KATHMANDU, NEPAL – Bhawana Dhakal, 26, always hated wearing men’s clothes.
Growing up in a society that does not accept people of the “third gender,” or transgender, she says she had no choice but to wear men’s clothes.
“My family does not let me [leave] the house if I do not set off for [my] office in a boy’s dress up,” says Dhakal, who leaves home dressed as a man every day.
Today, like all workdays, she makes a pit stop on her way to work at the rented room where she keeps her “other” clothes and makeup. She stops here to change into women’s clothes and applies what she calls “a lot” of makeup every morning before 9 a.m. Then, she heads to work.
Dhakal has a masculine physique, but says she has always carried herself as a woman.
“I want to look and dress like a girl,” she says. “But [I] can’t do that because I am a third gender.”
Dhakal was born a boy to a middle-class family in Kathmandu. Her parents named her Subas Dhakal, a traditional boy’s name. Dhakal has a brother and a sister, but says as she grew up she became closer to her sister and realized she liked to wear her dresses.
At school, she preferred to play with the girls in her class rather than the boys. She says, as she got older, classmates began to tease her. And eventually, she says she was asked to leave the school when she revealed she was transgender, an allegation The Press Institute was unable to confirm with the school.
“I used to burst into tears when my friends teased me, calling [me] ‘hijada’ (gay) and ‘napunsak’ (infertile),” Dhakal says.
As the harassment grew, Dhakal became depressed. By the age of 18 she tried to commit suicide because she says she could not bear the hostility from her friends, family and society. She says her sister found out and saved her from her suicide attempt.
“We are compelled to suppress our feelings, being the third gender,” Dhakal says.
As rumor spread that Dhakal was transgender, her parents tried to shield her from the criticism, but ended up isolating her further.
“My parents often locked [me up] inside a room at home when some of our long-distance relatives used to come,” she says. “They thought that I would be forced to live a hateful life if society knows about my situation.”
Eventually her parents began berating her for wearing girl’s clothing, and then the physical abuse began.
“They even beat me up, thinking that I could be changed,” Dhakal says. “But all their efforts went in vain since I am naturally [this way],” she says referring to what is commonly known as being transgender.
In Nepal, there are thousands of transgender people who face discrimination and harassment every day. Although there has been significant progress for gay, lesbian and transgender people here in recent years – the Supreme Court struck down the law that classified homosexuality as bestiality in 2007 and granted gay and transgender people full rights – many say they have not been granted the citizen certificates they need to receive many of these rights. And even in the face of court-approved rights, activists say Nepali society has been slow to accept transgender people. On the ground, Dhakal and other advocates say they will continue to press for legal rights and social acceptance, no matter how long it takes.
There are as many as 200,000 transgender people in Nepal, according to the Blue Diamond Society, BDS, Nepal’s leading organization for the rights of sexual minorities. Dhakal, along with other gay, lesbian and transgender people, works in the BDS offices in Kathmandu. To date, there has been no official government data as the Central Bureau of Statistics, CBS, says it did not record the number of transgender people in its last census in 2001. In the new census, scheduled to be held this year, “sexual status” will be collected, says Sunil Babu Pant, BDS founder, chairman and Nepal’s first openly gay politician.
Activists working for the rights of transgender people in Nepal say that they are vulnerable nationwide, even in the capital city of Kathmandu, where most of the population is educated and tends to be more socially accepting.
“When the situation in Kathmandu is horrifying, how will the plight of sexual minorities [be] in the rural parts of the country, where most of the people are illiterate?” Pant asks. “They cannot live the dignified life of a human being. The people do not have positive attitudes toward the third gender.”
For Banita Adhikari, who was born with what she calls “ambiguous genitalia” in a village in the rural districts of western Nepal, life has been filled with eviction and discrimination. Two months ago, Adhikari was forced to leave her village after she became openly transgender. Adhikari, who was born a boy, faced constant discrimination in her village. When her family forced her out, she moved to Pokhara, a tourist city in the west. She says she has had difficulty finding work and a place to live.
Adhikari says society does not treat her as human. She says she appreciates activists who remind Nepalis that people are born transgender. She calls it “biological” and says it is not a choice that can be changed with enough harassment.
“One does not give up his inborn gender and adopt another by some[one] else’s influence,” says Dr. Karuna Onta, program development coordinator for CARE Nepal, an international nongovernmental organization that aims to fight poverty and social injustice in Nepal. “Medical science has proven that it is not a psychiatric problem, but it is behavioral [and] comes naturally.”
Still, the thousands of openly transgender people in Nepal say they live in fear.
Dhakal says she “fears the shame and hatred of society,” and blames local leaders for the persecution she faces on a daily basis. “Our country fails to treat all citizens equally,” she says.
Dhakal says the general public, including police, harass gay and transgender people in public places.
“The third gender people are not living independently with their true identity,” Onta says. “They are forced to live as a humiliated character in the society. There is an urgent need to improve the situation of the third gender people, whether through public awareness or provision of special reservation by Nepal[’s] government.”
The Supreme Court of Nepal ordered the government to extend homosexual and transgender people the same rights and privileges as other citizens on Dec. 21, 2007. The court ruling made Nepal the first country in South Asia to issue equal rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
But despite the court order, many sexual minorities are still without citizenship certificates. As a result, they are unable to get jobs, enroll in schools or colleges and seek treatment in hospitals. They are not even allowed to inherit property.
Thanks to the BDS, transgender people are demanding citizenship certificates with their gender marked as "third sex" instead of male or female. Ram Bandhu Sharma, a local lawyer, says the lack of a third option on the citizenship cards flouts the provision in Nepal’s constitution that states that there will be no discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, gender, origin, language and ideology.
“The constitution clearly says that all the people are equal,” Sharma says.
In the past, homosexuals in Nepal have faced up to a year in prison, as homosexuality was classified as bestiality and, therefore, illegal. Thanks to the court ruling of 2007, homosexual people can no longer be jailed for disclosing their identity, but social persecution persists.
“As of now, only five transgender people have citizenship,” Pant says.
But 200,000 people in Nepal, a country of nearly 30 million people, or 0.6 percent of the population, identify as transgender.
Since 2001, the transgender community in Nepal has been staging various protests and demanding citizenship, with little results. The Ministry of Home Affairs, the authority responsible for issuing citizenship cards, has not yet taken any initiative in this regard, Pant says.
“Recently we met President Ram Baran Yadav and Prime Minister Madhav Kumar [of] Nepal and informed them about our problems,” Pant says.
In response, the offices of the president and the prime minister sent letters to the Ministry of Home Affairs, urging them to take the necessary steps to issue citizenship cards, which both Pant and Dhakal say they were pleased with. To date, however, there has been no progress in issuing citizenship cards.
“Since we are also citizens of this country and deserve every human right guaranteed by the constitution, we will continue our fights for our rights,” Pant says.
While both Dhakal and Pant say they are frustrated with the status of the movement, Nepal’s transgender people have realized some progress. Responding to long-standing demands of Nepal’s transgender community, Nepal’s Election Commission recently started registering transgender people based on their stated gender identity.
“This decision will certainly contribute to our movement for equal rights and the right to identity,” Pant says.
But Pant acknowledges that overall societal acceptance still falls far below their expectations.
“More people need to be informed that third genders are like them,” Pant says.
Awareness programs, he says, are key to exposing Nepali culture to gay, lesbian and transgender culture.
“To change [the] mindset of people, Blue Diamond Society is launching awareness program[s] in the districts as well as in the capital,” Pant says.
But for Binod Kharel, a police inspector, acceptance of transgender people here will take time.
“The public behavior towards them is slightly changing,” Kharel says. “I think it will take time to see satisfactory progress.”
Dhakal hopes it will be sooner than later.
“Is it our mistake to be a third gender?” she asks. “What can I do when I am this way naturally?”
Pant, who was the pioneer in the gay rights movement in Nepal, says time will tell.
“For now, we are waiting and watching,” he says.
