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Keshav Murthy's family disowned him and drove him from his home. His employer fired him. His brother spread the news, ensuring that one by one doors closed in his face. As Keshav's savings dwindled, the one-time medical administrator roamed southern India like a beggar, his strength draining away as the opportunistic infections of HIV/AIDS took their toll.
Keshav's tale is not unusual. Much of Indian society has treated its millions of HIV positive like modern-day "untouchables"; a reference to the stratified Hindu caste system which once condemned those born into the "lowly" castes assigned the dirty jobs to live apart on society's fringes. The fear of being cast out is so strong that infected husbands often don't tell their wives, denying them the opportunity to take measures to prevent transmission of the disease, and opening the door for HIV/AIDS to wreak havoc on future generations as women who become pregnant unknowingly pass the disease on to their children.
It's almost two decades since HIV/AIDS was first identified in India. For years, it slipped under the radar because infection rates, as a percentage of the national population, are relatively low. In a country with a population of 1.1 billion, a small percentage hides huge numbers. By the time the alarm was sounded, HIV had crossed from high risk groups into urban and rural families, passing swiftly from husband to wife and mother to child. Today, India has the single largest national HIV/AIDS case load in the world with nearly six million people in the country living with the disease, accounting for ten percent of global infections. As many as three million people have already died.
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