Third Gender tag still a distant dream for Mumbai’s transgenders
India is a country known for being a multicultural nation and also for its diversity. It has nearly 1.2 million population with people from all races, castes and communities. Stating that this huge populace has been too much “conservative” about sexual orientations does not fall into the realm of fiction. Often Indians do not prefer speaking openly about sex and sexual orientations. The ones who do, do not count themselves either as wholly females or males, and are mostly seen with a different lens — that can be described with one word “discrimination”.
These people identify themselves as eunuchs, transgenders or the hijras. They are ubiquitous in India, standing out among crowds throughout the length and breadth of the country. Their fortunes are determined to a large extent by their looks. Often the notion is “Hijras are ‘diabolic creatures’, a source of eternal disgust and perennial fear”. The treatment meted out to members of the hijra community is evident from the manner in which the word ‘hijra’ is used in the day-to-day conversations of people that is to abuse people. Surprisingly, even some of the dictionaries in Hindi define hijra in derogatory terms. It would suffice to say that this community which has roughly 19 lakh members is most stigmatised, socially marginalised and economically impoverished.
Hijras have been fighting a battle from roads to courts, since several decades to get themselves identified as the Third Gender. Their earnest efforts brought fruitful results with the Supreme Court declaring them as the “Third Gender” in April 2014. The Supreme Court had in a detailed judgement observed, “Our society often ridicules and abuses the Transgender community and in public places like railway stations, bus stands, schools, workplaces, malls, theatres, hospitals, they are sidelined and treated as untouchables, forgetting the fact that the moral failure lies in the society’s unwillingness to contain or embrace different gender identities and expressions, a mindset which we have to change.”
The apex court had issued a series of directions to the Union as well as the State governments to provide a friendly atmosphere so that they can be treated in society on a par with men and women.
Post this judgement, the Union government came up with a bill titled — The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016. This Bill was tabled before the Lok Sabha in August last year but it could not be passed as it had certain infirmities. An experts committee under the Ministry of Social Empowerment was constituted to study the entire issue and make appropriate recommendations.
The Committee recently tabled its report before the Lok Sabha including a series of recommendations that it claims would help in enhancing the living conditions of hijras.
In its report, the committee has held that the 2016 bill is silent on granting reservations to hijras under the category of socially and educationally backward classes of citizens. The committee has also recommended for a separate HIV surveillance centres since hijras face several sexual health issues. According to the committee, these centres must be operated by the Union and the State Governments.
The report states, “The Bill does not refer to important civil rights like marriage and divorce, adoption, etc, which are critical to transgender persons’ lives and reality, wherein many are engaged in marriage-like relations, without any legal recognition from the State. The bill must recognize transgender persons’ right to marriage, partnership, divorce and adoption, as governed by their personal laws or other relevant legislation.”
The report also bats for providing amenities to the hijras. It states, “There should be a provision for separate public toilets. Also, there should be counselling services provided to the hijras to cope up with trauma and violence on the model of Rape and Crisis Intervention Centres. There must be a career guidance and online placement support system for this community.”
The committee has come up with a suggestion that stern action should be taken against those who abort intersex foetuses at the neonatal stage itself. The report says, “A provision providing penal action against abortions of intersex foetuses and forced surgical assignment of sex of intersex infants should be there in the bill. There must be a provision of separate frisking zones of hijras at public places.”
Interestingly, the report also cites the risk of hijras being criminalised under Section 377 (unnatural sex). The committee has sought rights of this community to partnership and marriage.
While speaking with the Free Press Journal about the recommendations, Koninika Roy, the advocacy manager at the Humsafar Trust, said, “I think the government has done an abysmal job of implementing the Supreme Court judgment and progress on actualisation of these directions of the apex court has been extremely slow. This bill is one more attempt at implementation but it goes so far off from what was prescribed in the judgment that it is shocking. We the community feel that the bill must follow the guidelines provided by the standing committee although there are a few clauses which are still contradictory to the judgment.”