Events & Issues
New Delhi, 17 May, 2017
Transgender
Services
DISPEL
STIGMA, AID INCLUSIVITY
By Proloy
Bagchi
One has to give it to a mayor for
taking a very courageous decision: he will use the services of the transgender
community for recovery of property tax from defaulters. For want of any more
details, it is hoped the Mayor of Bhopal has seriously thought about the matter
and brings about a change in the lives of the transgender community and
people’s perception about them. Surely, he knows that the defaulters are not
going to be shamed by the appearance of a transgender at their door to cough up
their dues to the municipal corporation. No, not in Bhopal, which perhaps hosts one of the
largest transgender communities.
However, if this is the intention it
would be exploiting the transgender community’s sexual aberration to the
advantage of the civic body. This is precisely what had been done in Pakistan – in Lahore
and Karachi.
The property tax evaders were literally raided by transgender people who were
successful in intimidating the defaulters to promptly pay up their dues.
Reports said that in Pakistan
a single round of clapping by the members of the community was enough for the
wallets to be fished out and opened up.
Something similar was tried in Bihar also and the defaulters did not know where to hide.
A group of transgender people with their ungainly gait and hoarse voices,
clapping away in the way only they can was enough to rattle the Bihari tax
defaulter as, perhaps, it would any other.
Viewed from all aspects, to use the
transgender community in this fashion would not appear to be proper, especially
by public agencies. The public organisations are expected to take care of them
and should attempt to improve their lot and eradicate the discriminatory
treatment meted out to them. In India,
in fact in the entire South Asia the life of a
transgender is miserable and demeaning.
It starts from their families who
generally do not accept a transgender baby even if she happens to be their own.
They are, therefore, necessarily adopted by the transgender community who care
for them and bring them up in their own peculiar way. As they grow old they are
humiliated at every step and are made to earn their living by dancing at
weddings or celebrations for child-birth, where their presence is, curiously,
considered auspicious, at least, in the Indian society. And yet to earn their
keep they have to go begging or using their own queer sexuality.
The world of transgender community is far too apart from normal bi-polar
two-gender society, so much so that there cannot be any intermixing between the
two, thus debarring them forever from joining the social mainstream. It always
works like that and when it deviates it is sustained only for a while, only to
get back to where the deviation commenced from.
An example will perhaps clarify it.
A Bengali transgender, Manabi Bandhopadhyay, broke the shackles of social
normality after she had completed higher education. She decided to throw off
her fake masculinity by subjecting herself to surgical procedures to align her
sexual orientation with her physicality. Having acquired a doctorate on the
subject of the community of transgender she applied and was appointed as
principal of a women’s college in Krishnagar, Nadia.
Troubles for her started
immediately. Unable to bear the daily harassment from both, teachers and
students she gave up and resigned. Behind it all was her gender or rather the
apparent absence of it. Thankfully, however, here there was another deviation.
The government of West Bengal that had decided
to inquire into complaints against the principal found these were mostly untrue
and rejected her resignation. Happily she is back at her job.
Such examples are rare and only
brave can take all the innuendoes and abuses that are hurled at a transgender.
After all, a transgender is viewed as sub-human in the normal two-gendered
Indian society.
This is precisely what is being
currently shown in a soap opera telecast by the intrepid Colours channel. It was a very brave move by the channel as it was
a way out-of-the-ordinary soaps. The girl enacting the role of the transgender
in the serial also exhibited extraordinary guts to take on such a role.
The storyline reveals how from the
very birth machinations of fate made her escape the atrocities of her father,
who tried to even bury her alive soon after her birth. It was fate again that
threw her into the arms of a loving Punjabi boy of a conservative Punjabi
family which, though doting on the only son, subjected the transgender to
untold miseries by inflicting on her extreme mental and physical agony. That
she was unwelcome in the house was made plain to her at every step. It was only
deep love for her that the boy wouldn’t let go of her for she not only had a
beautiful face but also beautiful head and heart – a very well assembled
complete package of a human being.
Unfortunately, the problem that the
transgender face is universal; the differences, if any, are only in degrees. In
the West, however, the transgender are not subjected to such pernicious
treatment as in South Asia. Yet, in lots of
ways efforts are being made at inclusivity for them.
In Britain, for example, the Lloyds
Banking Group’s the Rainbow Network has thousands of members and allies
connecting and supporting LGBT colleagues by providing professional networking
events and mentoring. The basic idea is to integrate the transgender employees
in the work force by promoting inclusivity and training. All this can happen
when the lines of recruitment are open and the transgender can find employment.
In India, however, things continue to
be different – regressive and status quoist. Transgender are a neglected
community which is shunned by virtually everybody. They have been left to their
own devices. They are hardly educated and if one ever happens to find admission
in a school she is bullied and humiliated so much that she finds the confines
of her community safer than the cruel outside world.
Nonetheless, the Government seems to
be alive to their problems and has already accepted to enact a law on the basis
of a Private Member’s bill. This will be like breaking new ground as it will
fill the vacuum of absence of legislation in respect of their status, their
rights etc. In this connection, a government release said: “through this bill
the government has evolved a mechanism for their social, economic and
educational empowerment. The bill will benefit a large number of transgender
persons, mitigate the stigma, discrimination and abuse against this marginalised
section and bring them into mainstream of society.”
As there seems to have been no
movement in regard to passing of the enabling legislation the transgender
community would seem to have a long wait in front of them. Governments do grind
but they do so very slowly. A generation or two could pass by before the
enactment takes effect. In the meantime, however, one hopes the mayor will take
personal initiative sooner than later to improve the lot of this blighted
community of substantial proportions in Bhopal.
A small step but in the right direction.—INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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