Indian gay rights activists voiced shock and outrage yesterday over public comments by the health minister who said that homosexuality is unnatural and a “disease” brought to India by foreigners.
Speaking at a national meeting on Monday of district and mayoral leaders on HIV/AIDS prevention, Indian Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said that gay sex was “unnatural and not good for India.”
“It is a disease which has come from other countries,” he added.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the president of the ruling Congress Party also attended the meeting, but had left before Azad spoke.
Coming almost two years to the day after a landmark Delhi High Court ruling that decriminalized homosexuality, his comments prompted a storm of protest and calls for an immediate retraction.
“I think the minister needs to apologize immediately. He has insulted the entire homosexual community,” said Mohnish Kabir Malhotra, a publicist and gay rights activist.
“Homosexuality is very much a part of nature and it even finds references in religious texts. To call it unnatural is absurd,” Malhotra said.
There was particular anger that the comments were made at a meeting of officials tasked with promoting and enforcing HIV/AIDS prevention policy at a grassroots level across the country.
“To have such a level of bias and ignorance expressed in that context about something so basic is very dangerous,” said Mario D’Penha, a historian of the gay rights movement in South Asia.
“What is farcical, given his comments, is that he said the country needs more sex education. There are a lot of gay people in India who would like to give the minister an education,” D’Penha said.
Aditya Bondyopadhyay, a lawyer and gay rights activist, said Azad’s remarks would encourage those conservative groups and religious organizations who had vehemently opposed the 2009 High Court ruling.
“When a minister, and especially the health minister, says this in public, it conveys the impression that this is government policy and that can have a huge impact on the lives of gay people who already struggle with official discrimination and police harassment,” Bondyopadhyay said.
“The religious right will jump on statements like this to increase the amount of hate,” he added.
Despite the High Court ruling and gay pride events in some major cities, homosexual culture remains shocking to many Indians, who often treat the topic as taboo.
Very few high-profile Indians are openly gay or lesbian whether in the fields of sport, politics or entertainment.
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