The Hijra community has been an integral part of Indian society with references in the Puranas, Ramayana, and Mahabharata. The Supreme Court of India recognized the community as the third gender in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India and others (2014). Yet, as a society, we seem to be failing the community by proselytizing a stereotypical image of the Hijra. We can see this unabashedly unfold in the comedy industry. How much of comedy is good comedy? Where does one draw the line?
I recently witnessed a student costume competition with not many rules. It is rightly said that too many rules choke creativity, but what if there are insufficient rules? One of the participants supposedly dressed up as Laxmii from the eponymous film, however, the student mainly engaged in representing a stereotypical image of a transgender through clapping and flirtatious interactions with the male students in the audience, inter alia. To make matters worse, the judges (academicians of the college) awarded the winning position to the student. Doesn’t this reflect the values of a society?
Leaving aside the stereotyping, is it even ethical to dress up as a member of a real/non-fictional community? Is it moral to relegate the Hijra community to a character/costume? What if one of the teaching staff of this institution was a transgender? Would such a performance be still allowed to fly? Wouldn’t the faculty be offended by such a relegation of their community?
We all are aware of the harsh history of slavery and racism in the west. In the USA and Canada, there was a time when students would come dressed up as coloured/black characters at costume parties which was considered “normal”. What do we do when we engage in such behaviour? Doesn’t it reflect a view that we consider a particular community as sub-human? A lot of rhetorical questions, yes, because that’s how outrageous it is to reduce a community to a costume, to treat another less human!
The opposition may raise the charge that I’m being humourless, but for the fundamental question of ethics raised above, such a charge does not stand. There was a student in this very competition who played the character of Jadoo from the movie, Koi… Mil Gaya (2003); this is alright because Jadoo’s community will obviously not feel offended; same is the case with Manjulika and the ghost. Do you get my point, the crucial difference between the Hijra character and the other characters?
Another differing argument and the most crucial one is that I don’t belong to the Hijra community and as such I don’t possess the locus standi in the matter. One need not be a part of a particular subaltern group to recognize a wrong culture and to call a spade a spade.
The dissenters may further argue that the student was simply playing the role of Laxmii from the movie Laxmii (2020). But can our movie industry be exonerated of the charge that it is the Goliath among those who spread such stereotypes?
I find no fault in the student, but with the coordinators of the event which allowed this mockery. Teachers are meant to ignite the critical thinking ability of their students so that they can discern for themselves the right from the wrong, and the rational from the irrational in the phenomenons that unfurl before them in their experience of society. This episode is not merely a failure of certain teachers, but a collective failure of all the teachers of this institution.
