On a giant flyover in the sprawling Indian metropolis of Mumbai, a transgender art collective is trying to change attitudes as radically as it transforms the concrete pillars into brightly colored murals.
Known as “hijras,” individuals identified as male at birth but now part of India’s “third gender” have an ambivalent position on the edges of Indian society, respected and feared in turn as some Hindus believe they hold the power to bless or curse.
Denied jobs at most workplaces, many are forced to beg at traffic intersections, where they are a common sight in cities or on trains.
Photo: AFP
Some turn up at family events such as weddings or birth celebrations, or at new houses, to offer blessings in return for money, sometimes threatening to issue curses if denied. Others turn to prostitution, increasing the risk of violence they face.
The Aravani Art Project hopes to challenge the stigma and marginalization by showing transgender people as artists in the same public spaces where they beg or face abuse.
At the latest mural site — one of Mumbai’s busiest junctions — the team painted portraits of local residents, among them two cleaners, a vegetable seller and a policeman.
“It’s an opportunity for us to show what talent we have,” said artist Deepa Kachare, a transgender woman.
“We have to beg from people by going to marriage functions, babies’ births, shops, trains, and some of us are sex workers to make money as well,” she said. “We go everywhere to beg, but we love to work hard and earn money.”
The organization — whose projects are commissioned by governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations — has brought together dozens of mostly transgender women for street art projects in multiple Indian cities.
“People are very happy to see us working as artists,” said Kachare, 26. “Now they think positively when they see us.”
The art collective takes its name from Lord Aravan, a Hindu deity who is “wedded” to hundreds of transgender people every year in a southern Indian festival.
Hinduism has many references to “third genders,” such as Shikhandi, a character in the epic Mahabharata, and hijras have assumed different roles in society over the centuries, among them royal servants and harem guardians, historians have said.
However, gay sex was criminalized in India during the British colonial period and only legalized by the Indian Supreme Court in 2018.
The transgender community — believed to number several million — has fought to end discrimination, but many say they still struggle to be accepted by broader society.
“What’s exciting for me is to tell them [transgender artists] that they are capable of doing anything, and gender is really something that should be discussed much, much later, and what they do and what they want to do in life comes first,” said Aravani cofounder Sadhna Prasad, 29, who is also an artist.
Another member of the group, Ayesha Koli, 25, a transgender woman who still begs on the streets, said that her pigment-spattered kurta had become a marker of a different kind.
“These days when we wear our ‘painting clothes’ and go, they ask with curiosity if we paint,” she said. “We feel immensely proud in saying: ‘Yes, we are artists and we paint.’”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including