[Reader-list] In blast times, eunuch goes to donate blood, is turned away: some reflections on citizenship, the body, religion and gender

[inder salim]

Dear Akshay
it is all very sad....treatment to this community in our society is
quite disappointing.
it just happens that today i was talking to a eunach about the
possiblity to do some theatre with 'hijras ' only

thanks for comment on indersalim poster

love
is

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 4:37 PM, A Khanna <A.Khanna at sms.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> below is a newsclip forwarded from another list, thought this might be of
> interest to those concerned with the body of the Citizen. first a few brief
> and random reflections...
>
> the story below relates to someone i presume to be a member of the Hijra
> community in delhi. this person, named Sita, went to donate blood in light
> of the recent and unfortunate blasts. heris blood was refused. to me this
> opens up the question of what it means to be a 'citizen', and what bodies
> are allowed into that space – whose blood is good enough to be part of a
> city's brave response to a moment of trauma? It also opens up questions of
> the significance of spaces of thirdness in frames that are all too
> polarised, as seems to be the case in much talk around 'terrorism'. a couple
> of years back i was carrying out fieldwork in southern Gujarat, on
> sexuality, gender an sexualness. There are two things from this experience i
> shall share here.
>
> Though being careful not to allow my questions to be overdetermined by the
> context of hindu fundamentalism (this being Gujarat, and specifically areas
> where the violence against the muslim community had been particularly
> widespread), this fundamentalism emerged as a central theme that it would be
> a travesty to ignore. I mean this in the sense that a Hindu-ness ahs come to
> be essential to claims to legitimacy. For instance, if an NGO does not/did
> not perform a Hindu-ness – by clearly displaying pictures of deities, or a
> shrine in its office, it could well expect to be attacked as a Christian
> outfit and receive threats of violence. But this demand for hinduness is a a
> complicated thing. In my all to brief work with the Murat/Hijra community in
> southern Gujarat (Murat, an interesting idiom of gender - which translates
> simultaneously to face, idol, mask and performance and which is an extremely
> flamboyant queer embodiment. visibly, it is similar to Kothi and Hijra
> embodiments), i was struck by the strong flavour of this Hindu-ness in the
> narratives of self and community. While in other parts of the country the
> practices and beliefs of the Hijra community challenge the very notion of
> discrete 'religions', combining elements and practices of hinduism and islam
> in particular, here i was often offered narratives placed squarely within a
> hindu frame. For instance, Gujarat is home to one of the bigger temples of a
> deity, Bahuchara mata, worshipped by hijra communities from different parts
> of south asia. the government of Gujarat, which i am loathe to trust,
> estimates 1.5 million pilgrims a year. this was fact was brought to bear on
> the claim that there is a high respect in Gujarati society for gender-queer
> folk, that people on the streets would often fall at the feet of Hijras,
> that violence against Murats/Hijras was a travesty of not some simply rights
> in a frame of secular citizenship, but of a respect and position accorded
> these bodies within a religious cosmology. (this is not to say that there
> are no Muslim murats/hijras in Gujarat, but rather that they are not (any
> more?) as central to the narrative of the collective self-as-represented.)
> surely there is a history to this Hinduness (given the complex connectedness
> of hijra communities in different parts of south asia...), and i don't know
> enough about it.
>
> Given this peculiar hinduness, i was curious, what was happening in this
> community, and in its interactions with the world, when the organised
> violence was being carried out against Muslims a few years back? The Murat
> community is connected with all sorts of people, whether in terms of class,
> religion, or caste, through a thriving sexual economy. Murats have lovers
> and friends who are muslim, and hindu. (it is not that love/desire is blind
> to religion – there are widely circulating stereotypes about the sexualness,
> and sexual performance relating to religions and class. Working class Muslim
> males are most often placed at the highest level, as the best lovers, most
> caring and respectful, and are expected to be terrific in the sack, but that
> is an issue for some other time).
>
> In that scary time, i was told, the Murat/Hijra community became something
> of a safe space for people being hounded – lovers and their families - hindu
> and muslim, were afforded protection in our homes, in our neighbourhood. We
> are all people who have been thrown out of our own homes, who have been
> hounded down by this society – how can we discriminate? How can we stand
> back and watch? Our homes are open to all, hindu, muslim, christian.
>
> This community, in other words, emerged as a significant space, a third
> space perhaps, where the evocation of religious identity as the basis for
> violent political play was nullified. And significantly, this is not an
> a-religious space either. Maybe this is an instance of the solidarity of the
> despised, the collaborations of the margin. (on which note, i loved inder
> salim's poster stuck on trees at the India Social Forum in Delhi:
> http://pics.livejournal.com/indersalim/pic/0000c70r/ ). Or is it actually
> not the margin, but something central, a core of humanness that is
> suffocated as the pseudo-religious  identities of fundamentalism crowd their
> objects, leaving this humanness at the margins, visible only in those
> despised enough to be irrelevant to their virulent projects?
>
> But then, when we 'citizens' are called upon to give our blood, our body
> parts, our organs, seemingly we are being asked to become the 'bare life'
> that may (re)build the nation. The non-citizen, however, cannot be allowed
> to contaminate that nation. So despised, it is, that  it cannot be allowed
> to become part of that body. A shame?
>
> x
>
> akshay
>
> ..................
> beginning forwarded message:
>
>
> In blast times, eunuch goes to donate blood, is turned away
>
>  http://metronow.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/in-blast-times-eunuch-goes-to-donate-blood-is-turned-away/
>
> Stories of callousness of hospitals is not new. Refusing beds to the
> terminally ill, denying care to the sick, making them wait for hours for an
> appointment…the list is endless.
> And now, in blast times, if a recent incident at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital
> is to be considered a case in point, there is discrimination against those
> who want to help, also.
> After the blasts, many people came forward to help and donate blood. Among
> them was Sita—a eunuch. After hearing of the plight of the victims of
> Saturday's blasts, Sita wanted to help and went to RML Hospital where the
> doctors refused to accept her blood and turned her away.
> This, apparently, at a time when the hospital would have needed as much
> blood as possible!
> For the doctor at the blood bank, the fact that Sita was a eunuch was enough
> to send her on her way. "When I went to donate blood on Saturday around 10
> pm, Dr Veena Doda, the blood bank incharge, said they did not need a
> eunuch's blood and turned me away," Sita said. Shockingly, this happened at
> a time when dozens of injured people had been brought to the hospital for
> treatment.
> Harsh Malhotra, secretary general, Delhi Pradesh National Panthers Party,
> who witnessed the incident on Saturday night, said, "It is human blood after
> all and in times of crisis such attitude is not acceptable. The doctor
> misbehaved with Sita just because she is a eunuch."
> While confirming that there was a shortage of blood at the hospital, Rahul
> Verma of Uday Foundation—a non-profit organisation for congenital defects
> and rare blood groups—said, "I got phone calls from anxious relatives of
> victims telling me that the hospital was short of blood that evening," he
> said.
> A NACO survey shows that, voluntary donation in Delhi is only 24 per cent.
> "Blood shortages are a regular feature and if hospitals are turning away
> donors then obviously there are no plans to increase blood donation."
> Denying any knowledge of the incident, Medical Superintendent, Dr N.K.
> Chaturvedi, said, "At the time of the blast we had 250 units of blood of all
> blood groups. Many voluntary organisations came and donated blood but then
> we redirected the donors to Red Cross as it is centralised and all hospitals
> could get blood from there." He, however, added that there was a blood
> donation camp at the hospital on Sunday and Monday.
> But why was Sita refused? Was it because she is a eunuch? "That you have to
> ask Dr Doda as she is the incharge of the blood bank," said Dr Chaturvedi.
> Efforts to contact Dr Doda, however, failed.
> What's more, even the law has provisions that prevent people like Sita from
> exercising their duty as a citizen.
> When asked, Aditya Bandyopadhyay, a gay lawyer, says, "According to the
> Blood Safety Regulation, there is a clause in the form (which the donor has
> to fill) that asks if the donor is male or female. If the answer is none,
> then the doctors can refuse to take blood from such a donor." He adds that
> so long as Article 377 is alive, such discriminatory clauses would remain.
> Would you rate this as discrimination? Should eunuchs be given equal rights?
>
>
>
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> - --The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>
>
> http://metronow.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/in-blast-times-eunuch-goes-to-donate-blood-is-turned-away/
>
> Stories of callousness of hospitals is not new. Refusing beds to the
> terminally ill, denying care to the sick, making them wait for hours for an
> appointment…the list is endless.
> And now, in blast times, if a recent incident at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital
> is to be considered a case in point, there is discrimination against those
> who want to help, also.
> After the blasts, many people came forward to help and donate blood. Among
> them was Sita—a eunuch. After hearing of the plight of the victims of
> Saturday's blasts, Sita wanted to help and went to RML Hospital where the
> doctors refused to accept her blood and turned her away.
> This, apparently, at a time when the hospital would have needed as much
> blood as possible!
> For the doctor at the blood bank, the fact that Sita was a eunuch was enough
> to send her on her way. "When I went to donate blood on Saturday around 10
> pm, Dr Veena Doda, the blood bank incharge, said they did not need a
> eunuch's blood and turned me away," Sita said. Shockingly, this happened at
> a time when dozens of injured people had been brought to the hospital for
> treatment.
> Harsh Malhotra, secretary general, Delhi Pradesh National Panthers Party,
> who witnessed the incident on Saturday night, said, "It is human blood after
> all and in times of crisis such attitude is not acceptable. The doctor
> misbehaved with Sita just because she is a eunuch."
> While confirming that there was a shortage of blood at the hospital, Rahul
> Verma of Uday Foundation—a non-profit organisation for congenital defects
> and rare blood groups—said, "I got phone calls from anxious relatives of
> victims telling me that the hospital was short of blood that evening," he
> said.
> A NACO survey shows that, voluntary donation in Delhi is only 24 per cent.
> "Blood shortages are a regular feature and if hospitals are turning away
> donors then obviously there are no plans to increase blood donation."
> Denying any knowledge of the incident, Medical Superintendent, Dr N.K.
> Chaturvedi, said, "At the time of the blast we had 250 units of blood of all
> blood groups. Many voluntary organisations came and donated blood but then
> we redirected the donors to Red Cross as it is centralised and all hospitals
> could get blood from there." He, however, added that there was a blood
> donation camp at the hospital on Sunday and Monday.
> But why was Sita refused? Was it because she is a eunuch? "That you have to
> ask Dr Doda as she is the incharge of the blood bank," said Dr Chaturvedi.
> Efforts to contact Dr Doda, however, failed.
> What's more, even the law has provisions that prevent people like Sita from
> exercising their duty as a citizen.
> When asked, Aditya Bandyopadhyay, a gay lawyer, says, "According to the
> Blood Safety Regulation, there is a clause in the form (which the donor has
> to fill) that asks if the donor is male or female. If the answer is none,
> then the doctors can refuse to take blood from such a donor." He adds that
> so long as Article 377 is alive, such discriminatory clauses would remain.
> Would you rate this as discrimination? Should eunuchs be given equal rights?
>
>
>
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