Afroza Begum, 28, a transgender woman, says her family accepts her gender identification on the condition that she never go out in public dressed as a woman.
SRINAGAR, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR – Five years ago, Salma Jan’s parents locked her in her room for two days as they and her siblings celebrated her cousin’s wedding. They told relatives Jan couldn’t attend because she was away on a trip.
When the family came home, laughing and worn out from the family festivities, Jan’s parents unlocked the door to her room, gave her a 500-rupee ($8) note and sent her to the store for vegetables and milk.
Jan took the money, headed out the door and never returned.
Born the eldest son in a family of six, Jan never regrets her sudden and permanent departure. Staying would have meant subjecting herself to endless criticism.
“My father would always shout at me and say, ‘Can’t you get a more boyish hairstyle instead of growing your hair?’” she recalls. “He would yell at me, saying: ‘Do you want to be a woman? Don’t you ever dream about it or you’ll be kicked out of the house.’”
Jan, 35, and her parents never frankly discussed her desire to change her sexual identity. They could not accept the very possibility.
“My transgender experience is full of pain,” Jan says, her eyes wet with tears as she fiddles with her faded gray gown.
Jan’s torment was not limited to rejection. About a month before she ran away, Jan was sexually assaulted by a family acquaintance.
“I was molested for two days,” she recalls, seated on a thin sheet on the floor of the small, dark, one-room apartment she shares with another transgender woman in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir.
“I returned home weeping and explained the incident to my family," Jan says. "But they didn’t believe me and instead blamed me for what happened.”
Convinced that no one else would believe her – and not wanting her family shamed by the public knowledge of such an ugly crime – Jan declined to report the assault to police.
“I became a victim of exploitation just because I was a transgender,” she says. “My family was never supportive of me.”
Jan now earns a meager income as a matchmaker – a traditional profession for transgender women, along with singing and dancing, in the Kashmir Valley and across India. Transgender women face discrimination in every other field.
Jan earns barely enough to live on. Her share of the rent consumes about half of her 1,000-rupee ($16) monthly income.
“Even a beggar earns more than us,” she says.
Transgender women face intense discrimination in the Kashmir Valley, a predominantly Muslim region whose people once celebrated what these women now call “the third gender.” Rejected by their families and unrecognized as a distinct gender class, these women are just beginning to demand that society accept and honor them. Transgender women are asking the government to help them achieve financial independence, and they are calling on Muslim leaders to foster the bedrock Islamic virtues of tolerance and acceptance.
As far back as the 16th century, transgender women enjoyed a special respect in Jammu and Kashmir state, says Bashir Ahmad Dabla, a sociology professor at the University of Kashmir.
During the Mughal dynasty – two centuries of Muslim Turkic-Mongol rule over large parts of the Indian subcontinent – Kashmiris honored transgender women.
“They were considered caretakers, trusted messengers and skilled entertainers during the Mughal period,” Dabla says. “But today they have to face discrimination.”
Today, most Kashmiris consider any form of gender reassignment unacceptable, he says.
Families reject transgender women for fear of being shunned by society, and society scorns them because their families have turned them away. Regardless of how transgender women identify themselves, the Indian government – and its Kashmiri administrators – record their sex as the one they had at birth.
“Society has not accepted their existence,” Dabla says.
India legitimized opposition to same-sex relations in December 2013, when the Supreme Court upheld a colonial-era law that criminalizes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” according to the Indian penal code. The crime of “unnatural offenses” is punishable by a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
No one in the LGBT – that is, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender – community has been arrested or sentenced in Jammu and Kashmir state since the verdict was handed down, says Rafiq Fida, acting chairman of the State Human Rights Commission, Jammu and Kashmir.
The Indian Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Such protection should extend to transgender women, Fida says.
“They too are human beings,” he says. “There should be no hesitation for the government to come up with legislation to protect them.”
The verdict has shaken the Kashmir Valley’s transgender community, says Aijaz Ahmad Bund, a social work scholar at the University of Kashmir whose study of the problems of transgender women in the region was published in the international Journal of Humanities and Social Science.
Bund calls the ruling a regressive act that reveals the depth of contemporary India’s intolerance of the LGBT community. He could not estimate how many transgender women live in the Kashmir Valley because, fearing discrimination, most of them keep a low profile.
The Supreme Court decision has made transgender women even more reluctant to openly express their sexuality in the Kashmir Valley, Jan says.
“If a developed place like New Delhi cannot give protection to a minority community, what can we expect from a closely knit place like Kashmir?” Jan asks. “Our battle has become tougher now.”
One Kashmiri family illustrates the resolve with which most local families reject gender reassignment.
Gulzar, who lives in the Qamarwari sector of Srinagar, refused to accept the feminine traits that his son Irfan manifested over the years.
Because transgender women and their families face severe discrimination, Gulzar asked that members of his family be identified solely by their first names.
“Without any arguments or discussion, I told him either to continue to behave like a man or leave the house,” Gulzar says. “I didn’t want to hang my head in shame.”
The transgender woman raised as Irfan dropped out of school after 10th grade and left home last year at age 16, Gulzar says.
“We don’t know where he went,” Gulzar says. “It doesn’t matter at all.”
Jan believes society will more readily accept transgender women as they become more financially independent. The lack of vocational and business opportunities has forced transgender women into low-income jobs, Jan says.
“Nobody takes any measures to explore our hidden talents,” she says. “We also have a right to earn a decent living.”
Bund says transgender women are denied inheritance claims as well as a reserved quota in educational opportunities and government jobs.
The prevalence of transgender women will not become apparent to Kashmiris until their rights are protected, Bund says.
“They are a minority group like disabled people, but still there are no legal provisions for them,” he says.
Fida agrees. Other minority groups receive monthly stipends ranging from 200 rupees ($3) to 500 rupees ($8), he says. If provided with such assistance, as well as vocational training, transgender women can likewise come forward and become financially independent.
“There is a dire need to help the transgender population,” Fida says.
Dabla thinks a shift in perception will do more for transgender women than any government program designed to directly improve their income-earning prospects.
“They face discrimination more from their families and society,” he says. “The social image of transgender needs to be improved. The way they interact with broader society has to be explored so that they would be treated equally.”
Many transgender women in the Kashmir Valley feel the Islamic community should stand up for them – and the cleric who holds the highest office in that community agrees.
Mirwaiz Muhammad Umar Farooq, whose title identifies him as the head priest of the Muslim community of the Kashmir Valley, says such support is fundamental to the faith.
“People have used religion as an excuse to discriminate on basic human rights,” Farooq says in a phone interview. “Islam teaches peace, love and oneness with mankind, and not hate.”
Islam has traditionally honored transgender women, whom the faithful call “mukhannathun,” an Arabic term meaning “men who resemble women.”
“Their inheritance rights and other legal and social aspects should be given according to their behavior or inclination of the gender they identify with,” Farooq says.
Farooq calls for a radical change in attitude.
“We will definitely take some positive steps to talk about these issues,” he says. “People need to be aware of their rights. They shouldn’t be discriminated against at all.”
Through religious sermons and at festivals, Farooq hopes to spread awareness of the transgender community’s plight.
Jan agrees that there is an urgent need to raise awareness of transgender women among Kashmiri Muslims. More tolerant attitudes by family and society can make a huge difference, she says.
“People in Kashmir don't support transgender,” Jan says. “They know that there is a lack of acceptance of our gender from our own family members, and that reason gives enough confidence to anyone who wants to exploit us physically or sexually.”
Afroza Begum, 28, who lives with her family in Srinagar’s Jawahar Nagar residential district, has been accepted in her family on condition that she follow certain rules, she says.
Begum’s father, Ghulam Ahmed Khan, admits that initially the family was annoyed by Begum's identification as female.
In time, however, the family came to understand that it was not a deliberate choice, Khan says. Still, he laid down a strict condition.
“We do not allow her to dress like a woman, ever,” he says. “We were afraid that people would make fun of her.”
Begum feels accepted in her family and says she is treated as an equal. She earns a small income by singing and dancing at weddings and only dresses as a woman inside the house when her family is not home.
“My family stood by me, despite the stigma that others tried to attach to me,” she says.
Khan believes the families of transgender women can be a powerful catalyst for change.
“Real change can only come through the acceptance of parents,” he says. “We are trying our best to stand by our child.”
When society accepts them, transgender women will be more confident to come out in the open, Farooq says. And when their lack of rights becomes more visible, the government will be compelled to draft laws and policies to help them.
Fida hopes the transgender community in the Kashmir Valley will become an organized group and lobby for changes in laws and government policies.
“There is a need that they themselves come forward so that their issues come into public domain rather than remain hidden,” he says.
Cast out by their families, transgender women such as Jan keep hoping for a better future.
“If I was born in a wrong body, that is not my fault,” she says. “We also want to live a dignified life, free of discrimination and invisibility.”
Transgender women should not lose hope, Jan says. They should continue to be themselves, fearlessly.
“I am hopeful that people will change their attitudes toward us one day,” she says.
GPJ translated some interviews from Kashmiri.
