THE QUEER HISTORY OF ‘QUEER’

OVER the decades, as our constitutional courts came to be confronted with matters relating to homosexuality and the rights of persons from the third gender, the language employed by these courts evolved from clinical or derogatory to one of acceptance and affirmation.

- SAAI SUDHARSAN SATHIYAMOORTHY

During this period, the natural meaning of the word ‘queer’, once used as a pejorative, has transformed into an inclusive umbrella identity, having been reclaimed by the LGBTQIA+ communities.

Equally, the evolution of the word’s usage in today’s constitutional jurisprudence represents a remarkable transformation from colonial criminalisation to constitutional affirmation, though its direct usage in judicial opinions still remains denotative, lexical and surprisingly limited.

From the early colonial period to the late 20th century, ‘queer’ was mostly restricted in usage in the context of ‘strange or odd’. That’s the sense in which it was used by the Madras High Court at one of the many proceedings related to the infamous liquidation of Travancore National and Quilon Bank (1941)—“it did strike him as queer”. One of the very first constitutional cases to employ the word was S B Trading Co (1951), where the Calcutta High Court observed about different classes of tenants, “[t]hey are not similarly circumstanced individuals and if the effects are queer as indeed they are, even they cannot be said to infringe the constitutional guarantee of equal protection”.