Gay Bombay revisited - part one
When I retired from Swiss National Television after 30 years and had to clean up my office, I found 28 video cassettes in a cupboard - raw material, which I used for my film “Indian Queens – the forbidden gay world of Bombay” (28min., 1998). Fortunately, before I got rid of these old cassettes, I looked through them and found a lot of interesting, unreleased material.
Back in 1997, when I was shooting the film, homosexuality was still a big taboo in India. According to the Indian Penal Code, Section 377, a law from the British colonial era, homosexual acts were considered a crime. The gay community had to go underground and hide. But it was also the time when gays started to come out, break the silence and challenged this paragraph, especially in the big cities. On September 6, 2018, after a long battle, this law was abolished and homosexuality decriminalised in India.
After all these years, I decided to visit my protagonists, find out what had become of them and maybe make a new documentary using old and new material. The latter did not happen. Covid and other things got in the way. Instead, I’m now going to create a blog series with some of this unique material.
More about the old times and “Indian Queens - the forbidden gay world of Bombay” you will find here: https://lekhasarkar.com/indian-queens
Ashok Row Kavi, India’s first gay rights activist
It was very difficult to reach Ashok Row Kavi, one of the protagonists of my old film. He was so busy. Eventually it worked. I met him after 22 years at the Gulabi Mela, a kind of LGBTQ-fair, on January 29, 2019 in Mumbai.
Ashok Row Kavi, born 1947, was one of India’s first gay rights activists. He was also the first to come out publicly. As early as 1984, he openly declared his homosexuality in the popular magazine Savvy. This caused a huge uproar and he almost lost his job as a journalist at the time. In 1990 he published the first Indian gay magazine “Bombay Dost” and in 1994 he co-founded the “Humsafar Trust”, one of the largest and most active NGOs in India that advocates for the rights of the LGBTQ community and provides health services.
Photos: Gulabi Mela, Mumbai 2019
I was happy to meet Ashok, albeit briefly, at the Gulabi Mela 2019. He was then 72 years old and looked good. It was a colourful event and the joy, that Section 377 of the IPC was removed, palpable. This Gulabi Mela was also special because the 25th anniversary of the Humsafar Trust was being celebrated at the same time. I recorded Ashok’s moving speech.
Interview with Ashok Row Kavi in November 1997
I filmed Ashok Row Kavi in 1997, when he was 50 years old and the Humsafar Trust was still in its early stages. When I interviewed him, he had just returned from the United States, where he had been attending conferences on HIV/AIDS, a big issue at the time.
In this interview, he talks about the “contract of silence” and very briefly about his life. Ashok Row Kavi was born on June 1, 1947 in Bombay (now Mumbai). He initially studied chemistry, later he joined the Ramakrishna Mission and became a Hindu monk. On the advice of a senior monk, he left the monastery and began to explore and express his homosexuality. He became a journalist and wrote for various prominent newspapers.
In the interview, he also highlights some different patterns between East and West, which I find interesting. And the fact that he is a controversial figure is also a topic of the interview. He has been criticized for his right-wing political views and his defense of Hinduism, among other things. But his contribution to the recognition of homosexuality in India, his life's mission, is undisputed.
I remember that shoot at Humsafar Trust very well. I had an excellent Indian camera crew. My cameraman was tall and had the look of a Bollywood actor. My protagonists loved to flirt with him, including Ashok Row Kavi.
I would have liked to talk with Ashok Row Kavi once more. I would have liked to ask him about his present life, what worries him, what makes him happy these days and much more. But we didn’t meet again. So I googled him and found out: There are many more struggles to be fought within and outside of the LGBTQ community. For Ashok Row Kavi, there is no time to rest.
Video: Flashmob at the Gulabi Mela, Mumbai 2019
Next in the series: Gay Bombay revisited - part two is about filmmaker Riyad Vinci Wadia, who made Bomgay, India’s first gay movie.
Related stories “Mumbai Pride 2019” and “Dodo - from glamour to social awareness”: youtube.com/@chitra_lekha_sarkar
All photos and videos: Copyright Chitra-Lekha Sarkar