Whose fault?

“Who are they?” my son asked me.

“I’ll tell you later!”

“Why do they look so different?” he could not wait.

“Let them go! I will explain later!”

“Why not now?

By now that person took the seat that got vacated. As the person sat, the lady sitting next to the vacated seat got up and stood aside.

“Kyon uth gayee? Hum achoot hai kya? Mera koi galti hai? (Why you got up? Are we untouchables? Did I commit any mistake?)” the eunuch asked. I could feel that she is crying.

“Why did that lady say so? What sin did she do?’ my son perturbed me. I will have a tough time explaining him. However, it kept some bells ringing in my mind. “Whose fault is this?”

Transgender communities have existed in most parts of the world with their own identities, customs and rituals. The hijra (Eunuch) community in India, which has a recorded history of more than 4,000 years, was considered to have special powers because of its third-gender status.

Mentioning of Hijras can be traced back to Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Rama, while leaving for the forest upon being banished from the kingdom for 14 years, turns around to his followers and asks all the `men and women' to return to the city. Among his followers the hijras alone do not feel bound by this direction and decide to stay with him. Impressed with their devotion, Rama sanctions them the power to confer blessings on people on auspicious occasions like childbirth and marriage, and also at inaugural functions. This set the stage for the custom of badhai in which hijras sing, dance and confer blessings.

The legend in the Mahabharata is that Aravan, the son of Arjuna and Nagakanya, offers to be sacrificed to ensure the victory of the Pandavas in the Kurukshetra war. 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 be killed, Krishna assumes the form of a beautiful woman called Mohini and marries him. The hijras of Tamil Nadu consider Aravan their progenitor and call themselves aravanis.

Considering themselves neither men nor women, members of this so-called ‘third sex’ generally adopt feminine names, dress like women and are traditionally referred to as ‘she.’ Faced with lives of isolation, poverty and public ridicule, eunuchs often resort to prostitution for economic survival and beg on streets. Such people never gain the affection or support of their families, a desire that for many will remain just another dream for them. Suffering from a sexual identity crisis and physical deformities, they could not talk to anyone in her family and was labeled a ‘sinner’ for behaving like a girl.

The discrimination based on their gender makes the hijra community the most disempowered groups in Indian society. The hijras in India find it hard to get a good education, employment opportunities are rare. Most public and private companies use several excuses to deny employment. Hijras in India have virtually no safe spaces, not even in their families, where they can be protected from prejudice and abuse.

Reports show that this prejudice is translated into violence, in public spaces, police stations, prisons and even in their homes. The main factor behind the violence is that society is not able to come to terms with the fact that hijras do not conform to the accepted gender divisions. The systematic violence that hijras face is reinforced by the family, media. The worst part is, it is given legitimacy by the legal system.
The hijra community is deprived of several rights under civil law as Indian law recognizes only two sexes. This means that hijras do not have the right to vote, marry and own a ration card or a driving license, or claim employment and health benefits.

Under the 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 child.

According to the Indian medical establishment, trans-sexualism is defined as a `gender identity disorder'. The doctors usually prescribe a sexual reassignment surgery (SRS), which resorts to hormone therapy and surgical reconstruction that may include electrolysis, speech therapy and counseling. Surgical construction could include the removal of male sex organs and the construction of female ones. Since government hospitals and qualified private practitioners do not usually perform SRS, many hijras go to quacks, thus placing themselves at serious risk. Neither the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) nor the Medical Council of India (MCI) has formulated any guidelines to be followed in SRS. The attitude of the medical establishment has only reinforced the low sense of self-worth that many hijras have at various moments in their lives.

The law that is used most to threaten the hijra communities in India, is Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalizes carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal" even if it is voluntary. In effect, it criminalizes certain kinds of sexual acts that are perceived to be `unnatural'. The law, which has its origin in colonial ideas of morality, in effect presumes that a hijra or a homosexual person is engaging in `carnal intercourse against the order of nature", thus making this entire lot of marginalized communities vulnerable to police harassment and arrest.

If God made mistake in His creation, we blew it out of proportion with our wrong approach towards them. They need your care and not your alms or sympathy! Educating the eunuchs and accommodating them in the mainstream society is the only solution to end the numerous troubles faced by them. Most of them can be pulled out of prostitution by providing employment. The Indian society should come forward to accommodate these people with the mainstream society.