In my recent book Criminal Love? Queer Theory, Culture and Politics in India, I point out how the government and the judiciary have been passing the buck to each other as far as decriminalisation of homosexuality in India is concerned. In December 2013, when the Supreme Court reinstated Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which was read down by the Delhi High Court in July 2009, it argued about that scrapping Section 377 or not, was not for the courts to decide, but for the government.

When the BJP came to power in May 2014, Arun Jaitley said exactly the opposite. He said it was high time the Supreme Court legislated on Section 377 and abolished it. Today, the Supreme Court has done just that. While hearing the curative petition for repealing Section 377, the Chief Justice of India, who was part of the five-judge bench that heard the case, said the Supreme Court intended to stop prosecuting people for consensual 'unnatural' sex. Hats off to the Supreme Court for saying that! Obviously, two previous judgments, the one that gave rights to transgender people in April 2014, and the recent one that held that the right to privacy was a fundamental right, served as the backdrop to today's ruling.