India’s third gender

“There are roughly one million Hijra (transgender) in India, representing approximately one in every 400 postpubertal persons born male there. This very large prevalence (~ 1:400) of the Hijra in India, most of whom have undergone ‘nirvan’ (a sex change by ancient surgical means), is strong evidence that the intense transgender condition is far more prevalent (by about two orders of magnitude) than traditional western psychiatrists and psychologists have ever been willing to admit. These large numbers also speak of the countless tragedies occurring in the current climate of oppression, degradation and violence against transgender women, not only in India but also in many others traditional societies all around the world. “ An American computer scientist and transsexual activist Lynn Conwey
Transgender community, as well known as ‘eunuch’ in India, is at such an extreme end of the rights spectrum here, that it would be quite right to assume that they are completely off it. Though in 21st century, with most of transgenders living in the big cities consumed and populated by IT and Software crowd, it is rather shameful to acknowledge how tradition and social stigma are still wining their bets over simple humanity progress.
India, such a diverse and spiritual country… yet full of people who are rendered invisible, ridiculous, horrific and most of the time disgusting.
Each and every transsexual woman has her own story to share, but in its essence, they all share one. Being laughed at by their friends, beaten and rejected by their families, denied jobs, ration cards and passports by government, being exploited by society in the only few professions they are unwillingly pushed into (begging and prostitution), as well as being most of the time exploited by the police.
In India, people live with a level of gender, cast and social denial that defies all sense of common decency and humanism — and don’t even notice it most of the time. Indian society consistently rejects and violates an entire group of people on the basis of their gender, cast or/and social status while the horror of this never seems to strike people as they roll up their car windows or carefully look away with a grimace when approached by a transgender begging on the street. Most of them only know how prostitution is disgusting, and begging disgraceful, yet very few of them care to notice it is Indian society who pushes most of the people on the streets by violating their primal human rights of being who they are. If given a chance, transgender people wouldn’t be separated in a special group and they would be normal, or a little bit less normal