A brief history of Section 377

Indian Penal Code was drafted by Lord Macaulay and introduced in 1861 in British India. Section 377 IPC is contained in Chapter XVI of the IPC titled "Of Offences Affecting the Human Body". Within this Chapter Section 377 IPC is categorized under the sub-chapter titled "Of Unnatural Offences".
The legislative history of the subject indicates that the first records of sodomy as a crime at Common Law in England were chronicled in the Fleta, 1290, and later in the Britton, 1300. Both texts prescribed that sodomites should be burnt alive. Acts of sodomy later became penalized by hanging under the Buggery Act of 1533 which was re-enacted in 1563 by Queen Elizabeth I, after which it became the charter for the subsequent criminalisation of sodomy in the British Colonies. Same-sex activity was morally unacceptable to the British rulers and their society. The local populations were not consulted concerning the imposition of such law. In many of the territories in Asia, Africa and elsewhere where the laws were imposed and enforced, there was no (or no clear) pre-existing culture or tradition that required the punishment of such offences. They were simply imposed to stamp out the ‘vice’ and ‘viciousness’ amongst native peoples which the British rulers found, or assumed, was intolerable to a properly governed society.
The Section 377 of the IPC was copied in a large number of British territories from Zambia to Malaysia, and from Singapore to Fiji. The postulate inherent in the provision, so defined, was that carnal activities against the order of nature violated human integrity and polluted society so that, even if the 'victim' claimed that he had consented to it, and was of full age, the act was still punishable because more than the individual’s will or body was at stake. The result of the provision was that factors of consent, or of the age of the participants or of the privacy of the happening, were immaterial. Legally, same-sex activities were linked and equated to the conduct of violent sexual criminal offences.