India

Indian Transgender Rights Activist

b. December 13, 1978

“It is only through faith that the original status of the transgender people in India can be reclaimed.”

Laxmi Narayan Tripathi is an Indian transgender rights activist, dancer and television star. She is among the most influential figures in India’s LGBTQ community.

Tripathi was born male in Thane, Maharashtra, near Mumbai, to an orthodox Brahmin family. Brahmin is the highest caste in Hinduism. Growing up, Tripathi was sexually abused by a close relative and bullied by her classmates.

Tripathi graduated with an arts degree from Mumbai’s Mithibai College and a postgraduate degree in Bharatanatyam, a form of Indian classical dance that often expresses religious and spiritual themes.

After starring in several dance videos directed by Ken Ghosh, an Indian director and producer, Tripathi took up choreography and became a well-known dancer in Maharashtra. When the state shuttered its dance bars, Tripathi organized protests against the decision.

Tripathi identifies as a female in the Indian sense of hijra. Considered nonbinary, hijras can be intersex, transgender or eunuchs. Historically, Hinduism viewed hijras as divine. In the late 1800s, when India was a British colony, transgenderism was criminalized. For centuries, transgender Indians have lived as outcasts. Tripathi is working to reclaim the hijras’ holy status.

During India’s HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s, Tripathi was one of the first activists to demand that the national anti-AIDS program include hijras as a separate category. She attended the 2006 World AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, and participated in HIV/AIDS activism at other international forums. In 2008 she became the first transgender person to represent Asia Pacific in the United Nations, where she spoke of the plight of sexual minorities around the world, particularly in India.

In 2014, thanks to Tripathi’s successful petition, the Indian Supreme Court ruled to officially recognize a third gender. The landmark decision paved the way for transgender people to receive government benefits and for India’s decriminalization of same-sex relationships in 2018. In the wake of her Supreme Court victory, Tripathi formed the nonprofit Astitva Trust, Asia's first transgender organization, and established a Hindu hijra religious order, the Kinnar Akhara.

Tripathi was featured in the 2005 documentary “Between the Lines: India’s Third Gender.” In 2011 she starred in the celebrity edition of the Indian reality television series “Big Boss” and in “Queens! Destiny of Dance,” an acclaimed Bollywood film about hijras. In 2012 Tripathi published her autobiography, “Me Hijra, Me Laxmi.”

In 2017 at the KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, Tripathi received the Rainbow Warrior Award. She received the Sree Narayana Guru Award for social service the same year.

Tripathi lives with her fiancé, Aryan Pasha, a transgender man. The couple has two adopted children.

Indian Activist

b. April 6, 1985

“Loving another man does not make me a criminal.”

Keshav Suri is a prominent Indian activist and entrepreneur. He leads the The Lalit Suri Hospitality Group, which operates a chain of luxury hotels worldwide, and he founded India’s celebrated LGBTQ-friendly Kitty Su nightclub. In 2018 his petition of India’s Supreme Court ended in a landmark decision decriminalizing homosexuality.

Born in New Delhi, India, the son of a prominent hotelier and member of Parliament, Suri was bullied for being gay as a youth. As he matured, feeling the intense pressure imposed by a conservative, highly stratified society and his own family status, he considered marrying a lesbian to hide his sexual orientation. Ultimately unwilling to live a lie, he came out to his family and friends during graduate school in London.

At age 21, after his father died, Suri learned the hotel trade alongside his mother and sisters. As executive director of the family business, he has spearheaded various successful ventures across the hotel chain, including the Kitty Su nightclub. Kitty Su is the only nightclub in India to have been listed by GQ magazine among the top six nightclubs worldwide and by DJ Mag among the top 100 nightclubs in the world. Suri also founded The Lalit Food Truck Company and brought the first pop-up party concept to India.

Suri uses his position as an influential businessman to create opportunity and inclusion for LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people. In Indian cities, known for their exclusionary club scenes, Kitty Su has emerged as a welcoming nightspot for LGBT and disabled patrons and has helped introduce and grow drag culture in India. Kitty Su also welcomes acid burn survivors—the majority of whom are poor women—who Suri works to aid, both in their physical recovery and through job opportunities. Under Suri’s leadership, half of Kitty Su’s DJs are female and its resident DJ, Varun Khullar, a.k.a. DJ Aamish, is India’s first wheelchair-using DJ.

In June 2018 Suri married his partner of 10 years, Cyril Feuillebois, in Paris. At the time, the relationship alone—much less the marriage—was illegal in India. In 2017, as one of four other activists, Suri filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India to repeal Section 377 of the Penal Code, which banned gay sex. Three months after Suri wed, the high court unanimously struck down the law, decriminalizing homosexuality countrywide.

Suri and Feuillebois live in New Delhi.

Indian Gay Pioneer and Journalist

b. June 1, 1947

“Coming out was a natural defense mechanism.”

Ashok Row Kavi is an Indian LGBT rights activist and journalist. The first gay man to ever talk publicly about his sexuality in a country where homosexuality is still illegal, he is considered one of the most influential gay men in India. The Pink Pages lists him among the most influential LGBT people in the world.

“When you come out in India, gay identity becomes your primary identity,” Kavi said. “If you come out as an openly homosexual man and refuse to get married to a woman, then your homosexual identity becomes a form of rebellion and attracts a great deal of attention. All the other identities—being a good journalist, for instance—become backups.”

Born in Mumbai, Kavi was educated at India’s most elite schools, eventually graduating with honors in chemistry from the University of Bombay. As a young man, he had trouble coming to terms with his sexuality and trained as a Hindu monk. After a senior monk encouraged him to explore his sexuality, he went on to study at the International School of Journalism in Berlin. He became well known for his work for Malayala Manorama, India’s largest newspaper.

In 1971 Kavi started Debonair, an Indian men’s magazine modeled after Playboy, and in 1990 he founded Bombay Dost, India’s first and only gay magazine. 

Kavi’s reporting for leading publications led him to cover the AIDS crisis. He became a representative at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam and also served as chairman of the Second International Congress on AIDS. In 1994 he founded Humsafar Trust, an LGBT service organization and drop-in center in Mumbai that specializes in outreach and educates people about HIV/AIDS and political issues. It also provides a rare place for LGBT people to meet and socialize.  

In 1998 Kavi designed questionnaires for the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California at San Francisco that have been used to help track the disease and to educate young gay men about risk. 

After retiring from journalism, Kavi organized the first Indian conference about gay men and the first LGBT conference in Mumbai. 

Kavi is an active member of Gay Bombay, the Mumbai District AIDS Control Society and the National AIDS Control Organization. He is also a visiting faculty member of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the International Institute of Population Studies.

Rock Star

b. September 5, 1946, Zanzibar, Tanzania

d. November 21, 1991, London, England

“Success has brought me world idolization and millions of pounds. But it has prevented me from having the one thing we all need, a loving, ongoing relationship.”

Freddie Mercury ranks among the most sensational rock ’n’ roll vocalists in history. He was one of the leading musicians, record producers and songwriters of the 1980s.

Born Farrokh Bulsara to Parsi parents, Mercury was a British citizen who spent his childhood in India. At age 7, he began to study piano. When he was 8, he matriculated to an all-boys school near Bombay (now Mumbai). While enrolled there, he adopted the name “Freddie” and formed a band, the Hectics. In his teens, he moved with his family to Middlesex, England.

When he was 24, Mercury, with guitarist Brian May and percussionist Roger Taylor, formed Queen. Mercury designed the crest of the band, which features the zodiac signs of all the band members, a ribbon circled in the form of a Q and a phoenix symbolizing continual rebirth.

Mercury’s unique musical style blended pop, disco, rockabilly, and operatic influences. He wrote many of Queen’s most popular songs, including “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “We Are the Champions” and his elaborate masterpiece, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Mercury was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the UK Music Hall of Fame. He ranks 18 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 100 greatest singers of all time. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one of the best-selling singles of all time, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004.

Mercury died at 44 of AIDS-related illness.

Muslim Reformist

b. 1968

“My journey is about speaking out against injustice, no matter who is offended.”

Irshad Manji is an award-winning Muslim author, feminist and advocate for Islamic reform. The New York Times described her as “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.”

Manji was born in Uganda to an Indian father and an Egyptian mother. In 1973, when Asians were deported from Uganda, her family immigrated to Canada as political refugees. She attended public school during the week and the madrasah, an Islamic religious school, on the weekend. At 14, she was expelled from the madrasah for asking too many questions.

In 1990, Manji graduated at the top of her class from the University of British Columbia. She worked as a legislative aide to Parliament and became the speechwriter for the leader of the New Democratic Party. At 24, she wrote editorials on national affairs for the Ottawa Citizen.

In 1998, Manji hosted Citytv’s “QueerTelevision,” the world’s first commercial broadcast exploring the lives of gays and lesbians. The show won a Gemini, Canada’s top broadcasting award. She produced the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary “Faith Without Fear” (2007), which follows her journey to reconcile faith and human rights.

Manji authored “The Trouble with Islam Today” (2004), an international best seller published in more than 30 languages. In its first year, the Arabic translation was downloaded 300,000 times. She wrote “Allah, Liberty, and Love” (2011), her guide to becoming a robust global citizen.

In 2004, Oprah Winfrey awarded Manji the first Chutzpah Award for her “audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction.” In 2007, she was named one of the country’s 50 most powerful gays and lesbians by Out magazine. The Jakarta Post in Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, named her one of three Muslim women creating positive change in Islam.

She is the director of New York University’s Moral Courage Project, which develops young leaders to challenge conformity. Manji travels the world speaking about religion, LGBT issues and human rights. Her columns have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and The Globe and Mail (Toronto). She is a frequent guest on CNN and other television networks.

Activist

Urvashi Vaid is an attorney, author, activist and the executive director of the Arcus Foundation.