Ok, I have stayed silent for long... for too long it seems. There has been a good number of blog posts in GA and thankfully all of them are in favour of the LGBT community of India. This was expected. GA is a safe space and a close community of great solidarity. In today's hateful cyberspace, this is a truly unique oasis of love. I am really thankful for GA. But, regarding this matter, there has been some amount of confusion and misinformation as well. I want to target those and clear the air a bit.

First of all, homosexuality is not criminalised in India. It never was. It never will be. All citizens of India are provided equal rights and protection under the constitution. There is however a law introduced by the British that talks about the legal ramifications of the so called "unnatural sexual offenses". IPC s377 is concerned with sexual intercourse which implies penile penetration (except in the case of lesbianism where there is no penetration obviously and hence the act is termed "bodily congress") in routes other than the vaginal. This is applicable for anal and oral intercourse in both homosexual and heterosexual situations. There is no mention of sexual orientation in the law. However, it is clearly understandable that this law can easily be used to incriminate people of queer identity. The same section talks about bestiality. The punishments are of various degrees from life imprisonment to 10 years in prison to 3 years in prison with or without fine. And you need medical evidence to prove the offense (as unfortunate as as this is, I, as a Doctor, was trained in this). But, most importantly although rarely used, this is the one and only law that protects male rape victims. If this section is simply writ down without amendment or insertion of another law for the matter, there will be no law against male rape in IPC. Generally the misinformed police of India use these laws as threats to extort money from queer couples in public. This and the law against public indecency are a perpetual nightmare for couples of any orientation and a regular fund raiser for the Indian police force. It is not like they get to enjoy the bribe. the money is fed into the political system and everyone gets a share. This is an open secret in the subcontinent.

Secondly, although it was majorly the religious-right-wing-extremists who were the plaintiff in SC and the defendant of the Delhi High Court ruling, their focus of contention were not religion based. Such religion based contention would have fallen face first in Indian court where the concept of secularity must rule supreme, as per the constitution. Although, there is also a matter of religious freedom, it would not have worked here. The main discussion was thus focused on public health, specifically HIV/AIDS spread due to widespread sexual immorality if s377 is writ down. In Delhi High Court that was overruled due to lack of evidence and presence of evidence of the contrary. WHO provided some significant statistics in this matter. Details of the ruling are available on public domain if you wanna read the long pdf. http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs1.aspx?filename=41070

Lastly, SC did not overrule Delhi High Court's ruling in order to define sexual morality and to uphold an unused outdated law. They only defined the power of a lower court to suggest for such writ down. And passed the ball to parliament to do the honours. Now if only the parliament passes the bill in its current session, this law can be writ down. In any case, a clear 2/3 rd majority in upper house is needed to effect the writ down.

Now, these are all technical facts. Let's see what is actually happening. The current coalition in power is somewhat similar to liberal socialists of the USA. Their main vote banks are the minorities, the Scheduled Caste, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. A significant proportion of these are composed of Muslims and Christians and Sikhs. So, they will not do anything to anger the religious leaders of these sects. And the religious right wing nationalist coalition, who is a strong opponent to the said coalition, is tight with these people. After all, in India the masses sway to religious fervor. They will put their vote where these leaders ask them to. This is because the general lack of education and unthinkable poverty makes them more vulnerable to God's people's council (yes just like in the middle ages). Although the current government has done much for the poor and the less fortunate, the staggering population makes it impossible to reach all. There is still much to be done. Unless the level of education is increased beyond a certain benchmark, social issues like homosexuality will never be properly understood by the masses. After all, if you are concerned about how to feed your son and daughter the next day, you can hardly be interested in what the upperclassmen of the metropolis are talking about in their comfortable drawing rooms. Still this is an issue that needs to be addressed, because globalization has hit India hard and these issues need to be discussed if India is to step into the new millennium.

India is a country of apparent contradictions. It is hard to understand things in a linear view. People in general are not completely against homosexuality; Especially in the metro cities, they are quite supportive. Homosexuality in men are more accepted than in women. Honour killings and rapes of LGBT are still a regular thing albeit under-reported. And the status of security of women are in all time low. But, that doesn't mean women are suppressed. For an upper-middle-class educated Bengali household my family is extremely supportive of my choices. I have seen the same with a number of other families. Then, there are those who appear liberal superficially but are deeply bigoted in heart. My religious Muslim friends are okay with my choices even if they are not okay with homosexuality. They see it as a personal choice and leave it there. Yet some of my Hindu associates find homosexuality abhorring and are all too vocal of their disgust, sometimes beyond the border of civility. This is weird since Hinduism has no moral code against Homosexuality while Islam does. Also there is a strong connection between history of childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality in the popular psyche.

s377 is making rounds in the media circus at the moment. The Central government (federal gov) has come out in support of the writ down. And so has a good number of politicians and ministers. However, with elections next year it is highly unlikely that a bill will be passed. Then again, Indian politics is big on minority games and if LGBT are solidified into a minority and a significant vote bank, then things will start changing really fast. Everybody wants the pink vote. Ultimately next year when the other coalition comes to power (as they most expectedly will, since the current rulers have sent the economy to dumps and the other party is considerably better at managing the economy), the prosecution of the LGBT will reach record high. Homosexuality is after all the result of western influence in Indian society, as per these bigots, therefore most ardently to be battled and the society to be purified back to its ancient glory. Trial by fire...

The best you can do for us now is, pray and wish us luck.