#dnaEdit: Time to change

The irony is difficult to miss. At a time the Indian State and the judiciary are recriminalising homosexuality and sexual choice, transgendered people are entering public life. Recently, Raigarh elected its first transgender, Madhu Naresh Kinnar, as mayor. The 35-year-old independent candidate, bagging 33,168 votes, defeated the BJP’s Mahavir Guru by 4,537 votes. Not so long back, Madhu used to sing in Howrah-Mumbai trains to earn a living.
 Madhya Pradesh has played a leading role in breaking social barriers and empowering trangendered people. The state elected its first transgendered legislator, Shabnam Mausi, in 1998. The following year, Kani, then in united Madhya Pradesh, now in Chhattisgarh, elected its first transgendered person Kamla Jaan as mayor. In Uttar Pradesh, Asha Devi, another transgendered person, was elected mayor from the Gorakhpur municipal corporation. It’s of course another matter that the courts later invalidated the elections of both Kamla Jaan and Asha Devi on the grounds that the posts were reserved for women.

It’s interesting to note that the successful transgendered candidates whether in Madhya Pradesh or in Uttar Pradesh were independents and not fielded by political parties. Is the political class then lagging the changing perceptions of the times? That people —then, as now — were ready to elect transgendered candidates regardless of their low social and economic status would appear to corroborate such an assessment.
 India has approximately 4,90,000 transgendered people. Denied social legitimacy and dignity, they often earn a living as sex workers, also resorting to begging and extortions. Majority of transgendered people have little access to education and no socially acceptable avenues for earning money. 

The election of a Dalit transgendered person as Raigarh mayor comes on the back of several elections and significant legal judgments that indicate a larger process — though tentative — of mainstreaming transgendered people. That a beginning in this direction has been made is indeed welcome. In September this year, Lotus News, a Coimbatore based new channel, hired 31-year-old Padmini Prakash, a transgendered person, as one of its prime time news anchors.  According to reports, in less than two months, Padmini became one of the most popular anchors of the channel.

Wind further back to 2009 when the Election Commission allowed transgendered people to choose their gender as “other” on ballot forms. In April this year, the Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment, recognised transgenders as a legal third gender. Before the ruling, the identification documents made a binary classification — male and female. The Supreme Court’s April judgment directed central and state governments to ensure separate toilets and address problems like shame, fear and social stigma that transgendered people experience in their daily life.

The Supreme Court ruling, delivered by a two-judge bench, said “Recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue.” “Transgenders are also citizens of India. The spirit of the constitution is to provide equal opportunity to every citizen to grow and attain their potential, irrespective of caste, religion or gender,” the court said. India’s legal recognition of transgendered people came after neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal had already allowed citizens the right to identify themselves as a third gender in official documents. Ironically, the same Supreme Court that delivered such a progressive judgment on transgenders, reinstated the ban on gay sex in December 2013. This, after the Delhi court in 2009 had decriminalised homosexual acts.
The Raigarh mayor’s election is yet again a reminder to review such regressive laws that deny people human dignity and the right to choose.