Ban on gay sex overturned in India

Gay rights activists in India are heralding a new court ruling that overturns a colonial-era ban on gay sex. Indian gay rights advocate Vinay Chandran tells host Lisa Mullins that India’s long history of acceptance of gays has been suppressed.
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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Gay rights advocates are celebrating in India, that’s because a court in New Delhi issued a landmark decision today. The court decriminalized consensual gay sex. And it ruled that a colonial-era law, known as section 377, that banned gay sex is unconstitutional. This is the first ruling of its kind in India, a country where homosexuals still face widespread discrimination. Members of India’s gay community are hailing this decision as a historic step. Vinay Chandran runs Svabhava. Svabhava is a counseling group for gays and lesbians in Bangalore. After the ruling today, many homosexuals came to celebrate on Vinay’s balcony well into the night.

VINAY CHANDRAN: We’ve been celebrating. So people are refusing to leave my office, and I’m waiting to lock up, because I think everybody wants to have a party considering the change in the law. So, that’s where I am.

LISA MULLINS: The people who are celebrating with you there, what is that they’re celebrating? Is it they feel as though their lifestyle can change, can be more open? Is it they feel that they won’t be subject to discrimination even though it has not been a crime to be homosexual in India?

VINAY CHANDRAN: I think it’s a mix of honesties. Considering how ultra evasive this notion of homosexual as a sinner, as a criminal, as somebody who’s mentally challenged, all of these have been. And, I mean, just today I got a case from a young in his mid to late 20′s who was talking about being harassed by a particular police station over here because they were asking him for about 25 thousand rupees as blackmail charges or else they put him into prison and book a case under section 377. And I put him in touch with a lawyer to be able to deal with that, but this is the kind of fear that section 377 has been put to use for. That really, in 149 years it’s never been used as anything more than just a tool for extortion and blackmail of homosexual and transgender people. And perhaps this celebration is really, you know, a coming out of, an therefore symbolic that I’m no longer a criminal in the society that I pay to keep up, that I am productive in, that I pay taxes for.

LISA MULLINS: Homosexuals in the United States face legal challenges in many areas that are rooted in our past. And I wonder if you can tell us about the origins of this law in colonial era India, and also the history of homosexuality throughout the centuries in India.

VINAY CHANDRAN: Well, there is this perception that homosexuality was never part of Indian culture. But the perception is wrong because if one takes, for instance, the same as example of Kama Sutra, which is really what a lot of non-Indians recognize as being very Indian. And this written way back in the 10th and 11th centuries, you see that there are chapters in that which dedicated itself to looking at same sex sexual pleasure. And we’re talking about a thousand years ago. So, there is feeling that it wasn’t homosexuality, that was the western import as a lot of the governments there. And a lot of religious people keep saying, it’s really, it’s homophobia, and the anti homosexual traditions of the law that were the western in import.

LISA MULLINS: You know, there are those who even backed the ruling, supported the ruling that decriminalizes consensual gay sex, who are still very concerned about the impact on Indian culture, family culture there. I wanna quote now, Doctor Babu Joseph, this is a spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Church in Delhi, who told the BBC that the attempt by gay rights activists, he says, is to redefine the very concept of family, and he thinks that’s very damaging for society against the very order of nature. He says, wherein we say man and woman are complementary to each other, and they found families, they gave birth for generations of people, and sustain society. Do you understand that concern?

VINAY CHANDRAN: I don’t share that sentiment. I think it’s improved in various contexts across the world that the notion of family has changed over the past five thousand years of recorded history. There is no universal notion of family, there is the perception that it has to be like this, but we all know that it doesn’t work like that. And I don’t think families are going to get destroyed just because two men fall in love, or two women fall in love.

LISA MULLINS: Vinay, thank you.

VINAY CHANDRAN: Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

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