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

[inder salim]

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image in solidarity with eunachs

http://pics.livejournal.com/indersalim/pic/000657qa/



On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 7:43 PM, inder salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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