Which is the real menace? Hijras or Police
People whose bodies and sexualities put them beyond the pale of social norms are without rights in the eyes of Indian policeComments
Early on October 20, Bangalore police arrested five hijras – a traditional cultural identity for working-class transgender people who, born as men, identify as women. Such arrests are sadly routine. Throughout India, many hijras cannot get identity papers: the state will not let them change their legal sex and denies them IDs if their appearance does not match their birth gender. As a result, they often cannot work, go to school, find jobs, vote, or even move around freely. Social prejudice against "men" or "women" who are not "masculine" or "feminine" enough makes them ready victims of violence.
Denied viable opportunities for work, hijras are forced to resort to begging or demanding goodwill funds during marriage or birth celebrations. That way of life has been part of several regional Indian cultures, where blessings of a hijra were considered a good omen. But as these traditions erode, many hijras have had to survive as street beggars or sex workers. In both cases, police slap them with fines, jail them, sometimes physically or sexually abuse them.
In India's vibrant civil society, a growing number of NGOs support the sexually – as well as politically and economically – disenfranchised. A crisis intervention team from the Bangalore-based organisation Sangama, which works to protect and advance the rights of sexual minorities, arrived at the police station to help. The group is trained to assist hijras in fending off barrages of minor charges. But this time, the police jailed the five members of the crisis intervention team as well, beating and sexually abusing some of them.
The situation escalated after about 150 activists from a wide range of social movements – lesbian and gay, hijras, feminists, trade union leaders, Dalit activists – gathered outside the station for a peaceful protest. The police invited six of them into the station, ostensibly for a dialogue, then arrested them. Two women among them were sexually assaulted, one of them kicked and beaten by a police inspector when she demanded he not touch her breasts. However, none of the six were charged.
The press reported – and police confirmed to the activists they arrested – that this was the start of a drive by local authorities to contain what they called the "eunuch menace", citing public complaints against hijras as justification. A police official told one jailed activist who demanded an end to the violence and the human rights abuses: "Yes, this is human rights violations, so what? Stop us if you can."
The poor and disempowered are no "menace". But prejudice is. Indian democracy is still riven, and endangered, by deep divisions. These shocking arrests show how people whose bodies and sexualities put them beyond the pale of social norms are effectively without rights in the eyes of the police.
The violence also shows, though, how anyone who defends sexual rights can also become a target of abuse, arrest, and, in some cases, sexual violence.
The High Court in Delhi is in the last stages of deciding a challenge to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This law, a British colonial invention, criminalises "carnal intercourse against the order of nature". Human rights activists want it reinterpreted to end the criminalisation of adult, consensual homosexual conduct.
The Guardian
