In light of the recent Supreme Court judgment refusing the legalisation of same-sex marriage, Ondede, a Bengaluru-based human rights organisation focused on queer advocacy, held a public lecture on ‘Constitution and Political Representation for Transgender and Sexual Minorities Community in India.’
The event questioned the lack of queer representation in the legal, political, and legislative spheres and correlated the non-existence of queer-friendly laws to the same.
The lecture was moderated by M.S. Ashadevi, professor at Maharani Cluster University, between former Karnataka High Court judge Nagamohan Das and former JNU professor Purushothama Bilimale.
Prof. Bilimale spoke on reservation and affirmative action, saying: “Women have only been recently receiving adequate representation in our government bodies. Similar provisions should be made for transgenders. But, reservation needs to be preceded by a good primary education, without which representation will not be useful.”
Mr. Das added: “We also need to confront the social aspects of it and other structural issues. For representation to be achieved, we first need appropriate acknowledgment of transgenders and sexuality minorities.”
He also highlighted the historical presence of queer people and depictions of queer people in Indian history.
In response to this, Prof. Bilimalle called for an “Indian, un-colonial rewriting of our laws and Constitution.”
