May Manabi Bandopadhyay change the way the society look at the third gender?

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.

Courtesy: 'http://www.dailyo.in/politics/hijras-manabi-bandopadhyay-first-transgender-principal-bengal/story/1/3968.html'

An over 2,000-year-old journey for ‘hijras’

“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

“No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.’’

Eunuchs have been there for centuries and the scriptures have mentioned them in many places. If you happen to read the well-researched fiction of Barbara Chase Riboud’s ‘Valide – Novel of the Harem’’ on the Turkish Sultans, then there is much to squirm about.

Riboud describes in detail how eunuchs are created with the stroke of a dirty but sharp knife. First, the penis is cut off, without sedation, from young boys who are kidnapped; pinned down by eunuchs themselves. Then the slower process of carving out the testicles is executed. The wound is not allowed to fuse, enabling an orifice for urine to pass, which is ingeniously created by inserting a neem stick which is removed whenever the wound heals.

Meanwhile, the boy during this healing period does not pass urine, and is also not given water – to minimize the formation of urine. In many cases, the pressure of the urine hit the ureters and damages the kidneys, bringing death and an escape from the agony.  But for those who survive the healing process, the neem stick is removed, letting out a steady stream of urine which is at once acknowledged by celebrations from the eunuchs. They then assimilate the boy, ‘reborn’ now as a eunuch, to perpetuate their community.

Last year in Delhi, when 13-year-old Ram did not turn up home from school, the police were clueless. He had just become another statistic in the numerous children who go missing each year. But when he reappeared at the doorstep six–months later, the joy of the parents were cut short by a distinct queerness that had come over the boy who had aged much more than six years in the few months he was missing.
Upon prompting, Ram recalled how he became Rama the eunuch after being lured away into a ‘Hijrah’ stronghold and castrated with crude instruments and then made to eke out a living for a couple of rupees a day.

Today, there are about two million of these members of the so called Third Sex and all have been recognized as part and parcel of the mainstream society in India.
The “recognition of transgender (people) as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue”, said Justice K. Balakrishnan in the Supreme Court,  creating formally another category of people who would now jostle for jobs, medical entrance exams and claim to become lecturers in universities.
In a ruling Tuesday, the apex court has given the status of ‘backward’ caste to this community enabling them to have reservations in all walks of life and help them catch up lost ground after centuries of discrimination on account of their deviant sexuality. Those under its ambit would include castrated males, men born with deformed genitals and effeminate boys discarded by their families.

Many of these transgenders eke out a living either through aggressive begging or through performing sexual acts. They are also known to ambush weddings and birthdays of young baby boys demanding large donations and upon the faintest mention of denial would flash their mutilated genitals – considered a bad omen to those who happen to see it. This lurking fear would also make many cough up the demand for cash, clothes or food at once. There are also cases of eunuchs being deployed as tax-collectors.

In the ancient Indian texts the mention of the eunuch was rare, though not completely unknown. Castration, whether of men or animals, was disapproved of, and harems were generally guarded by elderly men and armed women. But, the literature and history of medieval India seems to indicate a greater space to this as a phenomenon which got institutionalized through the relationship between the rulers and the slaves, with some of the slaves being eunuchs.

The best known relationship was between Sultan Alauddin Khalji and his eunuch slave Malik Kafur. Such was Kafur’s hold over Khalji that he was appointed deputy ruler (Malik Naib). Ziauddin Barani, a commentator on Alauddin’s reign, said in reference to the last years of the Sultan’s life, “In those four or five years when the Sultan was losing his memory and his senses, he had fallen deeply and madly in love with the Malik Naib. He had entrusted the responsibility of the government and the control of the servants to this useless, ungrateful, ingratiate, sodomite”.

According to R. Nath, in the Private Lives of Mughals in India, the Mughals used boys from the province of Sylhet in Assam – now part of Bangladesh- for this purpose. It is a common sight in many bazaars in the country where packs of these transgenders roam with lipstick, false eye-lashes, faces caked with layers of cheap make-up adorning ill-fitting blouses and striking saris, playing out the parody of the grotesque in womanhood.

With India being the only country where the eunuch tradition exists, they have come a long, long way from being royal confidants, to harem keepers, tax-collectors, symbols of fear and even loathsomeness right down to jostling for space in the mainstream of the Indian society.

source: 'http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2014/04/16/kidnapped-castrated-boys-men-deformed-genitals-eunuchs-get-legal-acceptance-india/'
 

Lakshmi’s Story

People are curious to know about hijras. How do we live? Behave? What do we do? Do we kidnap children? What funeral rites are performed for a hijra after his death? Is he cremated or buried? Such questions do not have answers. Only scholars can answer these questions. Because we hijras are so secretive about our lives, hearsay rules the roost.
As hijras we live ordinary lives, like everyone else. Like the underdog, we are respected by nobody. Except for the newly introduced “Adhar Card” we have no “adhar”  or official recognition, or support from any quarter whatsoever. We are thus destitute. Estranged from family and ostracized by society, people couldn’t care less how we earn a livelihood, or where our next meal comes from. If a hijra commits a crime, the mob rushes to attack him while the police are only too glad to press charges against him. This is not to justify crime, but to reiterate that all crimes have a social dimension, and in the case of hijras this cannot be overlooked. Yet it is never taken into account.
We hijras live in ghettos. In Mumbai and Thane, many such ghettos exist in neighborhoods like Dharavi, Ghatkopar, Bhandup, Byculla, and Malad. The eviction of the poor from the city of Mumbai takes its toll on the ghettos. They begin to shrink in size. The hijras then disperse toward townships like Navi Mumbai where survival is a bit easier.
Our main occupation is to perform badhai at weddings, or when a child is born. At such times we sing and dance to bless the newlyweds or the newborn. But can badhai alone fill our stomachs? Obviously not, and so we supplement our earnings by begging on city streets, and performing sex work, and dancing in bars and night clubs. Dancing comes naturally to us hijras.
It is believed that all hijras are castrated. We call it nirvan. In the eyes of the public we are castrated males. But that is not always the case. Castration is strictly optional, and every hijra decides for himself whether or not to undertake it. Castration cannot be forced upon a hijra. Though the world believes that a castrated hijra alone is a real hijra, we do not endorse this. I am not castrated. I did not opt for it and my guru did not pressure me into it. Most of my chelas are also uncastrated like me. But yes, many of us have had breast implants. The surgery is expensive, but without it our transformation is incomplete. However, unlike many other hijras, I haven’t gone in for hormone therapy in my desire to look feminine. Though I am not castrated, the hijras regard me as one of them.
At times, we hijras are in the news for the wrong reasons. Say, for kidnapping a child and forcing it to become a hijra. Here, what is needed is an unbiased and impartial inquiry. Prejudice shouldn’t dominate. That hijras receive orders from their community to convert people to their gender is a myth. Our elders have never advised us to force someone to become a hijra. The decision to become a hijra is traumatic. Once one becomes a hijra the doors to one’s earlier life are shut forever. It isn’t easy for a hijra to come to terms with his new life. The family, and indeed society as a whole, reacts strangely. Terrified, the hijra in self-defense invents the story of his having gotten kidnapped and forced into hijrahood. Sometimes, even a complaint to that effect is lodged! Of course, it’s not as if hijras never kidnap kids. But then the community doesn’t forgive them. Like mainstream society, the hijra community too has its share of criminals. Though the laws of the land should be sufficient to deal with them, crimes by hijras are often exaggerated and the hijras are chastised. Disproportionate punishment is meted out to us by the police and the public. This is unfair.
Yet another myth about us is that the funeral of a hijra is performed late in the night and he is beaten with slippers. The unearthly hour is chosen, it is said, so that none should witness the funeral. But this is rubbish. Hijras belong to different religions, and our last rites depend on our religion. A hijra who is a Hindu is cremated, while a Muslim hijra is buried. When carrying the corpse of a dead hijra to the graveyard, we shed our women’s clothing and dress instead in shirts and pants, or in a kurta and pajama pants. We do this to hide the fact that the deceased is a hijra.
The hijras are a family. The guru is the mother. Then there’s the dadguru who is the grandmother, and the purdahguru who is the great-grandmother. The guru and his chelas comprise a family. A guru selects a successor and trains him. If a guru fails to choose a successor, the panch, or the leaders of the seven hijra gharanas, choose him. All crucial decisions are made by the panch. Its leaders are wise men who command the respect of the entire community.
Once one decides to become a hijra, there is a christening ceremony, known as a reet, which he must undergo. It’s a bit like the janwa, the thread ceremony of the Brahmins. The rites are performed by the guru and the disciple is initiated. The charter of rules and regulations is explained to the aspirant. These concern little things like how a hijra must walk, and how he must serve water to a visitor. While serving water, the glass must not be held at the top or the middle. Instead, the glass must be balanced on palms joined together. The pallu of the hijra’s sari must not touch anyone as he moves around. One should not lie with his feet facing the guru. The guru’s clothes mustn’t be worn by the chela, nor should the latter utter his guru’s or gharana’s name. The hijra should not talk back to his guru. And so on.
There is a saying among us, that for a hijra it is all words and nothing else. Guru is a word. Chela is a word. The woman in the guru makes him feel motherly toward his chelas, but the man in him makes him authoritarian and dictatorial.
In everyday life, we do not observe the rules of our community that strictly. But if our leaders are around, we do. This is just as it is in mainstream society. At the end of the day, it all depends on how liberal (or otherwise) your guru is.
My guru never imposed restrictions on me. Lataguru did not want me to talk about my life to the press, or allow them to publish my photographs. But other than that she gave me ample freedom. At first, I observed all the rules, because the decision to become a hijra was, after all, mine. But soon there came a time when I rebelled. I could not stand these restrictions on my freedom. I began to give interviews to the media. I appeared on television. I traveled abroad. The community fined me for these transgressions. I paid the fine and committed the “offenses” again. I was all but ostracized by the community. But Lataguru stood by me. She was proud of me because I was educated and had a mind of my own. So what if I broke all the rules?
It is tiresome to swim against the current. I have been swimming against two currents, one society and the other community. Both need to change their attitude. Whereas society needs to confront its biases toward the hijras, the hijras themselves must be forthright. We have paid a hefty price for living an estranged and secluded life. The black sheep in the community, no more than ten percent of our total population, defame the entire community.
To counter this defamation, I have established a support group known as the Maharashtra Trutiya Panthi Sanghatana. We fight for the fundamental rights of hijras. We managed to persuade the state government and the Planning Commission to give us the Adhar Card. Since Hijra sex workers are susceptible to HIV and AIDS, we work towards the eradication of these diseases. We try to obtain housing and employment for the hijras. Change is only possible when the laws change. And for that, the authorities need to be approached. It is happening in other Indian states, so why not here in Maharashtra? In Tamil Nadu the hijras have been given houses. In Madhya Pradesh they have run in elections and won. The hijras have potential. Their families must support them so that they realize their potential.
I work at the local level, state level, national level, and international level, too. I go abroad frequently. I do for my chelas what my guru did for me.
Subhadra was my very first chela. She was murdered in Sheelphata. Many of my other chelas have passed away. Kiran succumbed to AIDS. She loved me selflessly. She was intelligent and disciplined, and had terrific managerial skills. Rupa, who was a fashion designer, also died of AIDS. Payal was a wonderful cook. Kanda poha, omelet, and chicken biryani were her specialties. But she took to drinking excessively and finally died of alcoholism.
I try to save hijras like Kiran, Roopa, and Payal. I try to talk them out of their vices. But in my heart of hearts I know that words are poor consolation. As a hijra myself, I can empathize with their anguish. Their female psyche, trapped in a male body, stifles them. There is no one in this world they can truly call their own. They don’t have an easy means of making a living. Their sex work causes mental pressure and anxiety, and nagging questions about their identity. Their working conditions are gruesome. A hijra often thinks to himself: Sala, what is this life! And to blot out his misery, makes liquor his best friend. But this association proves costly. It eats into one’s vitality. I thus failed to save the lives of Roopa, Kiran, and Payal.
And Shahin. No one who saw her would call her a hijra. She was a Bollywood heroine! She nursed the sick like Florence Nightingale! When my father was dying, I entrusted him to her care. She would buy medicines from the store downstairs and give them to him at the prescribed time. She stood by my mother and brother Shashi like a pillar of strength.
Shahin was Shahid Naik before her christening. He was the son that followed the birth of his elder sister. They were from Konkan. When Shahid was ten, his mother died and he was brought up by his grandfather in Mumbra, Mumbai. As a child, he was fond of household chores. He helped his mother in the kitchen. Though his mother was touched by his concern, the others in the house mocked him. They called him names. They thought he was effeminate. When Shahid grew up, he befriended some homosexual men. That’s how I got to know him. He wanted to become a hijra, but he wasn’t old enough to be initiated. So I advised him not to convert just yet, but to hang out with us and finish college. But Shahid was adamant. He began to live like a hijra in the company of Subhadra and Sangita. Then one day, Shahid Naik became Shahin. Became my chela. Her family had no clue. They thought she was out shooting a film, because that is what she told them when she left home. Shahin never went home after that.
One day Shahin received a call from her uncle. He wanted to meet her. A meeting was arranged, and when the family saw her in a sari they began to wail hysterically. They wanted her to get back into men’s clothes and return home. But Shahin meant business. She stayed with us and earned money.
When Shahin’s younger sister got married, it was Shahin who bore the expenses. The family then took her back into the fold. Today, Shahin’s father is in touch with her. When Shahin goes home on annual visits, she takes gifts for everyone. Her brother refused to speak to her at first, but relented later. Only her stepmother hasn’t come round yet.
Then there’s Kamal. He was the only son of an Ulhasnagar businessman. But from childhood he was fond of cross-dressing; wearing a sari and make-up. The family dismissed this as a kid’s fancy. But one day Kamal told his family: “I will not be able to live as you want me to, as a male.” Saying this, he left home. His best friends were Shiba and Vinnie, and all three of them became my chelas. Kamal’s folks landed up at my place in Thane. They were comforted to learn that their only son was safe and sound, and that we lived together as a family. Today, Kamal’s folks have opened their doors to her. Sometimes she goes home on overnight visits. She’s not in the family business of course, but works instead in a dance bar. She hands over her earnings to her folks, believing it to be her duty, though her parents are well-off and do not need her money.
There’s a family I am related to by blood, and then there are my chelas who are my other family. I need both families and cannot envisage a life without either.

source: http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/lakshmis-story

Hijra Farsi: Secret language knits community

 MUMBAI: It's not often that one stumbles upon a secret language floating around the streets of a busy Indian metropolis, least of all a language that has been alive-and-kicking across the sub-continent for a century or two.

While the language in question is shrouded in mystery, its keepers are anything but obscure. The vivid make-up, rose-red lipstick and colourful saris draped across a body that is neither entirely male nor entirely female make South Asia's Hijra community among the most visible sexual minorities. Yet their lexicon is invisible to civil society, though it remains in use across much of India and Pakistan.

"Nobody besides the Hijra community would understand the language we speak. It was created for the purpose of self-preservation during the British Raj. While literature shows that Hijras occupied a privileged position in ancient India, the British criminalised us and put us behind bars. This language was as a survival mechanism for Hijras," says Simran Shaikh, an attractive and articulate member of the community, speaking to TOI at her guru's sunlit home in Kamathipura's 1st lane, a stretch of Mumbai's red-light district reserved for Hijras.

Shaikh's claims are backed by academic research in India and Pakistan. The language is sometimes referred to as Koti or Hijra Farsi, though it has more in common with Urdu and Hindustani than it does with Persian.

That the language is still in use may have to do with the fact that the community continues to be persecuted in independent India. "Seventy-four percent of the Hijra community has suffered violence and harassment," says Shaikh, who works with Alliance India, an NGO that works on AIDS prevention.

"Today, if there's some information I'd like to communicate with those within my community that the outside world does not need to know, I would use this language. For instance, if there's a police van in sight and I want to warn a member of my community standing on the road, I'd use this code language," says Shaikh.

'Complete language'

Academic research validates the claim that Hijra Farsi is indeed a language and not simply a collection of secret code-words. A research paper by Islamabad-based scholars, Muhammad Safeer Awan and Muhammad Sheeraz, who studied the language spoken amongst Pakistan's Hijra community, shows that the language contains its own unique vocabulary. It has its own syntax that differs from other mainstream languages, making Farsi "as good a language as any other."

Another academic paper by Himadri Roy, professor at Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi, shows that, much like any other language, the language of the Hijras has nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and other parts of speech, with verbs used to complete a sentence.

It's a language that a pretty young Hijra called Ayesha, who has yet to come out of the closet at home, uses when she meets other members of the community. She uses this language while talking to her friends in public, when she doesn't want the rest of the world to know what she's saying. She talks of the words used to allude to an attractive man, as well as words that distinguish men of different age groups. There's a specific word to describe a man in the age group 16-18, and another for one who is 25-30.

"See what I'm wearing," says Ayesha, pointing to her colourful get-up and bright sari. "We call this satla in our language," she adds, referring to a word used for feminine clothes. For Ayesha, a language to call her own has helped her embrace her identity as a Hijra.

source: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-10-07/india/42793159_1_secret-language-urdu-alliance-india