Navtej Johar

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Navtej Johar
Navtej Johar at Delhi QueerFest 2016.jpg
Navtej Johar at Delhi QueerFest 2016
Born (1959-08-08) 8 August 1959 (age 64)
NationalityIndian
Occupation(s)Dancer, Choreographer, Yoga Instructor
Known for Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India
Website navtejjohar.com

Navtej Singh Johar (born 8 August 1959) [1] is an Indian Sangeet Natak Akademi award-winning Bharatnatyam exponent and choreographer. He is also an LGBTQ activist. [2] [3]

Contents

Life and career

Johar is faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat. [4] He is trained in Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra, a dance school of Rukmini Arundale at Chennai, and with Leela Samson at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra in New Delhi. He also studied later at the Department of Performance Studies, New York University. [5] He has received numerous fellowships for his research such as Times of India Fellowship (1995), the Charles Wallace Fellowship (1999).

Johar has collaborated with composers Stephen Rush, Shubha Mudgal and installation artist Sheba Chhachhi among others. He has also acted in Earth by Deepa Mehta and Khamosh Pani by Sabiha Sumar. [6]

He is among the few male dancers of classical form in India and first Sikh to have taken to the art form. [7]

Activism

In June 2016, Johar and five others, belonging to sexual and gender minority community, filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court of India challenging Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. [8] This resulted in the 2018 landmark judgment in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India in which the Supreme Court unanimously declared the law unconstitutional "in so far as it criminalizes consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex". [9]

Related Research Articles

Section 377 of the British colonial penal code criminalized all sexual acts "against the order of nature". The law was used to prosecute people engaging in oral and anal sex along with homosexual activity. As per Supreme Court Judgement since 2018, Indian Penal Code Section 377 is used to convict non-consensual sexual activities among homosexuals with a minimum of ten years imprisonment extended to life imprisonment. It has been used to criminalize third gender people, such as the apwint in Myanmar. In 2018, then British Prime Minister Theresa May acknowledged how the legacies of British colonial anti-sodomy laws continue to persist today in the form of discrimination, violence, and death.

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References

  1. "Navtej Singh Johar". sangeetnatak.gov.in. 2012. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  2. "CUR_TITLE". sangeetnatak.gov.in. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
  3. "SNA || List of Awardees". sangeetnatak.gov.in. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
  4. "Faculty/Staff".
  5. "Navtej Johar". Abhyas Trust. Archived from the original on 3 December 2018. Retrieved 18 May 2015.
  6. "Navtej Singh Johar: I plod my own path". Narthaki.com.
  7. "Bring on the boys". Indian Today. 9 November 1998.
  8. "Many ups and downs in battle against 377". The Indian Express. 11 January 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
  9. Safi, Michael (6 September 2018). "Campaigners celebrate as India decriminalises homosexuality". the Guardian. Retrieved 9 September 2018.