One day, about 15 years ago, Sunil Mehra’s partner, Navtej Johar, a classical dancer, was being interviewed on the phone at their New Delhi home. The journalist asked about Johar’s sexuality. Mehra waited until Johar had finished, then sat him down and asked him a question: “Navvy [as he calls Johar], do you want to be known as a brilliant dancer? Or do you want to be known as a gay dancer?” For his entire life, Mehra had refused to be defined by his sexuality. “I am not a professional homosexual,” he says now. “There is much more to my life than my sexuality.” And yet, five years ago, Mehra agreed to shed his privacy to become the first well-known Indian in the country to openly declare that he was gay, putting his and Johar’s names on a writ petition in the supreme court demanding that section 377 of Indian law – which criminalizes gay sex – be abolished.