Deeply shattered and disappointed: LGBTQ community reacts to Supreme Court's verdict on same-sex marriage

"This is just like - 'we know you're in trauma but we can just know about it, can't help it and can't do anything about it,'" Aggarwal remarked.

The government has been directed to set up a committee to deliberate on the issue.

However, Aggarwal is not satisfied.

“A committee with no clear deadline or guidelines on how to work, who will be the people involved and timeline. There is no pressure for the government to enact what has been told by the apex court today and to enact as soon as possible,” he said.

Earlier, opposing the petition filed by couples in the Delhi High Court to legalise homosexual marriages, the Central Government had stated, "living together as partners and having sexual relationship by same sex individuals is not comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children which necessarily assumes a biological man as a 'husband', a biological woman as a 'wife' and the children born out of the union between the two".

Aggarwal isn’t the only one from the community who feels let down by the verdict.

Kittu Pannu, an Indian-American PhD candidate in counselling psychology in Tennessee, said, “Its very disappointing that the court didn’t provide any recommendations language for parliament, like getting them to suggest that parliament should take this up as a cause for the next legislative session. That would have been a great recommendation to do, but they did not do it and just said it is up to the parliament. And we have seen in the past, it is not an issue that politicians in general that are currently in power really care about.”

Vivek Shukla, CEO, The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group, on the other hand, is disheartened with the verdict, but believes it is essential to focus on the broader narrative and the progress we have made as a community.

“The Supreme Court's observation that it is the legislature’s domain to change the law for validating such unions is a call to action for our lawmakers. It is a reminder that the journey for equal rights is far from over, and we must continue to advocate, educate, and raise awareness until every individual in our country can live and love freely,” Shukla said.

“Laws and guidelines play a really big role in creating acceptance at a ground level. When you have laws that are being enacted, or the lack of laws for that matter, as in this case, that don’t really show any sort of solidarity with minority, it signals to the general public that this isn’t a community that really matters,” Pannu said.

But it wasn’t until the arrival of the British in India that homosexuality was looked down upon as different and unnatural.

In terms of accepting people of different sexual identities, the mentality of Indian society has regressed over the years. It hit its lowest with the enforcement of the Section 377 under British rule.

In 1860, during the Victorian rule, homosexual intercourse was considered unnatural and was declared a criminal offence under Chapter 16, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). After Independence, on November 26, 1949, the Right to Equality was implemented under Article 14, but homosexuality remained a criminal offence. However, ironically in 1967,

Britain itself decriminalised homosexual intercourse in England and Wales.

In the year 2009, the Delhi High Court issued a landmark decision in the Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi case. It ruled that treating consensual homosexual sex between adults as crime is a violation of foundation rights protected by the Indian Constitution. However, in the Suresh Kumar Koushal and another v. NAZ Foundation and others case in 2013, the Supreme Court overturned the Delhi High Court Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi case and reinstated Section 377 of the IPC.

In late 2015, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor introduced a bill to decriminalise homosexuality, but it was rejected by the Lok Sabha.

On September 6, 2018, the Supreme Court ruled Section 377 as unconstitutional unanimously - “in so far as it criminalises consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex”. The struggle for equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community, however, continues.