VADODARA: Prince Manvendrasinh Gohil of erstwhile Rajpipla State in South Gujarat has come out of the closet and admitted to being a homosexual. He even revealed that his sexuality caused the failure of his marriage.
Though it took years’ struggle for this prince to accept himself as he is, today he runs an NGO for gay people and strives to spread awareness in society about gay relationships and their struggle to be accepted.
In an exclusive interview to DNA, the young prince, son of Raghuvirsinh Gohil and Rukminidevi, said, “Being different is normal for me and even to people who understand this. It is like being left handed. I am a left handed person and I know that it’s very normal. The same goes with my sexual preference.”
With this admission, he wishes to send a message to the society that homosexuals are facing a terrible situation following the existing unawareness in the society. “Gays as well as common people, mostly their relatives, suffer because of this. So I decided to acknowledge publicly that I am a homosexual,” he said.
“Homosexuality in royal families is not rare. As our women are always kept behind the ‘Pardah’, there’s hardly any contact of a male teenager with the opposite sex, which may develop a homosexual tilt,” he adds.
Kunwar Manvendrasinh came to know about, as he puts it, his being ‘different’, at the age of 10. “However, I could not quite understand how I was different from others. I came to know about the term ‘homosexual’ from the dictionary at the age of fifteen. And as years passed I became clearer about it. I realized that it’s not a deformity and I am normal. However, I was not strong enough to tell people about it,” he says.
He couldn’t even confront his parents in this matter. And the result was his marriage that lasted for just a year. He got divorced in 1992. This one year proved to be the worst period of his life, says Manvendrasinh.
It is only after Manvendrasinh came into contact with some other gay people and organisations working for gay people that he developed some confidence. He came in contact with Ashok Rao of ‘Hamsafar’ - a Mumbai based organisation working for gays. Later in 2000, he decided to start his own organisation for gays. He registered Lakshya, an organisation working to spread health awareness in homosexuals. Lakshya has been working in Rajkot, Surat and Vadodara.
Meanwhile, parents’ and society’s unspoken questions were making Manvendra still suffer from the stress of keeping it a secret. He even had a nervous breakdown in 2002. And after counselling with a psychiatrist, he ultimately revealed the secret to his parents. Though this deteriorated his relation with his parents, he has no complaints as he feels much lighter and free after expressing himself.
Today, Manvendrasinh is determined to carry on his efforts to spread awareness in society about gay relationships and their struggle to be accepted. He has even been to an international conference on AIDS and homosexuality held in Japan as a representative.
