National and international human rights organizations are applying Martin Luther King’s principle of injustice anywhere being a threat to justice everywhere as a barometer to measure the Supreme Court order upholding the criminalization of homosexuality. Civil liberties organizations that do not specifically deal with the LGBT cause have swelled the ranks of those supporting queer rights.
Amnesty International India said the SC ruling marks a black day for freedom in India. “This decision is a body blow to people’s rights to equality, privacy and dignity. It is hard not to feel let down by this judgment, which has taken India back several years in its commitment to protect basic rights,” says G Ananthapadmanabhan, chief executive, Amnesty International India.
“This (the LGBT community) is a section of society that has been discriminated against, held up to ridicule, shamed, injured and violated. The stamp of criminality will increase risks to the section without adding anything to the morality of the country,” said Maja Daruwala, director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
Feminist organizations have been among the biggest supporters of India’s queer rights movement. “A feminist perspective looks not only at women in isolation but also at other areas of marginalization. For instance, a poor, migrant, lesbian woman faces intersectional vulnerability. Though we are a women’s organization, we are not fighting for the rights of only lesbian women but of the entire LGBT community, as well as other progressive liberal movements such as the right to food and land,” said Kalpana Viswanath of Jagori, a Delhi-based women’s organization that has actively supported the Naz Foundation petition seeking to read down Section 377. The SC order has come as a shock for organizations like Jagori. “With various progressive laws brought in this year, including those against sexual harassment at the workplace, we thought India was moving towards a more liberal legal regime,” said Viswanath.
All of us have supported the struggle to decriminalize homosexuality, said Nandita Shah, co-founder of Akshara, a Mumbai-based women’s rights group. “The judgment should be set aside as it criminalises consensual relationships between adults and seeks to define what people should do in their bedrooms,” Shah said.
While disappointed with the order, Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch said the SC ruling rests on the technicality that the decision on whether Section 377 infringes on one’s fundamental rights rests with the legislature and not the judiciary. “At one level, this is a letdown because it has been so hard to build a political consensus around the subject. At another level, it’s true this is a matter for our elected representatives to decide on. If a political consensus around decriminalizing homosexuality cannot be arrived at in parliament, it will help us get to know what our representatives think,” said Ganguly.
