Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil of Rajpipla, India celebrated International Pride Month with a visit to Block Island. The Prince began his visit to the United States in NJ with a string of performances and the NJ premiere of the international award-winning documentary about LGBTQ+ hate crime survivors, Pieces of Us, in which he is one of the subjects.

While on-island the Prince kindly led a guided meditation class at Champlin’s Marina, spoke at the Harbor Church about Queerness in India, and performed harmonium music for attendees. The Prince was hosted by the island’s LGBTQ+ community organization Queer Block Island and during his visit he met with some of the local activists that call Block Island “home”.

Austin Morin, founder of Queer Block Island and Block Island Pride, presented a public Q&A with the Prince at the Harbor Church. Gohil and Morin brought attendees on a fantastical journey touching on the struggles of queerness, colonialism, and the Hindu faith.

Gohil has used his title as “India’s First Gay Prince” to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights in India and abroad. He is internationally recognized as a voice in the fight against HIV and is regularly invited to keynote international conferences. Gohil stands as a proud symbol of social progress in India, while honoring and surviving its rich cultural heritage. Gohil has been featured in The Oprah Winfrey Show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, TEDx talks, and People Magazine.

In 2000 the Prince started the Lakshya Trust, a charitable organization dedicated to HIV/AIDs education and prevention. As part of his philanthropic work the Prince has built an LGBTQ+ community center for people experiencing housing insecurity on the grounds of the Hanumanteshwar Palace in Gujarat.

One of the Prince’s goals when accepting someone to take refuge at his palace is to give a person the strength and skills needed for living independently in society with dignity and purpose. His one requirement to stay at his palace is that a person must be LGBTQ+, allied, or “homophobic-in-transition”. His center is suitably named after Lord Hanuman who is worshipped in the Hindu faith as a symbol of physical strength, perseverance, and devotion.

Gohil came out to his family as gay in 2002, and was subject to electroshock treatments, publicly disowned by his family, and victim of an attempted assassination. The Prince gave us an Indian Queer History crash course and highlighted the many ways in which queer culture is something of an “Indian export” to the world, and that for thousands of years India had established queerness as an acceptable sexual/gender expression.

Written in ancient sacred texts many of the Hindu deities reincarnated into human forms and blurred western concepts of gender and also celebrated same-sex love as a normal facet of human sexuality. These LGBTQ+ deities are enshrined in ancient Hindu holy temples scattered around India and worshipped by the likes of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Some deities are believed to appear on earth with both male and female aspects, and there is even a Hindu deity named Bahuchara Mata who is dedicated to the transgender people.

Gohil enlightened attendees about the history of the traditional Hijra gender identity which is a traditional 3rd gender unique to the Indian subcontinent. Hijra are eunuchs, trans, or intersex people who are considered neither male nor female and exist outside the gender binary system. These people are considered sacred and appear in holy texts.

The Prince said “There are whole chapters in the sacred Kamasutra dedicated to gay sex, and the positions which may allow for optimal pleasure, and these holy passages were all written centuries before Christianity was even invented”.

India was subject to repeated European colonization starting in the 1500’s with the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British in the 1800’s. Even after the British left India the scar of European colonization had established firm taboos and negative attitudes towards gender and sexuality leading to widespread marginalization of India’s queer people.

In recent years, Indians have advocated to reinstate traditional LGBTQ+ rights, and in 2009 the Delhi high court struck down Section 377 legalizing homosexuality. It was then criminalized again in 2014, and then finally legalized again in 2018.

Prince Manvendra finished his speech with an invitation for all Block Islanders to visit India and stay at palace!

The Prince was introduced to Block Island by a close friend, Kris Lamb, who is the sister of Bud Oddsen. Kris and Bud are the great grandchildren of Edward G. Faile, who, as a sword fisherman on Block Island, built a home at the end of South-East Road in the 1920's that Kris and Bud grew to love. Bud and the Prince were dear friends before Bud passed away 10 years ago. Kris and the Prince were here to honor the 10th anniversary of Bud's death.

Thank you to Kris Lamb, Pastor Peter Preiser, the Harbor Church, Champlin’s and Joe Teja for helping to make this event possible.

Prince Manvendra Visits Block Island