History was made on Monday as Maneka Guruswamy, India’s first openly queer MP, took oath as a member of the Rajya Sabha.Here is a retracing of her steps.Lead lawyer behind decriminalisation of Section 377Maneka and her friend Arundhati Katju came out as a couple after the SC partially struck down Section 377 of the British era IPC.The duo had launched a long struggle against this section, which criminalised consensual same-sex relationships. The two announced they were a couple on a Fareed Zakaria show.This was in 2019, after Maneka and Arundhati convinced the apex court to decriminalise consensual same-sex acts under Section 377 IPC.It was this case, decriminalising homosexuality, that catapulted Maneka to fame.Maneka, lawyer in equal marital rights case tooManeka is also one of the litigants in the case for gender-equal marriage rights in the country. The case is before the Supreme Court and seeks marital rights for all citizens irrespective of gender. She is a passionate advocate of same-sex marriages.TMC lawyer in RG Kar case Maneka has represented the TMC in the RG Kar rape case and, most recently, in the ED case against I-PAC in the state. She has attracted the BJP’s ire for this.Was lawyer for petition against Salwa JudumManeka was also a lawyer for Nandini Sundar in the petition that sought the abolition of Salwa Judum, an armed group of tribals who were raised by the state to counter Naxals.The case was against the Chhattisgarh government, and the petitioners had won. It was Justice B. Sudarshan Reddy who ordered the disbanding of the force.EducationManeka Guruswamy was educated at Oxford University, Harvard Law School, and the 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 the 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.Most influential listManeka, daughter of Meera and Mohan Guruswamy, former advisor to the finance ministry, was along with Arundhati Katju on Times Magazine’s 2019 list of 100 most influential people. Maneka’s publicly available profile states that her portrait was unveiled at Rhodes House in Oxford University.