Hi, it's West Kasova. We're taking a break this week, so here's one of our favorite episodes you might have missed and an update since this show aired. In the spring, India Supreme Court held hearings on same sex marriage. A verdict is expected in the fall. From Bloomberg News and iHeartRadio, it's the Big Take. I'm West Kosova. Today India's march toward marriage equality. This month, India Supreme Court will hear arguments in a closely watched case on whether to allow
same sex couples to marry. The court's already affirmed are right to privacy for all, which abolished a colonial era law that made gay sex a crime, and it expanded social welfare benefits for what it called atypical families. To those arguing in favor, marriage equality is the logical and inevitable next step.
I want to get married. I want to get married for the reason that many people in this country and everywhere they believe that one day they'll meet somebody who they really love and you know, they'll be able to get married. I want to be able to do that.
That's Aditi Anan. She and her partner are among several same sex couples who petition the court for the right to marry. If the judges rule in their favor, the effects will be far reaching, and not only within India itself. India's size and its political and economic influence in Asia means the ruling will be felt well beyond its borders. My colleagues Munisa Nakbie and Kai Schultz are following this
case and they are here with me now from New Delhi. Munisa, can you give us an overview of the case that's now before the court.
So we's the case that is before the court is several couples who are asking the court. Shortly after India legalized, or rather decriminalized homosexuality, they're asking to have access to marriage equality. So these couples are saying, we are no longer now criminals in the eyes of the law, and it's time for the law and the country to go one step further and allow us those rights and privileges
that come with marriage. These include things like adoption, being able to be each other's next of kin, have each other on their insurance, and all of those things that come with marriage, the good and the bad.
And how did this all come to be?
It's sort of built up from the decades on fight to first decriminalize homosexuality in India, which came to pass only in twenty eighteen. You know, for more than one hundred and fifty years before that, it was a crime to openly declare that you were a in this country, and even though prosecutions were read was a huge tool of harassment for the gay community. It created fear and a sort of impunity for police to come and harass
you should they choose to so. Once that sort of had come about and that was a huge moment for the NGBTQ community in India. Once that had been achieved, it seemed the next obvious thing. What a surprise everybody is the speed at which this has come. In many countries where marriage equality has come, or the fight for marriage equality has come, it's been a much slower process. In India. It's been just a couple of years between decriminalization and fighting to get the rise to marriage equality.
Kai Menisa described how quickly this all happened. How was it able to change so fast?
The speed has been remarkable for I think everybody that we've spoken to, and people have put forward a few theories for why they think the evolution has been so accelerated. India is a fairly English country. It has a large diaspora, it has a large English speaking population. It's very much a country where people follow international media. So there was an awareness, I think of rights movements in other parts of the world, including the US, that's helped to kind
of create this consciousness around these issues. Secondly, India is led by a fairly progressive Supreme Court. The bench as it currently stands is pretty progressive on social issues. So in recent years, they've allowed women to enter sex segregated temples. They've extended legal recognition to transgender people who can identify as so called third genders. That's how it's characterized in India, and so that's provided some of the context I think for the speed.
What happened between the criminalization and fighting for marriage equality has been quite a seismic shift in how Indian culture has viewed LGBTQ people. Twenty years ago, a firm that had a lesbian characters, you know, inflamed such passions that movie theaters were set on fire and you know, the
movie had to be pulled out off screens. Now we're seeing advertisements for two women buying a home together, buying wedding jewelry together, which is very iconic to Indian culture, and cinema is making nuanced, you know, not the caricatured sort of homosexual characters of the movies of the nineties, which was almost sort of like the buffoonish character. Bollywood is making films with very sort of sensitive portrayals of gay characters. So all of that has also changed in
the interim between decriminalization and pushing for marriage equality. Some of the people we spoke to have said this that seeing all of these things change, being able to see for the first time representations of themselves on screen and around them in popular culture, which was brand new, also allowed them to sort of feel that the time had come to push for more. So to give an idea of, you know, what this journey has been like for LGBTQ
people in India. We spoke to this couple, Aditi and Susan, and it's sort of their story really is the story of what it has meant in India for so many people to grapple with their own gayness, find themselves sort of legally full citizens finally, and then find themselves in this sort of amazing place where they can reach for marriage equality, which seemed even a decade ago to them completely out of reach. And in Aditi and Susan's story
we find reflections of all of that. So they talk about how as young women, coming out even to themselves was hard.
And here is Aditi Anan speaking about this to Bloomberg Quicktech.
Susan and I moved in within a few months of I think a few weeks of meeting each other, and you know, once we actually started dating. Susan quit her job, she moved out of a house, moved into my apartment in Bombay, and we got a dog. So I would say we started seeing each other in October and by
March of next year we were already living together. Our friend and family were extremely supportive, extremely supportive, though it was fell in nerve racking and a difficult, difficult thing to come out because of our own fears and all the things that we had been dealing with all our lives.
But it was remarkable once we actually came out to our families on both sides, Susan to her mom that night and then me to my parents the next day, it was remarkable how supportive they've been throughout Extraordinarily, my grandmother, who is in her nineties, is not just a supporter. I mean, it's completely organic, her relationship with Susan, her
relationship with our son. So it's been a really, really wonderful and I know, sometimes a very rare experience to have this kind of support, and we've been very lucky to have it.
So much of the context behind these journeys comes from a place of pain for people. India is a country where you can still very easily be harassed for being gay. You have a few legal protections in the workforce. In
many instances, sexual assault is common. Many of these challenges that come from living openly in countries across the world are common in India, and so the fear there persists, and I think that that's something that many people feel marriage equality will help to abate, is the idea that they're different or separate or other from other Indians in society.
Let's hear from Susan Dia. She's a Deity's partner and she also spoke to Bloomberg Quick.
Take at the time a couple of years ago when we decided to have children, is when we thought that marriage would be a logical next step for us, and in doing that, in having and raising a child, now we realize more so the lack of a lot of things that we don't have today. Legal rights over each other, the ability to you know, have a bank account, to own assets together, to be a legal parent to a child.
These are all things that one either takes for granted or doesn't think about till you're faced with it.
Kai, Is it possible to measure how the Indian people feel about this? Is same sex marriage popular? Do people want it?
It's hard to say precisely. We've spoken to lawyers who have said that with decriminalization it was a fairly easy pill for people to swallow. They could understand and get on board pretty quickly with the idea that people didn't want to be considered a criminal in front of the law. And I think it was also framed as a very private act. Marriage is a much more public institution. It holds such an important space in the Indian consciousness, and so there was some concern that the speed was so
quick that perhaps it was almost too quick. What we found though, is that public polling varies pretty widely, so in the months after decriminalization, this would have been. In twenty eighteen twenty nineteen polls found that anywhere from about a quarter to more than two thirds of Indians supported same sex marriage, And so it doesn't give a full
picture of support on the ground. But what we do know so far as there have been no public protests that have taken on any sort of grandeur or size or importance in the media or in bigger and urban centers, and so so far there hasn't been that pushback that some people are fearing there might.
Be, munisa because India has such a large population and it's so influential in Asia and around the rest of the world. If same sex marriage becomes law. You write in the story that this will have far reaching effects beyond India itself. How is that?
I mean, For one thing, one hopes that it sets a legal precedent for other countries to follow, for the more conservative cultures to follow it. It creates a blueprint. But also because in the region, even wealthier sort of seemingly more advanced economies so like Singapore and Japan, for example,
haven't provided this right to their citizens. Presumably once India or if India rather were to make marriage equality or possibility it would definitely sort of draw talent to India, people who would feel safer working here, living here, being able to get their partners on visas, and not having to sort of jump through hoops pretending that they were
moving in, you know, or living with a friend. So all of those things would make India sort of a stand out in the region where this access to equality of basic equality hasn't been made possible so far.
And to add to Muniza's point, the scale of the judgment is enormous. India is, by some estimates already the world's most populous nation, and so to legalize same sex marriage would extend benefits to more than one point four billion people. To get a sense of the scale of this, it would more than double the number of people globally
with marriage equality rights. As hosts of the G twenty this year as well, India's government, which is led by Prime Minister Nearendromodi, could use this ruling as evidence that the country isn't as regressive on minority rights, for instance.
That's a criticism that's often made by Western governments, and so there's a political mileage that could be gained from this ruling as well, that goes beyond the leverage that the ruling could provide in terms of attracting talent from other parts of Asia or other parts of the world.
Our conversation continues after the break, Munizer. We've talked about the significance of this case before India's Supreme Court and what it could mean both inside the country and around the world. Really, let's focus now on what's happening outside the court. What are various political groups within the country saying about this issue.
To begin with, we'll hear what the government actually thinks in a few days their affidavit to the court. The you know, the Law Ministry stating the government's position will be made available because the government has to take its stand before the Supreme Court, so we know more specifically what the government has to say. The interesting thing is there hasn't been very much said at all, and that can be extrapolated as a positive thing. I think the
positive has been that there hasn't been any backlash. Really, I suspect some of it as the government is beating and watching. It's a crucial election here, so if it feels like this might not be socially acceptable, who knows large Actually, what will be interesting to see is the two elements where this ruling could go. One is how
it affects Hindu marriage. Marriages in India guided by personal religious laws, So the Hindus have the Hindu Marriage Act, the Muslims have Muslim personal law, and then there is the civil code under which interfaith marriages happened.
We know that the ruling BJP has previously opposed broadening the Hindu Marriage Act, which applies to most of the population. Officials have argued that including same sex couples would legitimize what they've called a particular human conduct and that it would run against Indian values. Lawyers generally expect there to be some opposition within the government, but that's not necessarily
being framed as a bad thing. And to sidestep some of these issues, most of the petitions appearing before the Supreme Court fall under a different marriage Act, which is
used for secular and interreligious unions. Lawyers hope that this route will avoid some of the land mines that are associated with amending laws specifically bound with religion, and they're building their case around the idea that marriage equality is ultimately about fundamental rights under India's constitution, that it's not necessarily a moral issue.
Munisa. More than a century ago, you right, that India was much more tolerant than it has been, and that that is really a legacy of colonialism, that it is something that the British brought with them. Can you describe how that happened and how it played out.
Hindu mythology is very, very open when it comes to sexuality. There are you know, gods that changed gender, men become women, men have babies. It's all very fluid. Even for the many one hundred years of Mughal Muslim rule in India, erotic homo erotic poetry, same sex, so love, none of it was criminalized. And then you know, so in eighteen sixty one when the British took over rule of India, that is when the law was codified and draft to
make homosexuality a crime. Academics and experts who've been looking at this will say that, you know, while modern India, India today will often people who oppose gay marriage, for example, will critique gay marriage as a Western import, but what really is a Western import is the criminalization of homosexuality, and that ancient and even medieval Indian culture was very open and accepting, if not sort of warmly embracing it.
Kay.
The Supreme Court is said to hear this case later this month. What do you expect? Are there signs of which way the court may ultimately come down?
The Supreme Court is a fairly progressive institution in India and it's led by a largely progressive Chief Justice. Last year, the Court offered a hint at how the case might go, ruling that same sex couples and other what they've called non traditional families are entitled to social welfare benefits. And so I think there's an optimism in the legal community that the ruling could be apot one. What we're waiting on is to understand better the government's position in all
of this. But ultimately, the Supreme Court is an independent institution. The Chief Justice has the power to choose the bench, and lawyers are optimistic that unless there are widespread protests against the marriage equality case, that a ruling could come as early as this summer this fall.
Muniza Knakbe Kai Schultz, thanks so much for speaking with me today.
Thank you, Thank you Wes.
When we come back a broader look at same sex marriage, where is it allowed and where is it still outlud India isn't alone in considering same sex marriage. In recent years, several nations have legalized it, but there are many places where same sex relationships are still against the law. For a global picture of where things stand, ger chat and Sandu joins me from jin Eva, Switzerland. They're the director of programs at ILGA World, which advocates for the rights
of LGBTI people. Great Chatton, could you give us a little tour of the world. Same sex marriage has been expanding in many places, but not in all. Can you tell us where it's legal and where it's not.
We currently have thirty three UN member states with full marriage equality, thirty four with other forms of what we call civil partnerships. The latest countries that have introduced marriage equality in twenty twenty one was Chile, twenty twenty two, it was Switzerland, Slovenia and Cuba, and this year so far it's Andorra and I believe there are other discussions happening in Japan as well.
Are there regions of the world where you're seeing movement forward and other places where either there is no movement or there's active moves against marriage equality.
If we look at the question just purely from a marriage perspective, marriage equality perspective, Yes, there are certain moves towards that. A lot of the discussions or narratives around decriminalization of same sex intimacy, or the fear around decriminalization is that it would lead to marriage equality and the call for marriage equality. We are hearing from governments in parts of West Africa where there's no not even a
ban on same sex intimacy, they have no laws. They are thinking of introducing those bands on same sex intimacy to ensure that there is no marriage equality. So it's going the opposite way. This is in parts of Africa and Asia. We also see even in the USA with versus Wade, the whole of the argument around same sex marriage was pinned on the decision around roadways Wade. So what you see is that it's not so much the
attack on same sex marriage or marriage equality. You see that it's a chipping away at these well fought rights that have been gained so far that eventually lead to marriage equality. On one side you have a block and the other side you have a move which could then send marriage equality backwards as well. And it's not one region is leading, it's different patterns. I think it's always best to avoid looking at the world in a homogeneous
way or in different regions in a homogeneous way. And in fact, one of the most disturbing patterns is actually coming from North America and Western Europe, a where you see these growing anti trans anti gender rhetorics which could definitely play into the same sex marriage equality rights as well.
You mentioned Cuba as being a country that has advanced marriage equality last year. Is there a pattern at all between democracies and non democracies when it comes to enacting these laws.
Indeed, I think that's something very interesting that there is data that is correlated to this, and that we find that where there's our higher account or higher evaluation of democracies, there is more freedoms afforded towards LGBTIQ plus people. Indeed, in the case of Cuba, that is the anomaly in that sort of discussion. You know, we are seeing right now, in particular, at a time when we are seeing growing anti gender, anti rights rhetorics there are linked to anti
democratic movements, anti bodily autonomy rhetoric. They all do go to a hand in hand with a growing threat on democracy. A contrary to what I was saying earlier, there are patterns of merging. There is you know, there is the domino effect. Yes, we see one country and then the
others following. However, that does not mean every single country will follow because there's still many parts of the world, especially in Asia and in Africa, punitive laws against same sex into So whilst you will see this happening, it won't guarantee that every single country will then follow suit. There has to be certain enabling factors and enabling conditions.
So in authoritarian states you see less tolerance for both same sexual relationships and marriage equality.
Indeed, that's a growing pattern that we have seen, yes, and I think there's data around that, especially from our partners and members from the Global Council of Equality that have done great work around this, who have tied work on democracy and LGBTIQPUS rights, and in fact there has been other research that has been done, including not just
on democracy, but on economic growth as well. We see that when there's a percentage increase in rights or more rights being afforded, in particular to marginalized populations, especially those who identify as LGBTIQ PUS. We see a percentage growth in GDP as well. This is some great research that's come out from the US and from the Netherlands and.
Seeing all the change that's happening all around the world. When you look ahead, what do you see for the future of marriage equality.
We are moving towards marriage equality, but I would like to preface this. In twenty nineteen ILGA World we produce what it's called the State Sponsored Homophobia Report. In our report, marriage equality was seen as the gold standard as the go to you know, we've reached it. However, in twenty nineteen, our team decided against that and said no, this should not be the gold standard because it sends a very one sided view. So what we said that the gold
standard should be is constitutional rights. So once lgbtiquplus rights are enshrined in the constitution, we have better chances of ensuring equality for all the journey towards that could be one route to that is marriage equality. Indeed, we saw last year and the Netherlands have included or introduced now in their constitution lgbtiqplus protections. So I think some of this narrative around marriage equality is very, very import but also need We cannot just focus on that alone. It
cannot be our end goal. Our end goal is constitutional protections and ensure because once we're in the constitution there are constitutional laws are harder to change, whereas marriage quality laws. They could change from the next five ten years, and we indeed are going to see a positive direction. But it shouldn't be the endpoint for us.
John and Sandu, thanks so much for speaking with me, Thank you for inviting me, Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Vergalina. Our senior
producer is Catherine Viink. Frederica Romanello is our producer. Our associate producer is Zen Raphael. I'm Seely is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidron i'm wes Kasova. We'll be back on Monday with another Big Take. Have a great weekend.