Champion of LGBTQ immigrants of colour
Khan foregrounded shared issues aʘecting queer south Asians in the west, including persistent invisibility in mainstream gay movements
NOMINATED BY SOMAK BISWAS
Born in India in 1948, Shivananda Khan shifted to England when he was 10 years old. Attending university in Manchester in the 1960s, at a time when Britain’s sexual liberation movements were in full swing, Khan was inspired to get involved with queer activism. In 1988, he founded Shakti, the first south Asian LGBTQ organisation in Britain, alongside fellow gay activists Poulomi Desai, Pratibha Parmar, Savi Hensman and Sunil Gupta.
Shakti broke new ground by creating a dedicated space for queer south Asians in London. Its journal, Shakti Khabar, was circulated widely in Britain, Europe and south Asia – and especially in India, Pakistan and Nepal. Khan developed crucial transnational links with similar south Asian organisations in Canada (Khush) and the US (Trikone). They foregrounded shared issues affecting queer south Asians in the west: persistent invisibility in mainstream gay movements, a lack of community and support, and widespread homophobia within the diaspora. Shakti highlighted the exclusions that shaped the lives of queer south Asians, but at the same time also created new opportunities for forging communities.
In 1991, against the backdrop of the Aids epidemic, Khan co-founded the Naz Foundation. While south Asian communities formed the foundation’s primary target in Britain, this focus expanded over the coming decades to include Middle Eastern, north African and Latin American communities. Naz thrived in London’s vibrant multicultural ethos, plugging the need for an organisation catering to communities of colour.
Simultaneously, it expanded rapidly across south Asia, developing programmes for a range of LGBTQ communities, women and sex workers in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. It assembled an extraordinary repertoire of activists, resources and workers who proved key to LGBTQ health and activism in Britain and south Asia. In India, Naz spearheaded the legal campaign against Article 377 that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 2018.
Through Naz, Khan emerged as a leading voice for queer immigrants of colour, proving instrumental in fostering platforms unifying the diverse landscapes occupied by queer south Asians around the world.