India New England - Arts &
Entertainment
Issue: 4/15/04
Nonprofit AIDS group fighting Indian
anti-sodomy law
By Bilwakesh,
Champa
NAZ Foundation, a nonprofit
group dedicated to the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, has challenged the
constitutionality of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and petitioned the
Delhi High Court for an amendment.
A relic of the British penal code,
Section 377 states "whosoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the
order of nature with any man, woman, or animal, shall be punished with
imprisonment for life or 10 years."
Anand Grover, director of the Lawyers
Collective HIV/AIDS unit in New Delhi, who is spearheading the drive against the
Indian anti-sodomy law for Naz India, is arguing the case on grounds of both
privacy and equality for India's sexual minorities.
While the code does
not specifically criminalize sodomy, authorities often ignore that distinction
and treat it as an "unnatural" act.
Grover says that by criminalizing
predominantly homosexual behavior, Section 377 drives same-sex relations
underground, and creates societal conditions that significantly impede HIV/AIDS
prevention efforts.
The government has responded to the petition saying
that Indian society by and large disapproves of homosexuality and that is enough
to "justify it being treated as a criminal offense even where the adults indulge
in it in private."
Questioning the nonprofit group's right to approach
the court on this issue, the government has claimed that Section 377 is
basically used to punish child sexual abuse and to complement the gaps in rape
laws, and that it is rarely used to punish homosexual behavior. Repealing it
would leave the victims of such crimes unprotected, the response
says.
Most recently, this code was invoked in February when Gowrishankara
Swami of Sri Siddaganga Mutt at Kyatasandra in Tumkur District was convicted of
sodomy. He was sentenced to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of 2.5
million rupees (about $55,000). A lower court had acquitted the swami in
1998.
Deepak Singh, who filed the suit against the swami in 1986, was a
boarding student in the mutt at the time. He was 13 years old.
NAZ says
many people are affected by Section 377 on a day-to-day basis. The
stigmatization attached to their choices is so severe that they are disowned by
their families, subjected to shock therapy by doctors, brutally harassed by the
police, and unable to avail of legal redress against discrimination. It merely
wants to de-link what is a consensual adult sexual behavior from this code.
Parmesh Shahani, a gay MIT graduate student from Bombay, says this is
true. While wealthy, Westernized youths caught in homosexual acts can buy off
the police with money for "refreshments," others are subjected to extortion,
blackmail and physical and sexual abuse by the police.
These are the
kinds of issues that Shahani hoped to illuminate in the South Asian
gay-and-lesbian film festival he organized this month.
The current status
of Naz's petition is unclear, but Shahani is hopeful.
"I am sure that
the collective will not give up and continue to seek legal recourse," he says.
But, "with elections round the corner in India, I don't see anything
developing for at least six months."