“To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away. To do this to someone else is to murder their soul.”
These ringing words of Vikram Seth came to my mind the first when I sat down to write this essay. We live on a small planet in an inexhaustible universe. Life is not easy here. Disappointment and failure, loss and fear, pain and illness, doubt and death. These are all part and parcel of living and even those who have escaped poverty couldn’t find a getaway from them. But what makes life worthwhile is Love – to love and to be loved. And section 377 is a weapon against Love.
In India, as in every country in the world, there exist a small minority of men who fall in love with other men, and women who fall in love with other women. These ‘same-sex-loving’ men and women face widespread legal and social discrimination. The community of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) in India constitutes to be 2.35 million out of the total population, according to National Aids Control Organisation (NACO).…show more content… Lesbians, Gay, Bisexuals and Transgender are not recent and modern sexuality choices. The Indian society prevalent before the enactment of the IPC had a much greater tolerance of homosexuality than its British counterpart. Coming to Hindu tradition, it has recognized the wide range of human sexual diversity. Several texts, including the Narada Smriti, Srimad Bhagyatam (4.28.61), and medical texts like Charaka Samhita (4.2), Sushruta Samhita (3.2), and Sanskrit dictionaries and lexicons like Amarakosa, include references of persons who cannot be exclusively categorised as male (Totritya Prakriti). The Arthasastra forbids vilification of third gender men and women