Section 377: Drawing a curtain on the past
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In striking down Section 377, the Supreme Court has recognised the Constitution’s extraordinary transformative power In a rousing address to the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar laid out his transformative vision for the Constitution. The document, he said, ought to serve as a lodestar in the endeavour to make India not merely a political but also a social democracy. He saw liberty, equality and fraternity as principles of life, as a collective “union of trinity”. “To divorce one from the other,” he said, “is to defeat the very purpose of democracy.” Now, 71 years after Independence, these values that Ambedkar saw as integral to India’s republic, find new meaning in a remarkable judgment of the Supreme Court in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India. Not only has the court struck down the wretchedly wicked Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, insofar as it criminalises homosexuality, but it has also recognised the Constitution’s enormous and extraordinary tr...
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