Nitin Karani didn’t know it at the time but in 2002 he co-edited the last edition of India’s first gay magazine.
Twelve years after the groundbreaking Bombay Dost (Bombay Friends) first hit the streets and despite selling some 5,000 copies every quarter, lack of funding and advertising revenue forced it to close.
But last month, the first edition of the new Bombay Dost was launched at a Mumbai bookstore, with funding from a local men’s sexual health charity and the UN Development Program as well as star backing from a Bollywood actress.
For Karani, the magazine’s mission remains the same — to help give India’s marginalized gay community its own voice and be more accepted by society.
“The most important thing about the magazine was in the case of people like me,” he told reporters ahead of today’s International Day Against Homophobia.
“It made me realize I wasn’t the only ‘freak’ around and not isolated, that there are lots of other people like me, not just in India but abroad, and I could reach out to them and interact with them,” he said. “It gave me a tremendous sense of validity.”
Bombay Dost, originally set up by the gay rights activist Ashok Row Kavi, seems tame in comparison with its mainstream US or European counterparts.
Where Britain’s Attitude features pictures of near-naked models and celebrities and sells in the tens of thousands, Bombay Dost has only one shot of “Mr Gay India” in swimming trunks and an initial print run of 1,500.
Most of its glossy 56 pages are instead taken up with lengthy book and art reviews and features on gay issues both in India and abroad.
But in a country that is largely conservative and either ignores homosexuality, denies it exists or treats it as a disease, the magazine can justly claim its tagline of being “bolder than ever.”
In the seven years between publications, Karani said much had changed, even if a British colonial-era law banning unnatural sex “against the order of nature” is still on the statute books.
The original Bombay Dost was not even sold in bookstores and would either come in a plain, brown envelope or under the counter at roadside vendors.
“People would have been afraid to walk into a store and ask for it in the same way they wouldn’t walk into a chemist and ask for a condom. It was basically still contraband,” Karani said.
The now half-yearly Bombay Dost is still available via mail order or from gay-friendly non-governmental organizations but is also sold in a number of large bookstore chains.
Karani said his parents and colleagues in his day job at a large financial services firm know he is gay and are supportive.
Being gay is now more acceptable in certain jobs such as journalism, at call centers or in the entertainment or fashion industries and younger people are more accepting, he said.
The 38-year-old attributes that change in part to globalization as well as the explosion in India’s cable and satellite television sector, which brought among other things chat shows discussing homosexuality more openly.
Indian editions of the Time Out lifestyle and entertainment magazine now have regular gay listings sections and columns, while numbers at the annual Pride march, first held in Kolkata with just 14 men in 1999, are growing.
Prejudice still remains, though, whether it is through blackmail of closeted homosexuals or persecution of groups such as India’s sizeable transgendered hijra community.
Editor Vikram Phukan writes in the magazine that there remains fear of being associated with a lifestyle that is still effectively underground and where homosexual sex remains illegal.
Former Miss India turned Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley, one of India’s most outspoken campaigners for gay rights, received hate mail for supporting the relaunch of Bombay Dost.
The 27-year-old said she was saddened by the reaction but is undeterred, hoping that publications such as Bombay Dost would help break down barriers.
“We have to accept differences rather than be afraid of them,” she told reporters. “We’ve got to talk about it. Bring the change within yourself, accept the first person you come across with love.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
RSS