As India held only its second national Gay Pride march yesterday, officials said that the country was planning to repeal a law against homosexuality that was introduced by the British almost 150 years ago.

India is one of the few professed liberal democracies in the world that still has such a law. The others are mostly Islamic or authoritarian, and even China lifted its ban in 1997.

Successive governments have long argued that Indian society is too conservative to accept repealing Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code — under which sex “against nature” is punishable by up to ten years in prison. India’s leaders have come under increasing pressure in recent years from activists who say that the law, introduced in 1860, violates civil liberties and encourages the spread of HIV by forcing homosexuals underground.

The new Government that took power in May after the Congress Party’s surprise election victory has indicated that it is ready to change the law, which is at present being challenged in the Delhi High Court, according to Indian media reports.

P. Chidambaram, the Home Minister, has told officials that he supports repealing the law and is due to hold a meeting to discuss the issue soon with the two other ministers whose consent is required — those with the portfolios of Law and Health.

Veerappa Moily, the Law Minister, has already said that he favours a “review” of the law, and the Health Ministry, now under Ghulam Nabi Azad, has been calling for its repeal for several years.

Mr Chidambaram’s predecessor, Shivraj Patil, was considered one of the main obstacles in the last government to repealing the law — which brackets homosexuality with bestiality and paedophilia. He and other conservatives in the Cabinet and Parliament argued that homosexuality was “un-Indian” and that repealing Section 377 would encourage delinquent behaviour, even though it has been rarely enforced in the past decade.

“Public opinion and the current societal context in India does not favour the deletion of the said offence from the statute book,” the Home Ministry said in response to a challenge to the law in 2005.

Others argued that it was the only law that could be applied in cases of homosexual child abuse and male rape.

Activists claim that the law violates the Indian Constitution, which guarantees all citizens the right to equality and personal liberty, as well as the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

They also say that it leads to police harassment and encourages the spread of HIV-Aids, which affects about 2.5 million people in India, by making it hard for infected gay men to seek treatment. In 2001 a local non-governmental organisation, the Naz Foundation, challenged the law’s constitutionality in the Delhi High Court, arguing that it should no longer apply to consenting adults. A ruling is expected next month.

The Naz Foundation mounted the challenge after police in the northern city of Lucknow raided its offices and those of another NGO and detained four staff members for 47 days on suspicion of running a gay “sex racket”.

The police said that HIV-Aids related information seized was obscene and charged four staff under Section 377. The charges were dropped.

Sex acts

— Being gay is punishable by death in Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen

— Britain’s Sexual Offences Act (1967) permitted gay sex in private for consenting adults

— The US bans gay sex among serving soldiers

Source: Times archives

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