South Asians react to Kal Penn coming out as gay

“One of us.” That’s what LGBT South Asians are saying after US actor Kal Penn, star of the Harold & Kumar film franchise, came out as gay on Sunday.

Mr Penn, 44, revealed to People magazine that he has been in a relationship with his partner Josh for 11 years and the pair are now engaged.

He said he had kept the truth from those outside his “shy” inner circle.

The New Jersey native’s news comes ahead of the launch of his memoir You Can’t Be Serious.

Born Kalpen Suresh Modi, Mr Penn is best known for playing Kumar Patel in the Harold & Kumar buddy stoner comedy franchise.

His other credits include popular TV shows like House, Designated Survivor and How I Met Your Mother.

Mr Penn also briefly worked in the White House Office of Public Engagement under President Barack Obama, from 2009-11.

The BBC asked Mr Penn during a Reddit Q&A what it was like working for a president who at that point had still not come out in favour of gay marriage.

“In the case of the White House,” he said, “your role as an aide is to abide by the oath you took (to protect and defend the constitution, etc) but internally you also have a chance to advocate for certain policies to change and evolve.

“It can be super frustrating that politics moves so slowly, but I’m also really glad for the outcome of a lot of that work.”

The actor told People magazine: “I’ve always been very public with everybody I’ve personally interacted with.”

But his fiancé and family members “don’t love attention and shy away from the limelight”.

It was “the most thrilling kind of surprise” for Naveen Kumar, a 39-year-old gay man living in New York.

“For me, it’s now a person in pop culture that I can point out to my parents,” he tells the BBC. “Here’s someone who they have been watching on TV and movies since the 90s.”

He adds that he is looking forward to Mr Penn’s “big, gay Indian wedding”.

Fenit Nirappil, 31, proposed to his own fiancé this June. They will be married next year.

“It was the final stage of coming out for me when I announced my engagement, and all the extended relatives and family friends either got their suspicions confirmed or learned the truth,” he says.

“There was plenty of grumbling that it’s one thing for me to be gay and marry a man but I should be more discreet to avoid bringing embarrassment to relatives.”

“Desi [South Asian diaspora] youth are constantly compared to others and told over and over again that their value is closely tied to who they marry,” he notes. “It matters when one of the few widely known Indian American actors can be open about being in a same-sex relationship.”

Priyanka, 30, a drag performer of Indian descent, says her own coming out journey was not dissimilar.

“We are told, as South Asian people, to sit down, shut up, say yes to things and don’t cause a scene,” she explains.

Mr Penn told People magazine he had discovered his sexuality late in life and, like him, Priyanka was into her 20s when she began to explore her sexual identity.

Last year, the Toronto native was crowned the inaugural winner of Canada’s Drag Race. But some family members are still too “scared” to even watch the show.

Queer brown performers get crowded out in white-male-dominated media spaces, says Priyanka, so Mr Penn’s mainstream success as a comedian popular among straight males makes his coming out story an even bigger deal.

“It excites me that Kal Penn is doing this at his age because, for one person’s coming out story, there’s still one hundred more people that are in the closet,” she adds.

Additional reporting by Caché McClay.