Bullied out of education

Rosy, a Dalit trans woman, is often seen begging at a traffic signal on Purbasha Road in Kolkata. Once, while asking for alms from a man who was seated in a car, she happened to touch the vehicle. The man started hurling abuses at her in response. Such occurrences aren’t rare, Rosy said. “Karor garite ba sorire hat lagle, tara rege giye bole, tor sahos ki kore holo touch korar?” [If we touch someone or their vehicle, they angrily retort, ‘How dare you touch?’], she said.

Rosy has spent her entire life in the Dhapa slum behind Kolkata’s Science City, with her mother, father, and elder brother. Her mother worked as a domestic worker, her father remained unemployed at home, and her brother did manual labour. Sometimes, Rosy wishes she and her family weren’t Dalit. “If I was rich, I could be someone else. I could live in a bigger house, maybe an apartment with air conditioning. Not like this,” she sighed.

In 2016, while in grade 10 at Beleghata Swami Sangha in Kolkata—an all-boys school—Rosy decided to perform the popular Bollywood song ‘Rangeela Rangeela’ during the school’s Saraswati Puja. Midway through the performance, her class teacher abruptly stopped the music and yelled, “Is this a bar, that you are dancing like a freak?” 

This sort of public humiliation and bullying only worsened the more Rosy embraced her femininity. Despite these challenges, she was determined to continue her education and in 2019, she enrolled in Surendranath Evening College in Sealdah. However, within three months, she was cornered by a few members of the college union, who coerced her into a secluded room and harassed her, hurling sexual and transphobic insults. Exhausted from constantly battling caste prejudice and transphobia, Rosy ultimately gave up on college.

Like Rosy, Vaishali too grew up in a slum—in Delhi’s Kidwai Nagar. She also experienced constant bullying at school. Coupled with the tight financial conditions at home, pursuing education seriously never really seemed like an option to her. In 2007, after completing high school at the age of 18, she quit studying. 

According to the 2011 census, the literacy rate among trans persons is 56.1 percent, compared to the national average of 74.04 percent. In Delhi, where Vaishali lives, a survey by the Society for Peoples’ Awareness, Care and Empowerment (SPACE)—a non-profit organisation that works primarily in the domains of education, health, child and youth development, legal and human rights—revealed that 30 percent of trans students faced gender-based bullying, 39 percent reported name-calling and verbal abuse, and 24 percent experienced physical violence in school. 

Violence at home

When Vaishali was in the 9, as part of her school’s annual day program, she danced to the song ‘Ye desh hai veer jawano ka’ [this is a country of brave young men]—a popular Bollywood number with nationalist and masculine undertones. Vaishali enjoyed it because she loved dancing, but the song didn’t really resonate with her. She believed that the songs she really wanted to dance to—feminine ones—would make her the subject of ridicule.

 But when she saw some other students—“people like her”—performing to item numbers like ‘Kaanta laga’ [a thorn has pricked me] and ‘Ishq di galli vich no entry’ [on the paths of love, there is no entry] without shame or fear, she felt a sense of belonging. “I was very happy to see there are other people like me in the world. They were my first trans friends,” Vaishali recalled.

These newfound friendships were like a breath of fresh air for Vaishali. But they were always under scrutiny. Her brother took up the unsolicited responsibility of keeping her under constant surveillance, getting neighbours to keep an eye on her and report back to him. Every time she left the house, her mother and brother would hurl abusive, transphobic slurs at her from the balcony of their house.

“To them, I was a sexual pervert,” Vaishali said. The surveillance soon escalated to physical assault—she was beaten with a whip, a hot iron, and sticks. 

For many trans people, families are the primary sites of violence. But for those from caste-marginalised locations, escaping from familial violence often leaves them with very few avenues to build independent lives.

“They usually aren’t fluent in English, and growing up in socially marginalised and inadequate environments further restricts their life choices,” said Chandini, a Dalit-trans writer, poet, orator, and trans rights activist, as well as the co-founder of Payana—a Bangalore-based organisation dedicated to advocating for the rights and safety of sexual minorities.

Prarthana, a Dalit trans person from Rajasthan, was 15 years old when her father’s growing intolerance with her transness reached a tipping point. He burned all her makeup and threw her out of their home. Abandoned and lost, Prarthana joined a hijra gharana in Delhi, where she found shelter and solace. Her guru [leader] introduced her to begging.

In India, poverty and caste are inextricably intertwined. According to the United Nations’ Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021, five out of six multidimensionally poor people in India are from Scheduled Castes (Dalits), Scheduled Tribes (Adivasis), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Dalit trans people are doubly marginalised because they face discrimination both within and outside their communities.

Bittersweet reality of gharana life

Abandoned by her natal family, the Hijra gharana saved Prarthana’s life. She was 16 when she began to make her living through begging or challa mangna, as it is known among Hijras. 

When she boarded a bus to beg for the first time, Prarthana was nervous and shy. Now, seven years on, her routine is precise and methodical. She earns around 1,000 rupees per day. She is saving money so that one day, she can move away from begging and shift to the career she aspires to—modelling and dancing. 

Most trans persons who engage in begging are associated with a Hijra gharana. While the Hijra community is subjected to marginalisation and violence by society at large, discrimination on the basis of caste exists within the community as well, often in subtle and insidious ways. 

In a recent report authored by Pushpesh Kumar and Sayantan Datta titled Caste Concerns in Transgender Communities in India: Contesting Cohesiveness, Broadening Horizon(s), Smile talked about how  caste within the Hijra community is frequently invisibilised because “everyone’s names are changed.” 

Ina Goel, a scholar and founder of The Hijra Project, an online advocacy portal for the trans persons, identifies a further complexity within the renunciation of their given names by Hijra persons. Hijra persons from marginalised castes tend to discard their last names, which are often caste markers, while dominant caste Hijra persons tend to retain their last names.

Smile believes that the hierarchy within Hijra gharanas operates based on perceptions of caste and its visible manifestations. “The treatment you receive and the tasks assigned to you don’t just depend on your skills but also on your physical appearance—whether you’re fair-skinned or dusky, and how feminine you present yourself,” she explained. Members of the gharana who are fair-skinned and deemed conventionally attractive are more likely to be able to choose badhai, a performance done by Hijra persons that is considered auspicious and are capable of bestowing blessings, while the others end up doing sex work or begging. While it is not a hard and fast rule, multiple studies have shown that skin colour often correlates to caste location, with fairer skin being more common among dominant castes.

Fed up with ongoing conflicts about abrupt requests at odd hours, and insisting on keeping a large share of her earnings by her dominant caste guru, Rosy joined a new gharana under a different guru. “Everyone has to start with begging initially,” she said, but she hopes to leave it behind next year and move on to performing badhai.

Prarthana also reached a tipping point in her hijra gharana with ongoing disputes with people in the neighbourhood, landlords, police, and unequal distribution of labour. So she left, rented a room in Faridabad, and now begs independently in Delhi buses. She hopes for a day when she won’t need to beg anymore. “Ye kaam nahi, majburi hai [This is not work, it’s a compulsion],” she said. 

This is a sentiment echoed by Smile. “I will never say manual scavenging is work, and I’m proud of it. I will never say begging is work, and I’m proud of it too.” Smile asserted.

Denied other opportunities

After she left school, Vaishali didn’t want to join a gharana or beg for a living. She initially earned a living as a dancer, donning the role of female deities in jhanki performances. A few years later, she managed to secure a “respectable” job as a bus conductor with the Delhi Transport Corporation. But this job proved short-lived. 

One day in 2012, Vaishali was at the bus depot late at night, when she was cornered by a group of men and sexually assaulted. She felt traumatised by the experience and never returned to her job.

A study commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission in 2018 revealed that approximately 92 percent of transgender individuals in India are denied opportunities to engage in economic activities. While anecdotal evidence of violence against trans persons is widespread, official data fails to accurately capture this epidemic.

Ultimately, Vaishali was forced to turn to sex work and begging. She rented a small house in Faridabad where she carried out sex work from 7 PM to 11 PM. Once she was done there, she would go to the nearby Faridabad toll plaza to beg from cars and trucks that pass by. 

“Begging isn’t a lazy job,” said Smile as she recalls her days of begging in Chennai, when she couldn’t even take weekends off. “You have to walk the whole day, whether on trains or streets, especially in such hot Indian weather.” Smile elaborates on the labour involved in negotiating with people, urging them to give perhaps 5 rupees instead of 2, 10 instead of 5, or 30 instead of 10, so that one can pay rent, eat, survive. “The speaking, arguing, singing, clapping—it’s all hard work and a performance,” said Smile. 

Since she wasn’t part of a gharana, the local Hijra community made it difficult for Vaishali to beg at the toll plaza. Eventually, she was forced to take up begging in a place she had hoped never to return—Delhi buses.

Now 37 and a parent of three children, Vaishali stopped begging two years ago and currently works at the Naz Foundation, an NGO that works on HIV and sexual health issues. She occasionally still engages in sex work. Her earnings have allowed her to enrol her son in a Kendriya Vidyalaya. She is deeply proud of everything she has done to support herself and her family.

Slow tides of change

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2020 mandates that every state should have a Transgender Welfare Board that is tasked with protecting the rights and interests of the community. They currently exist only in 12 states and union territories. Rudrani Chhetri, founder of Mitr Trust, a trans rights NGO, highlighted an irony about these boards: “The [NALSAR] judgment [that led to the Act] came out from the capital city, yet there’s no board in Delhi.” 

West Bengal had set up a Transgender Development Board as far back as 2015, much before the legal mandate was created. Yet, like most welfare measures aimed at the community, it remained largely symbolic. Kolika, who served as a member of the board between 2020 and 2023, told me, “During my tenure on the board, there was no discussion about begging, no schemes, no support, nothing.”

In 2022, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment launched an umbrella scheme called  SMILE - Support for Marginalized Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise which included initiatives specifically aimed at rehabilitating trans persons involved in begging. As part of the scheme, 12 shelter homes or Garima Greh, were opened across the country to support destitute and abandoned trans persons with basic living amenities and skill development. However, CNN recently reported that these shelters are barely functional because they are yet to receive the millions of rupees that the government had pledged towards their operations.

Despite patchy support from the government, Rudrani, who is involved in the running of a Garima Greh in Delhi, believes that many young trans people now prefer not to be part of hijra gharanas or traditional professions like kajra, challa mangna, or badhai, a choice that was absent years ago.

Pushpesh Kumar and Sayantan Datta note in their recent report that caste concerns have increasingly become part of the queer-trans discourse and movement over the last decade. This shift has come about largely due to trans activists like Smile who assert that trans liberation—or any liberation for that matter—is not possible without the annihilation of caste.

Smile believes that the only way to break the association of trans people with begging is through education and through marginalised-caste trans people occupying more leadership spaces. But she acknowledges that we are still far away from that utopia, and that begging will likely remain a source of livelihood for many trans people for the foreseeable future.

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