India
Ignorant, harmful, antithetical: Law students slam Bar Council’s resolution on marriage equality | India News
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NEW DELHI: In a scathing indictment of the Bar Council of India’s resolution on marriage equality hearings as “ignorant, harmful, and antithetical” to the Indian Constitution, students of law from over 35 top Indian law schools have called for solidarity among the legal fraternity to “protect and advance” the spirit of constitutional morality and said BCI “ought to respect” the letter and spirit of the Advocates Act, 1961, which clearly defines the body’s mandate based on its regulatory function.
“Nothing in the Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, empowers the BCI to pass comments on sub judice matters. The passing of this Resolution is entirely unwarranted and a deplorable attempt by the BCI to illegitimately create influence for itself. The BCI must re-familiarise itself with the role envisioned during its establishment, look at the state of the Indian legal profession, and devote its resources to more pressing challenges – rather than needlessly entering constitutional debates,” the students’ statement said.
Students said BCI was denying the role of fundamental rights in its resolution and characterising marriage equality as a political decision, which shows the body’s “heinous indifference” towards the reality of queer and trans persons living as second-class citizens in India.
They also asserted that fundamental rights cannot be made to suffer from the “inaction of the legislature”, while accusing BCI of “blatantly concocting” the statistics of ‘99.9%’ of Indians opposing same-sex marriage, to push the theory that queer persons constitute a ‘miniscule minority’.
“This has already been rejected by the Supreme Court in Navtej Singh Johar. The usage of hateful rhetoric is consistent throughout the Resolution; the BCI feels no shame in calling demands for marriage equality ‘morally compunctive’ and ‘a social experiment’. We condemn this hateful speech in the strongest possible terms,” the statement said.
They alleged that the assertion that marriage has always been a union between ‘biological’ men and women based on procreation is a colonial reading of Indian history, culture, and civilisation and the BCI, “in another overreach of power as a mouthpiece of common men”, demonstrates that it is actually represents a “very specific class of men who have the privilege to make hegemonic statements on our culture without any form of accountability”.
“In condemning the BCI’s resolution, we pledge our continuing solidarity with the queer communities whose fights for liberation and emancipation extend far beyond this current petition. This includes the fight for horizontal reservation for transgender persons, the implementation of the NALSA judgement, and all other struggles by the transgender community,” the statement added, asking the legal fraternity to disavow all discriminatory, parochial, and regressive beliefs that hinder the advance of peoples’ movements towards justice.
“Nothing in the Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, empowers the BCI to pass comments on sub judice matters. The passing of this Resolution is entirely unwarranted and a deplorable attempt by the BCI to illegitimately create influence for itself. The BCI must re-familiarise itself with the role envisioned during its establishment, look at the state of the Indian legal profession, and devote its resources to more pressing challenges – rather than needlessly entering constitutional debates,” the students’ statement said.
Students said BCI was denying the role of fundamental rights in its resolution and characterising marriage equality as a political decision, which shows the body’s “heinous indifference” towards the reality of queer and trans persons living as second-class citizens in India.
They also asserted that fundamental rights cannot be made to suffer from the “inaction of the legislature”, while accusing BCI of “blatantly concocting” the statistics of ‘99.9%’ of Indians opposing same-sex marriage, to push the theory that queer persons constitute a ‘miniscule minority’.
“This has already been rejected by the Supreme Court in Navtej Singh Johar. The usage of hateful rhetoric is consistent throughout the Resolution; the BCI feels no shame in calling demands for marriage equality ‘morally compunctive’ and ‘a social experiment’. We condemn this hateful speech in the strongest possible terms,” the statement said.
They alleged that the assertion that marriage has always been a union between ‘biological’ men and women based on procreation is a colonial reading of Indian history, culture, and civilisation and the BCI, “in another overreach of power as a mouthpiece of common men”, demonstrates that it is actually represents a “very specific class of men who have the privilege to make hegemonic statements on our culture without any form of accountability”.
“In condemning the BCI’s resolution, we pledge our continuing solidarity with the queer communities whose fights for liberation and emancipation extend far beyond this current petition. This includes the fight for horizontal reservation for transgender persons, the implementation of the NALSA judgement, and all other struggles by the transgender community,” the statement added, asking the legal fraternity to disavow all discriminatory, parochial, and regressive beliefs that hinder the advance of peoples’ movements towards justice.
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