By Shriya Tandon
“See, communities are communities,” says Rudrani when asked about why casteism is so openly practiced even within the Kinnar community. “No matter if you’re the most deprived one or if you’re facing the most stigma and discrimination; you are still part of a community and you will have similar rules,” is what the transgender actor, model, activist and entrepreneur had to say. There has for long been an assumption that since the Hijras form an ostracized class in themselves who have to constantly fight battles against the societal norms and standards, they would be casteless, among other things. The reality, however, is far from this ideal image. Turns out, our socialization and conditioning have triumphed in prioritizing discrimination over unification. Even among a class of people who understand what being preyed upon and belittled on a regular basis must feel like, the Hijra community has not shied away from preserving this practice among themselves.
Rudrani further said that casteism is not something we started believing in on our own, it is just that we are conditioned to think and believe in a certain way. She holds that such a socialization process is a sort of an ingredient to the building up of communities. There is a tendency within communities to form a binary on the basis of almost everything to establish the superiority of one class over the other. The gender binary endeavours to make us believe that it is acceptable for one class to patronize the other. Similarly, the main purpose of the caste system is to establish an unquestionable claim that one class of people is superior to the other; and just because one chooses to identify as a transgender, why would they want to lose out on an opportunity to have an upper hand in setting the power dynamic straight? Often the discrimination, stigma and hatred that the lower caste-lower class people face in the Hijra community cause them to convert to other religions in order to be able to avoid the ever-present casteism in Hinduism.
It is pertinent to mention that one of the biggest reasons why practicing caste-based customs should be the last of the Kinnar community’s concern is because they are already burdened with so many evils to fight against! Aside from the impossibly blatant ignorance that people often show towards the existence of a third gender, there are various forms of violence, harassments and discrimination targeted directly at them, privately as well as publically, for choosing to identify as they do. The following lines are from a recent article in The Diplomat, “A study by Humsafar Trust titled, “Situation and Needs Assessment of Transgender People in Three Major Cities in India,” carried out in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, between June 2017 and March 2018, found that around 59 percent of respondents in the transgender community had experienced violence: 57 percent in Delhi, 55 percent in Mumbai, and 70 percent in Bangalore. Across these three cities, ones’ own family and relatives were often perpetrators (22 percent)…”
In a day and time when the society has turned their backs on the third gender, the most reasonable thing to do would be to band together rather than to perpetuate a baseless and meaningless practice of discrimination associated with dogmas of centuries ago. However, when there is a widely embraced and treasured hierarchical division that cuts across bodies and genders, we can be sure that deep bigotry will always be successful in being despotic for our fellow people. While certain sections unite against the injustice targeted at their in-group, how does the society manage to ensure that this unity is not unconditional? There are people at this frightening juncture where they have left their family and sense of safety at bay only to able to align with their true self, but at what cost? This cost is not disregardable, neither for the victim nor the perpetrator. While the victim is put through the torturous oppression of caste for no fault of their own, the perpetrator doesn’t ever get to become conscious of the severity of indoctrination they have been through in order to continue to hold fast to the idea of casteism. Therefore, the latter never truly comes to terms with the real essence of freedom since they have continued to be a slave to the self-serving norms of society.
