The order made Nepal the first south Asian nation — and only the second in Asia after Taiwan — to institutionalise marriage equality.
Four months before India’s Supreme Court nudged open the door, for making available fundamental rights and freedoms to the embattled LGBTQI+ minority, but stopped short of legalising marriage equality, a neighbouring country had taken momentous strides in that direction.
In its landmark June 27 verdict, Nepal’s Supreme Court, responding to a writ petition, legalised same-sex marriage. The court’s interim order directed the government to make arrangements to “temporarily register” the marriages of “sexual minorities and non-traditional couples”. The order made Nepal the first south Asian nation — and only the second in Asia after Taiwan — to institutionalise marriage equality.
This week, Maya Gurung and Surendra Pandey, who have been together for 10 years and had a temple ceremony in 2017 with the blessings of their families, became the first queer couple in the country to officially register their wedding.
Gurung and Pandey’s dream of a life together, finally recognised and enabled by the law, is one that will resonate within their country, and also outside it, including in its neighbourhood — in south Asia and in India where the October 17 verdict had left many disheartened.
In a world that is more interconnected than ever before, and where ideas travel much more quickly and strike sparks even in distant places, it can be hoped that what has happened in Nepal won’t just stay in Nepal.
In the aftermath of a verdict that did not go far enough in India, the news of a queer couple’s marriage in Nepal raises hopes of the next step being taken here in the not-too-distant future, now that a model is available in the neighbourhood.
After all, the power of a good idea to set an example and cross a border has been seen before — for example, with India’s Right to Information (RTI) law, which grew from a grassroots movement for greater accountability and transparency in governance to a 2005 Act that subsequently became a model for other nations in the region. After India, Bangladesh passed its own RTI law in 2008, followed by Sri Lanka in 2016.
Advertisement
Ideas that drive change in the direction of greater equality and freedom can make a larger difference, set off wider ripples and echoes. A wedding in Nepal today can become the signpost in South Asia for a more equal tomorrow.
