The mixed-methods study was conducted in Chennai, Vellore, Salem, Thanjavur, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Trichy and Madurai. It consisted of focus groups with 61 participants, surveys of 371 participants,  eight in-depth interviews and 20 key informant in-depth interviews involving 16 government and private school teachers, two school principals and two officials of Tamil Nadu School Education Department.

Some key findings include:

” Forms of bullying varied according to grade levels – primary, middle/high school or higher secondary. Physical harassment was reported high among middle/high school (60%) and higher secondary (50%) students while sexual harassment was reported high when the participants were primary school students (43%).

“Only 18% said that they had reported incidents of bullying to school authorities, to which authorities responded as follows: 29% were asked to change their perceived feminine mannerism/behaviour to avoid being bullied and 49% were asked to ignore the incidents. Only 53%1 of those who had complained reported that authorities took action against the persons who bullied them.

” About one-third (33.2%) reported that bullying played a key role in discontinuing school. More than three-fifths (63%) reported lowered academic performance while 53% reported having skipped classes.” [Quotes are from the research brief available here]

The study concluded with recommendations for measures to prevent and mitigate bullying such as: monitoring bullying and implementing anti-bulling policies, raising awareness among students and training of teachers on diversity in gender and sexuality, establishing mechanisms of for confidential reporting of bullying, and providing supportive counselling services for survivors of bullying.

The study ‘Be a Buddy, Not a Bully! Experiences of Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Tamil Nadu’ jointly published by UNESCO New Delhi and the Department of School Education, Government of Tamil Nadu, was released on June 11, 2019 at the Anna Centenary Library.  It was one of the events held in conjunction with Chennai Rainbow Pride 2019. The research brief is available here and the full text of the research study is available here.

Congratulations to Sahodaran and partner groups Thozhi and C-SHARP, and all community members, including research investigators,  who contributed to this important study.

The report states that the two young men consumed poison on March 2, unable to bear the taunts and harassment of peers who ridiculed their close friendship and ragged them based on this.  They were rushed to the Government Rajaji Hospital, Madurai, where one passed away four days ago, and one this morning.

While they are not alive to comment on the nature of their relationship, it seems clear that the ragging they faced was motivated by homophobia.

Three years ago, in 2016, the University Grants Commission published its 3rd Amendment of the Anti-Ragging Regulations. This amendment expressly prohibits ragging based on sexual orientation and gender identity (including transgender), among other factors. While most colleges and universities around the country display their anti-ragging regulations and even organise sessions on ragging during orientation for incoming batches, ignorance of this amendment –  and the vulnerability of gender-nonconforming, queer and trans students to ragging –  is pervasive (see Queerala’s study of colleges in Kerala).

Six months after the Navtej Singh Johar verdict, homophobia, lesbophobia and transphobia are alive and flourishing. They are reflected in statements by the police that same-gender relationships, though decriminalised, are against ‘our’ culture; in attempts by parents to separate their adult progeny who are in queer/trans relationships with their lovers and place them under house arrest (individuals in six such cases reached Orinam for support from Dec 2018 to February 2019); and in continuing violence faced by students in educational institutions, leading to hate crimes such as the Madurai suicides.

When will the prejudice and hate stop?

Notes:

• For crisis support and suicide hotline information, visit https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/lgbt/crisis-support/
• For information on how educational institutions can be LGBTIQA+ inclusive, see https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/educational-institutions/
• Thanks to Gokul for translation support.

At first, Tushar thought that the note slipped under his hostel room door on Oct 11, 2015, was some sort of prank by a fellow student. The next one read: “I am not joking… this is important for both of us as I need the money and your secret won’t get out. If your secret is leaked you will be hated by everyone and your career will be ruined in IISc”.

The notes kept coming. Nine in all, over the course of five days.

And they got nastier. On Oct 16,  when the blackmailer realized that Tushar wasn’t about to yield to his demands, he pinned a homophobic note on the hostel notice board outing him.

Says Tushar: “[t]he notice was first seen by one of my friends and removed by him. He brought it over to my room asking me if I was fine and talked with me for a while. Subsequently, sometime during the night, a similar notice was put up with a terse handwritten note at the end “YOU CAN KEEP REMOVING IT. I WILL PRINT MORE“.

Thus outed to the entire hostel, Tushar, who had only been out to his closest friends until then, chose to respond with the following note on the same notice board:

Tushar, who describes himself as ‘shy and a bit introverted’ said he felt relieved upon writing the note. Classmates and fellow-hostelites came up to him to express their support. In the weeks since the incident, he, with the support of friends, lodged a complaint with the university administration. At the time of publishing this note, he is still awaiting formal action in response.

Episodes such as these suggest that even large, supposedly progressive, campuses with support groups and allies, are not immune to bullying and harassment of LGBT students. It raises questions about the ability and willingness of the campus administration to respond swiftly and effectively to complaints received.

The familiarity of the perpetrator with the campus, hostel and locations where he asked the money to be placed, strongly suggests that he is a student, causing his actions to fall within the purview of ragging. The 1998 amendment of the Karnataka Education Act includes in its definition of ragging “causing, inducing, compelling or forcing a student… to do any act which detracts from human dignity or violates his person or exposes him to ridicule or to forbear from doing any lawful act, by intimidating., wrongfully restraining, wrongfully confining, or injuring him or by using criminal force to him or by holding out to him any threat of such intimidation, wrongful restraint, wrongful confinement, injury or the use of criminal force” [1].

Further, the University Grants Commission regulations on ragging, released in 2009, include extortion within their definition [2]. Such anti-ragging policies need to be made explicitly inclusive of homophobic and transphobic bullying, as well.

Finally, while the current Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act [3] is limited to redressal for ciswomen, we urgently need measures to address sexual harassment, including blackmail and outing threats, of queer and trans individuals who are not ciswomen.

Some Orinam resources to make educational institutions more LGBTIQ* inclusive are here [4], and a list of campus LGBT initiatives including Queer IISc collective is here [5].

We at Orinam are aware that coming out [6] is not a universal or readily available prophylactic for such expressions of homophobia as blackmail and extortion [7], and recognise that such forced outing can have disastrous consequences for many. We also realise that for some of us who are visibly different in our gender expression, being in the closet is not even an option.

The caveats notwithstanding, we applaud Tushar for his courageous response, and stand in solidarity with him and the queer/trans and ally communities at IISc in their efforts to obtain justice.

Tushar is also planning to speak out to his peers on sexuality issues, and hopes that other queer students will find this to be a source of support. He eventually plans to come out to his parents, a rite of passage that – while considered before – hasn’t happened yet.

A shout-out to the friends who have supported him at this time. In the words of Anubhav, a member of the campus LGBT support group Queer IISc who accompanied Tushar to the university administration, “Our friends supported us irrespective of orientation, because a crime is a crime, and victims are our friends, relatives, people who we care for, not ‘gays’, ‘lesbians’ or ‘transgenders’“.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Tushar and Anubhav for their input, and Advocate Amba Salelkar for pointing out that extortion is covered within the UGC definition if ragging.

References

[1] The Karnataka Education Act, 1983. (with amendments). Online at https://test.orinam.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Karnataka_Ed_Act.pdf

[2] University Grants Commission, 2009. UGC Regulations on Curbing the Menace of Ragging In Higher Educational Institutions. Online at https://test.orinam.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/anti_ragging_UGC_20091.pdf

[3] Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India. 2013. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, Online at http://www.lawyerscollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Sexual-Harassment-at-Workplace-Act.pdf

[4] Orinam, 2009. Resources for Educational Institutions. Online at https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/educational-institutions/

[5] Orinam 2009, updated through 2015. Campus Initiatives. https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/lgbt/campus-initiatives/

[6] Orinam. 2009. Coming Out Stories. Online at https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/lgbt/coming-out-2/coming-out-stories/

[7] Orinam, 2009. Dealing with Extortion. Online at https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/lgbt/legal-resources/dealing-with-extortion/

I. Self

It started thus for me:

During school days, my teachers perceived extra grace in my dance movements and selected me to play the role of the female consort of a male deity in a stage play. They also spared me, as they did with girls, the corporal punishment they freely employed on boys.

Ever since, a series of unconnected events have kept reinforcing that I am different.

Some of these are,

Observing me walk in front of him, my uncle cautioned me to change my gait, lest people call me a ‘lady’.

Classmates started walking beside me mimicking my walk, accompanied with claps and catchy movie songs that described the gait of a young woman, “nadaiya… ithu nadaiya…” and “aiyo … mella nada mella nada … meni ennagum?”

I got called by different female nicknames. And one that tweaked the spelling of my name, Shankari.

Boys in class would re-enact movie sequences treating me as a woman and holding me in an endearing clasp or brutal grip, depending on whether they were playing hero or villain.

While removing stains in my hand, a maternal aunt wondered out loud why my palms were unusually soft.

A boy seated next to me in one of our crowded classrooms called out friends to touch me and feel the softness of my skin. I was touched and rubbed by a number of boys who vehemently agreed with the first one.

Two of my neighbours were irritated with my soft nature, and started hitting me regularly, till I broke down inconsolably one day.

A classmate started interacting with me in an overtly physical manner; nuzzling and teasing my face with his fingers and winking at me. I reacted with ignorance at first, followed by shock, and then with curiosity at what new things he might do. Finally, when I began to like the attention, he pulled away scolding me for not resisting him all these days. That left me thoroughly confused, and thereafter suspicious of the intentions of anyone who showed any signs of intimacy towards me. I was only able to speak to my mother about this twenty-five years after the incident.

My cousins suggested that I join ‘people like me’ who live in groups in some huts nearby.

A male teacher sent shivers down my spine when he subjected to me a sudden unwanted bad touch, and kiss.

The list goes on, but now all these other people have moved on in their lives leaving an indelible mark on me. Strangers still point at me on the road. Recently, a group of boys let out a peculiar sound on seeing me walk by. After the usual shock, I decided I should not let this affect me anymore. I went briskly and sat next to them, as if daring them to touch! You know what happened next?

They all fell silent.

Part II. Incident on a Train

It was a day  I regretted I being at that precise location: the upper berth of an unreserved compartment of Jolarpet Express heading towards Chennai. A vantage point from where I could observe the behavior of those around me.

I was engrossed in a book, as I usually am during train journeys, when I became aware of  intermittent laughter, hustle and bustle around me. The tone of mockery in the voices was all too familiar, and my senses alerted me that something was amiss.

On the floor of the compartment, standing below me, was a short, bulky and dark-complexioned man in his twenties, wearing pants and a shirt, the fingernails on one hand painted a dark red. He was being smothered on all sides by a  group of laughing, jeering men, who addressed him as ‘Bajji’. One of the men said something in his ears in a seemingly endearing tone. Bajji rebuked the man in a way that suggested the man was known to him, and tried to push him away. Only to end up entangled in the arms  and gropes of more men.

What I saw after that was too much to bear. A tall man kept grinding  against Bajji from behind, while holding the latter’s shoulders and simultaneously engaging him in conversation. A few others made comments  that were not  audible in the noise of the moving train. At the next station, a passenger seated below got down, leaving his place vacant. Bajji’s ‘peers’ generously offered the seat to our Bajji. But wait, it was not the vacant seat they offered, but the lap of another man who had occupied it by then. The man behind him firmly  clasped Bajji by his waist, while the man who was nuzzling him called in a man with curly hair to join in the action. This curly-haired man took his position in front of Bajji. Now Bajji was captive, positioned in a such a way that he was imprisoned by male bodies—for I would not like to call them human beings, after witnessing what they next did to him. The man who had Bajji on his lap, tightened his grip around Bajji’s waist. The curly-haired man began squeezing Bajji’s chest. Bajji tried to push those fingers away but his hands were then promptly restrained by another man. It was neither affection nor curiosity. It was utterly cruel abuse!

My own prior experiences of harassment made me feel that Bajji needed help, but multiple thoughts held me back. What if I had misunderstood the situation? How could I, on my own, confront a group of passengers? What if these people were an organized gang of traffickers?

I looked at the co-passengers seated around me. Most were sleeping or completely unconcerned by what was happening.

As I hesitated, mustering the courage to intervene, I waited for a cry from Bajji, an audible confirmation of his distress, so I could also cry out loud and alert people to his predicament. But to my surprise, Bajji mustered a wan smile every time some atrocity was committed on his person. Now and then he would wipe his eyes, as if to prevent tears from rolling down. Perhaps he had learned that crying would only provoke further abuse.

The worst part was yet to come. A loud-voiced bystander asked the men surrounding Bajji what they were doing. One of them replied that they were auctioning Bajji off. A few quoted prices on him, much to the merriment of the group. One of them remarked that the auctioneer could earn a fortune through Bajji. I looked helplessly at Bajji. I noticed that he forced himself to join in the laughter, as if wanting to belong to the group! Perhaps he had been socialized to be manly and face the abuse without shrinking or running away.

The train then reached Arakkonam junction and he asked one of his ‘friends’ to help him get his bag from the luggage rack. A tall man pulled down the bag and handed it over to Bajji who then scurried away.

I am still struck by the violence of the episode.

Do such incidents happen every day? How long will Bajji, and others like him, survive these attacks and insults?

Or, was I over-reacting about something over which no other co-passenger worried?

Why did circumstances place me so close to such a harrowing event?

How should I respond if I were to find myself in such a situation again?