Marriage for all, even if for a few

Context:

The Supreme Court began hearing the case for marriage equality within the ambit of the Special Marriage Act. 

Society’s view:

• A Bar Council of India resolution recently quoted a dubious survey on 99% of Indians being against marriage equality while more sober commentators argue that the society is not ready for what the petitioners seek.

Views of Earlier Instances:

• Former Member of Parliament, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, predicted that the law would not have many immediate takers but that an emancipated next generation. 
  • She conceived the civil union law as a calculated, rational decision where a freedom wilfully granted is better than a freedom that is ‘taken’.
• Former President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, had bitterly opposed the Hindu Code Bill in his private correspondence with Jawaharlal Nehru because he believed that the measure was forcing something on a vast majority, because some people — according to him, a small, likely microscopic minority — considered it a right.

Such a step will reaffirm rights as a whole:

• Social transformations are not easy and laws, in a vacuum, are unlikely to disrupt the lives of ‘vast majorities’. 
• Some citizens may not be prepared for marriage equality, just as some are not open to inter-caste and inter-community marriages but, as Pandit had argued in 1954, the law should hold out more potential than the public imagination allows for and should be aimed at improving the lives of the more marginalised. 
• Affording rights to a sexual minority — even if it is a minority — reaffirms the rights of the citizenry as a whole.

News Source: The Hindu

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