The 2013 Indian Supreme Court decision on section 377

While many LGBTQ activists across the globe expressed mourning, rage and sympathy with the Indian queers who lost the Supreme Court battle against Section 377 (the British colonial-era law widely understood to criminalize same-sex intercourse), some used the opportunity to express their criticisms of the anti-377 campaign. These critics – largely speaking from within Indian queer circles – alleged that the 377 organizers failed to adequately consider the impact of their activism on the most marginal queers in India: lower class/caste hijras, kothis, poor MSM to mention few. In the most biting version of the critique, the 377 campaign was portrayed as an elite middle class movement, fueled by foreign-funded NGOs, against a largely symbolic, immaterial enemy. Rather than fight 377, campaigners should have invested their energies on a number of other issues allegedly more important to marginal queer people…