Ramesh Tawadkar says state government in resort region planning to open centres to ‘train and give them medicines’

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

An Indian minister has come under fire after he announced plans to make gay people “normal” in the Goa resort region.

Ramesh Tawadkar, from prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), said the Goa state government was planning to open centres to treat gay people in the region.

“We will make them normal. We will have centres for them, like Alcoholics Anonymous centres,” the sports and youth affairs minister told reporters on Monday, adding that the government would “train them and give them medicines too”.

Gay rights groups described the comments as offensive and ignorant, while the main opposition Congress party criticised the minister’s attitude as shameless.

“We should not respond to this kind of stupidity,” said Anjali Gopalan, founder of Naz Foundation, which first launched a case to decriminalise homosexual sex in India.

“It’s better to ignore such things coming from the BJP. Their regressive attitude is not surprising,” Gopalan told AFP, calling the minister an “incompetent nincompoop”.

Tawadkar, who faced a barrage of cricitism, insisted he had been misquoted even as television footage of his comments continued to be run on local news channels.

The backlash came a day after the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, condemned legislation against gay sex.

Ban said laws against gay and lesbian relationships breed intolerance, although he did not refer specifically to India’s colonial-era prohibition.

Speaking on a visit to the capital New Delhi on Monday night, Ban said he “staunchly opposed the criminalisation of homosexuality”.

“I am proud to stand for the equality of all people – including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender,” Ban said, in an address to a gathering that included India’s Nobel peace prize winner Kailash Satyarthi.

“I speak out because laws criminalising consensual, adult same-sex relationships violate basic rights to privacy and to freedom from discrimination. Even if they are not enforced, these laws breed intolerance.”

The supreme court reimposed a ban on gay sex in 2013, ruling that responsibility for changing the 1861 law rested with lawmakers and not judges.

Gay sex had in effect been legalised in 2009 when the Delhi high court ruled that banning “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” was a violation of fundamental rights.

Hindu nationalist hardline groups such as the RSS, the ideological mentor of the BJP, have often called same-sex relationships a disease and a western cultural import.

Goa’s laid-back feel and party scene have attracted tourists for decades, and it has a reputation for being more gay friendly than other socially conservative states.

Goa-based fashion designer Wendell Rodricks said the BJP government was attempting to deflect attention from problems afflicting the state.

“There are lot of other issues which need urgent attention in Goa. They should concentrate on real issues like corruption, illegal constructions, drug mafia, lawlessness and others,” he said.