ can be sensed from the multifarious attempts to deny them a rightful place in society. Stories of people committing suicide after their “PRIVATE” affair was objected to by society was commonplace. India though boasting of diversity and inclusion and strict adherence to a representative Constitution was still unfit for even discussions about certain people. This is a sharp contradiction to pre-colonial India. Transgender and eunuchs hold a much-respected position in pre-colonial history. Even a gleaning look about pre-colonial India indicates their much-revered position as advisors in Royal courts. The ancient myths also tell about their existence and respected position in society. Ramayana narrates how Rama on returning to Ayodhya was moved by the gesture of the ‘Hijras’ waiting for him at the outskirts blessed them. Arjuna, the much-famed warrior of Mahabharata donned the identity of a woman during exile. Nevertheless, the death of the invincible Bhisma of Mahabharata occurred at the hands of Shikhandi, a transgender. But the chest-thumping conservative patriarchy which regularly cavorts about a ‘Golden Age’ disingenuously denied the validity of all these.
The last time the communities of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian joined hands to oppose happened in 2013, a petition to criminalise homosexuality, restore the Sec 377. Such virility and fraternity were not displayed even during Independence. Malady festers in the body cells and vice runs in the blood veins of all these bigots. Bigots are Bigots, irrespective of religion. The Supreme Court then mulishly castrated the populist sentiments and overturned the landmark Delhi High Court judgement of striking down Sec. 377. The Supreme Court then restored the Sec. 377, called the LGBTQ community a ‘minuscule minority’ and their acts as ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature. This was a far cry from the ethos of the Constitution of standing for minority and providing the right to liberty.
In a sense calling LGBTQ a ‘minuscule minority’ and their private engagements as ‘against the order of nature is against the order of humanity. And in a more liberalised view, a crude joke as the entire human population which once lived as a minority has killed other species, cleared natural environment, and procreated in geometric progression to sit as a majority. Wasn’t human civilisation itself ‘an act against the order of nature?’ To remark more sensibility, homosexuality is documented in 1500 species and is not unique to human beings. This unmasks the prejudice and undocumented justifications against the LGBTQ community. And to reason in a more humanistic sense, isn’t consensual sex between two adults in their right sense a private affair? And does the Law and Government deem it correct to dictate what is right sex and wrong sex? This belies the theory of every Individual having a right to construct one’s life as guaranteed by our constitution. Freedom to the LGBTQ community is not ‘Love at Will’, it is ‘Love at your own Will’. Love is genderless and cannot be constrained and restricted by any rule book. It is a good time that our Supreme Court has preached this gospel of truth.
It is worth reprising some of the statements of the erudite Supreme Court Justices:
Justice Indu Malhotra: History owes an apology to members of this community and their families, for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism they suffered.
Justice D.Y.Chandrachud: What is the order of nature? The state cannot decide the boundaries between what is permissible or not.
Chief Justice Dipak Misra: What nature gives is natural. That is called nature within.
These pithy lines have opened a window of joy and opportunity to the LGBTQ. But still, a lot hinges on the people of India to follow the ideas behind the judgement in letter and spirit. The people have to wake up from the deep slumber of insensitivity based on irrationality to a state of awareness of human conscience based on rationality. It is high time before the Indian Society comes out of their disinterest in rational knowledge and accept the truth which has been plangently knocking at the doors of our civilisation. The prescient words of Rabindranath Tagore will be apposite to the current situation:
‘The ideal of Human Civilisation does not lie in the isolation of Independence, but in the brotherhood of inter-dependence of Individuals as well as nations in all spheres of activity thought and activity’