India’s first transgender college principal a giant step forward

The recent appointment of India’s first transgender college principal in eastern Bengal state is another incremental step towards public acceptance for the country’s small but hugely discriminated against community.

India is believed to have more than two million transgender people, the majority of whom live shadowy lives in dire poverty on the fringes of society, socially ostracised because of their gender and abandoned by their families.

Known across the country and other neighbouring south Asian countries as “Hijras”, many live in ghettoes and eke out a living by singing and dancing, begging or prostitution.

"For me it's been a long battle against ignorance," said Manabi Bandyhopadhyay (51), who takes charge on June 9th of Krishnagar Women's College in Nadia district, 115km northwest of Bengal's state capital, Kolkata.

“There was a time when I and even my father were threatened with dire consequences as I am a transgender,” she said, recounting the series of sex-change operations she undertook 2003 onwards to become a woman.

“But things have changed and I am returning home to Nadia with pride and dignity after a long battle,” she added, referring to the struggle transgender people have waged across India for decades for societal acceptance.

Their first victory was in late 2009, when the federal election commission provided transgender people with an independent identity by allowing them choose their gender as “other” on ballot forms. Until then, they had been forced to declare themselves as either male or female.

This was followed in April 2014 by India’s supreme court legally recognising transgender as a third gender and granting equal rights to those who identified themselves as neither male nor female.

“It’s the right of every human being to choose their gender,” the court declared.

Affirmative action

It also instructed the government to provide transgender people with jobs and education in keeping with prevailing affirmative action policies for the country’s low-caste and underprivileged communities.

Thereafter, a television channel in southern Tamil Nadu state appointed its first transgender news anchor, while another transgender person was elected mayor in Chattisgarh in central India earlier this year.

India’s transgender community, however, remains widely vilified and mocked in public, feared for what many regard as outlandish and overtly sexual behaviour.

Like any community of individuals, India’s transgenders have a wide range of experiences and means of expressing themselves, but their public reputation centres around elaborate costume jewellery and gaudy face make-up.

Some form part of a bizarre freemasonry that largely sustains itself by collecting money by dancing outside houses of newborn babies or at weddings. Most Indians believe that giving money to Hijras after a birth or at a marriage guarantees good luck.

Moneylenders have also exploited the flamboyance of Hijras by hiring them to recover debts from people whom they could publicly embarrass.

Municipal authorities in eastern Bihar state once engaged Hijra groups to recover long- overdue taxes from defaulting shopkeepers in the capital Patna. Dancing and singing to the beat of drums, they went from shop to shop, warning the owners to pay up.

Many Hijras in India are caught up in gangs, headed by a leader designated “Mummy”. Activists working with Hijra groups have said inter-clan buying and selling of young transgender people is common after fierce, often violent, bargaining between Mummys, many of whom have underworld links.

Traditionally, transgender people have featured prominently in Indian culture, and in ancient times were treated with great reverence and mentioned glowingly in Hindu epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

In medieval times they were patronised by Mughal and Hindu rulers, with many transgender people rising to prominent positions of authority and even military importance. Harem guards, who customarily were transgenders, exercised great influence in palace circles.

Decline

But their decline began under colonial rule in the 18th century, when all transgenders were categorised as criminals.

They were arrested for cross-dressing or dancing in public places and indulging in gay sex, which remains a crime in India punishable with a long jail term and a fine, in a statute inherited from Victorian times.

College principal Bandhopadhyay’s struggle against centuries of discrimination has not been easy, but she has persevered and prevailed.

“This is a new chapter in her life” her adopted son Debashish Gupta told the BBC. People can be cruel and always want to trip her up. Life as a transgender is an eternal challenge in India, he added.