An “out and proud gay Indian man”, Parmesh Shahani highlights how the Supreme Court overturning Delhi High Court’s judgement to de-criminalize homosexuality in 2013 was a huge step backward for India. However, Shahani finds hope in the growing sense of acceptance and inclusion of the LGBT community, especially in film, media and workplaces.
Recorded at INK Women 2014, Mumbai
Parmesh is the founder of the Godrej India Culture Lab, a space that aims to interrogate the textured nature of Indian modernity by cross-pollinating the best minds working on India from across the academic, creative and corporate worlds. In addition, he serves as the Editor-at-Large for Verve, a fashion and lifestyle magazine. In the past, he founded aFreshlimesod, India's first online youth expression community, and worked across the Indian media and corporate landscapes, as a writer, editor, and venture capitalist, at organizations like Elle, the Times of India group, Sony Entertainment Television and Mahindra and Mahindra. Parmesh is a TED Fellow, a MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow, and Utrecht University's Impakt Fellow for 2012. His first book - Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India (New Delhi, London, Los Angeles, Singapore: Sage Publications) was released in 2008. Parmesh has undergraduate degrees in Commerce and Education from the University of Mumbai and a Master's degree in Comparative Media Studies from MIT
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