Tag Archives: India

Art Attack! Legless Gay Indian Artist Balbir Krishan assaulted. He’s ok. His Art’s messed up.

Balbir Krishan was attacked on January 5th in New Delhi, India at a gallery at the Lalit Kala academy, where he was exhibiting his work. The masked attacker kicked the double-amputee artist, destroyed one of his paintings, and shouted anti-gay slurs before escaping. Kick a gimp, ruin some art and run…sounds like a real stand-up guy. The show, called Out Here and Now, focused on homosexuality as a theme, and Krishan had been getting angry phone calls in the days leading up to the incident. More on this story from The Advocate’s Neal Broverman here. From the Hindustani Times article by Aakriti Sawhney, here. And for Cali Manga artist JoJo Mendoco’s take on war, gay life and lost limbs, click here. This last one is NSFW!

Colonialism as an excuse for Homophobia? India’s Health Minister calls being Gay a Western “Disease”

Mumbai Gay Rights Parade - Photograph: Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images

We hear this over and over and over again from our gay friends in and from countries and regions that were once under colonial occupation. Homosexuality is cast as a disease brought in by European conquerers, foisted upon an unsuspecting population that had never know of such evils before. Sort of like smallpox-infected blankets.

As a Ugandan pal (not named here – for his protection) pointed out, in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, this nefarious discourse has the effect of making being gay not only a crime, not only a sin, but worse, a sort of Pan-African treason, a wholesale capitulation to the white man and his evil ways. In Uganda, the Anglican Church (which IS a Western import!) is the main vehicle for this evil propaganda.

This thinking is in full effect in India, too. Ghulam Nabi Azad, India’s minister of Health, addressed a conference on HIV/AIDS in New Delhi on Monday, saying: “Unfortunately this disease has come to our country too … where a man has sex with another man, which is completely unnatural and should not happen but does.” For the article published by The Guardian UK, click here.