Good riddance to colonial rubbish

Good riddance to colonial rubbish

State must back legal norm to change society’s.

We welcome the unanimous verdict of a five-member Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, articulated through four separate judgments, however, that homosexuality is not a crime but a natural state that society must respect as part of the right to liberty and to live with dignity guaranteed by the Constitution. This removes the legal hurdle to large numbers of Indians who belong to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community to seeking a life of equality with other members of society. However, social mores do not change, merely because the law has expunged an aberrant portion from its body. For that, the state must be prepared to fully enforce the judgment, as conservative elements oppose change to social norms relating to sexuality.

“We would have appreciated a categorical statement of position by the government, setting out its views on the validity of Section 377,” says Justice Chandrachud in his judgment. That would have been ideal. But the government did the next best thing, leave it to the court to decide, without opposing decriminalisation of consensual sex between adults, whatever its nature. Its pragmatism is explained by the observation of the ruling party’s ideological parent, the RSS, following the verdict, that homosexuality is not natural. Nor have political parties come forward to welcome the judgment, except for Congress and the Left. The reluctance of the political class to confront social conservatism in defence of liberty and equality points to the tough battle ahead for the LGBTQ community to translate their release from criminality into celebration of life on par with heterosexual men and women.

In fact, there is reason to celebrate the judgment as one more step forward in the national project of shedding the Victorian shroud of prudery that colonialism had forced on a culture that had produced the Kamasutra and the commingling of stone and sensuality at Khajuraho. That makes it all the more ironic that Justice Indu Malhotra should quote the current British premier to justify reading down Section 377.