Section 377
section of the Indian Penal Code
Section 377 is a British colonial Penal Code provision that criminalized all sexual acts "against the order of nature". The law was used to prosecute people engaging in oral and anal sex along with homosexual activity. As per a Supreme Court of India judgement since 2018, the Indian Penal Code Section 377 is used to convict non-consensual sexual activities among homosexuals with a minimum of ten years' imprisonment extended to life imprisonment. It has been used to criminalize third gender people, such as the apwint in Myanmar. In 2018, then British Prime Minister Theresa May acknowledged how the legacies of such British colonial anti-sodomy laws continue to persist today in the form of discrimination, violence, and even death.
History
Although the act of sodomy was sometimes prosecuted in England under British common law, it was first codified in the British Empire as Section 377 in the Indian Penal Code as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" in 1860. Section 377 was then exported to other colonies and even to England itself, providing the legal model for the act of 'buggery' in the Offences Against the Person Act (1861). Alok Gupta wrote for a Human Rights Watch report in 2008 that the British intended for the code to prevent Christian colonial subjects from "corruption", and to condition colonized subjects undergoing Christianization to conform to colonial authority. This consequently had a big impact on colonial-era sexuality in India.
Although Section 377 did not explicitly include the word homosexual, it has been used to prosecute homosexual activity.
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