INVISIBLE CITIZENS: CONSTITUTIONAL PROMISES, STRUCTURAL BARRIERS, AND THE ONGOING MARGINALISATION OF SEXUAL MINORITIES IN INDIA

Abstract

The marginalisation of sexual minorities in India reflects a profound and structurally entrenched contradiction between the promises of a constitutional democracy and the persistent realities of inequality, exclusion, and violence. Despite the transformative constitutional jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, including the decriminalisation of consensual same-sex conduct in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India and the recognition of a third gender in NALSA v. Union of India, the lived experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex persons in India continues to be defined by social stigma, economic exclusion, institutional invisibility, and the absence of comprehensive legislative protection. This paper argues that the gap between formal legal progress and substantive equality is best understood not as a residual problem awaiting further judicial correction, but as the product of self-reinforcing structural barriers that operate across institutional domains simultaneously. Drawing upon constitutional jurisprudence, international human rights law, sociological research, and comparative law, the paper examines the historical roots of sexual minority oppression, the conceptual framework of structural marginalisation and transformative equality, the principal dimensions of contemporary exclusion, and the legal and policy lacunae that perpetuate disadvantage. It concludes with a normative framework for a rights-based, structurally attentive reform agenda that the legislature, executive, and judiciary must collectively advance if India is to honour its foundational constitutional commitments to equality and dignity for all its citizens.