When India’s Supreme Court struck down Section 377 in 2018, it was celebrated as a turning point. Same-sex relationships were no longer criminal. But take a closer look and a pressing question emerges: what does decriminalization actually give same-sex couples in their daily lives? The answer is – very little. Removing a criminal penalty is not the same as recognizing a relationship. It does not protect a couple from family interference, grant them inheritance rights, or acknowledge the love that holds them together. The real work of legal equality begins where decriminalization ends.
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Beyond decriminalization: the question of love
The 2018 landmark verdict in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India declared that discrimination based on sexual orientation violates fundamental rights to equality, dignity, and privacy. The court went beyond just decriminalizing same-sex acts – it acknowledged, for the first time at the highest judicial level, that sexual orientation is a natural variation of human sexuality and that LGBTQ+ individuals are entitled to the full protections of the Constitution. As the International Commission of Jurists noted, the court itself underscored that decriminalization is only the first step, and that LGBTQ+ persons are entitled to equal citizenship in all its forms.
Yet the law has continued to treat same-sex love as something tolerated rather than recognized. A heterosexual couple that lives together, marries, and builds a life together enjoys a comprehensive web of legal protections – inheritance, hospital visitation rights, joint bank accounts, adoption, pension benefits, and more. A same-sex couple in India has access to almost none of these by default. The legal system has, in effect, said: your relationship is not a crime, but it is also not real in the eyes of the law. That distinction matters enormously.
The need for social and legal validation
Law does not just regulate conduct – it signals what a society considers legitimate. When the state refuses to recognize a relationship, it sends a message to families, employers, healthcare providers, and communities that this relationship does not count. That message has direct, measurable consequences for same-sex couples in India.
Research published in a peer-reviewed journal following the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality found that the absence of legal recognition delegitimizes queer couples, contributing to an environment where LGBTQ+ individuals are pushed to the margins of society. The same study found that many LGBTQ+ people are effectively forced to choose between concealing their relationships to maintain family acceptance or disclosing them and risking social exclusion, discrimination, and rejection – choices that carry serious and lasting effects on mental health and well-being.
This is not an abstract concern. Same-sex couples in India routinely face discrimination in workplaces, educational settings, and within families – including forced marriages, conversion attempts, and outright violence. Without legal recognition of their relationships, same-sex partners have no formal standing when a family intervenes, no right to make medical decisions for an incapacitated partner, and no automatic entitlement to shared property or assets built together over years. The stigma and marginalization that decriminalization was meant to chip away at continues, in large part, because the law has not validated what these couples share: a bond built on love, commitment, and mutual care.
Live-in relationships and legal gaps: the story of Sreeja and Aruna
One of the most significant early cases illustrating both the progress and the limits of legal recognition in India is Sreeja S. v. Commissioner of Police (2018). The case arose when Sreeja, a 40-year-old woman from Kollam, and Aruna, a 24-year-old woman, decided to live together as partners. When Aruna left her parental home to join Sreeja, her mother filed a missing person complaint with the police. Aruna was taken into custody, produced before a magistrate, and secured her freedom – only to be forcibly removed by her parents afterward and admitted to a government mental health center, despite being in full mental health.
Sreeja filed a habeas corpus petition in the Kerala High Court. In a ruling delivered just 17 days after the Navtej Singh Johar verdict, the court held that the live-in relationship between Sreeja and Aruna did not violate any provision of law, ordered Aruna’s release, and affirmed her right to choose where and with whom she lived. Crucially, as analyzed in a detailed commentary on the case, this was the first documented instance in Indian legal history in which a court openly acknowledged that two women were in a romantic relationship – and ruled on that basis. Earlier cases involving similar situations had avoided naming the relationship for what it was, even when lawyers were aware of it.
That acknowledgment matters beyond the case itself. By naming the love between Sreeja and Aruna as a same-sex relationship in official court records, and then protecting it, the Kerala High Court did something courts had consistently refused to do before: it gave legal visibility to queer love. The Supreme Court of India later cited the case in its Sensitisation Module for the Judiciary on LGBTIQA+ Community as a significant ruling that effectively addressed the difficulties faced by marginalized queer individuals within the justice system.
What the case recognized – and what it didn’t
The Sreeja judgment confirmed that same-sex couples have the right to cohabit as a live-in relationship, and that the police cannot be used by families to forcibly separate consenting adults. It drew on the Supreme Court’s position in Nandakumar v. State of Kerala that even those who cannot legally marry retain the right to live together. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, was also noted as providing certain protections to women in live-in relationships.
But the recognition stops there. A live-in relationship carries none of the rights that marriage or civil union would provide. As the legal landscape in India stands, same-sex couples cannot jointly adopt a child, cannot access spousal benefits under employment or pension law, cannot automatically inherit from each other, and have no formal legal status as next-of-kin. Courts across states including Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab, and Uttarakhand have individually ruled that same-sex live-in couples are not acting unlawfully and deserve protection – but these protections have been limited to police protection from family interference and, occasionally, limited inheritance benefits. There is no comprehensive framework.
The 2022 case of Adhila Nasarin v. State Commissioner of Police followed a similar pattern. A lesbian Muslim couple – Fathima Noora and Adhila Nasarin – were separated by their families, with Noora reportedly subjected to conversion therapy at a center near Karippur airport. The Kerala High Court again intervened, allowing the couple to live together as per their informed choice. The court also highlighted the importance of public education on queer identity and condemned conversion therapy. Yet once again, this ruling protected the couple’s freedom without giving their relationship any formal legal standing.
The 2023 judgment and the legislative gap
The limits of judicial action became even clearer in Supriyo v. Union of India (2023), where a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court unanimously declined to recognize same-sex marriages under the Special Marriage Act, 1954. The court held that the right to marry is not a fundamental right in the Indian constitutional framework, and that creating legal recognition for same-sex unions is a matter for Parliament, not the judiciary. The court did, however, direct the Union government to form a committee – headed by the Cabinet Secretary – to examine the rights and entitlements of persons in queer unions.
The judgment left same-sex couples in legal limbo. They cannot marry. They have no civil union option. And while court rulings protect their right to cohabit, that protection does not translate into the hundreds of ancillary rights that marriage quietly confers – from filing joint taxes to authorizing a partner’s medical treatment to claiming a deceased partner’s pension. As health researchers have documented, named same-sex partners should be recognized as legitimate surrogate decision-makers for a patient in serious illness – yet without legal recognition, a partner may be turned away at a hospital in favor of biological family, regardless of the relationship’s depth or duration.
Love as a legal concept
What makes the gap between decriminalization and full legal recognition so consequential is that it treats same-sex relationships as relationships of a lesser kind. Heterosexual couples do not have to prove their love in court or navigate habeas corpus petitions simply to live together. The law presumes the legitimacy of their bond and builds protections around it automatically. Same-sex couples must fight case by case, city by city, for protections that still fall short of what marriage provides – and they must do so against families and institutions that the legal system does not, by default, hold accountable.
Recognizing love as a real and equal emotion in same-sex relationships is not a soft or symbolic demand. It is the foundation on which every specific right rests. Inheritance depends on the law treating a same-sex partner as a legitimate heir. Medical decision-making depends on recognizing that partner as next-of-kin. Adoption rights depend on viewing a same-sex household as a valid family unit. In August 2022, a Supreme Court bench made a non-binding observation that the definition of a family unit includes same-sex live-in relationships and that they are equally entitled to social welfare benefits – a promising direction, but one that has not yet been codified into comprehensive law.
Towards comprehensive equality
The path forward requires more than case-by-case court victories. India needs legislative reform that formally recognizes same-sex relationships – whether through civil unions, amendments to the Special Marriage Act, or a dedicated framework – and attaches to that recognition the full bundle of rights that heterosexual couples take for granted. This includes inheritance, adoption, pension benefits, joint financial accounts, spousal medical authority, and protection from family violence.
Legal recognition of same-sex marriages or unions also functions as a public statement about equality – it tells LGBTQ+ individuals, their families, and their communities that the state views their relationships as fully human and fully valid. That social signal reduces stigma, improves mental health outcomes, and counters the conditions that currently drive family interference, conversion therapy, and violence. Treating love as equal under the law is not a radical departure from constitutional values – it is their logical fulfillment.
The Supreme Court in Navtej Singh Johar acknowledged that this case was about more than decriminalizing sex – it was about people wanting to live with dignity. That dignity cannot be achieved in half-measures. As long as two women like Sreeja and Aruna must petition a high court simply to live together without their families calling the police, and as long as a same-sex partner has no legal standing at their loved one’s hospital bedside, the promise of dignity remains unfulfilled. Comprehensive legal equality – not just tolerance – is the only answer that matches the constitutional commitment India has already made in principle.
What do you think? If decriminalization does not automatically confer dignity or rights, what specific legal protections should follow – and should courts or Parliament take the lead in delivering them? And when the law refuses to name same-sex love as legitimate, what does that silence communicate to same-sex couples, their families, and society at large?
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_India
- https://www.icj.org/india-supreme-court-decision-ending-criminalization-of-consensual-same-sex-relationships-is-a-momentous-step-forward-for-human-rights/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11497438/
- https://polsci.institute/state-politics-india/lgbtq-rights-india-legal-recognition/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sreeja_S_v._Commissioner_of_Police
- https://lawandsexuality.com/2018/11/10/sreeja-s-v-the-commissioner-of-police-thiruvananthapuram-and-ors-w-p-crl-no-378-2018/
- https://www.scconline.com/blog/post/2018/10/20/live-in-relationship-of-a-lesbian-couple-is-not-violative-of-any-law-and-is-not-a-crime/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_of_same-sex_unions_in_India
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhila_Nasarin_v._State_Commissioner_of_Police_(2022)
- https://www.scobserver.in/cases/plea-for-marriage-equality/
- https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-equality-queer-couple-240341
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