India’s 1st Openly Gay Prince Was Forced To Marry A Woman, Now He’s Fighting For LGBTQ+ Rights

Standing against society takes a lot of courage, especially when you know that a little hurt to society might put your reputation at stake. Despite this fear, the world’s first openly gay prince, Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil, decided to stick his ground and fought the conservative society.

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The son of Maharana of Rajpipla in Gujarat, fought the taboos associated with the LGBTQAI+ community back in the day when homosexuality was still illegal in India, under Article 377. Hence, he was mentally tortured, forced to undergo conversation therapy, and was also married to a woman against his will, reported DNA.

While interacting with Oprah Winfrey on her show, Manvendra Gohil said, “I thought that after marriage everything will be all right, that with a wife, I will have children and become “normal” and then I will be at peace.”

“I was struggling and striving to be “normal.” I never knew and nobody told me that I was gay and [that] this itself is normal and it will not change. That this is what is called homosexuality and it is not a disease.”

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Even though he knew he was gay when he was 12 or 13 years old, he came out to the public when he was 41, through an interview with a local newspaper in 2006.

“The day I came out, my effigies were burnt. There were a lot of protests, people took to the streets and shouted slogans saying that I brought shame and humiliation to the royal family and to the culture of India. There were death threats and demands that I be stripped off of my title.”

However, he came out to his parents four years before he came out publically. “They thought it was impossible that I could be gay because my cultural upbringing had been so rich. They had no idea that there’s no connection between someone’s sexuality and their upbringing,” Business Insider quoted Gohil saying.

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The denial of his parents was so strong that they started looking for remedies to cure this ‘disease’. “They approached doctors to operate on my brain to make me straight and subjected me to electroshock treatments.”

He was also sent to religious leaders to make him “behave normally”. However, nothing worked on him but the years of torture left him traumatized and depressed compelling him to contemplate suicide.

Hence, when he came out to the world, his parents, the Maharaja and Maharani of Rajpipla even disowned him due to his involvement in activities “unsuitable to society”. And after enduring years of torture, he eventually married his husband in 2013.

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Prince Manvendra has now turned his ground into a battlefield to fight the ban on conversion therapy by founding his own charitable organization. He also aims at encouraging LGBTQ+ voices and strengthening their community in Gujarat.

“It’s important for people like me who have a certain reputation in society to continue the advocacy. We can’t just stop because the country repealed Section 377. Now we have to fight for issues like same-sex marriage, the right to inheritance, and the right to adoption. It’s a never-ending cycle. I have to keep fighting,” he exclaimed.

His story is awe-inspiring. The Prince is definitely being an inspiration for his people by advocating for the right reasons.

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