After remaining “shy” in revealing its stand on gay sex in the Supreme Court for over two years, the Union government now seems to have gone to the other extreme stating that homosexuals had far greater freedom to satisfy their “fancies” in India than the West where it today has taken the shape of a “human right” movement.
In order to defend its “changed stance” to support of Delhi high court’s 2009 verdict decriminalising consenting adult gay sex, the government has produced some historical material to suggest that “homosexuals were free to satisfy their fancies in India, where as in Britain they were widely despised and buggery was a capital crime until 1961” a note of attorney general G.E. Vahanvati, filed on behalf of the Centre stated.
The Centre’s note has extensively quoted from the book by Lawrance James titled Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India, further stated that “for many British onlookers, Indian erotic act was a revelation of practices which were all but unheard of in their homeland, or condemned as deviant and depraved. There was group sex, oral sex, sex in every conceivable position, buggery and masturbation.”
The note was presented by the AG after a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadyaya wanted to know as what was the material before Lord Macaulay who drafted the Indian Penal Code in 1834, to include in it Section 377, declaring gay sex as a criminal offence. The court wanted to know how the phraseology “carnal intercourse against the order of the nature” was included in Section 377.
The government note said “the Indian society prevalent before the enactment of the Indian Penal Code had a much greater tolerance for homosexuality than its British counterpart, which at this time was under the influence of Victorian morality and values in regard to family and the procreative nature of sex.”