Ashok Row Kavi
| Ashok Row Kavi | |
|---|---|
Ashok Row Kavi
|
|
| Born |
1 June 1947 Mumbai, India |
| Occupation | Writer and LGBT activist |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Period | 20th century |
Ashok Row Kavi is an Indian journalist and one of India's most prominent LGBT rights activists.
He was born in Mumbai on 1 June 1947. He graduated with honours in Chemistry from the University of Bombay. Later, he dropped out of engineering college. Due to his early difficulty in dealing with his homosexuality, he enrolled as a Hindu monk in the Ramakrishna Mission and studied theology. Encouraged by a senior monk, he left the monastery to freely explore and express his homosexuality. He has also studied at the International School of Journalism, Berlin, Germany.
In a journalism career spanning 18 years, he worked in various newspapers and magazines, including India's largest circulated newspaper Malayala Manorama (as Western India Bureau-Chief), Sunday Mail and The Daily. For six years he was also senior reporter covering Science and Technology in The Indian Express group of newspapers. His career as a journalist began in 1974 with The Indian Express and was the chief reporter with The Free Press Journal from 1984 to 1989.
In 1971, he started Debonair, with friend Anthony Van Braband and later in 1990, he founded Bombay Dost, India's first gay magazine. He was a representative at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam and served as chairman of the Second International Congress on AIDS.
Although he retired from journalism in 1990, he has worked at providing a formal platform for homosexuals to become actively involved in public life and institutions through media, advocacy, co-operation and community-building.Row Kavi was the first person to openly talk about homosexuality and gay rights in India. His first coming out interview appeared in Savvy magazine in 1986. His mother, Shobha Row Kavi, also gave an interview to the same magazine; it was the first time that a mother spoke about her son's homosexuality to the Indian media.
At the present, he is founder-chairperson of the Humsafar Trust, an LGBT rights and health services NGO, which also agitates for the legal emancipation of homosexuality in India. The trust's work comprises community work, outreach into the gay and MSM groups, advocacy on gender and sexuality issues concerning sexual minorities and research into sexuality and gender issues. Besides running several intervention programmes (funded by national and international organisations and private donors) for HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections in Mumbai and Goa, Row Kavi and the trust have been lobbying with policy making bodies as well as supporting similar upcoming groups across the country.
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