India: Which Is the Real Menace?

[Guest guest]

Which is the real menace?

People whose bodies and sexualities put them beyond the pale of social norms are

without rights in the eyes of Indian police

Dipika Nath

guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008 08.00 GMT

Under rightwing and leftwing governments alike, India has prided itself on its

status as the world's largest democracy. Civic freedoms, an independent

judiciary, and basic political rights for citizens are part of that promise. But

in India and far too many other democracies, rights that are arguably even more

basic - to be who you are, to live freely in your body, even to call yourself a

citizen if society despises you - are a different matter.

Early on October 20, Bangalore police arrested

<http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/10/28/india20085.htm> 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.

But on October 20, the five hijras, who were apparently begging but not

soliciting sex, were charged with " extortion " - a crime which, unlike begging,

allowed the police to hold them without bail.

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

<http://sangama.org> , 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.

In conversations with Human Rights Watch, one of the activists said that this

points towards the distinct class prejudice at work in such instances of abuse.

" The police obviously thought that we were the 'leaders' of the organisation, so

they didn't charge us whereas they thought the others were just workers and they

could treat them worse. "

Meanwhile, police attacked the protesters outside the station, charging them

with batons. They rounded up 31 of them, beat them, threw them into a police

van, and drove them away. They were held without food or water for almost 18

hours. At the height of the police violence, 60 police personnel stood guard

over the 31 activists.

Eventually, the hijras and the human rights defenders were freed, though many

still face charges that include " unlawful assembly " and " rioting. " 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.

Casting off that regressive colonial burden is crucial. But the events in

Bangalore - the splashy city that is the showcase of India's capitalist

modernisation - reveal other burdens, some modified from the colonial era, that

still weigh on the country.

One is the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act of 1956, passed following

independent India's ratification of a 1950 international convention, which can

be traced back to the colonial-era Contagious Diseases Act. The 1956 law gives

police wide leeway to arrest and abuse sex workers, and it has been used against

HIV outreach workers and others who behave in ways authorities simply do not

like. Contemporary anti-begging laws are a throwback on colonial " vagrancy "

laws, which gave colonial officials power to control the " natives " . Now they

serve to keep an underclass in subjection and fear.

More crucially, though, the divisions of poverty still weigh on the country. And

poverty and the effects of prejudice reinforce and intensify each other. People

who already face discrimination and hatred, including many sexual minorities,

remain shut out from the promise of prosperity from the establishment of call

centres and high-tech firms in Bangalore. What prosperity has resulted has not

trickled down to the lower classes among the despised and disenfranchised.

The Bangalore violence is a ringing challenge to Indian authorities, a reminder

that democratic institutions are no cause for self-congratulation if their doors

are closed to many who need them. " Stop us if you can, " the police told the

human rights defenders they arrested and abused. India's democracy must address

all the intersecting forms of economic, political, and prejudicial exclusion

that lead to such a slap in its face-otherwise the violence will not stop.

____________

Dipika Nath has a doctoral degree in feminist studies and works as a researcher

in the LGBT rights programme at Human Rights Watch.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/07/india-humanrights

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/07/india-humanrights?commentpa\

ge=1>

___________________________________

Long

Director, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program

Human Rights Watch

350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor

New York, NY 10118 USA

tel. +1 (212) 216 1297

email: longs@...