states already teach LGBT+ topics in schools. She said it would have been impossible to do so without the court ruling.īritain and some U.S. to also normalise (homosexuality), to remove the stigma and try to look at it as a normal form of relationship," said Vaishali Joshi, the sociology professor who wrote the new chapter. "Section 377 is something we wanted to highlight. It details the Supreme Court ruling that consensual adult gay sex is not a crime, and also includes a description of same-sex marriage - even though this remains illegal in India. The book breaks away from conventional Indian teachings about family types - traditionally either nuclear or joint - to include single-parent families, unmarried cohabiting couples and step parents. "They shouldn't be living in some mythical world where they think such (relationships) are fictional or something." "We just wanted to say that this is the reality out there and students should know," the head of the state's class 11 curriculum committee Vaishali Diwakar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The publisher of the revised sociology textbook said it may be the first to talk about same-sex couples after India's top court decriminalised gay sex - commonly known as Section 377 - last September. NEW DELHI, Aug 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indian schoolchildren are learning about same-sex couples in a new textbook, in the latest sign of shifting attitudes in the socially conservative country following the decriminalisation of gay sex last year.Īuthorities in the western state of Maharashtra have revised the syllabus for class 11 students, who are aged about 16, to include same-sex relationships and marriage.
Authorities in the western state of Maharashtra have revised the syllabus for class 11 students, who are aged about 16, to include same-sex relationships and marriage