"Shows Heinous Indifference": Law Students Condemn BCI's Resolution Requesting Supreme Court To Defer Same-Sex Marriage Issue To Parliament

Student groups from 36 Indian law schools have issued a statement condemning the "heinous indifference" allegedly shown by the Bar Council of India by passing a resolution- requesting the Supreme Court to leave the issue of marriage equality for LGBTQIA+ community to legislative process.

"The Resolution is ignorant, harmful, and antithetical to our Constitution and the spirit of inclusive social life...it has been alienating and hurtful to see our seniors engage in such hateful rhetoric...BCI demonstrates how it is in fact a mouthpiece for a very specific class of men who have the privilege to make hegemonic statements," the statement claims at the outset.

The Supreme Court Constitution Bench is conducting day-to-day hearing to decide a batch of petitions seeking legal recognition for marriages of same-sex couples, transgender persons or queer persons. Today is Day-6 of the hearing.

The student bodies said the apex body for lawyers is not empowered 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 write.

As per BCI's resolution, "more than 99.9% of people of the country are opposed to the idea of same sex marriage". According to the BCI, the vast majority of the population believes that any decision of the Supreme Court in the petitioners' favour will go against the cultural and socio-religious structure of the country.

Students said that the body has not cited any authority to back this claim. "Equally ignorant is the BCI’s unsupported assertion that marriage has always been a union between ‘biological’ men and women based on procreation. This is a colonial reading of Indian history, culture, and civilisation – there is diverse evidence of queer love and marriage existing in various forms across Indian cultures since ancient times. The BCI ignores this evidence...By asserting marriage as a vessel for procreation, the BCI fails to realise that the biological faculty of procreation cannot be lorded over citizens as a prerequisite for fundamental rights in a democratic and rules-based society," they add.

They have also expressed regret over BCI’s allegedly "stunning disregard" for constitutional morality.

"Our Constitution is a counterweight to majoritarianism, religious morality, and unjust public opinion. Constitutional morality dictates that marriage equality must not be made subject to the wishes of a casteist, cis-heteronormative, and patriarchal society. It is to save people from the worst scourges of public opinion that we have a Constitution in the first place. To subject fundamental rights to societal decisions is to betray the vision of morality our Constitution commits us to; it is to betray the Constitution itself."

Finally, the students have expressed their solidarity with the community and its allies and has called upon the legal fraternity to "disavow all discriminatory, parochial, and regressive beliefs that hinder the advance of peoples’ movements towards justice."

Read Statement Here