The paradox of making gender-fluid lives legible to the law
· Scroll
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In 2006, as the challenge to the criminalisation of homosexuality under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code returned to the Delhi High Court, a civil society coalition, Voices Against 377, was trying to gather testimonial affidavits from those directly affected by the law.
An earlier dismissal of the public interest litigation in 2004 had turned, in part, on a familiar judicial move: the petition was considered too academic and insufficiently grounded in lived experience.
By the time the case was revived, there was a clear understanding among the petitioners that this should not happen again. The law would have to be shown in the lives it governed rather than as an abstraction.
That was easier said than done. This was still a time of criminalisation. To sign an affidavit was to risk being exposed and made vulnerable to law and society alike. We put out calls. Few responded.
I found it difficult to ask of others what I was unwilling to do myself. So I agreed to file my own affidavit. A few others did too.
Gradually, we had a small set – eight in all – drawn from different lived locations: gay men, individuals identifying within the hijra and kothi communities, and others whose experiences spoke to same-sex...