What a milestone – Menaka Guruswamy has become India's first openly queer Member of Parliament. She's a senior Supreme Court advocate and was one of the lawyers who fought the landmark case that led to the de‑criminalisation of homosexuality in 2018 when Section 377 was read down.
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Guruswamy is a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford (D.Phil) and a Gammon Fellow at Harvard Law (LL.M). TIME named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in 2019, alongside her partner and fellow lawyer Arundhati Katju.
Fun fact – her partner is the daughter of former diplomat Vivek Katju, who is now retired.
In the RG Kar case, she appeared as counsel for the West Bengal state side.
People will conveniently forget the RG Kar episode and her role defending Bengal. Most will only remember her activism around Section 377.
She was my senior in college.
She comes from a privileged background.
She represented West Bengal in the RG Kar rape case, which was riddled with shady handling – from tampered witnesses to manipulated crime scenes. Being a woman herself, she also took on the Telangana‑Hyderabad deforestation fight that sparked huge social‑media outrage. She tends to side with the 'power side' rather than question the ethical morality of a case, and she comes from a privileged background.
She's the first openly queer MP. I'm sure there are others who just aren't vocal about it.
Her article in Hindu calls her a lesbian and is heavily biased.
Both can be true – being queer is a plus, but backing West Bengal in the RG Kar case is an unfortunate downside.