Shaleen Rakesh

Shaleen Rakesh is a queer poet and gay rights activist^[1] based in New Delhi, India. He has been an important part of the Gender and Sexuality Movement in the country for over 20 years.

Early life

Shaleen was born in New Delhi to the famous Indian writer Mohan Rakesh. His father died when he was only two and his mother, Anita Rakesh,^[2] also a writer brought him up. Shaleen was a student of Modern School Vasant Vihar New Delhi. He completed his engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering and his MBA from the S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai

Gay Rights Activism

After completing his studies jumped into gay rights activism working initially with the Naz Foundation (India) Trust.^[3] As part of his activism, he was the primary petitioner to challenge Section 377 of the Indian Penal code in 2001, the anti-sodomy law in the country. Shaleen was also the first activist to initiate a campaign against the psychiatric mistreatment of homosexuality in India through a petition he filed with the National Human Rights Commission of India in 2001.^[4] Shaleen wrote the first queer column in a mainstream Indian magazine starting in 2002 for a Delhi based city magazine called Around Town, which ran for two years.

Queer Poetry and Writings

Shaleen started writing poetry from an early age. He stated he was urged by his grandmother, who was also a writer. Shaleen continued writing over the years and starting blogging^{[External Link 1]} his poems. Shaleen is Editor with the independent publishing house OpenWord^[5] in New Delhi. He also writes a queer poetry column for the community blog named hillele.org. His poems have been published in various magazines like (PANK), Bricolage, Pink . The Lion and Antler is his first collection of queer poems, published by World View Publications.^[6]

Citations

External links