3rd gender sensitization in Kolkata schools

By: Ajanta Chakraborty and Basabdatta Sarkar
KOLKATA: The city’s first transgender awareness programme for schools was launched at Netaji Nagar Vidyamandir on Saturday. The programme to sensitize students about the LGBTQI community will go on for a month.


“Schools, as a primary socializing agent, must play an important role to be inclusive for all students,” said Sobhan Mukherjee, who is spearheading the project. “This is a pilot run against transphobia, to tell students about things like the apex court ruling on transgenders, that nobody should be discriminated against for being labelled in the ‘other’ gender,” said Mukherjee, after the launch which was attended by India’s first transgender judge Joyita Mondol, state transgender board member Ranjita Sinha, trans model Sreya Karmakar and state child rights commission chairperson Ananya Chakraborty.

TOI on 5 August reported Mukherjee holding an impromptu workshop at the school — his alma mater. Headmaster Avijit Banerjee said, “I’m very happy to see my students again.” Joyita and Sreya, too, were his students.

Mukherjee, who is not a trans himself but understands their pangs, said: “Transgender commentators have pointed out that only trans people comment on their issues. But others should speak up for the rights of the minority too.”

Banerjee said, “It’s time to look at people as humans and not on the basis of their gender. Trans people are marginalized not only in society but in their homes as well.” Joyita, who’s ostracised from her family for the last 10 years, said: “I now have a bigger family (the LGBTQI community).” The Lok Adalat judge who migrated to Malda and faced poverty and isolation in the past, recalled how she was constantly reprimanded for behaving like a girl as a child. “But in school, even as I was bullied by some of my classmates, I received a lot of love from my teachers.”

Karmakar said: “As I considered myself to be a girl, I would feel bad to use the boys’ loo. So, the female teachers let me use their toilets.”