http://www.bagchiblog.blogspot.com
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| Dr. Manabi Badyopadhyay |
One
has to give it to the local mayor for taking a very courageous step. He
announced recently that he had decided to 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 bring 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 hosts, perhaps, 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 organizations 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 that they 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 a 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 soap. 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 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 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-quo-ist.
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 that “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 marginalized 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 Bhopal
mayor will take personal initiative sooner than later to improve the lot of
this blighted community of substantial numbers and spread the word around for
their uplift among his friends in other municipal corporations.
10th May 2017
*Photo from internet
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