Positive Life NSW

Royal portrait of Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil

Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil recently visited Australia on a whirlwind tour to promote the Lakshya Trust. Here he tells Kevin Pyle about the outreach and support work that won the 2006 UNAIDS Civil Society Award and continues to help countless people in Gujarat.

Much has been written about Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil’s personal odyssey. It often starts with his divorce and the nervous breakdown that led to his outing to his parents, followed by disinheritance then reconciliation and public appearances on TV shows around the world. Dubbed the ‘gay Indian prince’, his story captures people’s imagination wherever he goes. However, the most remarkable thing about this royal is the difference he and a trusted network of friends have made through the Lakshya Trust.

When I sat down to talk to Prince Manvendra, the first thing that struck me was that he appeared to be incredibly fragile. He had obviously been through a string of interviews and it was late in the day. He was reserved and slightly guarded or, perhaps, just a little exhausted by the media interest in his story. After following royal protocol, we were left alone to talk about his work and this is when he truly came to life. It was clear this is a man passionate about his cause.

“The Lakshya Trust was founded by myself and Sylvester Merchant in the year 2000. The idea was to create a platform for gay men to come together and share their personal issues so that we could jointly bring a solution to common problems faced by all of us: social issues, legal issues, marriage pressures, police harassment.

“Then we thought that we should start working on HIV prevention among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender communities. We were fortunate that we got support from the state government and we were the first community-based organisation to work with MSM and the transgender population in the state of Gujarat,” the Prince says.

Considering the social stigma relating to homosexuality and HIV in India, this was a big step. It takes courage and dedication to work with marginalised communities in a society that places so much importance on status and caste. I was curious to know what motivated the Prince to start such work when he had still not fully come out.

“Basically, I came out very late. I became comfortable with my sexuality at a very later age in life. I was confused about my own sexuality. I was made comfortable with my sexuality by someone who happens to be the first gay activist in India and he was an inspiration for me.

“Ashok Row Kavi came out openly in the late 1980s and he was the one who not only made me comfortable with my sexuality, he removed the guilt feeling from my mind because most of us [in India] think homosexuality is a sin. He made me feel proud of my sexuality and he exposed me to the gay world,” the Prince recalls fondly.

“Ashok started the first organisation [Humsafar Trust] in India to work on HIV prevention among MSM and he gave me the opportunity to work there as a volunteer. I was trained as a counsellor and made aware of the various STIs, how HIV could be transmitted – a lot of awareness was given to me. I found it quite interesting and I thought it would be worth starting something like this in my region of Gurjarat as there was nothing happening. Ashok motivated me and inspired me.

“We started as a group of friends, who used to meet in parks [a common way to meet in the absence of openly gay venues]. We thought why not organise ourselves and work together. Since that time, the government has been funding and supporting us and we are working in three cities of Gujurat [Baroda, Rajkot, Surat] and we’ve reached out to more than 18,000 men.”

The winds of change

This is quite an impressive outcome. It hasn’t always been easy though. There were reports that when Lakshya Trust first opened in 2000, it faced extreme opposition from local residents who feared HIV infection. This reaction reinforced the need for the organisation, which deals with issues such as stigma and discrimination. So, how have things changed in the last nine years and has the recent decision on Section 377 (overturning the criminalisation of homosexuality) had any impact?

Sylvester Merchant, co-founder of Lakshya Trust, suggests that, “Things have changed now. There are many factors contributing to the change in India. I would say the National AIDS Control Program has made the issue of MSM more visible. Of course, the Prince’s coming out has also made an impact.”

Prince Manvendra doesn’t believe that the legal reforms will have an immediate impact. “Not many people know about the law in India and, in fact, not many people knew about Section 377. It was only when the judgment came that people knew about the law. But because of this publicity it put homosexuality into mainstream discussion. Any law, whether it’s about positive people or gay men, we have to mobilise society, we have to motivate them and educate them.”

Sylvester adds, “After Section 377 it’s more about awareness building around people’s perceptions and educating them.”
There is no doubt that the Prince’s profile has helped draw attention to homosexuality in India. But what impact has his coming out had for his friends and how does his royal status impact his work for the Lakshya Trust?

“Initially there were mixed reactions. A lot of my straight friends supported me, but a lot of my gay friends were not happy – they were scared that they would be linked to me and were uncomfortable because what it might imply about them and their sexuality,” the Prince states.

“I was doing the work long before I came out. Initially I had a lot of fear, but slowly, slowly as I worked with the community … [I got] satisfaction, working for the community that you don’t get in other kinds of work. That was the one thing that kept me motivated.”

Making a difference

Lakshya Trust is funded by the Gujarat Government for targeted intervention programs. It provides counselling services, clinics for treatment of STIs, libraries and condom-use promotion. Lakshya also creates employment opportunities for gay men and support for other MSM organisations. Its outreach work has been quite unique in its approach; targeting the female partners of MSM in their homes and distributing condoms in well-known gay cruising areas.

Lakshya is a member of the India Network For Sexual Minorities (INFOSEM) and a founding member of the Sexual Health Action Network (SHAN). In 2006, the Trust won the UNAIDS Civil Society Award for its contribution to preventing HIV among homosexual men. It has since expanded its work to supporting people with HIV and has established a separate, registered organisation Nokhyu Aikhyu.

Prince Manvendra explains, “A lot of our work is about prevention, which is what we are funded for, but, of course, being a community-based organisation we cannot overlook the issues of positive people.

Prevention work created by Lakshya Trust and the Gujarat AIDS Control Society
“It has been over 10 years, so a lot of people have developed faith in us. They are now coming and confiding to us that they are positive and this led to Sylvester developing the support group Nokhyu Aikhyu.

“Before we started Lakshya, we built up a very good, big network in Gujarat; a network of friends from all over our state and that helped us build trust in the community. We started providing services to our community and people started coming to our office and our drop-in centres to access services.

“We started with two centres and now we have three centres in different geographical areas: north, central and south. So we are able to access people in each of these areas; we have even reached out to the rural parts of our state.

“Our services have been really appreciated and the fact that we got the UNAIDS award in 2006 shows that we are appreciated and we have taken the lead in our state and our team is really committed and dedicated. A lot of our staff is positive and people started clicking with them and coming in.”

Sylvester adds, “The idea for Nokhyu Aikhyu came because we were getting quite a few cases of positive men coming in and there were not really any other platforms for support. Quite a few of my staff are positive and are working for the outreach services for prevention and the group wanted a platform where they could raise their own concerns. Obviously their issues are different from those of negative gay men because their issues are more special in many ways. This is how Nokhyu Aikhyu came into existence.

“It now functions in five cities and we have registered it as a different organisation altogether so it will take up its own work.”

Lakshya has a strong relationship with the government run Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Centres. These centres are responsible for monitoring HIV-infection rates and ensuring access to structured antiretroviral treatment.

“We run three large projects in different cities and we have a strong collaboration with the government-run ART Centres in each city. We have strong prevention programs and within these programs we provide HIV testing. Through these tests we get exact details on the number of persons who are positive. Then we try to link in with the centres so that positive people have their medications taken care of,” Sylvester explains.

“Access to treatment was, at one point in time, really, really limited when HIV work first started in India. I would say even in 2006 it was quite difficult. It’s become easier and you now need very few documents to take care of when you test positive.

“Initially when we started work it was difficult, because we didn’t have ART Centres, but now we have infrastructure. All the treatment in the government-run centres is free, of course.

“In some regions it’s very easy to get access and treatment, but in a very few regions in India the systems have not been totally set up. Fortunately, for the most part, treatment costs, care and support is mostly taken care of by government-run projects or health systems,” Sylvester notes.

Supporting positive people

For all their hard work, there is still endless work to be done. Stigma is still very strong in India, both for gay men and for people with HIV. The stigma and discrimination exists on many levels and is layered.

“I think being gay and being HIV positive have similar levels of stigma. The purpose of Nokhyu Aikhyu is to fight the stigma and discrimination of HIV within the gay community. It is the first organisation of its kind in Gujurat,” according to Sylvester.

When it comes to degrees of stigma, Sylvester adds that “an HIV-positive woman might be taken in, but it depends on the circumstances. Generally people would still take in an HIV-positive man or woman who is heterosexual, but not a homosexual positive person. This was the basis of forming Nokhyu Aikhyu: to form alliances of straight HIV-positive persons and gay HIV-positive persons.”

When asked what they hoped to achieve as a result of their visit to Australia, the Prince says, “We would look for some kind of capacity building with Australia to strengthen our projects because we are still new. Australia has experience doing work exclusively for positive gay men, so if we can get some inputs on this and how to make our work better it would be beneficial.”

You can find more information about Lakshya Trust at www.infosem.org/lakshya.htm and the Gujarat State AIDS Control Society at www.gsacsonline.org/index.php