Fill in the pro-bono counsellor request form at
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The full Statement is at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1739CSyu5q_xSeFvkUvfFXUQopYtLd3jZ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114555905071788929193&rtpof=true&sd=true

You can endorse the statement by clicking on this link https://forms.gle/4YK1ZH2Pn7q7aW1t5 

Any suggestion for addition or modification to the Public Statement can be mailed at huz208546@iitd.ac.in or Qiz208582@iitd.ac.in

Dear Peers,

I hope all of you are doing well.

I write to all of you on a sombre note because of the series of events that have transpired this month regarding the teacher’s training manual formulated and published by NCERT to make educational avenues more enabling, inclusive and accessible for transgender and gender non-conforming persons. The redaction of the manual and the institutional attitude of human rights oversight bodies signals worrying trends in India.

The purpose of this message is to seek your support and endorsement of the public statement that would be sent to important stakeholders for their immediate retrospection and actions, failing which we* plan to seek legal remedy.

Your support, endorsement and suggestions will be highly valuable. In rage, we unite!

Link to the Statement – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1739CSyu5q_xSeFvkUvfFXUQopYtLd3jZ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114555905071788929193&rtpof=true&sd=true

The authors  are a group of gender non-binary, gender non-conforming students from various educational institutions, who have experienced the horrors of the gender non-inclusive education system.

The Glass Closet – clear, painted, transparent, translucent, opaque even, sometimes offering a mirror of distortions, sometimes one of clarity, refracting, or creating chiarscuros of rainbows or endless shades of grey – is an attempt to bring together some everyday stories of queer experiences on campuses in India.

This blog has emerged as a part of a research project titled, “An exploratory study of discriminations based on non-normative genders and sexualities” which is located in The Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, TISS, Mumbai. In this project research, while we want to create documentation on discriminations faced by individuals on the basis of non-normative gender or sexuality in different areas, we also want to understand the meanings of discriminations and non-normativities as reflected in our everyday.

One of our aims is to find different ways of talking about the experiences of being in higher education, and not just within the language that the university pushes us all to aspire to. To this end we organised two writing workshops, one in Kolkata and another in Bombay, with 14 students from campuses in Bombay, Bangalore, Kolkata, Bhuveneshwar, Banaras and Guwahati. These discussions and writings from the workshops enabled us to form a loose collective with several students, placed in different University campuses across the country to share their writings and give and receive feedback from each other and the facilitator. This blog is the collective effort of that group.

The title of the blog too came out from this process.

We are aware that our stories are perhaps a small insignificant slice of the wide range of experiences that many are living. Thus we would like to open this blog to invite submissions from other “queer” identified students to write about their stories and experiences of their lives within campuses of higher education. If you would like to submit your stories kindly write in to us at theglassclosetblog@gmail.com.

Do follow the blog on https://theglassclosetsblog.wordpress.com

Asmita came out to herself at age 12, while a student in her hometown in Bardhaman. Growing up, she internalized prevailing notions that homosexuality was unnatural. “But later when I started gaining more and more knowledge, I started understanding and getting my identity clear”, she says.

A national-level badminton player and photography enthusiast, Asmita has been actively involved in campus activism around gender-based discrimination.

When asked about her decision to represent AISA, she said “AISA gave me a platform to uphold my identity in front of the students of JU”, noting that Left parties had, by and large, responded positively to LGBTIQ+ issues. Incidentally, the first reported out LGBTIQ+ candidate, JNU’s Gourab Ghosh, also contested as a Left party candidate in 2013.

As a key election issue, Asmita is championing the cause of LGBTIQ+ acceptance in society, both on- and off-campus. She wants to counter myths that same-sex desire and transgender identities are unnatural, and to mobilize public opinion against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. She strongly feels that basic sex, gender and sexuality education, including LGBTIQ+ issues, should be given to school-going students. She asks that admission in educational institutions be accessible to all, based on their aptitude, with no discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

Asmita said that JU is relatively LGBTIQ+ friendly as Indian university campuses go, and she has not personally faced any problem on campus due to her identity. She noted that transgender people face much more difficulty. She also questioned the prevailing practice of marking all transgender people as “third gender” on admission forms, a category that not all identify with.

Other issues in Asmita’s election manifesto include proper functioning of the Gender Sensitisation Committee against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) on campus, and 24×7 availability of sanitary napkin vending machines in all women’s restrooms.

Her accomplishments notwithstanding, Asmita has a long way to go. She is not yet certain about the profession she would take up in the future. Her parents still do not accept her. “I still need to struggle with my family and in neighborhood to [get them to] cope with my identity”, she signs off.

* Readers: please let Orinam know if there have previously been any other out queer women students contesting campus elections in India.

A comprehensive list of Orinam blogposts on educational institutions and LGBTIQA+ issues is at https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/educational-institutions/from-the-blog/.