The Trans-National Indian Family

 The Trans-National Indian Family

In conversation with Dr Aqsa Shaikh, on queering the Indian family, the family as a site of violence, and how hate speech and propaganda further stigmatised Muslims  during the pandemic, in tandem with the rising anti-secular sentiments, impacting their access to dignified healthcare. Dr Shaikh is associate professor of Community Medicine at Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (HIMSR), Jamia Hamdard and the director of the Human Solidarity Foundation, a Delhi-based not-for-profit that runs a charitable clinic. 

By Sanhati Banerjee

The “ideal”/“happy” heteronormative and patriarchal Indian family has largely invisibilized sexual and gender minorities. The so-called benevolent family has often perpetrated violence upon non-confirming members and silenced their voices. The family has also operated in its own authoritarian fashion, neglecting the disabled, banning the “misfit”, ignoring the less successful. With its attitude varying from being benevolent to dictatorial, in this aspect of control and coercion, the family is akin to the nation state. 

And yet, a look at the passing decade from the NALSA judgement 2014 to striking down of Section 377 in 2018 and The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, and in view of recent marriage equality hearings, will tell us that landmark legal judgements and shifting societal mores have been rewriting what was once considered to be sacrosanct. Amidst these developing movements, how does health intersect with socio-economic identities and how should we look at marginalised identities outside and beyond the moral prescription of families? 

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Edited excerpts from the interview:

Tana Bana: Looking at these “trans-gressions” both within and outside the system of the Indian family, what do you think are some of the ways in which gender non-confirming identities have been challenging the status quo of the traditional Indian family and what are their sociocultural impact/legacy? 

Dr Aqsa Shaikh: When you talk about queer persons in the context of the family, the nature of the relationship is rebellious as the system of the family doesn’t accept them. This system of family is typically a heteronormative, patriarchal, and Brahminised one. When we talk about the entity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual (LGBTQIA+), especially transgender persons and visibly transgender persons in terms of hijra, kinnar or Aravani communities, a lot of them have either succumbed to the demands of their biological/legal families and left them or have been thrown out by their native families. And in this regard there is something unique in the South Asian system—the hijra gharana, kinnar samuday or the jammat system, which in spite of their drawbacks are systems where transpersons have created their own communities, with a grandmother-mother-daughter kind of a family tree where the older folks take care of the younger ones and vice versa. There’s a sense of democracy, and these systems have been in existence for centuries parallel to the state-sanctioned/government family system.

The legal purview of the family is also changing. Today, live-in relationships are legally recognised and are covered under the provisions of the Protection of Women against Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA). 

For a lot of queer people, especially the new generation of queer folks, there’s an emerging concept of the chosen family, where members choose certain people to be a part of their family. However, the legal recognition of the chosen family is still limited. In such a scenario, the question arises: Who can make medical decisions for queer people—the biological or the chosen family? In addition to addressing these challenges, we have to also locate this evolution of the concept of family as much within the queer community as within other movements such as the feminist movements, anti-caste movements, which are collectively making the traditional family churn. 

Tana Bana: Alongside the modernising families, do you see a tendency to uphold the traditional Indian family and anti-secular sentiments?

Dr Aqsa Shaikh: There’s been a backlash on interfaith marriages and The Special Marriage Act, 1954, which is in keeping with the growing erosion of secular values and an emphasis on the endogamous, biological family. With the government increasingly giving credibility to the biological family, the ideology is also penetrating law. The Uniform Civil Code, for instance, fails to recognise the indigenous systems of family practised by various tribal communities. Another example would be the Surrogacy Act—Section 2(1)(zg) mandates that a surrogate mother can only be a woman who is genetically related to the intending couple or intending woman—which reinforces the State ideology of the authority of the biological family. 

Similarly, the chosen family of queer persons often comes under the wrath of the authorities. There are polyamorous and polyandrous relationships or interpersonal settings, which involves a third partner, sometimes by mutual consent. But, in the absence of legal recognition, what happens to them? Who will take care of them? 

Under a growing tendency to portray an all-encompassing transgender identity, the hijra gharana system has also been losing its legitimacy, resulting in the erosion of regional identities and cultures of diverse social ethnic groups. In the state of Uttar Pradesh, there is an opposition against the hijra gharana but not the kinnar samuday, owing to members of gharana largely being Muslim.  

Tana Bana: Historically, the public health machinery has perpetuated dominant social stigma and biases, denying health rights and dignity to marginalised populations. In present-day India, with a rising Hindutva nationalism on one hand, and technological innovation revolutionising healthcare on the other hand, how do you think diverse marginalised communities can be better served, especially since health doesn’t exist in a vacuum? 

Dr Aqsa Shaikh: Health does not exist in a vacuum; rather it is rooted in socio-economic contexts. Unfortunately, the right to health is not a part of our constitution. However, Right to Life is guaranteed in the Indian constitution. But, marginalised communities are burdened with navigating an unfriendly healthcare system. When I say there is a problem of access, I do not merely mean a lack of geographical or economic access but a lack of access owing to their marginalised identities. 

During the peak of the pandemic, there was a propaganda of "Corona jihad" against the minority Muslim community, labelling them as super spreaders, thus stigmatising them. This resulted in a call for boycott for Muslim fruit sellers, weakening their health-seeking behaviour. Often subjected to the Islamophobic slur of being labelled as “child-producing factories”, Muslim hijab/niqab-wearing women were doubly marginalised. The issue is not about them not getting admission to a hospital but about the interaction not being dignified. 

Simultaneously, violence was perpetrated against women, persons of oppressed castes and lepers. Not too long ago gay men were targeted and demonised at the outbreak of monkeypox.

From battles between legal and chosen names, gender and pronouns, to lack of trans-affirming restrooms and wards for visibly transgender people, navigating the public healthcare machinery was often a nightmare. Several were forced to not report to a doctor, but to a pharmacy etc. The vaccination centres too did not have facilities for transgender people. Additionally, an overwhelming majority of transgender people lack valid or mandated documentation. Similarly, the sadhus of India, who had long left home and the family, didn’t have ID cards. Street children do not have any ID cards. So, there was a challenge in terms of how to get them vaccinated. This points to a larger lack of accountability. Hence, digital healthcare is good per se but for it to address gaps and biases, community participation is a must.

Tana Bana: Traditionally, the Indian family has often perpetrated violence, abuse, neglect and silenced victims/survivors, not letting them heal let alone seek justice. How should we rethink family and freedom, health and healing, while still navigating a heteropatriarchal, queerphobic, and transphobic society?

Dr Aqsa Shaikh: Family is a sacred space within Indian society. We have been told that it’s ultimately the family that will look after us in old age and so on. There has always been a constant reinforcement of the virtues of the family, ensuring their grip remains tightened around individuals. However, for a lot of queer individuals and other minorities, the family has been a site of constant physical, surgical violence, medical and emotional violence.

• For instance, if an intersex child is born with a larger clitoris—there’s nothing called a normal clitoris—the child is made to undergo a procedure to cut it short to the usual. This is akin to female genital mutilation. This doesn’t help the child lead a better life; on the contrary, when they grow up to realise their family perpetrated this surgical violence upon them it leads to trauma. 

• Medical violence includes conversion therapy, which when undertaken medically entails the administration of electric shocks and psychotropic drugs, and when undertaken in the absence of medical supervision, parents and family members generally turn to spiritual babas.

• The family also perpetrates sexual abuse in terms of corrective rape; forcing a boy/teenager to have sex with a sex worker in order to make them “straight”.

• Often, unmarried lesbian women and gay men are burdened with providing financial and physical caregiving to their biological families despite them having been subjected to physical/emotional abuse in their hands.

• These intersect with their health-seeking behaviours, leading to high levels of mental stressors, mental disorders, and mood disorders.

Sanhati Banerjee is an independent journalist and content consultant.

Lady Doctors – Lest We Forget

 By Swathi Chaganty

Picking one quote, one scene, one incident, or one doctor from Lady Doctors – The Untold Stories of India’s First Women in Medicine by Kavitha Rao, a journalist, and author, is a difficult task. Does one talk about Anandibai’s mature balancing act between her eccentric husband’s expectations and her own choices, or Kadambini Ganguly’s fight for native lady doctors’ against the rising tide of European lady doctors brought into India? Or does one talk about a young firebrand woman called Rukhmabai who went toe to toe against the orthodoxy of the time and called out child marriage and later went on to play an important role in dealing with the plague in 1895, Gujarat? Or Himabati Sen’s battle against sexism and rigid religious dogma and customs while having a forty-year-long career in medicine? Or the Edinburgh Seven in the mid to late 19th century who contributed towards the lives of our protagonists?

 

Anandibai Joshi, Kadambini Ganguly, Rukhmabai Raut, Haimabati Sen, Muthulakshmi Reddy, and Mary Poonen Lukose, all of whom have little to no works written or developed on them. Only a small percentage of people - from their own communities - are aware of their legacy, and an even lesser percentage of people are aware of the circumstances in which they dared to become doctors. This roughly 300-page book is a tribute to these women of our past. While books, plays, and a recent movie on Anandibai Joshi have been made available in popular culture, Haimabati Sen's dairies had come to light several decades after her death, and Muthulakshmi Reddy was the only one to have two memoirs to her name. Rukhmabai Raut’s clinics in Gujarat are active even today. Muthulakshmi Reddy’s Cancer Institute aka Adyar Cancer Institute, established in 1952, is a pioneer in cancer research in Asia; and Mary Poonen Lukose’s, tenacity laid the foundations for much of the public health system of Kerala and compulsory vaccination in our country. However, in reality, in a country of over a billion, very few knew the existence of these immensely talented women.

 

Born and brought up in late 19th and early 20th century India amidst political and social churning, facing child marriages, child widowhood, innumerable prohibitions established in the garb of taboos and offenses to religion and society, lack of access to health and medical assistance sensitive to their needs, each one of these women faced immense struggles. Even after overcoming a difficult childhood with the help of handful of well-wishers, in the form of either a supportive husband, father, social reformer, progressive compatriot, some well-meaning missionary, royal, or western liberal of the time, their lives had never been easy. Battling casteism, patriarchy, sexism, and racism was the norm. In addition to that, ‘mobilizing’ marginalized communities and ‘advocating’ for better health, sanitation, medical assistance, and female reproductive health among the people, challenging unscientific practices and beliefs, was an uphill task. And if work-life balance is complicated for working women in today’s day and age in our country, these lady doctors had seen it all; and they may have some radical views to share with all of us. 

 

The uniqueness of this book is the nuance, respect, and sensitivity with which it presents our protagonists, the complexities of those times, the politics of colonialism and social reform, and the philosophies of well-known political and social reformers who had a bearing on the lives of these women – positive and negative. The book gets even more thrilling from a historical point of view as the 20th century rolls in. Muthulakshmi Reddy and Mary Poonen Lukose, not only continued with their professional responsibilities as doctors but also took on much-needed political, and governance duties and campaigns. Did you know a version of ‘Votes for Women’ campaign in India also had its place in our political discourse?

 

Through the journeys of these lady doctors, we meet some more incredible women of that time, some were their contemporaries, some their ideological opponents but progressives in their own right, and some who came much before them but all of them inspired and contributed to the making of India as it is today and built a larger legacy towards humankind. Cornelia Sorabji – first female graduate from Bombay University and the first woman to study law at Oxford and social reformer, Pandita Ramabai – educationist and advocate for girl child education, Sarojini Naidu – poet and freedom fighter, Ammu Swaminathan – famous Gandhian and one of the early Constituent Assembly members, Annie Beasant – theosophist and Home Rule activist in the Indian freedom struggle, Krupabai Satthianandhan – famous writer and the first woman to enter Madras Medical College, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi – ruler of Travancore and advocate of women’s involvement in medicine, law, and politics, Abala Das – medical graduate, social reformer and educationist, and wife of Jagdish Chandra Bose. The mention of her famed husband is intentional, for we know of him and his contribution to science but hardly ever heard of his wife and her work. Rose Govindarajulu – a doctor with several medical degrees and a thirty-three-year-long career ending way back in 1920! The history of our country is much richer than we know and are taught. Just imagine a room with Muthulakshmi, Mary Poonen, Sarojini Naidu, Annie Beasant, and Ammu Swaminathan, how electrifying it must have been!

 

Lady Doctors is an opportunity for bibliophiles, history nerds, parents, development sector professionals, educationists, teachers, medical practitioners, and students, to learn about these incredible women and share their stories with our future generations. Read it, gift it, suggest it, recommend it. Add excerpts of these books as chapters in our language textbooks; or give them the deserved place in our history textbooks next to Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and Raja Ram Mohan Roy, for these women were the catalysts for some of the larger social reforms; have multiple copies of this book in school and public libraries; or introduce them to students of science and medicine. As Kavitha Rao, stated, "…We rightly eulogise C.V. Raman and Jagdish Chandra Bose, but never the unsung women who fought far greater odds with unbelievable courage." It is time we correct that. 

Tribal Women, Development and Gender Dynamics

Dr. Sharada, Director, Population First in conversation with Dr. Soma Parthasarathy, Researcher/Practitioner  - Gender, Sustainable Development, Environment and Livelihoods.       

Dr. Sharada: You have been working on tribal rights issues for so long, please tell us what is the status of the tribal populations today, particularly the tribal women.

Dr Soma K Parthasarathy: As far as the government statistics are concerned, everything seems to be showing a positive trend. However, there are concerns about food security and dipping sex ratio in several parts of Adivasi dominant areas. On other issues also the numbers seem to show outreach but one cannot generalize about the quality of the care. If you look at health care, traditional tribal societies had their own knowledge systems that were hugely about preventive health care which have been overwhelmed by the advancement of modern allopathic systems.  Communities were dependent upon their own healers - Guni and traditional dais, and their own traditional knowledge systems. The breakdown of their access to resources, as well as their ability to define how they use their resources and the kind of work they do, have compelled them to become much more dependent on the state because their access to their herbs, and to their foods reduced with the outsiders' claims on their land.   Now, with the kind of lack of access to and decay of knowledge systems that they have lived with, they are having to become more dependent on a health system, which is not designed for them. That, along with the loss of the natural resources and poverty, their nutrition intake has changed, increasing the incidence of anaemia and vulnerability to diseases among them. They used to eat far more non-veg, because they were hunter gatherers who grew more of seasonal foods, plants and vegetables. So, it is important to restore their traditional knowledge systems to make them better able to manage their own health and not become dependent on a curative health system

As regards education, the kind of education that's going into these areas is the formal education system, which is dependent on a set of curriculums, which is seldom designed to incorporate their systems of knowledge and sense making, The text books show houses and portray roles vastly at variance with what the rural adivasi child experiences in their lived reality.  For a tribal child there is a home built in the vernacular architecture of the materials of their region they live in houses that are traditional designed and their work place is in the forest and fields, or as migrants. What the curriculum is doing is, totally displacing their traditional knowledge and bringing in a new set of knowledge, and concepts located in a vastly different environment. This causes an alienation and compels them to accept ideas far removed from their experiences and ill-suited to their ecological location. I am not saying they should not have info and understanding of other regions and practices but often their practices are presented as backward, which leaves them feeling low self esteem while their practices are often those that other societies need to learn from for their simplicity, low carbon footprint and ecological sustainability.

Let's look at sex ratio, which is viewed as an indicator of a positive attitude towards women. Tribal areas have traditionally had better sex ratios earlier. But today even in tribal areas, it is coming down. We need to understand this from the context of the value of the girl child, the value of women, and the value of women's work. Bride price was a part of the recognition, of valuing the girls labor, it meant that she was valued for the work contribution she would be making to the family - her ability to create progeny, to work as a reproducer and a producer, it gave her some respect in her marital home. Also, marriage was not a cultural necessity. They value the symbolism of bride price over being considered as commodities of purchase.  But all these cultural traditions that created some degree of gender parity among men and women are disappearing.

Since independence, private ownership of land, which was not there in the tribal population, started gaining importance and going in the patriarchal form. Earlier, the youngest daughter was considered the inheritor of the common lands in Meghalaya khasi tribe for instance. And it was the rest of the women and men in the community who would support her to manage that land and the children of the clan, theirs was a matrilocal culture. But all this is getting eroded with the privatization of land and the concept of private property. So, we are moving from territory to property.

Dr A L Sharada: So, how do you see the future of tribal populations in India? Do you think they will get imbibed into the mainstream society, lose their identity? What is being done to restore or to maintain the identity of the tribal communities?

Dr Soma K Parthasarathy: The tribal communities are struggling to claim their autonomy, to be able to govern themselves. There are legal provisions, but that they are implemented so weakly implies that their culture, traditions and their way of life is subjected to the objectives of development and they are often seen as the collateral damage in that journey. So, if we are to restore a life of dignity and wellbeing, then it has to be in terms of the constitutional rights that they hold, which means restoring to them the right for self-governance, which the PESA Act in schedule 5 and 6 areas provides. We need to restore to them the rights over their territories and the ways of life. The Forest Rights Act does address these historical injustices and makes provisions to correct them by according them individual and community forest rights and for women to have rights, as well as to be in decision making bodies of forest governance.  This Act is however being either not effectively implemented or flouted or undermined by state agencies. Similarly, under the compensatory afforestation act, government of India, Companies are meant to compensate for the loss of forest lands but communities remain deprived, while other communities are also threatened with loss of their lands in the name of compensatory forestry. Too often the projects of mining and development are causing displacement of tribal populations to new areas, taking away the land from the adivasis and leaving them to struggle rather than recognizing their right over their land.

Dr A L Sharada: What do you see as a solution for this, because everybody, the corporates, the mining mafia, and the government, seem to be so insensitive to the need to protect their cultural diversity, identity, rights and giving them their space.

Dr Soma K Parthasarthy: I think it's necessary to look at the Adivasi communities, from a lens of political ecology. They are, the inheritors of the traditional wisdom of living with nature, their lives are ecologically embedded. But a lot of that evidence of such lives has been wiped out, simply because a different kind of political economy has been imposed upon them. So, if we are serious about our commitments to the climate agenda, if we are serious about the commitments in the constitution for equity and equality of all citizens, then we should be looking at ways of enabling them to take greater control of their lives and their resources, and setting in place models where they can determine their futures in the framework of gender equality enshrined in the constitution and by respecting what they consider a dignified way of living. Their value systems are hugely related to how they live as a community. Their lives in their societies have been defined by a communitarian responsibility and to nature they see themselves as a part of. And that is a starting point from where we can begin to learn and respect what they have to offer, as a way of life, even as a system of living for the future. 

Dr.A L Sharada: I really wish there are some people who are listening to that and paying attention.

Dr Soma K Parthasarathy: You know, we've got entangled into looking at the legalities of things rather than noticing the value they have to offer. So, the government departments see the forests as territories that are a part of their turf and sees forest areas as their domain. They see tribal people as the encroachers and they criminalise the Adivasis and label and penalize them as destroyers of environment. Whereas, theirs is a method of conservation and environmentalism which has so much wisdom to offer in terms of how communities can be sustained and live in harmony with nature.

This modern fortress environmentalism is actually creating monocultures of the mind and adverse fissures which are causing more conflict. The tribes living in these areas sustain their regions, despite the activity and yet we don't learn our lessons from them. They live with a principle of enoughness and fulfilment for a community rather than in terms of surplus and competition. And these are lessons that I think are important to learn.

Dr. A.L.Sharada: We observe in our villages that more and more households have men working in the cities and the families adopting more rural/urban life styles. How is it going to impact the conservation of tribal cultures and communities?

Dr. Soma Parthasarathy: Let's not talk about the Adivasi lives as a romanticised idea. Let's talk about the pragmatism that is there in each household, Tn some households there will be one or two people who are going out for work. So the fractures and friction are happening within the household. When does the process of needing to look elsewhere for work start? It invariably starts for two reasons; the push factors are invariably about hunger, and not being able to make ends meet. The other push factor is the aspiration that children get into jobs, so that they don't need to live with the stigma of being 'encroachers' and 'criminals' ' backward' and 'primitive' peoples. So, they don't want their children to have to live in this kind of conflict. Invariably, it will be the adult male worker who will go out to seek a living, The women will not go invariably because there are fields and cattle and elders and children to be tended to. And because 80% of the work is performed by women - the care work related to nature, the work of foraging for fuel and fodder, preparing the fields, seed protection, care of domestic animals, etc. Men are also pushed to migrate because of indebtedness and the debt is mostly for seeking health services. And they are borrowing money to go to private practitioners in the absence /inadequacy of government health services. They are borrowing because of a livelihood crisis. They are now having to depend on unsustainable agriculture, while they were earlier sustaining themselves on forests resources, and on animal herding.

Thus, migration gives rise to two sets of value systems within the same house hold. And how do they then negotiate that between themselves? The boys are invariably unwilling to work on soil, and see these as undesirable jobs. Instead, they prefer jobs to drive cars, taxis, and look at ways to migrate for work, in government or even private and informal sector services, while women are left behind to tend to the land and cattle. However, they are also organizing into self-help groups, so that they can live and manage the available livelihoods from the local resources. 

The last point is that the communities are getting divided along gender lines also.  Because women are the ones left behind and the men are moving out, the worldviews and value systems are becoming contradictory between the men and the women. Often men are moving into the market, into relationships bringing in values of great masculinity and less of mutual respect. That is also a reason for the dowry system making inroads in these communities, increasing dowry demands and violence along with the falling sex ratio issues. These are alarming trends. But women are also raising their voices to be heard and represented and  are also claiming their rights.