Professional Documents
Culture Documents
To
Date: 27.04.2023
We, the students and members of different LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender,
Queer, Intersex, Asexual and others) Collectives across various Colleges and Universities in
India, urge the Supreme Court to take cognisance of the status of LGBTQIA+ persons and
recognise the right to marry and the right to family for every individual, irrespective of their
class, caste, race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion and disability in line with Article 14 of
the Indian Constitution.
Currently, India has the largest population in the world, who are in their formative years, going
to schools and colleges to learn. Our shared experiences of learning in these educational
avenues are not linked by the enjoyment of fundamental rights (equality, life with dignity, etc)
but by being objects of passive and active forms of homophobia, transphobia, and
queerphobia that transcend the overview of statutory guidelines on ragging, bullying,
discrimination and various other institutional support (if any). Schools and Colleges as primary
sites of socialisation, beyond the family, become the first public spaces for an individual to
understand what it feels to be a right-bearing individual, and to first-hand experience social
stigma.
In 2011, the Census identified 54,854 transgender children in the age group of 0–6 years
(most likely an underestimation), less than 0.0001% of these children completed their
schooling. Trans-queer persons navigate a life of double standards, where we have to pass as
cis-gendered and heterosexual to survive identity-based discrimination in our educational
The Constitutional promise of the Supreme Court of India in NALSA vs UoI 2014 and Navtej
Singh Johar vs UoI 2019 of recognition, equality, dignity and privacy remains incomplete in
view of the double standards that the State and its law create for us. Our education is reduced
to a survival mechanism to evade or opt out of social humiliation and violence at homes,
schools, colleges, workplaces and public spaces. The constitutional wheel of life is broken for
us.
Today, we ask the highest court of the land to intervene and recognise our life’s work of finding
love and acceptance under the right to personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the
Indian Constitution. The law-making system of the largest and most plural nation refuses to
recognise non-heternormative marriages, partnerships and chosen families. This act formally
pushes us back into violent and toxic spheres of family and schools/colleges who invest in our
social ostracisation, correctional therapy, house arrest, and institutionalised deaths.
We come together to demand an equal and dignified life as envisaged under the Constitution
of India.
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