Singapore: amended in 2007 as Section 377A.Īlthough most colonies have since gained independence through statehood since Section 377 was implemented, it remains in the penal codes of the following countries:
The provision was introduced by authorities in the Raj in 1862 as Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and functioned as the legal impetus behind the criminalization of what was referred to as, 'unnatural offenses' throughout the various colonies, in several cases with the same section number. Īlthough Section 377 did not explicitly include the word homosexual, it has been used to prosecute homosexual activity. Alok Gupta wrote for a Human Rights Watch report in 2008 that the British intended for the code to prevent Christian colonial subjects from ' corruption' and condition colonized subjects undergoing Christianization to conform to colonial authority. Section 377 was then exported to other colonies and even to England itself, providing the legal model for the act of ' buggery' in the Offenses Against the Person Act (1861). Union of IndiaĪlthough the act of sodomy was sometimes prosecuted in England under British common law, it was first codified in the British empire as Section 377 in the Indian Penal Code as 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature' in 1860.
