Anjali Gopalan
Anjali Gopalan is an Indian Human Rights and Animal Rights activist, Founder and Executive Director of The Naz Foundation (India) Trust, an NGO dedicated to the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India mainly focussed on women and children. Anjali began working on issues related to HIV/AIDS and marginalised communities in the United States. In 2012, Times Magazine placed Gopalan in its list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
A Supreme Court of India bench recently heard a joint petition against the Delhi High Court judgment of 2009, which decriminalized physical relationships between two consenting adults of the same sex and has turned it down. This has once more made all homosexual activity criminal, thus situating the society on a reverse mode.
Anjali Gopalan is the founder of the Naz Foundation, which petitioned to the favorable Delhi High Court judgment for the LGBTQI community and is one of the leading organizations in the LGBT+ support movement in India. Gopalan says she “was absolutely aghast at the Supreme Court judgment, like many many others in the country.” “Many many” may not mean the majority but is perhaps an apt description, considering the wide-ranging protests that erupted in response to the judgment — on the streets, in newspapers, on television, in social media — the usual parameters of gauging public pulse. Gopalan is a well-known face in the field of HIV/AIDS activism in India;
activism which catapulted her to the Time magazine’s 2012 list of top 100 influential people in the world, rests a hand on her head, a tad helplessly, as she points out that “the thousands of young people who took the courage to come out of the closet after the 2009 judgment are now being told they are all criminals!” This “going back and forth and playing with people’s lives”, states the Nobel Peace Prize nominated activist, “would not only lead to the earlier situation when gay people would be harassed by the powerful but would also lead to a lot of people going underground, and hampering the HIV/AIDS caregivers from reaching them.”
A fear already expressed by many in the field. When asked about how it was to begin working in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention at a time when there wasn’t much knowledge about it, she was prompt to reply that is was “initially extremely hard”. “There was a lot of resistance because of the strong linkage of our activism with sexuality, a taboo at the time. People believed that HIV/AIDS is a disease that is so discontinuous with our culture that it wouldn’t affect our lives. The aim was to make HIV/AIDS a relevant issue in the minds of the people and we continued doing what we had to keep going. This came from a very strong sense of conviction and responsibility,” says the iconic activist. The case is now pending hearing as a curative petition before the Supreme Court.
If the court disagrees to the hearing, the legal battle ends right there. Does that push us back to square one? “If that happens, we shall look at other avenues of going through with the legal battle, such as the Parliament. We will fight the battle all the way, because we feel very strongly that wrong has been done. How can we live in a country where we deny rights to people? In fact, we cannot even be talking rights yet; that can be done only when the Judiciary recognizes that an entire community simply cannot be labeled criminals based on a personal trait like sexuality. We are not giving up just yet”, asserts Gopalan. As a concluding message to youth around the globe, she says, “We fear what we don’t know and our biases develop from these fears, from not knowing. It is up to us to educate ourselves to be able to break out of our biases and judgments. We are a product of our environment. It is up to us to make sure that our environment is an inclusive one.”
A Supreme Court of India bench recently heard a joint petition against the Delhi High Court judgment of 2009, which decriminalized physical relationships between two consenting adults of the same sex and has turned it down. This has once more made all homosexual activity criminal, thus situating the society on a reverse mode.
Anjali Gopalan is the founder of the Naz Foundation, which petitioned to the favorable Delhi High Court judgment for the LGBTQI community and is one of the leading organizations in the LGBT+ support movement in India. Gopalan says she “was absolutely aghast at the Supreme Court judgment, like many many others in the country.” “Many many” may not mean the majority but is perhaps an apt description, considering the wide-ranging protests that erupted in response to the judgment — on the streets, in newspapers, on television, in social media — the usual parameters of gauging public pulse. Gopalan is a well-known face in the field of HIV/AIDS activism in India;
activism which catapulted her to the Time magazine’s 2012 list of top 100 influential people in the world, rests a hand on her head, a tad helplessly, as she points out that “the thousands of young people who took the courage to come out of the closet after the 2009 judgment are now being told they are all criminals!” This “going back and forth and playing with people’s lives”, states the Nobel Peace Prize nominated activist, “would not only lead to the earlier situation when gay people would be harassed by the powerful but would also lead to a lot of people going underground, and hampering the HIV/AIDS caregivers from reaching them.”
A fear already expressed by many in the field. When asked about how it was to begin working in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention at a time when there wasn’t much knowledge about it, she was prompt to reply that is was “initially extremely hard”. “There was a lot of resistance because of the strong linkage of our activism with sexuality, a taboo at the time. People believed that HIV/AIDS is a disease that is so discontinuous with our culture that it wouldn’t affect our lives. The aim was to make HIV/AIDS a relevant issue in the minds of the people and we continued doing what we had to keep going. This came from a very strong sense of conviction and responsibility,” says the iconic activist. The case is now pending hearing as a curative petition before the Supreme Court.
If the court disagrees to the hearing, the legal battle ends right there. Does that push us back to square one? “If that happens, we shall look at other avenues of going through with the legal battle, such as the Parliament. We will fight the battle all the way, because we feel very strongly that wrong has been done. How can we live in a country where we deny rights to people? In fact, we cannot even be talking rights yet; that can be done only when the Judiciary recognizes that an entire community simply cannot be labeled criminals based on a personal trait like sexuality. We are not giving up just yet”, asserts Gopalan. As a concluding message to youth around the globe, she says, “We fear what we don’t know and our biases develop from these fears, from not knowing. It is up to us to educate ourselves to be able to break out of our biases and judgments. We are a product of our environment. It is up to us to make sure that our environment is an inclusive one.”