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Journalism of Courage
Very early in life, Shashank knew he was different from the other boys in the remote Baijnath village in Himachal Pradesh. Not only did the 36-year-old refer to himself with she/her pronouns, but the favourite pastime of the otherwise lonely teenager happened to be dancing with his mother’s dupatta. However, that was a threat to his father’s masculinity and, somehow, most days ended with violence.
Don Hasar, too, had a similar childhood in Kolkata. He, too, liked wearing his mother’s saris and bangles and dancing to Bollywood tunes. “People find that cute till a certain age. Then, my mother and elder brother started shaming me. I started drifting away from my family when I realised that a big part of my existence was trying to fit into a world that was not ready to accept me. Depressed, I left home. I finally found solace in Palampur, where I also met Shashank,” says the 30-year-old.
As they await the Supreme Court’s verdict on the legality of same-sex marriages, LGBTQIA+ communities across towns in India are fighting their own battles for acceptance.
While Shashank and Hasar co-founded Himachal Queer Foundation, Himachal’s first registered organisation for LGBTQAI+ rights, and are spreading awareness through workshops that rely on regional poems, songs and comics, Sadam Hanjabam, 34, started an all-queer football team in conflict stricken Imphal, Manipur, to emphasise gender equality through sports. In Uttarakhand’s Dehradun, Dr Sakshi Mamgain, a non-binary person, is fighting to make queer sensitisation and healthcare a part of medical curriculum.
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For Hanjabam, growing up in Manipur was difficult for more reasons than one. “In the ’90s, when militancy was at its peak, we carried a burden of trauma. There was hardly any dialogue among peers. I was also struggling with my sexuality. There was no internet to seek answers from. I couldn’t fit myself into the neat gender boxes that existed and there was no way to find out who I might be. I could understand my sexuality only after leaving Manipur for studies. When I was in Assam, Kerala and Mumbai, I started embracing my identity but when I went home, I withdrew into my shell. For most people in Manipur, it was unheard of and I started living a double life to avoid the stigma,” says Hanjabam, who identifies as gay.
The road to that realisation was long. When he moved to Mumbai for his PhD in 2013-14, he found himself depressed. Substance abuse followed. It was only after surviving two episodes of drug overdose that Hanjabam had an epiphany — he could provide support to others like him. “I was ashamed of lying in the hospital bed without any purpose. That’s when I realised that the worst is over. I had to act. I moved back to Imphal in 2017 and started a WhatsApp group to connect with others like me. I founded ‘Ya_All’ (Northeast’s first registered queer and youth-led organisation based in Imphal) in 2019 with a focus on UN’s sustainable development goals: gender equality, good health and well-being, and education and livelihood for the people of the LGBTQIA+ community. There was almost no gender awareness in Manipur. When you live in a highly militarised zone, these soft issues take a back seat. I wanted that to change. Manipuris have an emotional connection with football, so I started an all-queer football team,” says Hanjabam, whose foundation hosts the ‘Queer Games’ in March every year and has started the first drug de-addiction and rehabilitation centre for transgender men in Imphal.
His football team of roughly 20 trans-individuals’ function around a peer-support model. The team plays friendly matches with different local and state teams across the Northeast every week. “The players are in the 15-35 age group. The games give them a feeling of inclusion and allow them to talk about themselves,” says Hanjabam, who was featured in the Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry-produced Netflix show The Me You Can’t See, where he spoke of his experiences of discrimination.
For Mamgain, though, it’s been a different battle. She had started practising in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital in 2019 as a junior resident. Despite the massive daily footfall, not once did she see a trans person come there. “I worked there for a whole year and it was absurd that I did not come across even a single trans person seeking treatment. I started reading up on medical literature, including the 2015 US Transgender Survey, and found that more than 60 per cent of trans folks don’t come forward for treatment fearing abuse. As a queer non-binary person, who grew up and went to medical school in India, I identified with the issues at hand and figured I needed to work for my people. In 2021, I founded ‘UTH-United for Transgender Health’ in Dehradun to provide accessible healthcare to gender minorities,” says the 27-year-old, who holds an MBBS degree from Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences.
Her initiative not only provides inclusive and sensitised healthcare to the LGBTQIA+ community but also holds workshops for young medical professionals. She herself faced discrimination during her youth in Dehradun and wanted to nurture a support system that would be more accepting. “Teaching inclusive healthcare is very important, especially to medical students, who are just 20-22 years old. By the time they enter the professional world, they would be able to bring about a change in attitude that is missing now. As of now, in medical schools, we are not taught anything about transgender health. So, the generations of doctors that the schools have been churning out are not culturally competent. In fact, lots of terms in the medical curriculum in India are offensive to the LGBTQIA+ community. In 2019, the medical education regulator National Medical Commission revised the medical curriculum for the first time after two decades and made it competency-based. However, we still have a long way to go and years of damage to remedy,” she says.
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Back in Palampur, Hasar and Shashank met at a workshop on ‘Gender and Transfeminism’ before the pandemic. “When we started interacting, we realised that our understanding of gender politics was aligned. Love is also political as it has the capacity to move worlds. We soon fell for each other and started living together. We didn’t want more Dons and Shashank’s to go through trauma like us. Soon, Himachal Queer Collective was born out of a ‘Grindr’ account, opened in 2019, with a Helpline number for people like us to have a safe space to express themselves,” says Shashank.
In 2021, after the first wave of the pandemic, they started Instagram and Facebook accounts, where they shared stories of queer individuals, without naming them. They began advocating for the community’s rights. “We started holding online sessions and workshops on mental-health care, understanding gender, sexuality and LGBTQIA+ rights,” says Shashank, adding that he would receive a number of calls from people sharing their stories and asking for coping mechanisms.
Eventually, the duo decided to quit their jobs. “We wanted to focus on creating a dialogue in a region where there was not much awareness about LGBTQIA+ rights,” says Shashank.
In December 2021, the global campaign against sexual violence, One Billion Rising, contacted them. “We did Himachal’s first Queer Pride Walk in Palampur, it felt right. It is where we stay and having faced discrimination even while going out to buy groceries or renting a house, we thought that’s the best place to drive home a message,” says Hasar.
By February 2022, the group had officially renamed themselves as ‘Himachal Queer Foundation’ and started operating a shelter of sorts for queer individuals in distress. So far, around 15 people, including three couples, have sought their help. They launched an SOS Helpline for individuals facing violence or discrimination. Satrangi Sathi, another of their initiatives, gained momentum and the two started visiting healthcare centres, panchayats, mahila mandals, local youth forums and clubs for gender sensitisation sessions. In June last year, they held another pride walk in Kullu. “We started work at the grassroots and involved not only the youth but other community members as well. We mobilised funds for psychologists/counsellors to provide queer-affirmative mental-health care free of cost. We now have several volunteers across north India. Changing a mindset doesn’t happen overnight. To bridge the gap, we sometimes take recourse to regional poems, folk songs and even comic strips, to help people understand that homosexuality is not a choice for us. We also talk about laws such as Trans Act 2019, SC/ST Atrocities Prevention Act, RTE, anti-bullying and ragging regulations to raise awareness,” says Hasar.
The pandemic, however, hampered the community members in more ways than one. “People were losing jobs and since surviving in big cities was getting difficult, many had to return to their abusive family members…it led to suicide cases across the country,” says Hasar.
It was during the pandemic that the strength of Hanjabam’s commitment, too, was tested. He and his team raised around Rs 20,00,000, helped more than 2,000 people and set up a quarantine centre for transgender people in Imphal. “When the lockdown was first announced in March 2020, no one anticipated that it would go on for so long. Initially, we focused on providing ration but then I got to know that trans individuals were also facing racism in other states. We started a mental-health helpline and in just one year, we got close to a thousand calls. Our community carries an additional burden of trauma that comes from political unrest in the region. Even now when we are gearing up to celebrate pride month, there is no excitement among us as Manipur is burning,” says Hanjabam.
All of them believe that the road map for the future of their community will depend on the outcome of the same-sex marriage appeal. “We have been seeking a Trans Welfare Board and according to the Trans Act, 2019, it should have been made by 2021, but that is yet to be done. We also face problems while making Trans ID cards. It took me over six months to make my ID when the government guidelines say that for any trans person, the card should be made within 30 days. We do have some laws in place but what is the point of them when there is no implementation? It’s been five years since homosexuality has been decriminalised, but nothing has changed for people in the remote hills. Even if the Supreme Court legalises marriage equality, on the ground, nothing is going to change without sensitisation,” says Hasar.
But in the time they have begun work, some things have, indeed, changed. “Once an anganwadi worker came to us and said, ‘My brother doesn’t like to tick the male/female box in official documents. He says he identifies himself differently. Will you please speak to him?’ Recently, a government engineering college in Nagrota Bagwan started a gender-neutral washroom. Then there was the time we got a call from a person saying, ‘Thank you for existing. I thought I was the only one in Himachal’,” says Shashank.
