Dancing Queens: Celebrating transgenders in India

To mark the Transgender Awareness Week in India, Godrej India Culture Lab hosted a special event on November 18, 2015 along with the ‘Dancing Queens’, Mumbai’s foremost professional transgender-led dance troupe. (Source: Express photo by Amit Chakravarty)

The dance troupe, led by Abhina Aher, Urmi Jadhav and Madhuri Sarode depicted the issues faced by transgender in India, their identity in society, through a series dance performances, along with award-winning videos by the Culture Lab’s Fulbright Scholar in Residence Jeff Roy. (Source: Express photo by Amit Chakravarty)

India is one of the very few countries in the world that have recognised transgender as the third gender. In India, their blessings is regarded as a boon for any important event in one's life from birth to marriage. (Source: Express photo by Amit Chakravarty)

Recently, the Oxford dictionary in a bid to support the LGBT community also included gender neutral honorific Mx, for people who do not wish to abide by the other gender specific honorifics. The move was widely acknowledged. (Source: Express photo by Amit Chakravarty)

The Transgender awareness week began after the gruesome murder of Rita Hester, a woman from the community in Boston in 1998.

Hester's murdered was responsible for a symbolic shift in transphobic violence. Her death inspired the idea about the first International Transgender Day of Remembrance started by Gwendolyn Ann Smith. (Source: Express photo by Amit Chakravarty)

The impetus of Transgender Awareness Week is to create awarness about community and educate people about transgenders and queer community and social stigma faced by them in their everyday life. (Source: Express photo by Amit Chakravarty)