Suchitra Dey, formerly known as Hiranmey Dey, underwent a
sex-reassignment surgery last year. She has an MA degree in Geography as well
as in English and has also done her B.Ed. She teaches in a private school in
Kolkata. In a recent interview, she talked to The Indian Express about her job interview
experiences with some schools around Kolkata. Recounting her shocking
experiences, she stated, “One of the interviewers at a well-known Kolkata
school asked me to wear male outfits because all my mark sheets and
certificates say that I am a man. In each of these interviews, I faced the
worst kind of humiliation. The male principal of one of these schools asked me
whether I can bear a child. He also asked me if my breasts are real. Would
these questions be asked if I wasn’t a transgender woman?”
With a series of such harrowing experiences and no answers
to her questions in sight, she filed a complaint with the West Bengal Human
Rights Commission on June 11. In her written complaint, she wrote: “I couldn’t
handle the humiliation anymore. The things I have been asked by authorities at
“reputed” schools of Kolkata shows the kind of mindset people still hold about
our community. If someone like me, who is educated and experienced, has to face
this then imagine the plight of those who don’t have the opportunity to go to
school, or the ones who have been ostracized.”
Just as a reminder to the readers here: the Supreme Court
has, in 2014, lawfully recognized trans-genders as the third gender. However,
we are sufficiently aware that such minor legalities do-not make a difference.
No matter what the law says on paper, practically the realities of the lives of
every Indian citizen are defined by the socio-economic milieu one is born in.
Context, most often, determines the content of an individual’s life. It is an
open secret that even after the abolition of untouchability with the enactment
of the Constitution, the ground realities for the people belonging to the
lowermost castes, who are also devoid of any political and economic clout, has
hardly taken a turn for the better. Similarly, although recognition in law of
the transgender community is itself a big step, however it is far too
insufficient. If the promise of a dignified life for the transgender community
has to be fulfilled, it requires massive transformation of the societal
mindset.
Commonly, education is associated with bringing about
positive changes in mindsets and in steering the society in a progressive
direction. However, ironically, our education system either exists in isolation
of the society or alternately is used as a political mouthpiece to steer the
society in a direction that the political dispensation of the day desires.
Apart from the above, the aims of education have been completely reduced to
just instrumental and material aims. The meaning of education, as commonly understood
today, is something that is required for getting a decent job and nothing more
than that. The essential aims of education - to help an individual develop a
sense of right and wrong, to enable and strengthen the faculties of critical
thinking, introspection, decision-making, feelings of humaneness, empathy and a
sense of responsibility towards one’s own actions and towards the world – have
been diluted to such an extent that they have become non-existent.
In such a scenario, it is but apt that even those who claim
to be well educated, and not only that, have been further endowed with the
massive responsibility of educating others; should have such mindsets. The most
unfortunate part, though, is that this repulsive state of affairs does-not
bother enough members of the society, so that a societal change could be
brought about.
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