Yet despite the struggle his determination was strong and he became a fighter for LGBT Rights in India.
His parents attempted but failed to disinherit him after he revealed his homosexuality , and since then his relations with the family have been in question. He is the only known person of royal lineage in modern India to have publicly revealed he is gay .
In January 2008, while performing an annual ceremony in Rajpipla in honour of his great-grandfather Maharaja Vijaysinhji, Manvendra Gohil announced plans to adopt a child, saying: "I have carried out all my responsibilities as the prince so far and will continue as long as I can. I will also adopt a child soon so that all traditions continue". If the adoption proceeds, it will be the first known case of a single gay man adopting a child in India.
As the only son of the Maharaja of Rajpipla, Manvendra was expected to produce an heir and, as per Indian custom, his parents arranged a match for him. In January 1991, Manvendra married Chandrika Kumari, a princess of Jhabua state in Madhya Pradesh. However, suspecting her husband's true sexual orientation, Kumari filed for divorce just a year after the wedding. Manvendra later said of his marriage, "I thought that after marriage everything will be all right, that with a wife, I will have children and become "normal" and then I will be at peace. I was struggling and striving to be "normal." I never knew and nobody told me that I was gay and [that] this itself is normal and it will not change. That this is what is called homosexuality and it is not a disease. I tremendously regret for ruining (Chandrika's) life. I feel guilty, but I simply did not know better." Mavendra also stated that "the marriage never got consummated. I realized I had done something very wrong. Now two people were suffering instead of one. Far from becoming normal, my life was more miserable."
The journalist Chirantana Bhatt came to know that the crown prince of Rajpipla was a closeted gay man. It was too meaty of a story to be set aside.
This was in 2006, and Manvendra had gone through four years of counselling by this time. He had accepted his true nature and did not feel ashamed of it. He decided to defy his parents and make the matter public. The Prince confided his sexual orientation and the mental stress he was going through as a closeted gay man to the journalist. Chirantana Bhatt wrote it up as a phenomenal biggest breaking-news story in the local Gujarati language press.
On 14 March 2006, the story of Manvendra's coming out made headlines in India and around the world. The coming out of the closet story was published first in a regional Gujarati language daily of Bhaskar group, namely Divya Bhaskar, Vadodara Edition. It was extensively covered the next day in all other editions of Divya Bhaskar, as also in Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi language and Daily News Analysis English.
Manvendra's effigies were burnt in Rajpipla, where the traditional society was shocked. His family accused him of bringing dishonour to the clan and disowned him. His mother, in particular, issued a notice in several newspapers firstly disowning him utterly, and secondly threatening legal action against anyone who referred to her in future as his mother or referred to him as her son. Manvendra's father also initially reacted with rage to the family dishonor. After a few years, Manvendra and his father were reconciled after Maharaja Raghubir Singh said that while he could not understand why Manvendra felt the need to inflict this humiliation upon his family, he did sympathise with the misery that Manvendra had undergone as a result of his homosexuality.. Manvendra and his mother remain estranged, and in recent years, Manvendra has made disparaging comments about her in interviews to the press.
The fact that he has been disowned by his family, however, is likely to remain a symbolic act rather than a legally enforceable disinheritance, given India's modern inheritance laws.
He was interviewed for a BBC Radio 4 documentary in April 2007, titled The Gay Prince of Rajpipla which charted his coming out as a gay man and the HIV/AIDS prevention work of his charity, The Lakshya Trust. The report examined the ground-breaking work of the Lakshya Trust in training female field workers who educate women married to MSM about safe sex practices.
The BBC report also interviewed Manvendra's father, the Maharaja of Rajpipla. He revealed his embarrassment over the widespread coverage of his son's homosexuality, and how he thought Manvendra's work in the HIV/AIDS prevention field was not suited to someone of his caste. In an updated version of the report broadcast in February 2009, the programme revealed that Manvendra's father was a guest of honour at a fundraising event for the Lakshya Trust and was beginning to accept his son's sexuality.
Manvendra appeared as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show on 24 October 2007. He was one of three persons featured in the show entitled 'Gay Around the World'. He expressed that he has no regrets about coming out, and that he believes the people of his state respect him for his leadership in preventing and educating on HIV/AIDS.
On his coming out, Manvendra has said:
"I knew that they would never accept me for who I truly am, but I also knew that I could no longer live a lie. I wanted to come out because I had gotten involved with activism and I felt it was no longer right to live in the closet. I came out as gay to a Gujarati daily because I wanted people to openly discuss homosexuality since it's a hidden affair with a lot of stigma attached.”
Manvendra inaugurated the Euro Pride gay festival in Stockholm, Sweden, on 25 July 2008.
Manvendra featured in a BBC Television series, Undercover Princes, screened on BBC Three in the UK in January 2009 which documented his search for a British boyfriend in Brighton.
Since July 2010, Manvendra has served as editor of the gay male-centric print magazine Fun, which is published in Rajpipla.
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