Professor Manu Bhagavan (History; Roosevelt House Faculty Associate and Chair of the Human Rights Program), was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered last week. Bhagavan was interviewed by NPR journalist Melissa Block on the Indian Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Section 377 of the Indian penal code, which effectively criminalizes homosexual acts as ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature’ and allows for a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
A link to Bhagavan’s segment, with audio and transcript is available below:
Also this week, on an essay published by CNN-IBN (CNN India) on the ruling, Bhagavan writes:
‘The 11 December Indian Supreme Court 377 IPC judgment is rife with outlandish claims and pseudoscientific posturing, including in paragraph 43 that LGBTQ people only comprise a “minuscule fraction” of India’s population, and, worse, that they therefore don’t warrant equal constitutional protections. This is an entirely mystifying way to put things, especially when Article 14 explicitly states that “the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law.”‘
The full text of Bhagavan’s article is available below:
