Source: Press release SANEPR.com

Indian activist/journalist Ashok Row Kavi photo: Tribune India, 2003

In the introduction to a 1999 interview with Row Kavi, author Perry Brass says of Row Kavi, "He has been called the 'Larry Kramer of India,' though in person and in print he is more humane, understanding, and endearing than Kramer. But like Kramer, he has lots of opinions, and many of them land squarely on the issues involved -- much more so, I would say, than most people trying to figure out India itself, an almost impossible situation."

Row Kavi was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) to parents "fleeing poverty in South India." His mother eventually "became a leading light in Bollywood (India's Hollywood) and a founding member of the Indian Motion Pictures' Producers' Association."

He tells the SUTRA magazine that coming out was made easier because of advice he received while doing diploma work at a monastery. "I ... discovered my gay nature there," Row Kavi recalls, "and was given sensible counseling for it by the monks. 'Accept it as natural. Whatever occurs in nature is natural though it may not be common,' advised my counselor, Swami Harshananda."

Row Kavi worked as a journalist as the AIDS epidemic was beginning to take its devastating world-wide toll. He left journalism to

Since then, according to a Wikipedia biographical entry, Row Kavi has participted in several international and national forums and conferences on HIV/AIDS Conferences, where he has made at least five oral presentations. As head of Humsafar, he has also organized the first ‘Looking into the Next Millennium’ conference of 32 MSM NGOs in Mumbai in May 2001 and co-organized the first ILGA-Asia conference in Mumbai in October 2002.

But in the SUTRA interview, Row Kavi expresses regret that his early work as a journalist has been largely overshadowed by his activism.

He reminded his interviewer that he was one of the first journalists to get into Bhopal "while thousands were dying" from the devastating release of deadly gas from a manufacturing plant there.

"I am not just a gay activist," Row Kavi insisted, "I am India spanning 50 years of her 5,000 year old civilization. A sliver of it, but a good representative one, no doubt.”

Row Kavi recounted his contributions to journalism in the young country developing from an ancient civilization. He recounted his career:

"I returned from the monastery to do a post graduate in Journalism while working as a trainee in the Free Press Journal, and finally joined the 'Indian Express' chain of newspapers in Bombay. I started India's first Playboy clone, Debonair, with my English friend Anthony Van Braband in 1971.

"I left the Express to start India's first morning tabloid, The Daily in 1981, left that to become city editor of my home ground newspaper, Free Press Journal. I then became bureau chief of India's newsweekly, The Week. There I came out, creating a ruckus in the conservative Christian management.

"I quit journalism in 1990, after attending the Fifth International AIDS Conference in 1989 at Montreal, where I was aghast to see American gay men fighting for their very lives to get funding to fight AIDS."

"I've become just a 'gay activist,'", he said, "which is a very uni-dimensional look at my life. I have interests in religion, social biology, sexuality, science and even astronomy. I have reported developments in India's atomic energy establishment, the speeches of Indira Gandhi and her downfall, done court reporting, reported death and disaster on a huge scale."

Full article: Homosexuality in Indian Society by SUTRA Magazine