Me Hijra, Me Laxmi is foremost the story of an exceptional human being.This autobiography is how Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, the eldest son of an orthodox Brahmin family, became Laxmi, a hijra who made history. Laxmi Narayan Tripathi who isone of the most famous transgenders, Bollywood actress. Even Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer and motivational speaker in Mumbai, India. She is also the Acharya Mahamandaleshwar of kinnarakhara, Laxmi talks about her journey from childhood to attaining fame as an artist.
This book deals with the trauma of third gender. The title of the autobiography makes one think about the assertion of identity through the word ‘hijra’, coming before the name of the individual. The book turns out to be more the story of an individual’s struggle with identity and relationships than the celebration of ‘Hijra hood’.
In this book, we find that Laxmi spoke about every sphere of her life, whether it was the matter of sexuality or personal life. Initial chapters are fully dropped in the incidents of sexual harassments.According to this book, she was born as a normal male child but always had confusion to choose between her sexuality or personality. Laxmi was the eldest son of a brahmin family, but she was sexually abused in her early childhood due to feminine feeling and gesture by her relatives and outsiders also. When Laxmi was in fourth standard, she joined a gay group of Ashok Row Ravi.
After living a confused life, she joined a hijra community. Fortunately, her family accepted her as hijra, it seems much trickery when she had used to wear pants-shirts to live like elder son in the family and used to wear sari only outside of house, especially in hijra community.
Laxmi becomes the first transgender person to hold a passport in India. While she speaks at the UN World Aids Conference in Toronto about “Hijras and their problems”, she champions “The need to destroy stereotypes’ back home while appearing on a TV show”. Even though every day back home is a fight for her, when Laxmi is granted diplomatic status to represent India at the UN in New York, she feels national pride: “I was no longer just Laxmi, the hijra; I was India”.
What I liked best about this book that Laxmi accepted however she is. She could be opted to operation to change her sex, but she decided to be a hijra and started to work to uplift for hijras community. There is no doubt, a stigma attached to transsexuality and transgender people in India. Transgender face widespread discrimination and have their human rights violated daily. Laxmi wrote about her experiences of constant harassment.
In Article 1 of Universal Declaration of Human Right, it is mentioned that – “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. But the transgender community did not live freely and equally as compared to other two genders, so it shows a clear violation of their human right.But now in India also, condition of transgender community improves day by day by continuously trying to protect their human rights.In 2017 Supreme Court decriminalise section 377 of IPC, a 158-year-old colonial law which criminalizes consensual gay sex. Supreme Court also stated Right to Privacy for transgenders which is core human right in 21st century.
Transgender rights are part of human rights. It is natural right of every person whether that person is of any gender enjoy freedom to learn, love, work and play. We know that gender is not in our hand it depends on genes, hormones or environmental factor but after that we discriminate the transgender community. In recent years the law, policies and attitudes of social change and allow more transgender people to live safer and healthier life. It is the duty of Government to engage with transgender to easily understand their concerns and support then whenever their human right violate. NCTE (National Centre for Transgender Equality) believes that the progress of the transgender community requires social justice approach that fight with all form of discrimination.
I come to end and would like to say that this is one of the rare biographies of the LGBT community that intends to dispel many myths about them. The autobiography is a narrative of her ordeal of becoming a hijra by choice, and her subsequent journey of fighting against tremendous odds for the recognition of her community. I end with this sentence that, her identity of being hijra is for the people but being a social worker, her works are more than of being hijra.
BOOK – ME HIJRA, ME LAXMI
AUTHOR – LAXMINARAYAN TRIPATHI
PUBLISHER – OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
PAGES – 238
This Book review done by Priya Aggarwal.
