Nepal gays draw heart from Ricky Martin

The Times of India

Published: 3/30/10

KATHMANDU: Latino heartthrob Ricky Martin’s announcement through his official web site that he is gay comes as a shot in the arm for Nepal’s homosexual community, who are hoping it will help them win a case against “injustice”.

“We are absolutely joyous that Ricky Martin has honestly revealed his sexual orientation,” said Sunil Babu Pant, the Himalayan nation’s only openly gay celebrity who is now also an icon for the sexual minorities in South Asia. “The coming out of celebrities helps the cause of grassroot lesbian, gay and third gender people. It raises their self-esteem and makes society regard them with a more positive attitude.”

Pant, who is an MP as well as founder of Blue Diamond Society (BDS), Nepal’s pioneer gay rights organisation, is hoping that the Ricky Martin incident will help the court case BDS is fighting to get justice for a lesbian traffic cop who has been under arrest since last month. Ramina Hussain, in her late 20s, says she fell in love with a 17-year-old girl she met while being pressed into domestic duty at the resident of a senior police officer. The two, according to Hussain, fell in love despite fierce opposition from the former’s family.

According to the deposition filed in Supreme Court, the teen decided to leave her home and the two began living together about three months ago. When her family came to know where she had gone, they forced her to come back and compelled her to say Hussain had kidnapped her, subsequently leading to Hussain’s arrest. BDS says the teen’s aunt is a senior police officer and so, there is pressure from police authorities to prevent Hussain’s release under bail. The hearing is being deliberately stalled.

Pant wishes gay celebrities in Nepal would also start coming out of the closet, which would help erasing the discrimination and injustice faced by gays in the lower rungs of society. “There are gays in Nepal’s high society as well as Bollywood and Hollywood,” he says. “There are some in the extended former royal family of Nepal as well. However, it takes time to come out.”

Martin’s revelation, he says, is no surprise to the world gay community. “During international conferences, when we discussed potentially gay celebrities, Martin’s name often popped up. Being a family man and in limelight, it takes a lot of guts to come out. Congratulations, Martin, for coming out as you are, finally.”

Nepal’s Transgenders Make a Political Mark

Sudeshna Sarkar, Thaindian News

March 7th, 2010 - 2:36 pm

Kathmandu, March 7 (IANS) Bhumika Shrestha, who became the first Miss Pink Nepal, is an icon of the transgender community. And she is also its first member to take the plunge into politics.

The 23-year-old last month formally became a member of the Nepali Congress (NC), the largest party in the ruling coalition. “Politicians have the power to make an effective change in society,” Bhumika said.

When Nepal underwent a sea change in 2006 to become a secular state from the only Hindu kingdom in the world, the transformation was further heightened by the first Miss Gay pageant in a country that ostracised its homosexual community.

Much has happened since then.

“I joined politics to get a platform for my people. Politicians realise they can’t ignore us. In the last elections, all the major parties included the sexual minorities in their election manifestos,” Bhumika told IANS in an interview.

She remembers how she was thrown out of school as a 10th grader for her “womanish ways”.

“I was about 10 when I realised I was different from others,” says Bhumika, who chose the name when she decided to carve out a new identity for herself as a woman. “I preferred the company of girls and wanted to wear their clothes.”

She was taunted mercilessly by the boys in school and was expelled after teachers thought she was corrupting the morals of other students.

Hurt and humiliated, she was wondering what she would do with her life when someone told her about Blue Diamond Society (BDS), Nepal’s first organisation to protect the rights of gays, lesbians and transgenders.

“It was a huge relief,” she says. “I realised I was no longer alone. There were others like me.”

Today, Bhumika is a human rights officer in BDS and a well-known face in society, courtesy the limelight she received after being crowned Miss Pink and for taking part in public programmes seeking equal rights for the gay community.

Now she has chosen the Nepali Congress because she says she is inspired by the “democratic and socialist” philosophy of its founder, B.P. Koirala, who was also the first elected prime minister of Nepal.

She is also inspired by the thoughts and life of Mahatma Gandhi and Nepal’s freedom fighter Ganesh Man Singh, who strove for equality for women.

Bhumika has taken part in several interactions with Nepal’s lawmakers who are writing a new constitution where she has advocated equality for her community.

Though BDS’ founder Sunil Babu Pant is Nepal’s only openly gay MP, Bhumika and the others have had a tougher struggle gaining acceptance.

They are school dropouts while Pant is a computer engineer educated abroad and while he dresses in the accepted male way, they have chosen a sexual identity different from the one they were born with.

Suman Chepang, 20, was thrown out of school in Chitwan in southern Nepal for refusing to wear the uniform prescribed for girl students.

“For several years, I tied a stone to my heart and suppressed my natural inclinations, trying to look, dress and act like a woman,” says Suman who has now opted for a male identity. “But at the end, my heart revolted.”

Suman too was ostracised by society and when he decided to marry 23-year-old Bishnumaya, the bride’s family refused to accept him.

“There has to be a change in society,” says Suman, who has joined the ruling Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist with his wife and five others. “We decided to join different political parties so that it would be easier to usher in change.”

Suman says he chose the Communist party because he was profoundly moved by the life of its late secretary general Madan Kumar Bhandari.

“Here was a man who strove to uplift society,” he says. “Had Bhandari not died at such an early age, he would have transformed Nepal.”

A third group now wants to join the Maoists.

“It is the Maoists whose 10-year People’s War gave a voice to the downtrodden,” says a transgender who declines to be named. “It was the Maoist government that made the first budget allocation for sexual minorities and formed a committee to make regulations for same sex marriages.”

However, what is holding the group back is that the Maoists, despite their promises, have not been encouraging towards the community.

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)