If you dont want to send any additional context from views then you can handle it like this with resolver_match:
<li {% if request.resolver_match.url_name == 'home' %}class="active"{% endif %}>
<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/">HOME</a>
</li>
where ‘home’ is the name given to your url pattern for / (probably '^$') in your urls.py.
So obviously to use this you need to name all your url patterns, which is a good practice anyway.