The historic Naz Foundation petition to the Delhi High Court actually began with a history lesson – of fetishism, perversion, fondling and fornication and the punishments thereof. Tellingly, the Christian and European side of the history is much more severe and restrictive than the Hindu Indian one. It only takes a visit to India’s most notorious temple to see that there is a history here of open discussion of sex. Section 377 of the 1860 Indian Penal Code, which criminalises “carnal relations against the natural order” is based on the English Sodomy Law. The embedded notion – sex is for procreation only and that other sex is “unnatural” -is very much a Judeo-Christian idea which still hold sway in Bible Belt America (cf Pro Life) and in the pronouncements of the current Pope and in several sects of Islam (itself Judeo-Christian) but is not a feature of mainstream Buddhism or Hinduism. This idea held sway in the early applications of the law, but quickly gave way to India’s need to control its population.

Some in India claim that gays are a decadent western import. India's ladyboys walk on the wild side - now they can do so legally. Will it make a fundamental difference to how society views its others?

The Delhi High Court Decision to exempt mutually consenting adults from section 377 is a major shift which has been compared to the Roe vs Wade case in America, where women won the right to choose an abortion. At the same time the ruling has opened the debate as to whether the civil rights process itself is an aspect of Westernisation. Extremists even argue that somehow homosexuality, and by definition, tolerance, is alien and that civil rights for minorities is an invasive, exotic way of thinking.

Those radicals who argue against the corrupting aspects of western notions such as democracy avail themselves of the internet, that most democratic of outside influences, to illustrate and promulgate their views. The paradox is vividly apparent in the case of Iraq and Iran. While the web gives activists in India an opportunity to pool intellectual resources and raise their game to the point where they often make a fool of the government – see the varying quality of the 377 case documents, this version of events does little to explain the particular history of the laws being fought. This applies not just for gay rights and sexuality, but equally to Forest Law. These were drafted around the same time, but in this case importing the commercial interests of the British Raj, with the conservation of forests predicated on the need for massive Timber extraction. In 2006, in a similar way, this legal regime was challenged, and ownership rights of India’s “original people” were re-asserted after more than130 years.

It is sad that 60 years after Independence, these relics of British rule still remain, but it is also joyous to see that India has the resources and will to remake itself, and to do so with dignity. Both the Gay and Forest Rights campaigns focused around the notion of human dignity, something central to the Gandhian ideal and the wave of decolonisation it triggered. To call this a western ideal is to ignore the History of Others - others who were also capable of understanding the value of human life. These values, asserted in the Indian Constitution, are now taking precedence over a painful legal legacy. Thus these legal changes are signs not of the dominance of western values, but of a growing sense of inner confidence and self-ownership.