Queering the (Court) Room | Online Series on Marriage Equality Published by SLR

The Socio-Legal Review (SLR), a student-run journal, has recently published an online series on the marriage equality case called Queering the (Court) Room. The series comprises five very diverse and insightful interviews and is accompanied by an editorial note.

Abstract

In 2018, the Supreme Court of India decriminalised homosexuality. Five years later, we are at the cusp of possibly recognising marriage equality. The petitions, as well as the subsequent arguments in court, have provoked intense national debate about queer identity, rights and politics. In this special series entitled Queering the (Court)Room, the Socio-Legal Review seeks to capture aspects of this debate through different vantage points that do not necessarily feature in popular discourse.

In particular, we attempt to go beyond the constitutional arguments of dignity, equality, and non-discrimination. We seek to push the envelope of our imagination to think: what does it mean for a debate of this nature taking place in public, through channels such as livestreamed proceedings and national television debates? How does the queer self-fashion itself, both inside and outside the courtroom in negotiating between the struggle for equality in existing structures and questioning the structure itself? What are the implications of this debate on marriage and intimacy? How does marriage equality intersect with anti-conversion laws, the objections regime in the SMA and marital rape? Finally, what long-term impacts can we anticipate as a result of this development, especially in the context of other jurisdictions in South Asia which continue to criminalise homosexuality, even as they are located in diverse settings of kinships and familial structures?

Our attempt is to bring together a variety of perspectives and methodological approaches to this question which has gripped the nation and provide a critical commentary on what it means for law and society going forward. To this end, while the hearings were ongoing, we – the SLR Editorial Board – reached out to academics, activists and practitioners who have engaged with these questions in the past. We are delighted to publish a set of five interviews, each of which bring up unique issues and points of departure in unravelling the current debate, even as they grapple with a common set of questions.

The interviews feature:

• Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development and Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine
• Ruth Vanita, an academic and author who has written extensively on issues of gender and sexuality in Indian literary history
• Sayan Bhattacharya, an academic whose research is an ethnographic and archival exploration of various improvisatory and innovative strategies that Indian trans communities deploy to make life in an environment saturated by violence
• Sumit Saurabh Srivastava, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Development Studies, University of Allahabad
• Themal Ellawala, an academician who primarily works on gender and sexuality in the Sri Lankan context

Read the full Editorial Note here.
Read all interviews in the series here.

About the SLR

Socio-Legal Review (SLR) is a bi-annual, open access, student-edited, peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal run by the students of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and published by the Eastern Book Company (EBC). With respect to our mandate, we subscribe to an expansive view on the interpretation of “law and society” in South Asia, inviting articles with a perceived link between law and social sciences. First published in 2005 with the help of a grant from the Modern Law Review, SLR has carried articles by luminaries in the legal and social fields, including Roger Cotterrell, W.T. Murphy, Werner Menski, Asghar Ali Engineer, Pratiksha Baxi and Gina Heathcote. To know more, visit www.sociolegalreview.com