Khandelwal is very much a mainstream lawyer, sharpening his legal skills working on corporate and tax matters in the Supreme Court. He rejects the “human rights” lawyer tag, terming it as “bad slotting”. “But the argument for decriminalising homosexuality,” he contends, “is very much a mainstream argument.” Is his family shocked that he is representing the gay community in court? “Not at all,” he says, “they understand that so much around them has changed; that gays have rights too.”

MAYUR SURESH, 28

‘Why is it the state’s business to regulate love?‘

Having studied law at Columbia University. Mayur Suresh could be billing $250 an hour in lower Manhattan, or charging Rs 7,000 an hour in Nariman Point. Instead, he spends a typical day taking an auto to Delhi’s Tis Hazari, representing some of India’s most marginalised. Suresh is a lawyer for ‘Voices against 377’, a coalition of NGOs that is fighting to decriminalise homosexuality in the Delhi High Court. Hailing from a medical family in Bangalore, he graduated from National Law School Bangalore in 2004, and from Barack Obama’s alma mater in 2005. He is using this legal arsenal to work in Delhi as a litigator, and is currently combating what he terms “one of India’s most unjust laws”—Section 377, which holds homosexuality to be illegal in India. Suresh has a personal stake: he is homosexual. “There is a wider movement in the country fighting for the rights of the lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT). For the gay community, whose very identity is condemned as illegal, lawyers play an important role,” he says. “I’m only doing my bit.”

... contd.