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Madhu Kinnar's victory is no-win for transgender rights

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Vikram Johri
Vikram JohriJan 06, 2015 | 18:31

Madhu Kinnar's victory is no-win for transgender rights

The media went to town after Madhu Kinnar, a Dalit transgender, was elected mayor in Chattisgarh's Raigarh on Sunday. This is not the first time a transgender has reached a position of power in India. Shabnam Mausi was the first transgender to hold public office - she was a member of the MP Assembly from 1998 to 2003.

At first glance, the news is indeed worth celebrating: the latest in what has been a remarkable year for transgender rights. In April 2014, the Supreme Court recognised them as the third gender, and concomitantly, granted them benefits in education and employment.

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But the truth, as always, is not nearly as neat. To be sure, Indian society reserves a beneficent attitude towards transgenders. They - those of the hijra community in particular - are welcomed in homes at times of celebration and their blessings are considered auspicious.

Yet, transgenders face discrimination in all walks of life. One spots them mostly at traffic junctions, begging, placing their hand on the heads of those who part with change. Even this idea that they are special and therefore, command respect, is little more than an expression of otherness that pushes the transgender beyond the pale of normal society. They are not one of us, we say sotto voce, and pity them for what they cannot have - a family, social recognition, and so on. We refuse to contend that they are members of the same society that we inhabit with such a sense of acquisition. We the heteronormative (I mean the general "we"; I am gay) conveniently shun to the boundaries anyone who is not one of us.

That said, any debate about human rights begins with acknowledgement of such nascent discrimination and it is the legal and political ramifications of the issue that should interest us. Here too, there is much to desire. Cases of police notoriety against transgenders, including sexual assault, routinely make the news. In November last year, the Bangalore police sent 167 hijras to a rehabilitation centre under a 1975 anti-begging law. The irony of arresting members of a community whose traditional sources of income - receiving alms at births and marriages - are steadily drying up, was lost on the police.

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As for the Supreme Court verdict of April 2014, one feels distinctly ambivalent about the process of law in this country. Here was highest judicial body of the land finally granting the transgender their due, even as the same court had, only a few months ago, denied the same rights to gays and lesbians. In its December 2013 verdict, the Court had deemed us a "minuscule minority" and put the ball in the government's court by asking it to consider the possibilities surrounding Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.

As a member of the LGBT community, I am troubled by how fate plays a role in how the state views me. I am gay but I am a middle class gay man, and therefore, can choose to live "normally" - whatever that term means - without the state breathing down my neck. Yet, I have no locus standi in the eyes of the law. So far, so perplexing. But imagine I were born a transgender into a poor family. I might have ended up in a hijra commune, eking a living one day to the next. But since April, I would have at least had legal recognition. My poverty, the idea that I had been disowned by my biological family should ostensibly stop mattering because the court, in its wisdom, had granted me legality!

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There is also the truth that we live in a society where even discriminations must battle an inherent hierarchy. I don't suffer; the law does not affect me. I pooh pooh Section 377 every time I am with a man. I belong to a progressive family whose only worry about my gayness is the higher risk of HIV among gay men.

But Madhu Kinnar is not so lucky. As a poor Dalit, she may have battled a lifetime of hardships. So much so that maybe it is impossible even for her to isolate one kind of discrimination from another. I have a feeling she was elected to the rather ceremonial post of mayor for reasons other than her sexuality. Politics in India is an abstruse cocktail of caste, class and regional impulses, and my worry is that Madhu may have simply benefited from the lack of a sturdy alternative.

Where is Shabnam Mausi today? If her MLA status was as transformative as we were led to believe, how come we have no clue what happened to her political career? I wish Madhu all the best but I would be careful in calling her victory one for transgender rights.

Last updated: January 06, 2015 | 18:31
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