Section 377 - All Sides of The Story

Why wasn't this a part of the Indian law before? What maybe the consequences for the society as we move towards accepting the LGBTQ+ community? Unravel all sides of the story by Kabir Chatterjee.

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To really understand this article, you’re going to need a brief history about the law. This will make a few things very clear, the era this law was put into place, and to some extent why exactly this law ceased to exist not only now, but even when it was first instated. Section 377 was first put under the limelight by British India, it was based on the Buggery Act of 1533. The law was finally implemented in 1860. ‘Buggery’ was then defined as unnatural sexual activities against the way god meant it. This essentially meant that anal penetration and homosexuality was illegal.

Now, I’m not saying this was right, however the following is just my view-point on the what could be the justification of this law in the first place. Sexual education then was a non-existent concept, which is why people weren’t aware or they didn’t understand homosexuality as well as we do. That’s probably where the discrimination arose from, the lack of information and knowledge. We can’t completely just say that either though. This also comes from a place of ignorance, and India as a society was a lot more idealistic than it is now, yeah that’s possible.

Furthermore, I completely understand the outrage on this law, some sources online say that breaking this law could end up in a life sentence, or imprisonment for 10 years. Whereas if a person is guilty of rape through gross negligence the individual is sentenced to something limited to five years. I’d be surprised if this didn’t cause outrage. Now being a homosexual is extremely complex, but what’s clear is that it’s not a choice, if it were all of us would be bi-sexual. We aren’t. So now the deal is that you’re being punished for consensual intercourse and that too for a relatively longer sentence than that of un-consensual sex.

To conclude, I would like to take into consideration the theme of the website itself. How does this affect the up-incoming generation? Here’s a simple answer because it can’t get more straightforward than this. All over the world, not only in India, there has been oppression against anyone who isn’t heterosexual, this impacts the psychological aspect of a person in a disgusting way. They need security. Also the retaliation that comes from the LGBT-Q, whilst completely justified, could be avoided by just making ourselves more accepting. This could play the biggest role in the youth population understanding how to peacefully co-exist. What if we could just stop dividing ourselves in different communities and start supporting each other. Well, the excretion of this law from our constitution is a step forward.

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Written By Kabir Chatterjee