The Queer Column is a space for authors who wish to analyse law and policy through an intersectional lens. We wish to publish work that approaches the law through a queer perspective and aim for queer inclusivity within academia. Through our podcasts, we wish to capture the personal experiences of academicians, lawyers and activists working for the queer community.
Queer and Religious Alliances in India and Beyond
Jeffrey A. Redding
Professor Jeffrey A. Redding is a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School and the recent co-editor, along with Dr. Nausica Palazzo, of Queer and Religious Alliances in Family Law Politics and Beyond. He is also the recent author of the monograph A Secular Need: Islamic Law and State Governance in Contemporary India.
Some Thoughts on Marriage Equality, the Uniform Civil Code and Queering Indian Family Law
Akshat Agarwal is a J.S.D. candidate and Tutor in Law at Yale Law School, where he obtained his LL.M. degree in 2022. He was one of the founders of the NLS Queer Alliance and completed his B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) from NLSIU in 2017. In his time at NLSIU, he was the Chief Editor of NLSIR from 2014-16. He was also a Research Fellow at Vidhi. He has advised on projects relating to the regulation of the digital economy, privacy, federalism and healthare. His areas of research interest included constitutional law, gender and sexuality, family law and public health.
Transgender Politics of Liberation: Paradoxes and Possibilities
Transform 2022 took place on 9 December 2022 and the theme was ‘Transforming Rights: How Law Shapes Transgender Lives, Identity and Community in India’. The speakers included Dr. Svati Shah, Kalki Subramaniam, Santa Khurai and the discussion was moderated by Jayana Kothari (Director, CLPR). This is the second piece in a two-part series, engaging with arguments and insights emerging from the panel discussion.
Vibha Swaminathan is currently pursuing an LL.B (Hons) from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Prior to this, she has completed a B.A (Hons) in Political Science from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University. She is interested in the intersections of political and legal theory, specifically those emerging from the marginalities of the Global South.
Book Review: Free to Be Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Story of Women and Law by Teri Kanefield
Ruth Bader Ginsberg has been described by the American Civil Liberties Union as a “pioneer for women’s rights”- and rightly so. Born in 1933 to a Jewish family of immigrants facing persecution in the erstwhile Russian empire, Ruth Bader Ginsberg experienced sex discrimination throughout her life. And while her sex may have put her on an unequal footing in her career compared to men, it also provided her with a unique vantage point to see the world- one that ultimately paved the way for progressive legal change for countless women and men in America. In this book review, Kanav analyzes Teri Kanefield’s telling of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life story by highlighting its relevance today, as well as suggesting a few topics for further examination.
Kanav Narayan Sahgal is, as of January 2023, Communications Manager at Nyaaya, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. He holds a Master’s degree in Development from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and frequently writes about gender and sexuality politics and the law. Reach out to him at sahgalkanav@gmail.com and @kanavsahgal (Twitter).
Transgender Lives, Identity, and Community in India: A Report on TransForm 2022
This piece is a report on Transform 2022 prepared by Sarthak Virdi (Editor, LSPR) and Oorja Newatia (Observer, LSPR). It is the first post of a two-part series. The second piece will engage with the contents of the arguments presented at the event, while this piece seeks to describe the views presented by the panelists.
Beyond the Letter of the Law: Queer Policymaking From the Margins
Anish Gawande
Anish Gawande is a Rhodes Scholar and the founder of Pink List India, the first country-wide archive of queer friendly politicians. He is also the director of the Dara Shikoh fellowship which focuses on global creative dialogue around Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh, with an emphasis on intersectional conversations that put gender, sexuality, and caste in conversation with each other and with the political dynamics of the region.
Queering The Right to Health: Marginalisation, Equal Citizenship and Social Determinants of Healthcare
Rohin Bhatt & Sarthak Virdi
Rohin Bhatt graduated from Gujarat National Law University in 2021 with a B.Sc. LL.B. (Hons.) and with a Master of Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, where he was the class speaker, and is a co-founder of the Indian Bioethics Project. He is a regular contributor to The Leaflet. Most of his work focuses on constitutional law, bioethics (with a particular focus on feminist and queer approaches to bioethics), and the effects fascism has on human rights and their intersections. It has appeared in both public and academic platforms.
Sarthak Virdi is a student of National Law School of India University, Bangalore.
This piece aims to analyze how accessible healthcare is to queer individuals and locates itself within personal accounts. It presents access to healthcare as a function of one’s socio-economic standing and showcases queer exclusion through examples of practices such as conversion therapy. It historically contextualizes the queer movement in India in the demand for contraceptives from the MSM community in the Tihar Jail in the 1990s and shows how queer identity still remains tied to notions of disease and is sexualized and stigmatized. Finally, it proposes queer bioethics as the counter to undo the assumption of heteronormativity within healthcare.
Podcast Interviews
Sayan is a professor at the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland. They have written extensively on queer rights and issues. In this discussion, we discussed the debates around the West Bengal Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules 2022 and the bureaucratic entanglements concerning the same.
In this podcast, we sat down with Sayan Bhattacharya, we discussed the debates around the West Bengal Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules 2022 and the bureaucratic entanglements concerning the same.
In this podcast, we sat down with Rohin Bhatt to discuss his recent piece in the LSPR Queer Column. We also discussed other topics including his experience in the legal field as a queer individual, the recent petition for same-sex marriage, healthcare for queer individuals and briefly touched upon Indian queer jurisprudence as well.
Karan Gulati is a Research Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and a lawyer in Delhi. Previously, Karan held positions at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), where he worked on regulatory governance and judicial administration. He has been an occasional columnist for the Leap Blog, Indian Express, Times of India, and the Quint. Karan holds degrees in law and management from Symbiosis University.
This podcast explores his piece “Inheritance rights of transgender persons in India” and studies the inheritance rights of transgender persons in India. It examines the legal framework for inheritance and provides an overview of all court decisions between 1950 and 2021 that mention the term transgender (and its analogous terms, i.e., aravani, kinner, etc.).
Simran Shaikh is one of the founding members of Dai Welfare Society; the first community-based organisation for hijras in India. She has served on the governing boards of state and national PLHIV networks and been a consultant to national and international organisations on issues of gender and sexual minorities living with HIV. She is also a former UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board Member from Asia Pacific region (2015-2016).
Latest from the Blog
Advancing Investor Access to Fractional Shares in India: Assessing the Regulatory Landscape
Shashank Shekhar and Utkarsh Sharma The concept of fractional shares has been gaining momentum in the global stock market, and India is no exception. With the potential to break down the barriers to entry for retail investors, the Company Law Committee has proposed an amendment to the Indian Companies Act, 2013, to make fractional share…
LSPR Monthly Newsletter (Volume 9)
Tilting of Courts towards Gender Inclusive Interpretation of Rape Laws in IPC Smriti Jaiswal IntroductionThe rape laws in India have been gender-specific since the colonial era. They are based on the heterosexual classification of genders in society and fail to take into account the victims of sexual assault falling outside the heterosexual matrix. This article…
Towards Nuance and Balance: In Conversation with Mr Gopal Sankaranarayanan
Niveditha K Prasad and Rakshit Agarwal In this episode of Arbitrary, Niveditha (Deputy Managing Editor, LSPR) and Rakshit (Editor, LSPR) sit down with Senior Advocate, Mr Gopal Sankaranarayanan to discuss the issue of EWS and caste-based reservations, the complexity of the Aadhar challenge and air pollution litigation in India. Mr Sankaranarayanan discusses these issues by…
Law School Policy Review & Kautilya Society 