Trans community reaches out to wider society, seeks more acceptance

Nagpur: On Wednesday afternoon, a bunch of people decked in their best attires was celebrating Tulsi vivah. The uniqueness of this celebration was that a majority of the members of the host family were Muslims and all of them transgenders. As per the traditions of Hijra clan, they celebrate many other Hindu festivals.
Across the city, in North Nagpur’s Pachpaoli, another cohort of Hijra community often takes up the civic causes of the area with the officials.This group also takes up issues like violence against women and awareness about the various rights of citizens. Gone are the days when the transgender or Hijra communities would live on the margins of society. The new mantra of the community is to become socially acceptable by becoming inclusive. Many of the new generation are also looking beyond their traditional means of sustenance of asking for ‘mangti’, money they get by blessing new-borns and newlyweds and during other auspicious occasions.
“The ‘mangti’ system was put in place to provide Hijras a means of livelihood ages ago. Today, the money collected by us is not used only for our sustenance. On occasions like Tulsi vivah, we organise mahaprasada and yagya that the children in the Mariyam Nagar slums look forward to,” said Shehnaz Shah, guru of the transgender community of Mariyam Nagar. She stressed the rewards earned through this good deed are equally shared by the people who enabled them to do them.
Shah feels happy that these days parents would rather put their children through medical treatment than give them up to Hijras. “Most of us had to give up studies in middle school but these kids get to go to college,” she said.
At Pachpaoli, the group’s guru Uttam Baba Senapati has started training members of her clan in computer programmes like Tally and those that can help get jobs like in DTP centres. One of their members is known to support herself by making papads, another by making incense sticks. “It may have been a social system put in place with a certain end in mind but in the modern world, ‘mangti’ seems like begging. I would be happier if we would get similar employment opportunities as others. Till the society accepts us to that extent, we can work towards earning our own living too,” said Senapati.
Most people know about the Supreme Court judgment recognizing the third gender, said transgender activist Vidya Kamble. “The legal approval has also increased the social acceptance to some level. The provisions of the judgment, however, are still on paper with no official document having a third gender option. There are also people who treat us as untouchables even today,” she said.