Rewriting Supriyo
Unpacking India’s Marriage Equality Judgment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14296/ac.v7i1.5842Abstract
This article reimagines Supriyo v Union of India, a constitutional judgment rendered by the Supreme Court of India in 2023 that denied the legal recognition of same-sex marriages. The rewritten judgment uses a critical queer lens and recognizes the right to marry as a constitutional guarantee grounded in dignity, autonomy, and equality. It rejects the heteronormative exclusions of the Special Marriage Act 1954 and foregrounds the lived experiences of queer couples. It illustrates how queer relationships can subvert patriarchal norms through consent-based relational models. Simultaneously, it proposes a nomination-based approach to delink legal benefits from marital status, enabling legal protection for diverse kinships. In doing so, the rewritten judgment queers marriage both structurally and substantively, while also ensuring legal recognition for non-marital forms of intimacy and care.
Keywords: marriage equality; Indian Constitution; critical queer theory; anti-discrimination.
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