Why Decriminalization of homosexuality is not India becoming ‘decolonized’, and why it won’t change the situation.

On September 6th 2018, India decriminalized homosexuality. The headlines read “India passes historic rulings that decriminalize homosexuality…” as the Indian LGBT took to the streets to commemorate this victory. The rainbow flags were raised high as men and women finally celebrated being able to love their significant other without the fear of ‘legal’ ramifications.
As a child, I never had any thoughts about homosexuality. I didn’t think enough about it to agree or disagree with it. When I finally did think on the matter at the age of 17, I instantly supported it. The argument was simple. All men and women are entitled to their own happiness, provided that it’s not the cost of someone else’s. Why should they therefore be ripped from their own sexual pleasures and be forced into sexual acts which are as repulsive to them as homosexuality is to the average heterosexual? The argument was simple, and it still is. However, the case I’m presenting today is much more complex. Keep in mind that I am not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but point some obvious facts which may have been discarded in sheer happiness.
The average Indian, may he or she be Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian is extremely prejudiced when the matter of laying with the opposite sex is considered. This is often blamed on India’s history of colonization (Yet another false accusation which I will address shortly onwards.). Regardless of who or what you’ve chosen to blame on homosexuality, the fact of the matter is that this legalization won’t change the average Indian’s view on homosexuality. I view this decriminalization in the same way I view decolonization. Yes! It had to be done. It was an inevitability. But it wasn’t done at the right time.
At the end of the day, the legality of anything boils down to a set of words printed on a piece of paper and placed under lock and key. Rape is illegal in India. Yet India holds a record for the number of rapes committed. The illegality of rape doesn’t stop rapists from doing what they do. And the legality of homosexuality will not stop Indian fanatics from forming mobs and butchering homosexuals.
What Indian needed before it decriminalized homosexuality was the same thing it needed before it was decolonized. A massive reformation program which taught the Indian public how to behave in this new world which they’re not accustomed to. India needed massive social reformations in regards to caste, race and religion before it was decolonized. And India needed massive social reformations teaching the average Indian that homosexuality is not a form of sin, but a form of pleasure, and that if either of them be unwilling it is an offence totally different to its nature, it is rape(Since consent is something the average Indian has trouble understanding.) before legalization. In short, Indians needed to change before the law changed. Hopefully, the Indian government will launch social programs to help the average Indian to not demonize homosexuality.
There is also the issue of colonialism and the role it played in India’s criminalization of homosexuality. It is true that the British rule brought about Section 377. But to blame it purely on The Great British Raj would be to absolve the Indians of the role they themselves played in this denial of fundamental human rights. India’s competing religious fanatics, Hindus and Muslims historically do not have a record of coexistence or tolerance. This is especially true when homosexuality is concerned. Yet we see some rather ignorant and frankly wrong statements from reasonably educated Indians like the following statement.

There are many notable objections to be made here. Firstly it is that Sufism is not a mainstream iteration of Islam in India or anywhere in the world for that. Many mainstream Islamic groups have disregarded Sufis as heretics or idol worshippers. Sufis were often murdered and their mosques were attacked and pillaged by competing Islamic factions. Sufism was never mainstream and is all but dead in India.
Secondly, there’s the issue concerning transgender women in Hinduism. I think I have a pretty good idea what this is referring. Tritiya Prakriti, also known as the third gender is often heralded as a bastion of tolerance and acceptance in ancient India. However, it is intellectual dishonesty compare Tritiya Prakriti to our modern interpretation of transgenderism. In the west transgender people are given equal rights and are allowed to pursue whatever career they choose. In ancient India, the Tritiya Prakriti were never given this opportunity. And while they were considered to be of semi-divine status, they were often confined to their own settlements where they took on specific occupations such as masseurs, hairdressers, flower-sellers, and domestic servants.
These left leaners wish to blame Indians problems with homosexuality purely on colonialism and represent homosexuality as something that is part of Indian culture and was forcibly taken stripped from India. But what better way to put this theory to the test to look at the founding father of Modern India, Mahatma Gandhi. Not only was Gandhi himself a racist who only launched his anti-British campaign after being forced ride a train on the same compartment with Africans while he was in Africa, not only did the man engage in sexual acts which were morally questionable even in his own time, the man himself was openly homophobic. Gandhi’s extracts from All men are brothers give us a glimpse of his views on both contraception and homosexuality.
“But if it somehow or other gains the stamp of respectability, it will be the rage amongst boys and girls to satisfy their urge among the members of their own sex.”
But maybe Gandhi himself being British educated was indoctrinated by Great Britain’s homophobic policies. The surest way to reach a verdict on the role of homosexuality in ancient India is to look at a country that never was colonized. A country such as Nepal.
Nepal is heralded as the most progressive nation in South Asia, and a beacon of what a country can achieve when left untouched by the big bad white man. However, Nepal has several barbaric practices that still practised to this day, such as Rishi Pancham where women’s menstrual cycles are used to justify her impurity on religious grounds, and the practice of Deuki where young girls are offered to the temples and henceforth public property for everyone (sexual purposes included). Thankfully the latter practice is outlawed and currently in decline. But this is an example of how life might have been under pre-colonial India. You may argue that homosexuality is legal in Nepal, however, what you are forgetting is that it was only legalized in 2008 when the country transitioned from a kingdom to a republic. Until which point homosexuality was indeed illegal. Again, yet another example of life under pre-colonial India.
Is India moving in the right direction in terms of homosexuality? Of course it is. But let’s not forget that legalization doesn’t change the average Indians perception of homosexuality. Nor does it mean homosexuals are allowed to get married just yet. And let’s not forget India’s own role in Section 377 instead of whitewashing history and blaming everything on the great British Raj.
Historically very few people have led an easy life. Homosexuals have sadly gotten the worse end of the deal. Tolerance towards the LGBT community is a very recent phenomenon that originated in the west in the 1960s. Decriminalization of homosexuality is not India being decolonized, but rather India being Westernized. Let’s get off our high horses and stop pointing fingers. The key here is responsibility.
