There are two parts to it; the first is obviously the title of the book. I think it becomes important to turn that mockery on its head and perhaps reclaim the word and call ourselves the ‘urban elite’. Assuming for a minute that queerness is only limited to the urban elite, does that mean that the Constitution does not work for us? The answer is no. But if you look at the petitioners — and Chief Justice D. Y. Chandrachud’s judgment traces the backgrounds of each of the petitioners — you will see that a wide range of people were a part of it, from people from marginalised castes to Catholics. The whole process of using this urban elite definition was to kind of disenfranchise the queer community. One would expect that arguments, especially when advanced before the Supreme Court, would be based squarely on legal points, but we’ve seen ad hominem attacks on the petitioners across the board in human rights litigation, on the lawyers for the petitioners and also on the motivation behind the demands of petitioners.
There are two parts to it; the first is obviously the title of the book. I think it becomes important to turn that mockery on its head and perhaps reclaim the word and call ourselves the ‘urban elite’. Assuming for a minute that queerness is only limited to the urban elite, does that mean that the Constitution does not work for us? The answer is no. But if you look at the petitioners — and Chief Justice D. Y. Chandrachud’s judgment traces the backgrounds of each of the petitioners — you will see that a wide range of people were a part of it, from people from marginalised castes to Catholics. The whole process of using this urban elite definition was to kind of disenfranchise the queer community. One would expect that arguments, especially when advanced before the Supreme Court, would be based squarely on legal points, but we’ve seen ad hominem attacks on the petitioners across the board in human rights litigation, on the lawyers for the petitioners and also on the motivation behind the demands of petitioners.
