The laws of desire: rulings on sex and sexuality in India

This mini-hardbound book by Madhavi Menon brings to its readers debates and discourse on identity formation in India, based on conceptualisation of desire. She fiercely counters the courtroom sagas of notable legal suits ranging from art, performance, prostitutes, menstruation, moral policing of women’s clothing, adultery, registers of ‘love jihad’, homosexuality, etc. Menon brings this book with the very rationale of challenging the idea that ‘law is premised upon truth even though it reflects socially constructed biases, prejudices and anxieties’. Menon draws upon registers of religion, art, patriarchy, and heterosexuality as the foundation upon which laws are formulated. Further projecting, how law has nothing to do with gender and orientation of any individual (e.g. why does one need to provide gender details on ration card to secure government subsidised food?). This book being launched soon after her previous work (2018), ‘Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India’, makes the present book, a work-in-progress series on the discourse of sexuality in India. This book is rostered into six chapters. The first chapter titled Preamble sets the tone of the book by juxtaposing law and desire. She argued that transgression Patriarchal control, contesting the moral regime of society and representing many facets of sexuality; endangers the stability of society that law wishes to confer. She writes,