In partnership with Naz Foundation India Trust (Delhi), Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights has created a feature documentary No Easy Walk to Freedom on the challenge to Section 377 of the India Penal Code.
Section 377 is particularly significant as the first law to criminalize "carnal intercourse against the order of nature", developed during British colonial rule in India. For an introduction to the history of the law please see below, "Alok Gupta, This Alien Legacy".
Section 377 is particularly significant as the first law to criminalize "carnal intercourse against the order of nature", developed during British colonial rule in India. For an introduction to the history of the law please see below, "Alok Gupta, This Alien Legacy".
Alok Gupta, This Alien Legacy
2011, 7 min. Interview, Mumbai. Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
Gupta: "It all began in India..." Section 377 was the first of the penal code laws to criminalize "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" developed by the British colonial government in India. In his ground-breaking essay, This Alien Legacy, (Human Rights Watch), Alok Gupta examines the colonial history of the law, and its spread throughout the British empire. Gupta: "you have to see how the courts are imagining homosexuality. 377 allowed for the judicial imagination, both of homosexuality, and of the homosexual as a sexual pervert."
Gupta: "It all began in India..." Section 377 was the first of the penal code laws to criminalize "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" developed by the British colonial government in India. In his ground-breaking essay, This Alien Legacy, (Human Rights Watch), Alok Gupta examines the colonial history of the law, and its spread throughout the British empire. Gupta: "you have to see how the courts are imagining homosexuality. 377 allowed for the judicial imagination, both of homosexuality, and of the homosexual as a sexual pervert."
2014, 17 min. Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
This video contrasts the voices of joy and freedom when India decriminalized same-sex intimacy (2009) with voices of resistance when the Supreme Court overturned that historic ruling (2013). In 2009 the hope was "now we can live together openly!" (Kiran, outreach worker, Milan Project.) In 2013 Gautam Bhan, Voices Against 377, said: "we have been made vulnerable again, we have been exposed again... but we are not going to simply accept that situation." At a protest rally the crowd chanted "From our hearts together we will seize - freedom! No going back!"
2011, 11:25 min. Interview, Lucknow. Naz Foundation International & Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
2011, 10:50 min. Interview, Lucknow. Naz Foundation International & Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
Khan: "I've always said that South Asia is not a heterosexual society. It is a marital society, where heterosexuality is defined by marriage and children, not by who you engage sex with...Some of the best cruising sites in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan are weddings!" With humour and passion Khan talks about marriage, culture, identity, hijras and transgender people. He articulates his vision that the LGBT movement must work toward improving the quality of life for all human beings.
2011, 42 seconds. Interview, Lucknow. Naz Foundation International & Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
Khan relates the vision of social justice to the ancient Hindu spiritual text.
2011, 12 min. Interview, Delhi. Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
Chief Justice Shah talks about his historic judgement that read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. The decision cites Nehru on the Indian constitution: "the magic of the human spirit and of a Nation's passion". Shah: "When the case began the main arguments were on the right to health, in the context of HIV/AIDS. ... we thought our decision should be based mainly on the constitutional rights...equality, non-discrimination..." Shah: "The Home Ministry tried to justify the provisions on the ground of public morality... We said there is a distinction between popular morality and constitutional morality."
2011, 7:28 min. Interviews at Sangama, Bangalore. Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights
Elavarthi Manohar: "Marginalized people get their rights as a collective, as a community...With the law or without the law, what you can't escape is organizing people into a social movement." Veena was the first transgender person to run for election in South India, 2010. Veena: "If there is any stigma, discrimination, violence we work for them. Today it's the Dalit people, tomorrow sexual minorities, sex workers. We are all one...We organized a big rally to protest Section 377... Lord MacAuley brought it in 1860... The British have left, so why is this Act still here?"
2011, Interview at Sangama, Bangalore, November 2011. 4 min
Akkai sings her story: "Born as male / my feelings changed / when I was eight years / my feelings are feminine / I started behaving like a girl..."