Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday ruled that gay sex among consenting adults was no crime. The court said that section 377 of the IPC - which criminalised an act of consensual sex among adults - is a violation of the constitution and fundamental rights.
Though a historic judgement, India must never be allowed to forget that it has been a long and often harrowing journey for its queer community.
For a hundred and forty nine years the gay community in India has been mistreated. Often being arrested, threatened, blackmailed and sexually exploited with a tool called Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. An archaic law introduced by the British - though ironically removed from the British law books.
Being booked under Section 377, a cognisable offence means that a policeman can pick you up based on just suspicion.
"In the 60's I walked into a police trap. I went with a friend to a particular location that was used for sex and we were casually in the area and these cops turned up and they accused us of having sex," said gay rights activist, Sunil Gupta.
"They decided to pick on me and I was unprepared for this and didn't know how to handle the situation, so they beat me up and then they moved on to blackmailing me," he added.
Section 377 also implies that two people in a same sex relationship have no rights. They cannot own property together, cannot adopt and do not have any conjugal rights.
"I've been with my partner for six and a half years and when we want to open a bank account or some thing we cannot have each other as nominees, we cannot show our relationships on visas," said a person of the gay community, Amit (name changed to protect identity).
However, over the years, the Indian gay community has risen from invisibility.
They went to the judiciary in 2001 to ask for consensual same sex relations to be made legal, to remind the courts that the law was a Victorian hand-me-down.
In 2006 two tribal women from Orissa became poster girls for the lesbian movement in India. Thirty two-year-old Anita (name changed to protect identity) and 24-year-old Nisha (name changed to protect identity), both escaped from abusive marriages to be with each other.
"We live together and the villagers let us be. We would like to own our own house some day," said Anita.
In the past few years, the gay community came out of the closet. They marched the streets of India and shouted, 'we are here, we are queer, we are you'.
Today, as the first step towards legalising homosexuality is taken - it's a moment these men and women will remember.
"What we feel about love is the same as what you feel. We have been together for 10 years. You cannot say that is nothing. This is something as basic as the right to love. Who are you to say what we feel is not love," a person of the gay community whose identity has been witheld.
The gay community is overjoyed and are not shying away from expressing their happiness, "I am not ashamed of being gay," said Amit (name changed to protect identity). "Now I can be proud of being gay," said Rohit (name changed to protect identity). "It will be nice to take the man of my dreams to a bar and not have the bouncers throw us out ," said Jai (name changed to protect identity).
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