Growing up in the Delhi of the 1980s, Saurabh Kirpal didn’t have a vocabulary for what he felt. “The word ‘gay’ barely existed at that point of time… I simply knew I love boys. That’s all I knew,” says senior advocate Kirpal.
As time went on, though the vocabulary continued to elude him, Kirpal started “understanding” himself better – “I started loving myself more. And above all, I started accepting myself a lot more,” he told The Indian Express at the sidelines of the Kolkata Literary Meet, where he was promoting his new book, Fifteen Judgements: Cases that Shaped India’s Financial Landscape.
Kirpal is among the five advocates whose names the Supreme Court on January 19 reiterated for appointment as High Court judges. If approved by the Centre, he could be India’s first openly gay judge.
Despite the privilege that came with his background – he is the youngest of three children of Justice B N Kirpal, who would go on to be India’s 31st Chief Justice, and Aruna Kirpal – it wasn’t easy growing up with an acute awareness of the self. “There was fear… and shame. Shame about who I was… I was aware of the language of discrimination, about what people would say, to try to hurt you. Even if it wasn’t said, I was fearful that it would be said, that it could be said,” he says.
After his graduation from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, Kirpal went to Oxford University for an undergraduate degree in law. He says that it was around the time that he was in the UK for his second degree – he earned his Master’s degree from Cambridge University – that he “started understanding” himself a little better.
“As a child, when I read the encyclopaedia – I was a nerd who read every volume of the encyclopaedia – I was confused when they described the sexual act. I just couldn’t imagine doing anything with a woman, especially when I had crushes on boys in school! There were no books, there was no internet – basically no information,” he says.
It was in 2001, while Kirpal was in Geneva with the UN Compensation Commission, that he met Nicolas Germain Bachmann, a Swiss national. Nicolas, who was working with the International Committee of the Red Cross and headed to Sierre Leone, was visiting Geneva to meet his mother. “Nico was supposed to be in Geneva for three months, but we fell in love so hard that he moved in with me in two weeks,” says Kirpal.
According to the collegium, Kirpal’s sexual orientation and his “foreign-national” partner were cited by the government as reasons for its objection to his candidature.
In 2004, the couple decided to move back to India. “I always intended to come back to India. When we fell in love, Nico decided to follow me,” he says.
It was then that Kirpal came out to his parents. “My friends and family met Nico. Our apprehensions often stem from how the family will react… In my case, that was taken out of the equation because from the very beginning, my parents fell in love with him. They adored him,” says Kirpal.
The couple live with Kirpal’s parents in Delhi. “It’s a traditional setup, but I also recognise the privilege of coming from a family that accepted me and my partner,” he says.
At the Literature Fest, as Kirpal ushers his partner from one event location to another, Nicolas seems unfettered, cheerful.
“For me, settling in India was the easiest thing to do. I didn’t know much about the country but I was fascinated… and I have not been disappointed,” Nicolas, who works at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in New Delhi, told The Indian Express.
Wasn’t Kirpal worried about bringing his partner to a country where homosexuality has very little social and political acceptance and where it was criminalised until as recently as 2018?
“One always does, of course, have apprehensions. I can’t claim to say that I was absolutely the bravest person… No,” says Kirpal, adding that his struggles had taught him the value of empathy, something that came in handy through some of these uncertain moments and his career as a lawyer.
Kirpal was one of the counsels for Navtej Singh Johar & Ors. v. Union of India, the historic case that led to the landmark reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 2018.
“I believe that the quality of empathy really comes from understanding that today you may be at a particular place of advantage, but that advantage is not going to last forever. Or it may not last at all… And that comes from a lack of some privilege or discrimination,” says Kirpal.
When Kirpal started practising law, he realised he was not being “treated fairly”. “Most importantly, I felt there was discrimination codified in law, under a Constitution that professed to be liberal in a country that I felt on my own. And that is what made me really, really fight for the rights that I believed in,” says Kirpal.
He realises it’s a long fight.
Many gay activists believe the 2018 judgment laid the foundation for legal recognition of same-sex marriages. On March 13, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether to legalise same-sex marriage. For Kirpal, personally, it’s a worthy fight.
“Others may disagree, but I think there is joy in being recognised as a partner of the one you love. It may be a hetero-normative construct, but once there is marriage equality, it would not be an exclusionary concept. People would have the option at the least,” he says.