Abstract
Upendra Baxi is one of the few legal scholars of his generation to have consistently engaged with the queer movement and the legal struggle for decriminalisation of homosexuality in India. In this article, I outline three key moments in Baxi’s engagement with queer politics—his foreword to the groundbreaking 2003 PUCL-K report on human rights violations against the transgender community in Karnataka, his public responses to the Delhi High Court’s Naz Foundation decision in 2009, and its overruling by the Supreme Court in the Koushal judgment in 2013. I conclude by selecting parts of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Navtej Singh Johar overturning Koushal, that resonate strongly with Baxi’s writing on this theme.
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Notes
People’s Union for Civil Liberties – Karnataka, Human Rights Violations against the Transgender Community: A Study of Kothi and Hijra Sexworkers in Bangalore, (2003).
Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT of Delhi & Ors., (2009) 111 DRJ 1.
Suresh Kumar Koushal & Anr v. Naz Foundation & Ors., (2014) 1 SCC 1.
Navtej Singh Johar & Ors. v. Union of India Thr. Secretary Ministry of Law and Justice, Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 76 of 2016 delivered on 6 September 2018.
People’s Union for Civil Liberties – Karnataka, Human Rights Violations against Sexuality Minorities in India: A PUCL-K Fact Finding Report about Bangalore, (2001).
Navtej Singh Johar, supra note 4 ¶ 23, Justice Chandrachud’s concurring opinion.
PUCL, supra note 1 at 5.
Siddharth Narrain, The Queer Case of Section 377, in Sarai Reader: Bare Acts, 466-469 (2005).
See for example contributions in the Special Issue: Sexual Orientation and the Law, 2(3) NUJS L. Rev. (2009).
Mahendra P. Singh, Decriminalising of Homosexuality and the Constitution, 2 NUJS L. Rev., 361-380.
Id. at 378.
Upendra Baxi, Courage, Craft and Contention: Human Rights and the Judicial Imagination, Alternative Law Forum 10th Anniversary Talk, 2010.
Upendra Baxi, Dignity In and With Naz, in Law Like Love: Queer Perspectives on Law 245-246 (Arvind Narrain & Alok Gupta eds., 2011).
Id. at 231.
Id. at 233-234.
Id. at 234.
Upendra Baxi, The Future of Human Rights (2012).
Id. at 237.
Naz Foundation, supra note 2 ¶ 132. The declaration read as follows: ‘We declare that Section 377 IPC, insofar it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution’.
K.S. Puttaswamy & Anr. v. Union of India & Ors., (2017) 10 SCC 1.
Navtej Singh Johar, supra note 4 at ¶ 6.
Id. at ¶¶ 76-77.
This Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism, Dec. 2008, Human Rights Watch.
Navtej Singh Johar, supra note 4 at ¶30.
Upendra Baxi, Naz 2: A Critique, 44 Econ. and Pol. Weekly (2014).
Written Submissions of Senior Advocate Krishnan Venugopal on behalf of Professor Nivedita Menon & Ors., ¶¶43-47.
Upendra Baxi, supra note 25 at 14.
See for example, Nick Robinson, Bigger Bench Please, The Indian Express, June 8, 2012.
Navtej Singh Johar, supra note 4 at ¶ 27, Justice Chandrachud’s concurring opinion.
Upendra Baxi, supra note 25 at 14.
Navtej Singh Johar, supra note 4 at ¶ 20, Justice Indu Malhotra’s concurring opinion.
Oscar Vilhena, Upendra Baxi, & Frans Viljoen, Transformative Constitutionalism: Comparing the Apex Courts of Brazil, India and South Africa, Pretoria University (2013).
Navtej Singh Johar, supra note 4 at ¶¶ 99–104.
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Siddharth Narrain—lawyer and legal researcher, Delhi.
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Narrain, S. A Co-traveler in the long road to decriminalisation: Upendra Baxi’s engagement with the queer movement in India. Jindal Global Law Review 9, 299–305 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41020-018-0072-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41020-018-0072-4