Dr K Aruna Kandan
Birthplace:
Arunagiri Sullipalayam, Tamil Nadu
Residence:
Namakkal, Tamil Nadu
Qualifications:
Class 12
Inspiration:
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi
FIGHTING DISCRIMINATION
An activist working for transgender rights in Tamil Nadu for the last 25 years; organiser and director of the South Indian Transgender Federation; member of the Tamil Nadu Transgender Welfare Board; recipient of the 2005 Woman Achievers Award, and 2006 National Advocacy Trainer Award; involved in projects by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; NNTP Vice President; and member of INFOSEM, she’s an icon and saviour that her community looks up to. And she never tires from taking up the cudgels on their behalf.
Her father was in the terminating stages of kidney failure. Knowing fully well that the end was so near, she begged for his blessings – something she had always longed for. While he still refused, he told her that God would always look after her.
While lamenting that her father didn’t relent even in his final moments and that she couldn’t fully understand his uttering at the time, Dr. K. Aruna Kandan says, “Now I do. I am among the people who care for me and have stood by me; I have my community’s love. Isn’t this God’s blessing?”
Having spent more than 25 years working for Tamil Nadu’s transgender community, Aruna has seen it all – the early ostracisation of the community to its mainstreaming and empowerment, led by inclusive state government policies being implemented even before the landmark NALSA judgment of 2014 and the scrapping of IPC section 377 in 2018.
“I won’t say it was always this good,” she avers.
Aruna was born a boy in Arunagiri Sullipalayam, a tiny village in Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district on 12 December 1973. Her effeminate disposition became a talking point within her family, schoolmates and teachers and naturally so, because back then there was zero awareness or sensitisation on the transgender community.
“The discrimination escalated when I was in class 11. I still remember the way a teacher would use me as an example while explaining organic and inorganic chemistry. The entire class would erupt in laughter.”
She faced beatings within the walls of her home and jeering outside. Unable to take it any longer, Aruna, 15 at the time, escaped to Chennai without a penny in her pocket.
“I felt drawn to the hijra community and wanted to spend the rest of my life with them. All I knew was that I would be able to dress up, put flowers in my hair, and live like a woman. It was 1987, I was a student of class 12. Chennai had only about a hundred transgender people,” she recalls.
Sustenance to social work
But it wasn’t what she had expected it to be. She saw what the community faced – violence, crime, stigma, abuse. Transgender people avoided walking alone on the streets out of fear of being beaten up or harassed.
With no roof above her head and no source of sustenance, Aruna rented a shanty for Rs. 15 a month and started earning her living through begging and commercial sex.
Hoping for a better life – away from sex work and begging – she moved to Mumbai in 1989. She spent some time in north India, underwent castration, and shifted to Pune in 1991 to join a group of transgender people from her village.
Until this point, there was no contact with family. “One day I wrote to my parents about what I had become and what my life was. I poured my heart out on one small card. My father showed up at my doorstep in Pune with that letter in his hand and accepted me. Every bias and every grudge we held was dissolved,” she narrates those exceptional moments.
She later visited her village – a visit that soon after turned into an event of sorts. “People flocked to see me, some out of disbelief that a boy could turn into a girl, and others for entertainment. I felt like a spectacle during my entire 10-day stay. It was humiliating, to say the least.”
Peer educator
In 1998, Aruna was appointed a peer educator by Vanchit Vikas, a Pune NGO working for HIV/AIDS awareness among sex workers. This work exposed her to a new aspect of transgender persons’ lives and their issues and rights.
Having gained reasonable experience, she returned to Chennai in 2001 where she, along with nine other educated members of the community, registered their organisation, All Human Empowerment and Development.
“IAS officer, Dinabandhu, facilitated funding through NACO and that helped us launch an awareness programme on transgender rights and facilities,” she says.
“We raised our voice against police atrocities, violence by local goons and against being implicated in false cases and locked up. We went to every village, every locality, every street talking to transgender people and society in general and worked to solve their grievances within 24 hours. Awareness spread as workshops continued across the state.”
In 2004, through a programme by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Aruna mobilised transgender people from 30 districts of Tamil Nadu telling them to be open about themselves without fear and make the community visible.
In 2005, she was instrumental in instituting the Tamil Nadu Transgender Grievance Day, which is observed on 18 January annually. The same year, under a combined programme on HIV/AIDS awareness and social security, she created district-level CBOs, and Tamil Nadu now has more than 100 CBOs.
Thirunangai: A respectable woman
In 2007, her organisation began advocacy with policy-makers in the DMK government led by M. Karunanidhi. The next year, the government formed the Tamil Nadu Transgender Welfare Board, among the firsts in the country, and the community was given a beautiful name – Thirunangai, meaning a respectable woman.
“The continued government support and inclusion led to a marked improvement in the way society saw us. Eighty per cent of mainstreaming had happened by 2010 as we continued advocacy among the medical fraternity, administrative offices, and lawyer bodies. By 2014, we had sensitised more than three lakh policemen across the state.
“Community members began receiving ration cards, passports, voter IDs, self-employment loans from the government, and free housing. The community now is 100% satisfied. SRS, silicone implants, and cosmetic surgeries are performed free in government medical college hospitals in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry.”
Dr. Aruna formed the South Indian Transgender Federation in 2011. The body has two representatives from every district who facilitate issue redressal at the grassroots level through continued advocacy with the government. The federation works in 40 districts, talking to parents about gender identity and counselling an average of 300 transgender children every year.
She takes pride in Tamil Nadu’s contribution to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and acknowledges the central government and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment for including recommendations and amendments to the 2016 Bill, which had no clear definitions and among other things, criminalised begging, a primary source of income for many community members.
VISION FOR THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY
The private sector, Aruna feels, needs to match its steps with the government’s initiatives on inclusion and jobs. “Transgender people are now completing their education, undergoing technical courses, and preparing for respectable professions and career progression, but where are the jobs? We still seek at least 2% job reservation,” she notes. Another area of inclusion, she points out, is political representation. “In the coming years, I hope to see at least 10 transgender people as MLAs and five as MPs so that the community progresses from activism to policymaking.” As many as 20 transgender people contested the February 2022 municipal polls while Dr. Aruna herself plans to contest the 2025 Panchayatiraj elections.
MESSAGE FOR THE MAINSTREAM SOCIETY
Dr. Aruna attributes the change in social perceptions in Tamil Nadu to its high literacy rate and rich culture. She reiterates, however, that families, irrespective of how their children identify their gender, should become their safety blanket and not a hell hole.
“Society should understand that transgender people are capable as cisgenders, they too hope for a good life, have feelings and worry about their future. We are as determined as others. Try walking with us once.”
FIVE FACTS ABOUT DR K ARUNA
She describes herself as a self-confident woman.
Her biggest strength is her community.
Her heart is an unending reservoir of love for everyone.
She loves books by Sujatha Rangarajan and hopes to someday publish a book on her life.
She is a strict vegetarian.
