Rainbow In The Streets

“History owes an apology to the members of this community and their families … for the ignominy and ostracism that they have suffered through the centuries. The members of this community were compelled to live a life full of fear of reprisal and persecution.” With these words, Justice Indu Malhotra, one of the judges of the Indian Supreme Court, held that Section 377, which criminalizes consensual sex between two adults of the same sex, was unconstitutional.

LGBT people in India faced legal problems and social differences for many years over the past, all thanks to the educated illiterates and so called spiritual gurus as people call them. There have many reports of abuse, harassment and violence over the years directed against LGBT people. In 2003, a hijra was gang-raped in Bangalore, and then gang-raped by the police. Testimonies provided to the Delhi High Court in 2007 documented how a gay man abducted by the police in Delhi was raped by police officials for several days and forced to sign a "confession" saying a derogatory term.

Homosexuality is mostly a taboo subject in the Indian civil society. Section 377 was brought up for hearing on 27 July 2009 in the Delhi high court which was in support of its abolishment, but the Supreme Court overturned that ruling in December, 2013. In February 2016, the Supreme Court of India agreed to reconsider its judgment and after numerous petitions and a 5 judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court Of India, invalidated part of Section 377 of IPC, making homosexuality legal in India.

Though the judgment was favored by all, through the process some politicians
made homosexuality sound like a disease. Yogi Aditynath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, in Dcember 2013 when he was a Member Of Parliament said, “Homosexuality is dangerous to social morality. If social norms and boundaries are done away with, then there is not much difference between man and animal… I feel that to associate this kind of cheap sophistry with religious texts is gross immorality… There should be no social sanction if someone wants to do at a traffic junction what one does at home. It shouldn’t receive any constitutional status either.”" What else can we expect from a stauch Hindu leader?

Baba Ramdev, one of the few persons who is held in high regard in the Indian society, in December 2013, told " I invite the gay community to my yoga ashram and I guarantee to cure them of homosexuality." While doctors and medical practitioners around the world are saying that homosexulaity is a sexual orientation, this man calls it as a disease. What an intelligent man right? I didn't see any person so uneducated like him ever before.

Bollywood had a postivie say in this issue. Dia Mirza,Celina Jaitley, Anupam Kher already criticized tha December 2013 judgement, long before it was decriminalized in 2018. Ayushmann Khurana,Kalki Coechlin, Rajkumar Rao, Sonam kapoor, Arjun kapoor,Karan Johar, and celebrity designer Manish Malhotra, all took to twitter to share their happiness regarding the legalisation of Homosexuality.

The British implemented this law more than fifty years ago. What I don’t
understand is that, we Indians and our country India is the largest growing
democracy, being the first country to send a rover to Mars, in the first attempt
and having embedded in our roots the sophisticated and highly classified caste
system from our ancestors, cannot understand a simple biological
phenomenon or a sexual expression which occurs in few people around the
world.

India became indpendent in 1947. But even now people fear coming out as homosexuals. If we can live our lives freely, so can they too. They are homo sapiens just like us. They are normal just like us. They are your fellow beings. You are expected to respect their choices and be in your limits when talking to them. If you are very much in support of the reservation system we have in India, then fight for their rights. And if you're against the reservation system, then you very well know, how it's like to be deprived of your chances just because you weren't born in the "under privileged" who are now as equal as you are.

I would like to quote myself here.

And the most ironic thing my friend, everyone loves a rainbow in the sky, but only very few like it, when it is in the streets.