Five Archaic Indian Laws

In the light of the recent verdict of the Supreme Court restoring Section 377 of the Constitution, we witnessed an anachronistic law being reinstated from over a decade ago. It only reveals the nature of legalities in this country; where obsolete rules exist in sheer abundance and posting a status on Facebook might just send you to jail.

In a country that’s all for freedom of speech, there are a few disclaimers. While there is no sustained government policy to block access to Intern content on a large scale, there are other measures that shut down sites on the account of being “objectionably obscene”. In 2011, India’s telecommunication minister Kapil Sibal asked top officials of the Indian units of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook to remove specific content in order “to take care of the sensibilities of the people”. In the same year, the website of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, was shut down by the Crime Branch of Mumbai, on account of “defamatory and derogatory cartoons”.

Suicide attempts are illegal

India has a suicide rate above the world average, which goes to show the plight of a large percentage of citizens, who suffer from elevated levels of depression and unhappiness. Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code criminalizes any attempt to commit suicide. "Whoever attempts to commit suicide and does any act towards the commission of such offence, shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year or with fine, or with both."  Not only is the account of the law baseless, it also aggravates the suffering of people, who would be better off receiving an intervention over imprisonment.

Legal Drinking Age

The rule governing the drinking age in Mumbai, is that you have to be at least 25years old, to buy yourself some alcohol. You can vote at 18, choose your political leaders, get married, have a child, raise it, have a few more children, but you can’t have a shot of Vodka. Not only is the law regressive beyond its years, it fails to value a sense of responsibility. If you allow adults to make adult like decisions, you can’t stop them from ordering a margarita.