In Statement and Rally, South Asian Students Protest Indian Ruling on Same Sex Rights

Ten South Asian student groups at Harvard signed a joint statement last week condemning the “recriminalization of same-sex sexual activity” in India, a development that on Sunday compelled Cambridge residents, as well as Harvard and MIT students, to stage a protest in front of the Harvard Square MBTA stop.

The statement to the Harvard community, signed by groups ranging from the Harvard South Asian Association to Harvard College Sangeet, a South Asian music association, attacked the ruling and affirmed the groups’ commitment to “serving as open and positive spaces for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities.”

The signed statement and protest were prompted after a Dec. 11 Indian Supreme Court ruling reversing a 2009 decision by a lower court that had overturned Section 377 of India’s penal code. That section, which was introduced in 1860 under British rule, currently criminalizes "sex against the order of nature.”

“It disturbs and disheartens us to know that many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Indian students and alumni of this University were deemed criminals by the Supreme Court of India this past Wednesday,” the groups wrote in the statement.

Anupa Murali ’16, a co-president of Harvard Mirch, a South Asian a capella group that signed the statement, said that she found the support for the statement “very encouraging.”

“I think it says something really strong about our generation,” she said, “especially considering the fact that in India this isn’t something that’s as widely supported.”

Meanwhile, as part of an international protest of the decision known as the Global Day of Rage, about 20 individuals from around Cambridge and Boston gathered in Harvard Square Sunday. Members of the group held signs with phrases like “One humanity, one struggle” and “Love is not a crime,” while chanting “Murdabad,” an Urdu word that translates to “down with” or “death to.”

Siddharth Narrain Arcot Ananth, a student at Harvard Law School who was one of the main organizers of the event, said that the protesters were trying to attract the Indian government’s attention by aiding the global protest.

“Today there are more than 30 cities across the world that are doing exactly what we are doing,” he said. “The idea is to send out a strong message to the Indian government and to the Indian Supreme Court that people across the world are upset and outraged by the judgment.”

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, the United Nations has spoken out against the decision and urged the government to reconsider.

Nishin Nathwani ’15, who was present at the event and read the student groups’ statement aloud, said that the students’ efforts illustrate “the amount of rage that there is against this.”

—Staff writer John P. Finnegan can be reached at finnegan@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @finneganspake.