How Long Must a Citizen Hold Their Breath?
Saurabh Kirpal and India’s Unfinished Promise of Equal Citizenship
By HH Prince DeAndre, Duke of Hanumanteshwar
There is a particular kind of waiting that does not look like punishment from the outside.
No order is issued. No right is formally taken away. A file is not necessarily closed. A committee is not abolished. A government does not always announce that it has decided against you.
Instead, time moves while the institution does not.
Days become months. Months become years. The citizen keeps living, keeps working, keeps paying taxes, keeps participating in a country whose Constitution promises equality before the law. The institution continues functioning around that person, but the question concerning that person's equality remains unanswered.
Eventually, waiting acquires consequences of its own.
I have been thinking about that while looking at the extraordinary case of Saurabh Kirpal, one of India's most accomplished senior advocates and a man who, as of September 2026, remains waiting for a judicial appointment first recommended in October 2017.
His story began this examination.
It did not end it.
Because when I followed the Kirpal file backward and then outward, through more than a decade of Supreme Court decisions, parliamentary opportunities, government committees, transgender legislation, marriage-equality litigation, state civil codes and cases now returning to India's High Courts, I began seeing a larger institutional question.
It is not simply whether India recognizes LGBTQ people.
India increasingly does.
The harder question is what happens after recognition.
What happens when equality moves from a Supreme Court judgment toward marriage, inheritance, taxation, gender identity, public employment, family recognition and constitutional power?
And when those inequalities have already been identified, when government has been told where they exist and when the institution with the authority to respond does not fully respond, how long can we continue describing the result as merely inaction?
Begin With One Man
Saurabh Kirpal is not an inexperienced lawyer waiting for someone to take a chance on him.
He studied physics at St. Stephen's College in Delhi, read law at Oxford, completed postgraduate legal studies at Cambridge, worked briefly with the United Nations in Geneva and built a legal practice spanning commercial and constitutional law. He was part of the legal team in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, the landmark case that ended the criminalization of consensual same-sex intimacy under Section 377. In March 2021, all 31 sitting judges of the Delhi High Court voted in favor of designating him a Senior Advocate.
His name had already been unanimously recommended for elevation to the Delhi High Court by that court's Collegium on October 13, 2017.
The Supreme Court Collegium eventually approved the recommendation on November 11, 2021. The Union government returned the file for reconsideration on November 25, 2022. On January 18, 2023, the Supreme Court Collegium reconsidered the objections and unanimously reiterated the recommendation.
This is where Kirpal's case becomes unusually revealing, because the objections did not remain hidden behind institutional walls.
The Supreme Court published them.
According to the Collegium resolution, intelligence communications identified two concerns: Kirpal's partner is a Swiss national, and Kirpal is in an intimate relationship and open about his sexual orientation. A 2021 letter from the Union Law Minister also noted that homosexuality had been decriminalized while same-sex marriage remained legally unrecognized and raised Kirpal's involvement in gay-rights advocacy as a possible source of bias or prejudice.
Those are personal facts.
Who he loves.
The nationality of the person he loves.
His openness about being gay.
His advocacy concerning rights affecting gay people.
I cannot responsibly tell a reader that those were the only considerations ever discussed inside government. I cannot assign private motives for which there is no evidence.
I do not need to.
The documented record is sufficiently remarkable on its own.
The Supreme Court Collegium considered those concerns and rejected them.
It found no identified national-security concern arising from the conduct of Kirpal's partner. It noted that people holding high constitutional office have had foreign-national spouses. On Kirpal's sexual orientation, the Collegium went further, saying that his openness about it “goes to his credit.” It stated that rejecting his candidature on that ground would be contrary to constitutional principles. Then it recorded what should ordinarily matter most in a judicial appointment: Kirpal possesses “competence, integrity and intellect.” The Collegium concluded that his appointment would bring value, inclusion and diversity to the Delhi High Court and said the recommendation should be processed expeditiously.
That was January 2023.
As of September 6, 2026, 25 Supreme Court Collegium recommendations for High Court appointments were reported pending with the Union government. Kirpal's was the oldest, tracing back to October 2017. India's High Courts were simultaneously operating with 304 vacancies against a sanctioned strength of 1,122 judges.
This is no longer an ordinary delay.
Nearly nine years of a person's professional life have passed.
And time matters because a High Court judge does not serve forever. Every year consumed by an unresolved appointment is a year that cannot later be restored.
Sometimes an institution never has to say no.
Sometimes the calendar can eventually say it for them.
2013: A Question Is Handed Back to Democracy
To understand why Kirpal's case means something larger, we need to go back to December 2013.
In Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation, the Supreme Court reversed the Delhi High Court's 2009 decision and restored Section 377's application to consensual same-sex intimacy. The judgment left Parliament free to amend the law.
That decision came before the present BJP-led Union government assumed office in May 2014, and that distinction matters. If we are examining institutional responsibility, we should place responsibility where it belongs rather than rewriting the timeline.
But from 2014 forward, the incoming government inherited both Section 377 and the legislative authority to change it.
Parliament had opportunities. Private-member attempts were made to change Section 377, including an effort in March 2016 by Shashi Tharoor to introduce an amendment bill. The Lok Sabha voted on whether even to allow its introduction. It did not proceed.
Ultimately, consensual homosexuality was not decriminalized by Parliament.
The Supreme Court did it in 2018.
That distinction becomes important when we look at what repeatedly happens in the years that follow.
2014: The Supreme Court Recognizes Gender as Belonging to the Person
Only months after Koushal, the Supreme Court decided National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India, better known as NALSA.
The Court recognized transgender persons within the guarantees of equality, liberty and dignity contained in the Constitution. Most importantly for the history we are examining, it upheld a transgender person's right to decide their self-identified gender and directed the Union and State governments to grant legal recognition accordingly.
This was not simply symbolic recognition.
The Court directed governments to take affirmative measures in education, employment, healthcare, welfare and public life.
In other words, the Court did not merely identify a citizen.
It assigned institutions work.
That difference between recognizing a right and making the right usable will become one of the recurring themes of the next twelve years.
2017 and 2018: Constitutional Language Moves Forward
In 2017, the Supreme Court's nine-judge privacy decision in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India placed sexual orientation within constitutional protections for privacy, dignity and autonomy. The judgment rejected the idea that constitutional protection could depend upon how small a minority might be. Fundamental rights, by their nature, do not become less fundamental because fewer people need them.
Then came Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India in September 2018.
The Supreme Court dismantled the criminalization of consensual same-sex intimacy under Section 377.
That judgment is remembered, correctly, as one of the great constitutional advances for LGBTQ Indians. But its significance extends beyond sex.
It spoke about dignity.
Identity.
Privacy.
Autonomy.
Constitutional morality.
And the danger of allowing majoritarian opinion to determine whether minorities may exercise fundamental rights.
The Indian Constitution was moving toward a principle that should have been unremarkable from the beginning: a citizen does not have to become popular before becoming equal.
Saurabh Kirpal helped argue that case.
By then, his own judicial recommendation had already been pending for almost a year.
That fact becomes difficult to ignore in hindsight.
A lawyer could help persuade the Supreme Court that sexual orientation cannot diminish constitutional dignity while his own openness about sexual orientation would later appear in government correspondence concerning whether he should sit on a High Court bench.
2019: Parliament Does Act
The story is not that the Union government has done nothing.
Any serious examination has to acknowledge where government acted.
Parliament enacted the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act in 2019. The law prohibited discrimination in a range of areas and expressly stated in Section 4 that a transgender person had a right to recognition and a “right to self-perceived gender identity.”
The law was criticized by transgender advocates, including over its certification structure and other provisions, but it nevertheless placed recognition and anti-discrimination protections into statute.
Government later developed schemes and administrative structures, and ministries have issued measures affecting transgender and queer citizens.
Those actions matter.
But acknowledging action should never prevent us from examining its result.
A government does not fulfill its constitutional responsibilities merely because a law has been passed or a program has been announced.
Rights ultimately have to work where people live.
And six years after the transgender statute, the Supreme Court would say something devastating about that distinction.
2023: Marriage Equality Reaches the Supreme Court
Then came Supriyo @ Supriya Chakraborty v. Union of India.
The marriage-equality litigation produced enormous expectations, but the five-judge Constitution Bench did not rewrite the Special Marriage Act to include same-sex couples and did not establish a constitutional right to marriage in the manner petitioners sought. The Court recognized the constitutional protection of queer relationships, but the majority did not create an enforceable marriage-equivalent legal status either.
The Union government had argued that fundamental changes to the institution of marriage belonged to the legislative domain.
The Court ultimately declined to do legislatively what elected lawmakers had been told was theirs to do.
And that should have shifted the public question.
If the answer to marriage equality was not through judicial rewriting of marriage law, then what would those possessing legislative power do with the question?
There is another part of Supriyo that has received far less public attention.
Marriage in India does not simply provide a ceremony or title. The State has built legal and economic consequences around it. A recognized spouse can acquire rights involving taxation, pensions, insurance, inheritance, benefits, medical relationships and other areas of law.
The majority recognized that this architecture could produce indirect discriminatory consequences for queer couples who could not acquire marital status.
Its language deserves to be remembered.
The Court said those discriminatory impacts had to be suitably addressed and removed by the State and that measures should be taken “with expedition because inaction will result in injustice and unfairness.” It specifically referenced benefits including provident funds, gratuity, family pensions, employee insurance and medical insurance.
That sentence changes how the years after Supriyo should be evaluated.
The Supreme Court itself identified inaction as consequential.
The Committee That Was Supposed to Move the Question Forward
During the 2023 proceedings, the Union government proposed a high-powered committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary to examine the practical inequalities faced by queer couples. The Court recorded that assurance and directed the committee to undertake a comprehensive examination, including consultation with stakeholders and State and Union Territory governments.
The committee was formally constituted on April 16, 2024.
Its stated remit addressed discrimination in access to goods, services and welfare benefits, violence and coercion, involuntary medical treatment and other practical concerns. It was not itself established as a body empowered to legalize same-sex marriage.
That distinction is important because queer stakeholders subsequently told the committee that administrative accommodations would not be enough.
In joint submissions following the government's consultation, civil-society groups specifically argued that Parliament and State legislatures possess authority over marriage and related family-law subjects and urged reforms involving marriage, divorce, guardianship, children, adoption, assisted reproduction and succession to become a central recommendation of the committee's work.
The government therefore did not lack notice that queer inequality extended far beyond ration cards and joint bank accounts.
It was told.
The committee was told.
The affected citizens identified the legal architecture producing the inequality.
What happened next deserves attention.
The full Cabinet Secretary-led committee met on May 21, 2024. A Home Secretary-led subcommittee met on May 31. A stakeholder consultation was held on July 25. The full committee met again on August 22. Some interim measures followed, including clarifications concerning ration cards, joint bank accounts and nominees, prison visitation, healthcare and protection against violence and harassment.
Those measures have practical value and belong in the record.
But by August 2026, the Union government told Parliament that the full committee had held only those two meetings.
Its final report had not been submitted.
No expected completion date was provided.
The government noted that the Supreme Court had not imposed a specific deadline.
Technically, that is true.
The Court did not write a date onto a calendar.
But it did write something else.
With expedition.
And it told us why.
Because inaction will result in injustice and unfairness.
The Existing Law Does Not Wait While Government Does
This is where I think we need to change the way we talk about governmental inaction.
When a legislature does not change an existing legal structure, nothing freezes.
The existing structure keeps operating.
Every morning.
Every tax year.
Every death.
Every inheritance.
Every hospital admission.
Every pension decision.
Every application asking whether someone is a legal spouse.
Consider what has happened with taxation.
Income Tax consequences were among the very kinds of marital-status inequalities identified during the Supriyo discussion.
Yet in 2026, same-sex couples are before India's High Courts litigating precisely that question.
In Karnataka, a same-sex couple challenged the application of Section 56(2)(x) of the Income Tax Act after a gift between partners did not receive the exemption available within legally recognized family relationships. The Union government defended the statutory distinction by arguing that the exemption is tied to legally verifiable relationships such as marriage or blood relation.
A similar challenge reached the Bombay High Court. There, the Income Tax Department argued that a same-sex couple could not claim a benefit available to a “spouse” without first having their relationship legally recognized as marriage or spousal status. The Bombay High Court later kept that proceeding in abeyance while the comparable Karnataka matter is decided.
There is a circularity here that should make us uncomfortable.
The government argued during marriage-equality litigation that recognition of marriage belonged to the legislative sphere.
Marriage equality was not enacted.
The Supreme Court identified economic inequalities flowing from marital status and called for government examination.
The government committee remains unfinished.
Queer citizens then return to court because a tax benefit belongs to a legally recognized spouse.
And government can answer that they cannot receive it because they are not legally recognized as spouses.
The citizen has moved.
The court case has moved.
The tax demand has moved.
The only part that did not have to move was the legal definition producing the problem.
That is why inaction is not an empty space.
The old law keeps answering while government does not.
Uniform Does Not Necessarily Mean Equal
There is another part of the Supriyo judgment that matters here.
Marriage falls within Entry 5 of the Constitution's Concurrent List. Both Parliament and State legislatures possess lawmaking authority in this field, within the constitutional rules governing concurrent legislation.
That means the post-Supriyo political landscape was not simply one in which everyone had to wait for another Supreme Court case.
Legislatures possessed power.
Now consider Uttarakhand.
After Supriyo, Uttarakhand enacted its Uniform Civil Code. The State's official portal presents the UCC framework in the language of equality and uniform civil rights.
Yet Section 4 of the Code begins its marriage provisions by stating that a marriage may be solemnized or contracted “between a man and a woman.”
Goa, often referenced because of its longstanding common civil-registration system, likewise states in its government marriage guidance that a bride and groom must belong to different sexes.
This exposes a distinction that deserves more attention whenever uniform civil law is discussed.
Uniformity is not automatically universality.
A civil code can standardize rules among the citizens it recognizes while still excluding another class of citizens from the institution itself.
One may create the same doorway for people of different religions.
That achievement does not answer the question of the citizen who is still not permitted through the doorway.
So when a civil code is described as offering equal treatment, another constitutional question remains:
Equal treatment for whom?
2025: The Supreme Court Gives Inaction a Constitutional Name
Then came Jane Kaushik v. Union of India in October 2025.
Jane Kaushik, a transgender woman and teacher, had approached the Supreme Court after experiencing discrimination in employment. But the resulting judgment became much larger than one employment dispute.
More than a decade after NALSA and more than five years after Parliament enacted the 2019 Transgender Persons Act, the Supreme Court looked at implementation and said that rights visible in statute books remained, in substantial respects, an “empty formality.”
The Court criticized governmental lethargy and said far more had to be done to create mechanisms capable of translating transgender rights into reality.
Then it addressed the very issue underlying this article.
The Court explained that discrimination is often discussed as an act of commission, something somebody actively does. But it recognized that discrimination can also operate through “silences, exclusions, and failures” that allow inequality to continue.
Its conclusion was direct:
“Omission can be discriminatory where there is a duty to act.”
The Court did not say that every policy disagreement or every bill a legislature declines to pass automatically becomes unconstitutional discrimination.
Neither am I.
But the judgment removes a convenient fiction from our discussion of equality.
Doing nothing is not always constitutionally meaningless.
Where rights have already been recognized, where government possesses affirmative responsibilities, where statutory protections exist but the mechanisms needed to use them are absent, persistent institutional inaction can itself produce unequal treatment.
The Court went so far as to award compensation to Kaushik, including against the Union and States for failures that deprived her of an effective protective mechanism.
That is an extraordinary development when placed beside Supriyo.
In 2023, the Supreme Court warned that inaction concerning discriminatory consequences affecting queer couples would result in injustice and unfairness.
In 2025, it expressly recognized that omission can itself be discriminatory where there is a duty to act.
Those are not activist slogans.
They are statements found in India's own constitutional jurisprudence.
2026: A Right Once Written Into Statute Is Rewritten
And then the transgender story took another turn.
The 2019 Act had expressly recognized a right to self-perceived gender identity.
In March 2026, Parliament enacted the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act. The Act came into force on May 25, 2026. It altered the statutory definition of a transgender person, removed the earlier explicit provision guaranteeing self-perceived gender identity, introduced a government-appointed medical-board role in certification, and included language excluding persons with different sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities from the amended definition.
The government's position is that the amended framework provides greater precision in identifying beneficiaries, structured certification and stronger administration. Government materials have described the changes as refining beneficiary identification and accountability.
That explanation belongs in a fair examination.
But so does the constitutional challenge.
Petitioners before the Supreme Court argue that requiring medical scrutiny and removing the earlier statutory self-identification framework conflicts with NALSA, which grounded gender self-determination in autonomy, dignity and liberty. The Supreme Court has issued notice in challenges to the 2026 amendment. It has not yet finally determined whether the new provisions are constitutional.
We should therefore be careful with our language.
The amendment has not been declared unconstitutional.
But we are entitled to observe its direction.
In 2014, the Supreme Court upheld self-identified gender.
In 2019, Parliament expressly wrote a right to self-perceived gender identity into statute.
In 2025, the Supreme Court condemned failures to implement existing transgender protections and said omission could perpetuate discrimination.
In 2026, Parliament changed the identity framework in ways significant enough that transgender citizens are once again before the Supreme Court defending principles of self-determination many believed had already been constitutionally established.
That is not simply unfinished progress.
It raises a serious question about whether previously recognized protections can move backward.
And Saurabh Kirpal Is Still Waiting
Now return to the man whose file began this inquiry.
When Kirpal's name was first recommended in 2017, Navtej had not yet been decided.
Section 377 still criminalized consensual same-sex intimacy.
India did not yet have its 2019 transgender-rights statute.
The marriage-equality petitions had not reached the Supreme Court.
There was no Cabinet Secretary committee.
There was no Jane Kaushik judgment explaining omissive discrimination.
There was no 2026 transgender amendment.
Nine years of constitutional development have occurred around his file.
And the file remains.
This is what makes his story more than a symbolic campaign to appoint India's first openly gay High Court judge.
We already know that the institution evaluating his judicial suitability found him qualified.
We know that the Delhi High Court recommended him.
We know that all 31 of its judges later supported his designation as Senior Advocate.
We know that the Supreme Court Collegium approved his appointment.
We know that the Union government returned the recommendation.
We know from the Collegium's own published resolution that the objections included his foreign-national partner, his openness about his sexual orientation and his gay-rights advocacy.
We know the Collegium reconsidered those objections.
We know it rejected them.
We know it found Kirpal possessed competence, integrity and intellect.
We know it unanimously reiterated his appointment.
And we know that more than three and a half years after that reiteration, and nearly nine years after the first recommendation, he has not been appointed.
At some point, the question becomes simpler than the bureaucracy surrounding it.
What exactly is he still waiting to prove?
The Part We Rarely Discuss
We spend considerable time asking whether societies are ready for LGBTQ equality.
I increasingly wonder whether that is the wrong question.
A Constitution is most necessary precisely when the person standing before the State does not belong to the majority.
If rights depended upon popularity, there would be little need to constitutionalize them.
The citizen who votes for a government is a citizen.
The citizen who votes against it is a citizen.
The Hindu citizen is a citizen.
The Muslim citizen is a citizen.
The Christian citizen is a citizen.
The person who belongs to no religion is a citizen.
The heterosexual citizen is a citizen.
The gay citizen is a citizen.
The lesbian citizen is a citizen.
The transgender citizen is a citizen.
The citizen whose family looks familiar to the majority and the citizen whose family does not are still citizens of the same Republic.
An election decides who receives authority to govern.
It does not decide who receives the Constitution.
And once elected, government is no longer responsible only to the people who placed a mark beside its candidates.
It governs the country.
All of it.
That is where I believe our conversation about equality has sometimes become too narrow.
The question is not whether a government is friendly enough to LGBTQ people.
This is not a popularity contest between a political party and a minority community.
The question is whether institutions perform the constitutional duties attached to the power entrusted to them.
What Grade Does the Record Earn?
I am not interested in assigning motives that I cannot establish, and I do not believe responsible criticism requires pretending that government has done nothing.
It has acted.
Parliament enacted transgender-rights legislation in 2019. Ministries have created welfare initiatives. The government constituted the post-Supriyo committee. It issued administrative measures concerning ration cards, banking, healthcare, prisons and protection from violence. Those measures can make meaningful differences in individual lives.
Those actions belong in the record.
But so do the unfinished assignments.
How should we evaluate government when the constitutional problem has already been identified, the citizens affected have already explained the harm, courts have already identified areas requiring attention, government possesses the institutional authority to respond, and years later citizens remain before courts asking for solutions to many of the same structural inequalities?
That question cannot be answered by counting announcements.
It has to be answered by outcomes.
The Supreme Court recognized transgender self-determination in 2014.
In 2025, that same Court was still describing significant statutory transgender protections as an empty formality because implementation had fallen short.
The Supreme Court decriminalized consensual homosexuality in 2018 after Parliament had not completed that reform.
In 2023, the Union argued that marriage reform belonged to the legislative sphere. The Court declined to rewrite marriage law.
No Union marriage-equality law followed.
No civil-union framework followed.
The Supreme Court identified collateral inequalities flowing from marital status and warned that inaction would result in injustice and unfairness.
A Cabinet Secretary-led committee was created.
Queer organizations told the committee that administrative accommodations were not enough and identified marriage, succession, adoption and family law for legislative attention.
As of August 2026, the full committee had met twice and had not delivered its final report.
Meanwhile, queer couples returned to High Courts over tax inequalities arising precisely because the law allows benefits to a spouse while denying them a legal route to become one.
A state Uniform Civil Code can speak in the language of equality while defining marriage exclusively as being between a man and a woman.
Transgender citizens are again in the Supreme Court litigating questions of identity and medical certification after self-determination had already been constitutionalized in NALSA.
And Saurabh Kirpal remains waiting.
Those facts do not require me to give the government a grade.
The record is the examination paper.
The reader can grade it.
Inaction Governs Too
There is a reason I keep returning to the word inaction.
Government often appears most visible through what it does.
A law passed.
A rule issued.
A program launched.
A committee announced.
But government also shapes citizens' lives through what it leaves in place.
If an existing tax law gives one family a benefit and excludes another, the inequality continues while reform waits.
If inheritance depends upon spousal status and one class of couples cannot obtain that status, property continues moving according to that distinction.
If medical authority, pension eligibility or succession turns on whether government recognizes someone as family, the old definition keeps functioning during every year that a committee deliberates.
If rights exist in legislation but mechanisms for enforcing them are not built, the right can become little more than language on paper.
And if a judicial recommendation remains unresolved while the candidate ages toward the statutory end of a potential judicial career, the passage of time itself begins making decisions.
This does not mean that every failure to legislate is legally identical to passing a discriminatory law.
It is not.
That distinction matters.
But it is equally incorrect to pretend that inaction has no consequence.
The Supreme Court itself has now given us language for understanding that reality.
In Supriyo, it warned that inaction could produce injustice and unfairness.
In Jane Kaushik, it went further and recognized that omission can be discriminatory where there is a duty to act.
That should change the way we examine institutional responsibility.
Sometimes what is not done belongs in the record alongside what is.
How Long Is a Citizen Supposed to Wait?
There are citizens who have spent years waiting for institutions to finish what constitutional recognition began.
Waiting for the law to recognize their family.
Waiting for a committee to complete its work.
Waiting for an inheritance rule to recognize the person with whom they built a life.
Waiting for a tax law to stop asking for a marital status the State will not permit them to acquire.
Waiting for rights already written into law to become usable in the workplace.
Waiting for a court to decide whether protections once understood as settled have been narrowed too far.
Waiting for lawmakers who said the question belonged to lawmakers.
And in one extraordinary case, waiting almost nine years for a judicial appointment after the constitutional body responsible for assessing the candidate has already answered the questions of competence, integrity and intellect.
There comes a point when asking a citizen to wait stops sounding like a request for patience.
It begins asking that person to surrender another portion of their life to institutional uncertainty.
That is what Saurabh Kirpal's file makes visible.
His story has a name, a résumé and a date attached to it.
But millions of quieter forms of waiting do not.
They appear when someone realizes that the person they have loved for twenty years is not legally their spouse.
They appear when the legal system calls a relationship a household in one office, a nominee in another, a chosen family somewhere else, but still refuses the word that would connect those rights across the law.
They appear when a transgender citizen has to return to government and explain an identity the Supreme Court once said belonged to the individual.
They appear when a citizen discovers that equality has been recognized in principle but has not yet arrived at the counter, the form, the tax return, the hospital, the inheritance certificate or the appointment letter.
And that is why I cannot look at Saurabh Kirpal's nearly nine-year wait as an isolated personnel matter.
It sits inside a much larger constitutional history.
India's courts have spent more than a decade developing powerful language around dignity, privacy, autonomy, equality and citizenship.
The language is there.
The citizens are there.
The institutional authority is there.
The warnings are there.
The question is whether implementation will meet them.
A government does not grant citizens their humanity.
A court does not create it.
A legislature does not manufacture it.
The work of constitutional government is to ensure that the structures of the State stop denying what citizenship already promises.
That responsibility belongs not only to judges.
It belongs to legislatures.
It belongs to executives.
It belongs to States.
It belongs to the Union.
And it belongs to whichever government happens to hold power when an inequality is placed before it.
Because governments change.
Citizenship does not.
There are people who have been holding their breath through one judgment after another, one committee after another, one election after another and one promise after another.
At some point, equal citizenship has to become something more than the next institution saying it understands the problem.
It has to become the answer.
So I will not assign the grade.
I will leave that to the reader.
But before doing so, I would ask the reader to look at the entire record, not one judgment, one government announcement or one disputed appointment.
Look from 2013 to 2026.
Look at what the courts recognized.
Look at what legislatures were empowered to do.
Look at what government promised to examine.
Look at what citizens told that government.
Look at what remained unfinished.
Look at what returned to court.
And then look once more at the name that has been sitting on an appointment file since October 2017.
Saurabh Kirpal.
Nearly nine years later, the question is no longer simply whether he can become India's first openly gay High Court judge.
The larger question is what his waiting tells us about everyone else who has been asked to wait for equality too.
How long must a citizen hold their breath?