‘A fifth of the world’s LGBT people now free’

LONDON: Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who called on Prime Minister Theresa May to apologise for the colonial era laws during the Commonwealth meeting in April, described the Indian Supreme Court ruling as “historic” but added that ending the ban on homosexuality is just a start.

“This historic legal ruling sets free from criminalisation almost one-fifth of the world’s LGBT+ people. It is the biggest, most impactful gay law reform in human history...there are still huge challenges to end the stigma, discrimination and hate crime that LGBTS suffer in India. Indian LGBTS now revert to the legal status of non-criminalisation that existed prior to the British colonisers...,” he said. PM Theresa May was under pressure during the April Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to tender an apology on Britain’s behalf for introducing the homophobic laws in former colonies, but limited herself to expressing “deep regret”. Britain introduced laws in its colonies criminalising same-sex relations, but it was not until 1967 that it lifted the legal opprobrium at home, and in 2013 it granted a royal pardon to gay mathematics genius Alan Turing, who committed suicide in 1954.

Until the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday, India was among more than 30 countries in the Commonwealth where samesex relations face criminal charges. Section 377 was introduced in India in 1862 following recommendations of the first law commission chaired by Thomas B Macaulay. NEW DELHI: In 1884, an unusual case came up in the then colonial Allahabad high court. For months, the police had been tailing a person named Khairati on the suspicion that he was a “eunuch” after being tipped off that on a visit to his ancestral village, he was found dancing and singing dressed as a woman.

The police arrested him on the suspicion that he was a “habitual sodomite” and subjected him to a medical examination, which recorded that the examinee showed the “characteristic mark of a catamite (a Victorian term for a man kept for homosexual desires) and noted that the anal orifice was “shaped like a trumpet”.