Bengaluru Pride 2009, photo by Lighttripper.
Official statistics released in a court case estimate the number of homosexuals in India at about 3 million. I think that’s a bit low. Some estimates (from the west) are that 1-5% of the population is gay, tho those are really rough. Estimating from estimates, that would mean that 12-60 million of Indians could be gay.
India has recently (2009) decriminalized, like, being gay and the numbers came up as part of a court hearing. People are challenging the 2009 Supreme Court ruling, I guess hoping to make homosexual relations illegal again. Uncouth.
The numbers were announced to the country’s Supreme Court earlier this week during a hearing on the decriminalisation of gay sex.
The figures were compiled by India’s National Aids Control Programme, according to the BBC.
Currently, the Supreme Court is hearing more than a dozen petitions filed to overturn the Delhi High Court’s landmark 2009 ruling, which legalised same-sex relations in India.
The figures are expected to put into the context the scale of liberties which will be inhibited if section 377 of the Indian Penal Code – the law which classed gay sex as a criminal offence – is re-instated. (Pink Paper)
Anyways, it’s nice to show that there are gay people in India, though there are probably more. Here’s hoping that they get more rights, more in line with traditional indic culture than whatever Victorian hangups we imported.
As Russell Peters pointed out, they really could do with a few more “homos” up there- given their population crisis and all…