Navtej Johar

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]

Navtej Johar
Navtej Johar at Delhi QueerFest 2016
Born (1959-08-08) 8 August 1959
Jalandhar, Punjab, India
NationalityIndian
Occupation(s)Dancer, Choreographer, Yoga Instructor
Known forNavtej Singh Johar v. Union of India
Websitenavtejjohar.com

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
Main article: Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India

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]

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.
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