dna edit: Democracy undermined

The brusqueness with which the Supreme Court dismissed the review petitions pertaining to the December verdict on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) underscores just how difficult it is going to be to walk back the damage done to the LGBT community. Given the poor chances of a curative petition succeeding, that leaves only the legislative route — and that looks, if anything, even more unlikely. The BJP has used a range of shopworn arguments, from Rajnath Singh’s cant about homosexuality being an “unnatural act” to spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi championing Section 377 as essential for protecting men from exploitation — in essence, equating consensual gay sex with rape. The SP, meanwhile, has seized on the baffling cultural corruption angle; the preserve of those who insist on creating a fictional cultural history out of whole cloth. And given the upcoming elections, it is all to see easy to see the Congress letting the matter slide; after all, until not too long ago, it had been against decriminalising homosexuality as well.
The stand parties across the spectrum have taken on this issue illustrates a larger problem: they have shown themselves in agreement with the December verdict’s logic when it elevates majoritarianism and public morality above the rights of the individual. Discrimination against the LGBT community is one of the most disturbing outcomes of this viewpoint, but is far from the only one. When VHP workers rough up an art exhibition as they did in 2006 or the Sri Ram Sena activists assault women for violating Indian values, they are drawing from the same well. When Asha Mirge, a member of the Maharashtra Women’s Association and associated with the NCP, blames the victims in the Nirbhaya and Shakti Mills gangrapes for not being careful enough about venturing out at night, or when Delhi law minister Somnath Bharti subscribes to mob justice, they are showing the extent to which that logic has permeated both state and society.
It has stunted both public debate and a reasoned understanding of Indian history and culture. Entire sections of histiography have been cut off at the knees, both academic and popular debates on multiple issues pushed to the margins. Historical figures have been frozen on plinths far above the common man. From Jawaharlal Nehru’s relationship with Edwina Mountbatten to Chhatrapati Shivaji’s life and Mahatma Gandhi’s musings and experiments with sexuality — an issue which the man himself dealt with frankly — the political elite stands ready to pronounce what is and what is not verboten. Little wonder that functionaries of the state follow suit; Mumbai police commissioner Satyapal Singh summed up this particular perspective pithily when he said in the aftermath of the Shakti Mills incident that moral policing was necessary for the “betterment of society”.
A democratic nation cannot be so without being liberal in the classical sense, guaranteeing individual rights. That in turn is founded in large part upon John Stuart Mill’s do no harm principle which states that the power of the state can only be imposed for acts harming other individuals. Both Indian polity and sections of its legislation such as Section 377 fail to clear this bar. Those who are in the best position to redress this genuflect, by and large, at the twin altars of a fictional cultural past and majoritarianism masquerading as public will. The LGBT community has suffered a severe setback because of this. And matters will not improve until it is addressed.