First published: Wednesday, 31 August 2005

In the heady times that followed India's independence, the country may not have done well economically, but in social and political matters - ranging from unsociability to divorce - it implemented a number of progressive policies and laws.

In some of these matters India was actually ahead of many more industrialised nations.

Our current situation is quite the opposite.

The economy is surging with infusions of foreign capital and rises in productivity, but on the social and political front there is little to report. (I am not counting the spread of jeans and hamburgers and the peppering of speech with "like" as social advance).

Blinkered

Our attire may be modern and cars placed on better shock absorbers but in some fundamental ways the contemporary Indian is more communal and blinkered and more intolerant than our forefathers.

Jawaharlal Nehru used to talk and write openly about his atheism.

In a letter to Gandhi, he wrote: "It is all very well for the likes of [Tej Bahadur] Sapru and me (a curious combination!) to... bless the movement for temple entry when neither has the remotest desire to go within a hundred miles of a temple, except, so far as I am concerned, to see the architecture and the statuary!"

It is a tribute to the tolerance of the times and, even more, to Gandhi - as devout a believer as there ever was - that this did not get in the way of Nehru's political life or closeness to Gandhi.

It is difficult to think of a person with such views, so openly aired, winning an election today in India.

August being the month of India's birth is a good time to take stock of these larger questions.

Even as we pursue modernity in economics, it would be good to see some initiative and activism on the part of government in social and institutional matters.

And issues there are by the dozen - child labour, gay rights, stem cell research, caste discrimination, gender discrimination.

There is scope for policy initiative on each of these matters and, since money is not a major factor for some of these, there is no reason why India cannot actually be ahead of richer nations.

With George W Bush at the helm of the US, the bar has anyway been lowered considerably.

Somewhere between 10.25% and 19.90% of all Indian children between the ages of nine and 15 are labourers.

Surely this is unacceptable in a nation that prides itself on its economic progress. I have been doing research on this and hope to write about it in a future column.

Sign of civilisation

Let me here consider another subject on which policy changes are long overdue.

This concerns IPC 377 -that is, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This decrees homosexual love as not just illegal but criminal. 

There has been an effort to amend this law so that homosexual love, when it is between consenting adults and conducted in private, is not treated as criminal.

To me such an amendment would be a sign of civilisation.

Tolerating behaviour that does not have a negative externality - that is, does not adversely affect a third party - is a key ingredient of a civilised society and such tolerance has a long tradition in India from Buddha to Ramakrishna.

But previous Indian governments have staunchly resisted reading down this law, taking the line that homosexuality is perverse and an import into India from the West. 

The truth is different.

There is evidence from ancient Indian writings and carvings on temple walls that same-sex love is not alien to India.

In fact, it is the criminalisation and intolerance of same-sex love that is alien.

What many do not know is that IPC 377 was enacted in colonial India, nearly a century and a half ago by Lord Macaulay.

It is true that this law is seldom used to prosecute but it is used to harass same-sex partners and to inflict on them a sense of unnaturalness and deviation.

Moreover, it is a hindrance in the control of Aids and the spread of HIV, since people are often forced to keep their sexual histories hidden, even from doctors for no other reason but the fear of IPC 377.

Ceremonial occasion

The urge not to feel unnatural is natural enough.

I realised this at a gay wedding in New York. It was between an Indian and an American woman.

They could not of course formally get married because New York law does not recognise such marriages but it was a ceremonial occasion.

A young rabbi, with a palpable spiritual presence, presided over the wedding.

At the end of the ceremony, with readings from religious texts from around the world and the poetry of Tagore, he declared the couple "married in the eyes of all", he paused deliberately and added with emphasis, "enlightened human beings".

That evening there was a party where most couples were of the same sex.

A charming young woman asked me what my "partner" did.

I replied: "My partner is a demographer", taking care to omit all pronouns-such is the human urge to be accepted.

We continued to chat for a while about our "partners", with me feeling increasingly hypocritical, till my wife came and joined us and I had to come out.

 Dr. Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University

This article first appeared on the BBC News Column published in Wednesday, 31 August 2005.