India’s first transgender college principal has a lesson for all of us
I was about eight or so. An annual carnival used to be held just behind our home in Kolkata on a sprawling meadow. I had gone there one July evening, accompanied by my nanny, Shantimashi.
At some point, thanks to the maddening crowd, she lost me.
"Come here," a really tall, buxom woman in a bright orange tangail sari said, grabbing my arms. She was strong, literally towering over me.
I was terrified. Telling her that I wasn’t here alone. She was insistent, luring me with a bar of Cadbury’s. Her eyes laden with kohl – something odd about her voice. Like she were a man, or something else.
"Want to try the fairwheel? Roll, khabi?" she winked, dragging me on.
I burst into tears. Some onlookers eyed us suspiciously. I called out for Shantimashi, frantically.
Another woman, more masculine looking, in a discoloured ghagra, joined us.
"I want to go home," I sobbed.
"Come shona… have pav bhaji?" she signalled to a taxi parked close by. I shrieked.
Thankfully, there was a cop drinking tea from a roadside stall nearby. He came charging toward us. There was a lot of commotion. Shantimashi was shoving her way through the crowd, sobbing violently herself. Guilty.
"Be careful of these people. Whenever you see them, roll up your car windows at once. And never give them money. If they curse you, you will fall sick. Beware of their buri nazar," she warned, hugging me tight. "Who was that woman?" I whispered.
"Hijras… evil," she hissed, protectively…
Almost three decades later, I am still a tad wary of hijras. I get edgy when I see them clapping at traffic signals, hoping the lights change fast. I always lock the door when I see throngs of them play the dholak and sway promiscuously into our Delhi colony. I remember being scared of Maharani in the Mahesh Bhatt directed Sadak - a eunuch played villainously by the late Sadashiv Amrapurkar.
A gnawing childhood anxiety still paralyses some part of me…
Are hijras really evil?
I mean, if the third gender is a reality, validated by the Supreme Court, where do they rightfully belong? And why is our most common perception of this community as cross-dressing beggars at traffic crossings, who croon popular Bollywood item songs in a particularly nasally voice, clapping their hands a certain way - banging at your doorstep, the minute a child is born, or during weddings, wearing cheap lipstick and fake, conical breasts.
The word hijra symbolises myriad sexual identities. From eunuchs or men who have emasculated themselves, intersexed people, both men and women with genital malfunction, hermaphrodites, those with indeterminate sex organs, impotent men, male homosexuals to even effeminate males who are often called chakka, in ridicule. The term hijra is borrowed from the Arabic "ijara", which means eunuch or castrated man.
Are hijras feared equally by men? Does that also explain the sexual abuse and violence against them in police stations, brothels and shelters?
Their fate, for long, was sealed by archaic laws like the 1897 ammendment to the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, subtitled, “An Act for the Registration of Criminal Tribes and Eunuchs”. Under this law, the local government was required to keep a register of the names and residences of all eunuchs who were "reasonably suspected of kidnapping or castrating children or committing offences under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code". The law also decreed eunuchs as incapable of acting as a guardian, making a gift, drawing up a will or adopting a son. Just as dehumanising as Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalises "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal", even if it is voluntary.
Hijras? Unnatural? Shadow people?
Hijra history dates back to more than 4,000 years ago. Hindu hijras trace their lineage to epics. In the Mahabharata, Arjun spent a year in hiding as a eunuch and Bheeshma finally chose his death at the hands of the eunuch prince Shikhandi. Or another, Aravan, son of Arjuna and Nagakanya, was to be sacrificed to Goddess Kali to ensure the victory of the Pandavas in the Kurukshetra battle. The only condition that he made was to spend the last night of his life in matrimony. Since no woman was willing to marry one who was doomed to die, Krishna assumed the form of a beautiful woman, Mohini.
The hijras of Tamil Nadu consider Aravan their progenitor and refer to themselves aravanis. Hinduism also abounds with tales of powerful deities worshipped as androgynes. Take the case of Lord Shiva, one of the most venerated gods. While thousands of Indian women pour warm milk over the shivalingam, every Shivaratri, with a prayer on their lips to secure a husband as potently masculine as him - Shiva is worshipped as Ardhanarisvara, half man and half woman. Shiva united with his female creative power known as Shakti.
Initiation into the Hijra community is symbolically based on the first and most significant step of complete emasculation – a ceremony akin to rebirth, termed nirvana. The transformation signifies the divine connection with both Shiv and Shakti, after which the eunuch is supposedly blessed with the goddess’ creative prowess. After the completion of this ritual, which includes a period of seclusion, a special diet and other symbolic rituals, the newly born eunuch can bless others with fertility and good fortune.
Religion and ritualism, however, remain a far cry from ground reality; with discrimination dictating the way we continue to treat hijras here. Despite NGOs like Sangama working tirelessly in the reassertion of their gender identity, this community remains one of the most disempowered social groups. Most hijras from the lower income group earn their livelihood through prostitution. What alternatives do we offer them? How else can they exist? What will they eat?
Will an Indian parent be cool, if their son comes home and says he is in love with a woman, say like Lakshmi Narayan, one of the most well-known faces of this community, a noted transgender rights activist and a participant in Season five of Bigg Boss? Evicted after just six weeks.
Why we don’t have any hijra friends? Why are our primary responses to this class an embarrassment. So much so, that the mainstream, LGBT community too doesn’t fight as hard for the common hijras – the ambivalent sex – ones with wigs who wink and whistle, crossing our paths, daily. Swaying their hips…
Hijras have virtually no safe spaces.
Parents. Police. Pimps…
Just this morning, social media was agog with reports of Manabi Bandopadhyay, who is set to assume charge as principal of Krishnagar Women's College in West Bengal on June 9. She is the first transgender college principal in India, and probably in the whole world, too.
Is this the beginning of a new wave of gender equality? Or a populist stint? Will the hijra community finally find their voice as a whole? Will we now see them differently…
"I don’t think that too much will come out of the decriminalisation of homosexuality by the Delhi High Court last week. Nothing happens in India for the good of anybody who chooses to be different. You can pass laws, but you can’t change the people. It’s a fact that man is free, but everywhere he’s in chains…" Manabi was quoted as saying in an article in The Guardian, on July 14, 2009.