India's health minister has called homosexuality a disease, saying it is “unnatural” and “fast-spreading” in the country.

Ghulam Nabi Azad told a conference dealing with HIV/AIDS on Monday that homosexuality was only recently imported from “the developed world.”

The comments enraged many gay activists in India, who say that homosexuals in the country are routinely harassed.

Gay sex in India was illegal until 2009, when a Delhi court overturned a colonial era law that referred to same-gender relationships as “unnatural.”

Separately, hundreds of conservative Islamists held rallies in Pakistan Monday to protest a gay rights event held last month at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad.

Protesters in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore denounced the event as “cultural terrorism,” saying it was part of a Western attack on Islamic values. Homosexual intercourse is illegal according to Pakistan's interpretation of Islamic law.

The gay rights event was held at the embassy on June 26 in order to support the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.