'Indian Literature' Breaks New Ground With Transgender And Non-binary Voices

Indian Literature, Mar-Apr 2024, issue no. 340; the bi-monthly journal of Sahitya Akademi, the National Akademi of Letters, is a pathbreaking issue in the sense that for the first time in the annals of Sahitya Akademi, a major part of issue has been devoted to ‘Transgender and Non-binary Writings’. This will certainly go down in the history of this prestigious journal for having dared to showcase emerging, vibrant voices with a robust body of literature focusing on how this section of our populace negotiated their identities through the maze of their socio-cultural space against the ‘normative gaze’ of their respective milieu, their archaic standards and prevailing judgmental attitudes. It’s against this backdrop that this issue of Indian Literature sought to present an engaging corpus of work consisting of essays, memoirs, poetry, stories; containing ‘tales’ quivering to be told, agonies seeking articulation, ideas to be thought aloud and matters to be addressed; all in an aesthetically rich, layered, and lyrical way. While setting the tone in a poignantly written editorial, poet-scholar and a highly respected academic Sukrita Paul Kumar writes, “Indian Literature has endeavoured to create a space for trans writing ‘by trans writers’, from different Indian languages…this issue is a modest attempt to bring together several transgender and non-binary writers who share, in their own voices, testimonies of pain, isolation and marginalisation. As importantly, they also help to remove our blinkers and perceive how trans narratives destabilise otherwise unquestioned gendered social constructions.”

In a diversely multicultural country as ours, ensuring an egalitarian social structure seems to be the only imperative of a constantly evolving society, one that affirms inclusivity, equality of opportunity and mutual respect between all stakeholders. All our efforts of ‘social engineering’ must be geared up to meet this utopian challenge. In this context, art and literature could play a pivotal role in augmenting cataclysmic change in society. Writings by ‘transgender and non-binary’ writers presented in this issue of Indian Literature, thus, serve to give some sort of a ‘literary legitimacy’ to their voices, and lives they lead. All the literacy pieces included here stem from an acute awareness and experience of their life lived ‘deeply’ and bear witness/ testimony to the trials, tribulations and daily struggles of their existence. The section ‘Narrating the Self’ contains excerpts from memoirs by trans writers that portray their lived experiences, and disturbing realities that chronicle their struggle. In her moving memoir Manipuri writer Santa Khurai says in her author's note, “My father constantly expressed his displeasure at my feminine nature, while my mother felt humiliated in front of neighbours, relatives and friends. Not many interested in listening to my problems and frustrations. This suppressed pain and anger led to a feeling of relief and bliss the minute I started relieving those moments and writing this memoir’’.

It speaks volumes about the ‘terrors’ of growing up trans people go through almost invariably regardless of place, race and class they belong to. She also admitted how writing gave her the much needed ‘cathartic’ release, a sense of liberation. It seems to be so true of so many others of her ilk; as academic Manobi Bandyopadhyay says in her memoir, “I write with the belief that it would help society understand people like me better. We are slightly different outwardly, but we are humans just as you are and have the same needs physical and emotional- just as you have”. The desire to become a woman got so strong in Olga B. Aaron that she underwent a marathon ordeal in clinics, hospitals, rounds of doctors, a suicide attempt; finally done with it. These memoirs poignantly portray the trauma of their being trapped in what they call a ‘wrong’ body. Such non-synchronisation between their mental gender and physical gender has invariably led them to live wretched lives. Thus, they carry within them a bitter burden of history consisting of victimisation, body abuse, disrespect, indignity, exclusion, abandonment, invisibilisation and outright violence. With apathetic social attitudes, legal remedies are also hardly a recourse open to them. Editor Sukrita writes, “The gender binary and the system of normative sexual relations that is built upon it are so deeply embedded in the psychology that the implementation of new laws that recognise the rights of LGTBQI people may not be possible”. So, they continue to be subjected to mockery and an unending saga of dehumanisation by an insensitive society surrounding them.

Reverberation of such and many other ‘back stories’ could be heard across the stories, poems and conversations; the tormented selves of trans people echoing through the narratives so much so that stories could hardly be read as ‘stories’ because of the load of ‘factfulness’ they carry within.

Thus, their voices carry the absurd weight of a strange urgency; voices heard, un-heard and largely mis-heard. The trans persona seems broken both from within and without the twin battle of having to fight their own sense of ‘incompleteness’; uncomfortable in their own bodies and being unacceptable outside of them; being sneered at, hated and at the same time getting sidelined for no fault of theirs. Despite the raw deal life meted out to them, they never seem to give in or give up, as poet Vidya Rajput says in her poem: “Yes, I am nature/ I am the light that rips through darkness, / Yes, I am dawn. / I am the confluence of woman and man, /Yes, I am indeed Ardhanariswar, / I am the earth, made of land and water, /

(Yes, I am, a Kinnar)

The pain and distress of gender dysphoria came out movingly in a poem by Kalki Subramaniam titled ‘The Mirror’: Everyday I look at the mirror/ And I don’t see me / I see him / He is not me. And in another poem; “Farewell to the boy/ who was she, / Welcome to the joy / for all new me”. The predicament of having an effeminate as father is reflected in a poem titled ‘Woman-dad’ by Aadhi. Translated superbly by eminent poet-scholar K. Satchidanandan it reads: “There is a dad/ Whom everyone in the land/ Calls woman-dad/ All other dads are Men-dads/ Only my dad is/ A woman-dad”. Such poems showcase voices that are unapologetically assertive, questioning stereotypes and binaries, owning sexual orientation on their sleeves to flaunt. In a short story by Bhairabi Amrani titled ‘The Mirror’ the protagonist Manav indulges in a dialogue with his bathroom mirror and tries to find solace when the mirror image exhorts, “only you hold the power to discover yourself”. How so true it sounds when it says further, “Manav, true authenticity lies in embracing the uniqueness of your being.. gender is not a rigid structure, but rather, a fluid expression of one’s inner sense”. Another significant section in the issue is ‘Conversations’ where, in a brainstorming session nine trans writers-activists-academics opened their souls in a no holds barred talk with Indian Literature.

This actually helped the editors to organise the materials around such a burning issue, and to have a first-hand, one to one sharing of life stories. Such churnings are meant to have a critical bearing on bringing about visible changes in social attitudes by sensitising people. The talks spread across 20 odd pages are rich, eye-opening, intimate and life-affirming; full of epiphanies and outright revelations. Disha Shaikh laments, “I feel like mainstream literature doesn’t talk about my challenges, my beauty, my love, nor my relationships with my guru and my sisters that goes beyond blood.” For Shivansh Thakur it is more like ‘pain’ on paper, who believed that writing can make a lot of people listen and start wanting to listen to you. Almost all of them found writing their stories ‘cathartic’ and empowering enough to engage with the world around them. Reading such stories, poems, memoirs and conversations one tends to conclude that, what matters ultimately is the gradual acceptance of their own selves through indulging in ruminative discoveries. These trans writers make full use of ‘writing’ as a ‘coping mechanism’. Social alienation, somehow, helps them to turn tables in their favour and undertake that much needed inner journey and vent it out to the world outside. Indian Literature, issue 340 (Mar-Apr 24) has indeed done an excellent job by curating their life stories, in an effort to drive home the point that we need to celebrate the diversity and multiplicity of ‘sexes’, not just in words but in our thoughts, attitudes and through meaningful dialogues and affirmative actions.

(DURGA PRASAD PANDA is an accomplished bilingual poet and critic whose works have appeared in several prestigious publication across the country and abroad.)