THE ARCHITECTURE OF AMBIVALENCE: LAW, THE QUEER COMMUNITY, AND THE STRUCTURAL CONTRADICTIONS OF RIGHTS RECOGNITION IN INDIA

Abstract

India’s legal framework for queer persons is defined by a paradox that this article terms “architectured ambivalence”: the state has progressively extended constitutional recognition to queer identity through landmark decisions from NALSA v. Union of India (2014) to Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018) and Supriyo v. Union of India (2023), while simultaneously constructing a legislative architecture that contradicts, erodes, or simply refuses to implement what those decisions require. The article argues that this pattern is not a failure of implementation but a structurally coherent arrangement constituted by three features: doctrinal abundance alongside legislative poverty, a systematic asymmetry by which the state has been willing to decriminalise queer identity but unwilling to extend the civil infrastructure that makes that identity liveable, and epistemic erasure at the implementation stage by which transformative judicial directions are hollowed out through administrative and legislative processes. Drawing on the critical scholarship of Narrain, Gupta, Jain, and Agarwal, and examining the replacement of the Indian Penal Code by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita in 2024 and the Transgender Persons Amendment Bill of 2026, the article demonstrates that the most consequential recent developments for queer persons in India have been legislative retreats, not constitutional advances. The article concludes with a critical legislative programme aimed at bridging the gap between constitutional doctrine and lived reality.