Eunuchs are a freak of nature. But they continue to be marginalised from mainstream society, forced to earn their living through prostitution and looked down upon through no fault of theirs, due to ignorance and superstition.

Professor Shomenath Bandopadhyay of Naihati is a 36 year old lecturer in Bengali at Jhargram College. He is also the editor of a monthly paper called Abomanob (Avmanav, literally meaning subhuman) that deals with the plight of the eunuch and seeks to abolish the “Hijra Pratha” of sex sale of the eunuchs.

Mr Bandopadhyay lives with his parents at his residence at Naihati. He wears colourful, unconventional clothes, has long, hennaed hair and uses make-up and jewellery. He has been active since two years trying to “make the intelligentsia aware of the plight of the Hijra” through his little magazine, he says, since according to him it is the intelligentsia that runs the society. He has also done some private social work trying to arrest the dropout of transsexual children from local schools by financing their education and also, in some occasions, even providing them with meals, but admits that he has not been very successful in these projects. Transsexuals continue to castrate themselves and enter the Hijra community due to social pressures as well as for the more easily available sex.

Are eunuchs asexual or hermaphrodite? What is the difference between an eunuch and a transssexual ? Mr. Bandopadhyay answers stating that only a minority of the eunuchs are clinically hermaphrodite having genital disfigurement disorders like hypospaedeus and ovotestes and are truly sexually handicapped by birth. Noone is asexual. And as for the rest, they are “simply transsexuals who are biologically male but psychologically female.” It is this section of people, he stresses, that he mainly works with and who also happen to form the bulk of the Hijras. SRS or Sex Reconstruction Surgery, he says, is the only hope of a solution to the problem of either group.

The eunuch has always formed a part of our culture and folklore since ancient times, he declares. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana contain individual as well as collective references of eunuchs in the form of Shikhandi, Brihannala and others. Even the Hindu god Vishnu is said to have gone trans­vestite as Mohini and even succeeded in enchanting the lord Shiva with his (her?) charms. With novels like Pourush (by Kabita Sinha), Shantaap (Manab Chakraborty) and The Invisible Tales of Eunuchs of India (Ziya Jaffrey) being written and films like Darmiyaan and Tamanna being screened as well as individuals like Kamala Jaan and Shahbano Bai winning elections and holding government posts and portfolio, does the condition of the average eunuch seem to be improving in the country? Banerjee replies that the upliftment of the eunuch has chiefly been an urban or more specifically, a metropolitan phenomenon in India as well as abroad, to some extent, due to economic reasons and stresses that the situation will improve only if society as a whole progresses.

Bandopadhyay talks about the various superstition that plague the eunuch and their origin. Their very sight is generally considered unlucky because people are afraid of their curses. What in reality they are afraid of is of possible retribution (divine or otherwise) for the cowardice of hurting a totally helpless individual. The custom of social ostracisation, Banerjee believes, started with the aforementioned minority group of eunuchs but later extended to the transsexuals as well, who started using the set up to find male partners for themselves, uncastrated transsexuals are known as Dhuraani in the community while the emasculated ones are as called Koti. Their male partners are called Parik and Giriya, respectively. The Hijra is a religious man. The customs of social ostracisation and general hatred being a chiefly Hindu origin, he feels more secure and accepted in Sufi festivals and mazaars and Baul fairs. Ghuntiari Sharif, South 24 Pgs. is one. such place where these people gather in large numbers for worship and celebration. Mr.Bandapadhyay also recounts a list of some socalled less unfavourable­ superstition about the Hijras like Marathi businessmen giving them money before the first sale of their day and families welcoming them at rituals of marriage and childbirth to gift them food and money and let them hold their babies. These practices, he says, though of humanitarian origin serve only to perpetuate the evi1 system of the isolation and prostitution of the eunuchs. Medical treatment in the form of alternative sex support is what he suggests as a step in the right direction. No he does not support castration as practised by the Hijras.

Yes he supports bi/homosexuality, mentioning that the WHO has approved of it as an alternative lifestyle and predicting that it is due to be socially accepted in India as well, in the very near future. No, he does not believe that homosexual marriages should be legalised : he does not believe in the institution of marriage. No, he does not believe that prostitution should be legalised: prostitution of any kind, male, female or eunuch. And yes, he distinguishes transsexuals from the male homosexual on the basis of their desire to be female. It is time, he says, for the eunuch to face reality about himself. As well as for society as a whole to confront the matter (that Bahuchara Maata, the traditional deity of the eunuchs of northern India is curiously a defeminised female although the eunuchs themselves are mostly castrated males is partly a result of psychological inversion and partly a deliberate attempt at a myth on the part of the eunuch, according to him, that serves to conjure an enigma in the minds of the ordinary man with regard to the eunuch’s sexual and social identity that the eunuch believes results in his protection from society as well as from himself).

An erstwhile exponent of Bharat Natyam, Shomenath is engaged in writing his very first novel, Proshitobhortrika, in Bengali. He admits it to be a semiautobiographical novel that will deal with contemporary society as a whole and “not only the minority groups.” Abomanab reflects his almost teenager-like exhibitionist exuberence and a remarkable freshness of outlook apart from an admirable command over his language. His novel, he says, is going to have sequels. At present, he is actively involved in promoting an NGO, LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual) which features personalities like sociologist Bula Bhadra and transsexual poet Tista Mitra through talk shows (ETV Bangla, E-Shomoy) and documentaries (he, himself, has been recently shot by filmmaker Goutam Ghose).

A few basic questions still do remain. Manhood is a gift of Nature/God. Why should certain individuals choose to deny it and go for feminisation, especially when women are not particularly a superior class of people but just the sexual counterparts of men? Also, emasculation does not necessarity mean feminisation. The biological masculinity of the transsexual is a private affair, but their psychological femininity is certainly doubtful consisting of a mere fondness for makeup and jewellery, a slavish adherence to the patriarchal set-up of family (both of which are really general characteristics and not gender-specific, contrary to general opinion) and general homosexuality (which is supposed to be a genetic and/or psychological inversion which disproves the original assumption that the subject wants to be female). The cause of this identity crisis of theirs may be physical (hormonal/chromosomal-genetic) or psychological or even psychosomatic. It is certainly influenced and even tacitly “encouraged” by society. We need to promote more biological and medical research in this matter. We also need to review the laws with regard to corrective surgery which are at present carried out only highly secretively (viz. the case of Nrisinghaprasad Bhaduri of IIT Kanpur who desired a sex change but has been denied by law). We also need to research and reassess gender definitions, roles and status in society, not only for the benefit of the transsexua1, but a1so for the benefit of general human beings. And we certainly need bright individuals like Shomenath Bandopadhyay to help us along the way.

http://sucheta-dasgupta.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/09/the-transsexual-question.htm