Supreme Court advocates Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju, who had led the fight to scrap Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that criminalised homosexuality, were among the Indians who were named in TIME magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world for 2019. The 'Time 100 Most Influential People 2019' names the world's most influential pioneers, leaders, titans, artists and icons of the year.
"This landmark judgment, overturning a 157-year-old law, was the outcome of a long-term campaign orchestrated by two amazing public-interest litigators, Arundhati Katju and Menaka Guruswamy. The fight has been hard. The LGBTQ+ community has battled on both legal and social fronts for decades - for their fundamental rights, for privacy, for dignity, for safety and for love. Their perseverance and commitment led an entire community to a historic win by humanizing their struggles and giving them the freedom to love," actor Priyanka Chopra wrote about the two women in their profile for the magazine.
"In their committed fight for justice, they have shown us that we as a society must continue to make progress, even after laws are changed, and that we must make an effort to understand, accept and love. It is who we are as people," she added.
Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani is the other Indian who has made it to the list. The list includes US President Donald Trump, Pope Francis, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Indian-American comedian Hasan Minhaj.
In the TIME 100 profile for Ambani, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra wrote that Ambani's vision was more ambitious than that of the father whose blessings he unfailingly invokes at the launch of each initiative.
"The scale of his Reliance Jio mobile-data network, which has already connected over 280 million people in India with low-cost 4G, is impressive by any standard. But what is truly jaw-dropping is the way it will allow Reliance to potentially dominate a staggering array of new businesses."
IANS inputs