Laxmi Narayan Tripathi applies eyeliner while discussing religion with Hindu holy men, and attending to a stream of visitors eager to touch her feet and receive a blessing.
Among India’s best-known transgender advocates, a Bollywood reality TV star and a former Asia Pacific representative to the UN, Tripathi is capitalizing on the ruling Hindu nationalist party’s emphasis on Hindu heritage to claim a place for transgender people, stirring both admiration and controversy.
Her newly formed Kinnar akhara, a monastic order, has set up camp at the Kumbh Mela festival, a series of ritual bathings that rotates among four Indian sites every three years and draws tens of millions of Hindu pilgrims.
Photo: AP
The Kinnar camp on the edge of the festival grounds is adorned with images of Ardhanari, a half-male, half-female composite of the Hindu god Shiva and his consort, Parvati.
Although hijras — the term used to describe eunuchs, androgynous and transgender people — were an integral part of the ancient Hindu society, they have been marginalized in modern India.
Hindu families have continued ancient practices of paying hijras to dance at births and marriages, considering their presence auspicious, while simultaneously denying them access to these same rites.
An orthodox order, the Juna akhara, on Jan. 15 invited Kinnar to take part in the Kumbh’s first royal bath, a saint-led procession into the river.
Since then, Tripathi has been pushing for recognition by the umbrella group that sets rules for the akharas. Unlike other akharas, which are only open to Hindu men, Kinnar akharas, founded in 2015, is open to all genders and religions.
On the Kumbh’s first bathing day, Tripathi led a train of 21 tractor chariots from their tent camp to the bathing ghats at the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers, with devotees following on foot, as observers showered them with flower petals.
“We have stripped enough in our lives. Let us just have fun,” Tripathi said.
They bathed in the presence of Juna members.
“For them to bathe with one of the oldest and most orthodox of the monastic orders, I consider that quite revolutionary,” said Ashok Row Kavi, chairman of the LGBTQ advocacy group Humsafar Trust.
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