In a major victory for LBGTQ rights, on 6 September 2018, the Supreme Court of India unanimously ruled to decriminalise consensual same-sex acts by partially striking down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This came after the same court had, in 2013, overrruled a 2009 Delhi High Court verdict which declared Section 377 unconstitutional. Here are some selected readings from our extensive coverage of LGBTQ rights in India and around Southasia.

From the archives:

Danish Sheikh on Section 377 as Shakespearean comedy. (December 2016)

Kyle G Knight on an online initiative for safe housing for gay people in India. (February 2015)

Danny Coyle on the trials and tribulations of young queer people in Nepal. (February 2017)

Sunil Gupta’s photo essay on queer lives in Delhi. (December 2015)

Hira Nabi on queer life in Pakistan. (January 2012)

Aditi Angiras on India’s first gay memoir. (June 2017)

An extract from Siddharth Dube’s memoir No One Else: A Personal History of Outlawed Love and Sex (December 2015)

Ajita Banerjie on the problems with India’s Transgender Bill. (June 2018)

Annie McCarthy on the rise of queer Southasian literature. (January 2014)

As the Indian government cracks down on several prominent activists and writers across India, here are some readings from our archives on authoritarian tendencies in India’s body politic at present and in the past.

Anand Teltumbde on links between neoliberalism and Hindutva nationalism in India.

Salil Tripathi on the silencing of the argumentative Indian.

Historian Ramachandra Guha on Indira Gandhi’s Emergency.

“Is the Indian Constitution a guarantor of nationalism?” asks scholar Debaditya Bhattacharya.

Author Amitava Kumar‘s poem ‘India (for Safdar Hashni)‘.

Illustration: Marcin Bondarowicz

Photojournalist and activist Shahidul Alam was picked up by the Bangladeshi law enforcement earlier this week over remarks made on Facebook about the government crackdown on protesting students in Dhaka. Alam continues to be in custody under Section 57 (2) of the controversial Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act, a legislation that has attracted widespread criticism over its draconian nature. The act has been used to detain over 20 journalists in the recent past for, among other things, social media posts and comments critical of the government. Over the years, similar laws have been enforced in other countries of Southasia, with authorities abusing the provisions of these often hurriedly and arbitrarily passed laws to clamp down on any dissent.

Sarah Eleazar on how Pakistan’s Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act impinges on freedom of expression.

Lawrence Liang looks at how the strategic use of the law threatens investigative journalism in India.

Salil Tripathi explains how freedom of expression in Bangladesh is caught between the machete and the magistrate.

On 30 July 2018, the final draft of National Register of Citizens (NRC) of India’s northeastern state of Assam was released, which left out  around four million people living in the state, potentially stripping them of their citizenship rights. The NRC, compiled over a period five years at a staggering cost of INR 12.2 billion (USD 177.9 million), comprises only those who were able to prove they were in Assam before 1971, when Bangladesh became independent.

From our archives

Anindita Dasgupta on what is behind the unrelenting myth that Assam is overrun by Bangladeshi migrants. (August 2000).

David Ludden on using geographical history to locate social realities in Assam. ( November-December 2005 ).

Rafiul Ahmed looks at Assam’s disenfranchised voters  (May 2014).