The Kardashian sisters - Kim, Kendall, Khloe and Kourtney - had a special guest in a new episode of their reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians: India’s first openly gay prince, Manvendra Singh Gohil.
Kendall Jenner, who is an international model, first heard of the prince’s story when she visited India in February 2017 for a modelling assignment with photographer Mario Testino. She posed alongside star Sushant Singh Rajput, for Vogue India’s 10th anniversary issue.
She told her sisters about the prince, 51, when she returned home, and they put together a dinner for him. “In India,” says Kendall in a clip from the episode, “it is not acceptable to be gay.” She drew similarities between the prince, and her father Caitlyn Jenner, who came out as a transgender woman. “What’s similar between him and my dad is the bravery to take that chance to come out,” she says.
At the dinner, the sister made an attempt to learn more about the prince, and his story. “My parents publicly disowned me and they disinherited me from the ancestral property,” he says, also talking about how people burnt him in effigy after he came out.
And while his relationship with his parents has improved over the years - he credits the media for helping change mindsets - his relationship with his ex-wife, whom he divorced in 1992, is non-existent. “We haven’t spoken since the divorce,” he says. “I felt guilty about ruining her life.”
But the prince, who came out in 2006, is working to make a change. He went to San Francisco to raise funds to make an LGBT community centre in India.