Anjali Gopalan

Anjali Gopalan, born in Chennai on 1 September 1957, is a human rights campaigner who did more than almost anyone to make HIV a subject that could be discussed and treated in India. She was educated at La Martiniere, Lucknow, took a degree in political science from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, and added a postgraduate diploma in journalism and a master's in international development from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her first development work was in New York City, with community organisations assisting undocumented migrants from South-East Asia.

She returned to India in 1994 and did two things that year: she opened Delhi's first HIV clinic, and she founded the Naz Foundation (India) Trust, which she has led as executive director. Naz worked with people whom the health system was then largely refusing to treat — men who have sex with men, sex workers, and children infected with HIV. In 2000 she opened India's first care home for orphaned and vulnerable HIV-positive children and women, and trained health workers and carers in looking after HIV-positive children in residential and foster settings.

In 2001 the Naz Foundation filed the public interest litigation challenging Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, on the argument that criminalising homosexuality exposed people to harassment and discrimination and made HIV prevention impossible. The Delhi High Court ruled in the foundation's favour in 2009, holding the provision a violation of individual rights — a judgment that reshaped the legal position of LGBT Indians even though it was later contested. In 2012 she also set up an animal sanctuary, All Creatures Great and Small, at Silakhari in Haryana.

She received the Commonwealth Award in 2001, the Sadguru Gnanananda Award from the Chennai-based Manava Seva Dharma Samvardhani in 2003 for her HIV/AIDS work, and a Woman Achiever award from the Ministry of Women and Child Development in March 2007. Time magazine listed her among the hundred most influential people in the world in 2012, and in October 2013 France made her a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur.[2]