The Struggles for Space Among the Transgender Community in India: Feminist and Marxist Approach (original) (raw)
Related papers
Frontiers in Political Science, 2022
Transgender groups in India constitute an indigenous community with a rich and vivid culture and history. However, it is unfortunate that under the hegemonic influence of heteronormative traditions, the democratic inclusion and accommodation of transgender groups could never take place. This exclusion and neglect have recently been challenged through the activism of several groups, which has given rise to a new chapter in the democratic unfolding in India. This article attempts to evaluate the social activism of transgender groups on two planes. One plane attempts to evaluate it in terms of the uniqueness of an indigenous social movement and the areas that distinguish it from other social movements. It is interesting to note that what started as a purely identity-based social movement has now acquired dimensions of redistributive justice. The second plane attempts to evaluate the social activism of transgender groups in terms of the achievements and advances made by the movement on the social and political fronts. This evaluation is necessary in order to appraise the trajectory of the politics of transgender groups, which could foretell the direction of the activism and help in understanding the future scope and direction. The article takes up three arguments in the context of the legal framework put in effect by the state. The first point of discussion is the effectiveness of the transgender ID provided by the Transgender Persons Act and the possible challenges and loopholes related to it. While the state provides legal recognition through the issuance of the transgender ID card, it only remains a symbolic marker as the de facto identity remains unchanged, unless changed by the person themselves. The second point of discussion is the emerging rift amongst transgender groups with respect to the reforms introduced recently. This rift has a tendency to pull in the opposite direction, causing tensions. The final aspect of my discussion relates to the subsequent challenges that emerge from the legal recognition of transgender persons. These challenges touch upon the various aspects of legal, political, social, and economic policymaking and are inevitable for understanding the concerns of transgender persons in India.
Spatial Analysis of Transgenders in india
For the first time in its history, Census of India has enumerated the number of transgender in all the states of India in 2011. The count is estimated to be 4.9 lakh (TOI, 2014). Census has counted them under a distinct category named ‘others’ (Census of India, 2011). The present paper tries to give a spatial dimension to the context so that fair and justifiable attention could be paid towards the upliftment of transgender in the country. It has been observed that maximum population is concentrated in the northern and central part of the country as compared to the eastern parts. The situation is however complex with SC and ST population amongst the community. Thus, the paper tries to bring out the spatial spread of the community with an aim to give suggestions to the respective states to improve their status. Keywords: Census of India, transgender community, spatial context, scheduled caste and scheduled tribe
TRANSGENDER IN INDIAN CONTEXT: RIGHTS AND ACTIVISM
AABS Publishing House, Kolkata, India, 2019
The anthology Transgender in Indian Context: Rights and Activism is written as a plea for transgender community in India neglected and deprived for long. The anthology with an effort to touch the soft corner of Indian hearts for this invisible class, tries to lay bare almost all those factors which are responsible to stigmatise their life and show almost all requisites through which this community so long denied to social positioning can meet dignified life on both familial and sociatal surface. The anthology has covered twenty well-explored articles on this serious issue which is the need of the day. Some of the articles in this anthology dealing with popular transgender autobiographies have endeavoured to explore the real life experience of transgender community in India showing their hard struggle to come into societal surface from their hidden marginal existence. Authors are very deep and sincere to articulate their ideas and hopefully see the service of humanity though their esteemed works in this anthology.
Decolonizing Transgender in India: Some Reflections (with Raina Roy) [pre-publication version]
Transgender Studies Quarterly 2:4
This essay is a set of reflections arising out of prolonged conversations in which we compared notes on our respective experiences as activist (Raina) and ethnographer (Aniruddha) working among, and to different extents belonging to, gender/sexually marginalized communities in eastern India. As we shall argue, the attempted universalization of transgender as a transnational “umbrella term” by the development (nongovernmental) sector, the state, and their funders tends to subsume South Asian discourses and practices of gender/sexual variance as merely “local” expressions of transgender identity, without interrogating the conceptual baggage (such as homo-trans and cis-trans binaries) associated with the transgender category. In the Indian context, this process bolsters the long-standing and continuing (post)colonial construction of hierarchies of scale between transnational, regional, and local levels of discourse and praxis, as evidenced in the relation between the hegemonic anglophone discourse of LGBTIQ identities recognized by the state and the development sector, on one hand, and forms of gender/sexual variance that are positioned as relatively regional, local or 'vernacular' on the other.
in: Silke Förschler, Rebekka Habermas, Nikola Roßbach (eds.): Verorten - Verhandeln - Verkörpern. Interdisziplinäre Analysen zu Raum und Geschlecht. p. 85-116, Bielefeld: Transcript 2014., 2014
Based on the ethnographic data of kothi-identified Sandy and h/er 1 »life world« 2 , I will concentrate in this article upon two issues: first, on the performance of gender and gender roles; and second, on hierarchies visible in different queer spaces in New Delhi, India. 3 For this inquiry, I pose the following questions: Which spatial practices of belonging and ›place claiming‹ do the actors in the various different spaces experience and how are these practices acted out? How do these actors position themselves in processes of demarcation in contrast to other queer individuals such as gay men? I will explore what constitutes as a ›queer space‹ and how these queer spaces impact on their social actors. Particularly in regard to the enabling of gender performance and queerness, I will examine which possibilities they offer in comparison to non-queer spaces. In which ways are these spatial experiences negotiated and narrated by the individual actors? In the first part of the article, I will sketch out my theoretical framework on gender and space before conceptualizing what ›queer‹ and ›queer spaces‹ entail in an Indian context. By providing an insight on the negotiation of gender by queer actors -including gender transgressive practices -based on ethnographic data, the second part of the article discusses their experiences in selected examples of public, private, commercialized and community spaces in New Delhi and sheds light on dynamics of gendered and spatial practices. 1 In India, people identifying as kothis display a culturally specific effeminate male identity characterized by gender nonconformity. They tend to adopt feminine associated clothes, gestures and behaviour. Kothis refer to themselves by choice mostly in feminine gender pronouns. However, in order to indicate kothis' switching gender practices, I am using the pronouns ›h/erself‹, ›h/er‹, and ›s/he‹ in this paper. 2 The concept of »life world« following Honer (1993) encompasses the perspective with which people who are subjects of anthropological research perceive the fragments of the social world relevant for them (cf. Anne Honer: Lebensweltliche Ethnographie: ein explorativ-interpretativer Forschungsansatz am Beispiel von Heimwerker-Wissen. Wiesbaden 1993). 3 In the remaining article, ›New Delhi‹ will be abbreviated to ›Delhi‹. the origin and spread of nationalism. London 1983. 6 See for example: Peter Bräunlein / Andrea Lauser (eds.): Ethnologie der Migration. Bremen 1997; Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin / Ulrich Braukämper (eds.): Ethnologie der Globalisierung. Perspektiven kultureller Verflechtungen.
Being A ‘Kothi’: An Ethnographic Interrogation with A Male Transgender in Kolkata, India
The present paper gives light on a self-disclosed male transgender locally known as 'Kothi' from Kolkata in India. Data have been collected from two brief interviews held with an interval. The researcher, who is also the storyteller and narrative analyst, is responsible for the story structure by locating central themes, sequencing life events, and organizing the time span. The focus includes the self-perceptions of an individual male transgender, his sexual orientation and relationships, and the manner in which he lives his 'other' gendered life in a hegemonic hetero-normative society. While this case is obviously not representative of all transgender of India, it does briefly illustrate the kinds of experiences that confront a male transgender. The narratives also indicate how the expression of a gender variance can sustain and resist in an apparently closed system.
Transgender Women in India: Neocolonialism, Stigmatization and Discrimination
Journal of Homosexuality, 2024
In India, transgender people have historically been called Hijra, Aravanis, and Kothis, and they have struggled since British colonialism against cisgender and heteronormative conventions that label them as outsiders despite their deep pre-colonial cultural origins. This research uses Bronfenbrenner's socio-ecological model t explore the independence and vulnerability of 45 transgender women living in Sambalpur City, Western Odisha, India. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather information from the group through the snowball sampling method. The research findings show that transgender women in India confront multiple forms of prejudice and stigma that diminish their agency and leave them more susceptible to harm. By underscoring the significance of historical, social, and cultural aspects, the socio-ecological model provides a holistic lens through which to comprehend these difficulties. Despite progress in legal recognition, transgender women continue to face significant barriers, necessitating ongoing socio-cultural, legal, and political efforts to reduce stigma and discrimination and enhance the agency, social inclusion, and wellbeing of transgender women.
Discrimination and Violence against Transgender People in India
Blue Ava Ford Publications, 2022
Abstract The aim of this paper is to give a voice for the transgender people who are oppressed and victimized in Indian patriarchal society. Under the Indian heteronormative society, transgender people undergoing trauma, agony, and pain are given much less signification. Their problems such as gender identity, victimization, homelessness, ridiculousness (ill-consideration), untouchability, discrimination, and sexual violence are disregarded in any conventional or mainstream discourses. Thus, the paper attempts to probe certain questions like What kind of problems do transgender people face in the heteronormative family and society? Does society accept their sexuality? How do the members of family and society treat them? Where and how do they live? Are these people rejected even to be members of a family based on their sexuality? What is their profession and what kind of professions they are choosing? Whom do they blame for being transgender, either the parents, the God, or the society? The purpose of this exploration is to probe into the undergoing trauma, misery, and pain in life journeys of transgender people, their constant struggles for legal and societal acceptance of their homosexuality or queer identities, and the freedom of choosing their lifestyles (expressing their gender choices.) The paper aims at studying some of these aspects by drawing attention to third-gender people’s writings. The text chosen for this study is “A. Revathi’s Our Lives, Our Words: Telling Aravani Life stories (2011)” a collection of transgender people’s oral narratives. Keywords: Transgender, Gender Identity, Homelessness, Sexual Violence, Discrimination and Ill-treatment
Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2022
The amendments to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of India in 2019 address non-binary persons’ constitutional rights, recognition of their gender identity, and non-discrimination laws across institutional spaces (for example, family, workplace, education, and healthcare). The Act discusses legal rights in isolation of praxis, structural support and, more importantly, lacks guidelines needed to substantively access rights. Such a disconnection relegates human rights to merely legal changes with limited practice. In this article, we discuss the achievements and failures of the act from the perspective of a transgender community in India, and the impact it has had on their lives from its formulation in 2014. Although non-binary communities are recognized, they face severe abuse and discrimination. We analyse accounts of 15 transgender persons’ lived experiences and challenges they faced in claiming their rights in Kolkata, a metropolis in eastern India. We used the framework of substantive access to rights, that is, the actual ability to practice and access documented rights, to critically discuss our findings across family, work, education, and healthcare spaces, often showing the gaps between achieved legal status, and the practical realities on the ground. We provide several recommendations to bridge these gaps—improving educational equity for non-binary people, including transgender specific training for healthcare providers and, more importantly, increasing the adequate representation of non-binary people in the positions of negotiation. The road to claiming social and economic rights following legal rights for non-binary gender communities cannot be achieved without overcoming their erasure within families and hypervisibility in public spaces.
TRANSGENDER NARRATIVES IN CULTURAL CONTEXT OF INDIA: A CRITICAL PURVIEW
Science, Society And Culture, 2022
The purpose of this chapter is to introspect the scenario and depiction of transgender lives through their mouthpiece in the Indian context that twenty first century has witnessed. This study also attempts to unravel the scope of this cornered literature in future tracing the pathways to the present day literary domain. It has been observed that the mainstream literature in India did not recognise nor provide scope for transgender narratives--the colonial rule had been one of the major reasons. However, with the advent of this century transgender narratives are evolving as a genre enriching queer themes into the mainstream. Therefore, this work attempts to interrogate the cultural stigma attached to transgender fraternity and how the narratives have responded to the same. As texts of references and primary sources, the narratives of A. Revathi (autobiography, 2010), Laxminarayan Tripathi (autobiography, 2015) and Manobi Bandopadhyay (biography, 2017) have been opted. The first question to respond at the inception is ‘who is a transgender exactly?’ Perhaps, an apt interpretation would be--a man born in a woman’s body, or a woman born in a man’s body. The concerned writers here were all born as a woman in a man’s body. They had their own struggles within and with the society at large. The similarity among them is that they belong to the transgender community which is nothing new nor obsolete.