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In the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, a sustained campaign for human rights of the gay community has seen a change in attitude and today the upcoming Constitution is likely to give them equal citizenship status. Ranjita Biswas reports
Manisha is beautiful. She is friendly and confident and dances gracefully at socials. Only her deep voice gives away the fact that she is a transgender. Manisha likes to say “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body,” and that’s why the preferred term of identification is a “she.”
Manisha is from Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. In her country she would be referred to as a "meti" or a transgender person.
However, the confidence Manisha exudes today has not been achieved overnight, she revealed at a workshop on LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) and Human Rights held in Stockholm recently. Coming from a conservative homophobic society, she had to go through the trauma of discovering that she was ‘different’. The next problem was how to tell the family of her gender preference. She did so, first telling her sister-in-law, then her brother (who turned “aggressive”) and then her father, because she did not want anyone to suffer since there was talk of marriage. Today, her status has been accepted and she lives with her family.
The boost to her confidence came when she joined the Blue Diamond Society (BDS), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Nepal that works for human rights of the LGBT population and their well-being as a whole. The moving force behind BDS is founder-member Sunil Pant. On his return from studies in Belarus he decided to start a support organisation in 2001 to help LGBT people, mainly men, finding they were always on the fringe of the society and did not know about their own health needs. Asked about the significance of the name Pant revealed in an interview: “That comes from the years I spent in Belarus. In the former Soviet Union people would ask 'Are you blue?' That was a way of asking if you were gay. And the diamond is from Buddhism. People who are compassionate and enlightened—we call them diamond beings.”
Says Manisha, “Through training at BDS I feel more confident today.” How did she come in contact with BDS? “People like us often visited Ratna Park in Kathmandu, known as a meeting place for like-minded people, and even for cruising. Then volunteers from BDS approached us with message of safe sex, and the importance of preventing HIV infection.” With funding from donor agencies the volunteers led by Pant distributed free condoms, gave information, and above all, provided a platform for the gay and transgender community to meet and interact and share experiences.
“At first we were suspicious. Why did he [Pant] want to work with us while the society ridiculed us?” Manisha recalls. But slowly trust developed. From that tentative start with six persons in the organisation, today BDS has spread to 20 districts and has 120,000 registered members. A long way from the time when the NGO could not register itself because of objection from some quarters. Recalls Pant: “An NGO for sexual minority had never been illegal but the officials fooled us. With limited knowledge on legal system then, we registered BDS as Human Rights and Sexual Health programme.”
Sharmila Dhakal is a young lawyer who works with BDS. A heterosexual and mother of a little girl, she has no problem putting her skills for the recognition of the human rights of the LGBT community. A personal experience drew her to BDS, she says. While on way to her college she often saw how a transgender, a street- cleaner, was mercilessly teased by young boys. “That was the first time I came across a transgender. I decided that after graduation, I’d work for human rights of such marginalised people though the subject was never discussed in our college and I didn’t know much about the LGBT issue either.”
Unlike a general belief, BDS is not confined to male members only. Lesbians, though less visible, enjoy its support too.
From its first focus on HIV prevention and treatment, BDS has expanded its scope by taking a holistic approach after realising that confining the activities to HIV-related issues would sideline other social issues concerning the LGBT community.
Thus it started raising its voice for legitimacy through the medium of human rights campaign. By working with other groups and even political parties, the capacity-building process took off to take on larger issues.
The sustained efforts have seen a great change in people’s attitude. Though ready acceptance by everyone is still a long dream, outreach workers at BDS are not harassed any more. With the coming of the new Maoist government in Nepal, the pace of acceptance has been faster as the right of LGBTs was in the political manifesto of the Maoists while they were struggling against the monarchial system in the country. Today, the Constituent Assembly has an openly gay member (Pant) in the Parliament, something India with all the gay activism is yet to achieve.
Going even a step further, the LGBT activists under the umbrella of the Federation of Sexual & Gender Minorities where BDS is greatly involved, are working on putting a ‘non-discrimination’ law in the upcoming Constitution. “The new Constitution is due in a year’s time and there’s a good possibility that [it] will have protection from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identities. Then the law must be enacted to punish those who discriminate LGBT people in work place or in other areas,” Pant informs.
With a predominantly Hindu population with its own innate conservatism, the small country, many sociologists say, is doing something revolutionary for recognition of the LGBT community. In December, 2007, the Supreme Court of Nepal issued a directive order to the government to recognise LGBT as ‘third gender’ according to their gender identity and protect sexual and gender minority rights. The Court has also issued a directive order to form a committee to study on practices adopted by other countries on same sex marriage.
Manisha says the media has played an important role in creating awareness about LGBT and their human rights in Nepal. “We have proved that Nepal has an LGBT population and that we are part of the society. The work will go on,” she says emphatically.
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