Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Human Rights in India: From Naz Foundation to Navtej Singh Johar and Beyond
Robert Wintemute*
Volume 12 Issue 3-4 (2019)
Prof. Robert Wintemute, first authored an article for the NUJS Law Review, back in 2011. The article titled ‘Same-sex Love and Indian Penal Code §377: An Important Human Rights Issue for India’ was published in Volume 4, No. 1 (p. 31-65), focusing on the human rights issue concerning the criminalisation of same-sex marriage under §377, was written in the aftermath of the Delhi High Court reading down the provision and advocated the affirmation by the Indian Supreme Court of the Delhi High Court’s position. The article went on to become one of the academic articles to be cited by the Supreme Court of India when it finally read down §377 in 2018. In this article, Prof. Wintemute revisits the journey of §377, outlining the key takeaways from the discussions in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, the decision of the Supreme Court of India which ultimately decriminalised same-sex intercourse under §377. A version of this article has also been published as a chapter in the book titled Human Rights in India, (Satvinder S. Juss (Satvinder Singh) ed., 1st ed.) published by Routledge (2019).