When Menaka Guruswamy walks into Parliament building for the Rajya Sabha election in mid-March, she will possibly be the first openly queer person on the ballot. From the Sept 2018 Supreme Court verdict decriminalising Article 377 to a possible seat in the Upper House has been a long journey. The Trinamool Congress has nominated her as its Rajya Sabha candidate.Perhaps cognizant of the enormity of the moment, Guruswamy on Saturday posted on X, “I am deeply honoured to be nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the All India Trinamool Congress. I am grateful to the Hon’ble Chief Minister of West Bengal Ms Mamata Banerjee for reposing her faith in me. Our Constitution’s values of equality, fraternity & non-discrimination have guided my life & work, I hope to carry these ideals forward into Parliament. I look forward to representing the interests of the people of West Bengal & to serve ‘We the People’ of India.”Guruswamy has been public about her relationship with fellow lawyer Arundhati Katju. In 2023, former diplomat Vivek Katju wrote a personal piece on his journey in accepting his daughter Arundhati and her partner, expressing his initial shock and despair when he found out about her sexuality.Guruswamy is the daughter of public policy analyst Mohan Guruswamy, who was advisor to the finance minister in Vajpayee govt. She started her career in 1997 under former Attorney General Ashok Desai.The nomination has also invited a backlash. Union MoS Sukanta Majumdar says that Guruswamy was nominated as “payback” for fighting Banerjee’s case.Guruswamy was on Foreign Policy magazine’s list of 100 most influential Global Thinkers for 2019 along with Arundhati Katju. In 2017, her portrait was unveiled at Rhodes House in Oxford University.Guruswamy was educated at Oxford University, Harvard Law School and National Law School of India. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a Gammon Fellow at Harvard. She has been visiting faculty at Yale Law School, New York University School of Law and University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She was the B R Ambedkar research scholar and lecturer in law at Columbia Law School from 2017-2019, where she taught constitutional design in post-conflict democracies.
