Ashok Row Kavi
Ashok Row Kavi was born in Mumbai on June 1, 1947 as a premature child. He graduated with honors in Chemistry from the University of Bombay. Later, he dropped out of engineering college. Due to his early difficulty in dealing with his homosexuality, he enrolled as a monk in the Ramakrishna Mission and studied theology.
His career as a journalist began in 1974 with The Indian Express and was the chief reporter with the Free Press Journal from 1984 to 1989.
In 1971, he started India's first Playboy clone, Debonair, with friend Anthony Van Braband and later in 1991, he founded Bombay Dost, Mumbai's first gay magazine. He was a representative at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam and served as chairman of the Second International Congress on AIDS.
Although he retired from journalism in 1990, he has worked at providing a formal platform for homosexuals –- people usually left out of mainstream life in a socially conservative India –- become actively involved in public life and institutions through media, advocacy, cooperation and community-building.
At the present, he is founder-president of the Humsafar Trust, which agitates for the legal emancipation of homosexuality in India.
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