Sunil Babu Pant is a member of Nepal's Constituent Assembly and the founder and executive director of the Blue Diamond Society (BDS), an organisation working with gender and sexual minorities. BDS addresses many issues of political representation, non-discrimination, health, community building and human rights. In December 2007, the Supreme Court of Nepal arrived at a historic ruling in favour of Pant and three other petitioners, mandating a revision of all laws concerning fundamental rights so as to apply to 'third gender' citizens and to ensure no discrimination against members of the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) community, granting a third-gender option for citizenship and identity documents, and ordering the formation of a government committee to examine the question of same-sex marriage (see Himal March 2008, 'The state of homosexuality'). Pant spoke to Kaveri Rajaraman in May 2010 about his activism, the consequences of the Supreme Court ruling, and the progress of the Constituent Assembly towards writing a historic constitution with explicit provisions for the recognition and protection of the LGBTI community.
How did you get the idea to run for the Constituent Assembly, and how did you pick the platform and party with which to run? In what ways do you think it has brought forward the rights agenda?
When the Interim Constitution was formulated, we were very disappointed that the suggestions we gave were not even tabled. So, in that context, we thought it was time to maybe ask the parties to also give us backing as they prepared for the Constituent Assembly elections, as we had supported them in the second Jana Andolan (people's movement). We went to all the small and big parties, asking them to include LGBTI rights into their party manifesto, and some parties readily agreed. The first party to do so was the Maoist party, much to our surprise, because I'd heard beforehand that some of the senior leaders were very negative. But I was glad to find that this was not the entire party's policy, and that there were gay-friendly people in this and other parties. So they were the first party to include our rights, and then the Nepali Congress followed, after which many other smaller parties did the same.
The Communist Party Nepal (United) was very supportive. One of their leaders had been following our work on the internet and through the media. He also came to some of our events and supported gay rights on a low, low scale. And on the last day of nominations for the personal candidates list, I heard from this tiny communist party, CPN (United), at 9 o'clock – 'OK, we would like people from third-gender and gay communities standing on our party's behalf.' This was a big surprise, and we were running around saying, 'OK, what do we do? Should we go for it?' I said, 'Look, we have nothing to lose.' That's how I got included into the list. The party didn't have enough candidates to cover all the electoral areas, so they were happy for us to be on the list wherever they didn't have candidates. We found another 11 candidates to contest. We only had offices and networks in 15 districts at that time, and the party actually did well in those areas.
What has been your experience in the Constituent Assembly?
I've been very happy for the past year and a half. It has been very exciting to have an opportunity to sensitise the entire Constituent Assembly and parliament on sexual minority rights issues. The constitutional draft that has been formulated around minority community rights and fundamental rights has fantastic language, ensuring gay, lesbian and transgender rights. The citizenship issue is covered in the draft, as are marriage rights, property rights, the non-discrimination clause, social security, pay and pension.