Winter set in this time with the air of the Capital as the first to represent the metaphorical filth in the air of the country quite literally, as it descended and settled down as a stubborn smog and made every breath a necessary poison of sorts. The dry chill of December has begin to set in finally, cutting straight to the bone like the palpable realization on the streets that these are a different kind of times— the political climate of the country is now fully dominated by a sense of majoritarian machoism, or in terms more precise, we are seeing a State-sanctioned upsurge of diffused enforcement of what are essentially Brahmanical social codes and impulses along with the aggressive political campaign to delegitimize, undermine and assault alternate power centres, institutional checks and civic resistance.

There can be many failures of the government lined up to examine, but the point being made in this essay is primarily about the threat to the rights of sexual minorities posed by an upcoming legislation, so it will suffice to understand the fact that the political consolidation of the BJP/RSS depends upon the polarization into ‘us’ and ‘others’, and in all situations where their moves are opposed they are seen to fall back upon this formula- ‘anti-national’, ‘jihadi’, ‘pro-Pakistan’, ‘pro-black money’ are just some weapons in the arsenal of the state’s vocabulary, bolstered as they are by an ever-eager and amplifying offline and online media.

The ‘other’ is easy to oppress when it is isolated against the ‘us’, and the most visible markers, such as a skull cap, or skin colour, or the language you hear them speak in, become the axis of discrimination. Sexual orientation and its expression is also an important aspect of identity and adversities based upon it are common worldwide, including India. The marginalization, destitution and alienation of the transgender community, as well as those belonging to non-heterosexual identities, is a well-observed fact that is rooted in the pervasive social stigma against these communities. The transgender body is often unjustly associated with notions of disgust, and the lack of possibilities for integration into mainstream society (divided though it is into hierarchies of caste) have historically led to their ghettoization and involvement in begging and petty crime. There is a need to recognize their inherited disadvantages in the negotiations with a heteronormative society, additionally fixated on the notions of inherent pollutions and purity, and the state must fulfil its obligations of creating a legislative framework for the protection of their rights.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016, has been met with outrage and resistance by the transgender community. On 19 November 2017, the government rejected all  the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on this Bill, and will be tabling an earlier, unamended version in the Parliament. Sampoorna Working Group, which describes itself as a group by and for trans and intersex Indians, has written a detailed letter to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment contesting its various provisions in detail. In a letter to Economic and Political Weekly (Vol LII No 48) the group has presented its opposition in concise points, writing that “Governments are constituted as representatives of their people, especially of their minority citizens. The state has a special obligation towards those communities that have been disenfranchised historically and continue to be vulnerable till date. Various sections of our communities worked with the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment over many months, culminating with the dispositions held till the end of 2016. Instead of taking into account our submissions, our very life stories and conditions, and committing to us that an environment for correcting the historical injustices will be ensured, this government has acted undemocratically, making a mockery of our communities, our efforts at collaboration, as well as the very standing committee they appointed”

[Daneesh Sheikh has written in detail of the failures of the bill for The Wire, here ]

The Bill is contested because it defines transsexuals regressively, in variance with the definitions adopted by international bodies and Indian experts. The other points of opposition are that it snatches the individual’s right to self-determination, contradictory to the landmark NALSA v Union of India judgement by the Supreme Court in 2015 which affirmed the community’s right to self-identify without physical screening. At present a trans individual can declare the gender of choice on the basis of an affidavit. The Bill replaces this with a certificate of identity to be obtained from the District Magistrate, who acts upon the ‘recommendations’ of a screening committee consisting of a medical officer, a psychiatrist/psychologist, district welfare officer and a transsexual person. The unnecessary bureaucratic processes imposed to define one’s very sense of identity is a reinforcement of society’s contempt upon the community and flies in the face of their right to dignity. At the ground level this will translate into favoritism, harassment and humiliation for an already vulnerable community and it is not keeping in spirit with a polity that calls itself ‘democratic’. The editorial ‘Forced to Live on the Margins’ by EPW (Vol LII No 48) states that “For long the transgender community has demanded that the definition of family should be expanded to include the Hijra or Aravani community elders, who adopt young transgender children and ensure that they are not put at risk, and that the Hijra family system is not criminalized. Similarly, the bill is silent in areas of health, affirmative action, and decriminalizing activities that marginalized trans communities are compelled to undertake to eke out a living”. At the end, the editorial concludes that an apathetic and half-hearted Bill such as that reflects not just the government’s shameful contempt but is also a reflection upon the society that put it in power.

These remarks must not be taken as limited to just the issues of a group of sexual minorities. While it is most important to center the voices of those affected and channelize them unfiltered through vested interests, but a broader understanding of how the quest for inclusion of one’s identity into the national mainstream on its own terms is an assertion of democracy itself is important if we are to express our ‘solidarity’ with the resistance to such a Bill. These are times in which the state as envisioned in the Constitution is abdicating its duties and is channelizing its immense resources for the reworking of the Indian past and its self-perception in the present. The blatant disregard for the vulnerable trans community and the contemptuous put-down of its efforts to find an equal place in society through the sanctity of Parliament mirrors the BJP-led government’s approach to power and displays yet again its disregard for the consultative power-sharing that is the soul of any democracy. As we live through the times when the ghastly and sick murder of a Muslim labourer Mohammad Afrazul is celebrated in the name of ‘love jihad’ and there are possibilities of riots in his favour it has become clear that the impulses and tendencies to exclude, marginalize, alienate and physically destroy, which always throbbed under the surface of Indian life and burst out periodically, has now official sanction to come out in the open. Nothing is more shameful than foreign media picking up on the fact that there have been legitimate donations to a bank account set up to support the criminal Shambhu Lal Begar, apparently by exulting ‘Hindu brothers’. The string of lynchings of Muslims has bred no introspection or lasting legal remedies but only sicker and sicker justifications. No protest against the government has been given even a token legitimacy, while on the other hand the forceful entry of Adhaar into all interactions with the state is appearing like the dawn of a dystopian surveillance state which can deny something as basic as food citing the absence of a mere card, which also has essential biometric details in it. It is in this upcoming dystopian-fascist state where the body becomes a site of control, a site of assertion of the dominant sections on the weaker, of patriarchy on the women, of the state over students, of heteronormativity over gender fluidity. The body has been made an object of hatred- it only has to be black skinned or has to have a skull cap on its head or slightly smaller eyes or perhaps the fair features which mark them from a particular State in India- that legitimizes its destruction, its lynching, its stabbing, its hanging, its being made into “half female, half male” and “neither male, nor female”.

The state on one hand seems obsessed with correcting fictitious ‘wrongs’ against particular communities- notice the unwarranted ruckus for Padmavati– it seems oblivious on the other hand to offer genuine reparations to those who have been wronged by society. Time and again, it is the Hindu, upper-caste, upper-class male which has become the object of the Brahmanical Indian state’s priorities, and all its relationships with other citizens are defined through his lens. More so with the current dispensation open about its ‘Hindu nationalist’ leanings. It remains to citizens aware and conscious of a Constitutional polity under gradual but sustained threat to express their rejection and resistance to such growing trends which threaten to reverse the little progress made through history as a united nation.

There is a protest against the Bill at Parliament Street on 17 December, 2017 at 9am to 11am

 

 

 

 

 

 

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