Course Information
- 2024-25
- CCQ214
- 5-Year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.), 3-Year LL.B. (Hons.), LL.M., Master's Programme in Public Policy
- III, IV, V
- Mar 2025
- Elective Course
How does this course relate to the programme curriculum: Does it develop on a prior course in the programme or is it a foundational or standalone course?
This course builds on foundational legal principles taught at NLSIU by deepening students’ understanding of how law intersects with various socio-political and cultural frameworks, with a specific focus on the queer community in India. It examines how legal systems both reflect and shape societal attitudes toward queer individuals, exploring the legal, cultural, political, and historical contexts that influence queer rights and activism in India.
As stated in the FAQ section of the electives page, NLSIU seeks to introduce students to courses that “explore law and its intersection with other disciplines – literature, philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, and history, among others.”
My course aligns with this interdisciplinary approach by situating questions of the law alongside critical perspectives from sociology, anthropology, history, gender studies, and queer theory. Specifically, the course takes original court judgments and places them in dialogue with texts from these disciplines to provide a comprehensive, “big picture”, contextualized understanding of queer politics in India.
Furthermore, this course builds upon two other electives previously offered by NLSIU, both of which explored crucial questions that sat at the intersection of queerness and law in India. The first, Kunal Ambasta’s Queerness and the Law (March 2020), addressed how legal frameworks in India intersect with queer identity, rights, and movements. Ambasta’s course focused on the legal struggles faced by queer individuals, examining the state’s role in regulating sexual identities and the impact of law on queer lives. This course offered students a foundational understanding of the legal challenges faced by the community.
The second course, Arvind Narrain’s Preserving Memories: Law, Social Transformation, and the Queer Archive (November 2022), highlighted the importance of archiving queer history and the role of law in social transformation. Narrain’s course connected the preservation of queer histories to broader themes of social justice, activism, and the struggle for queer rights in India. It explored how the law interacts with queer activism and how the historical preservation of queer narratives can influence contemporary advocacy.
My course advances the work done in both of these electives by bringing the contemporary fight for queer rights to the forefront, highlighting the challenges and fissures within the queer movement in India. It incorporates newer socio-legal developments, such as the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, and explores emerging intersections between digital spaces, queer politics, and Hindu nationalism. While Ambasta’s course provided an in-depth examination of queer rights and its accompanied socio-legal struggles, and Narrain’s course
focused on the preservation of queer history and its implications for social transformation, my course pushes the conversation forward by addressing current debates on legal reforms, exploring the political dimensions of queer activism, and examining the role of emerging technologies in shaping queer futures.
In essence, my course extends the dialogue initiated by these previous electives by allowing students to explore the transformative role of law in both mobilizing and hindering queer activism. It examines the political implications of socio-legal reforms, the intersections of caste, religion, and nationalism within queer organizing, and explores how the broader social fabric of queer identities is both shaped by law and politics in contemporary India and shapes them in return.
By the end of this course, students will be equipped to critically engage with the socio-legal dimensions of queer activism in contemporary India and should understand how legal reforms, societal norms, and political ideologies are mediated by the queer rights discourse.
Describe how you have approached the course. What have you included/excluded and why? Choice of materials: primary or secondary readings / case law;
In designing this course, I have taken a deliberate approach to ensure a comprehensive, interdisciplinary exploration of queer rights in India, with a strong emphasis on the socio-legal aspects that both shape and are shaped by queer activism. The course includes a balance of primary and secondary materials, carefully selected to provide students with a nuanced understanding of both the legal frameworks and the broader socio-political context these issues are embedded in.
