Sunil Babu Pant: A monk who revolutionized Conservative Nepal into a beacon of hope for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Pant was born to a Brahmin family in Gorkha District of Nepal in 1972. Pant came to Katmandu in 1990 to pursue his studies. Two years later he won a scholarship to study computer science in Belarus, where he first heard the word “homosexual.” By that time, he knew that he was attracted to other men but did not realize that this placed him in the minority. “I thought everybody would be like me, having the same feeling,” said Pant. He learned differently, particularly during a police crackdown on homosexuality in Belarus in 1994. There he saw the oppression of gay men prevalent, the queer-bashing, the posters in hospitals telling people to ‘beware of gays’, the police raids and beatings.
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