Delhi: Eunuch offers alternative to jaded voters

Indian eunuchs hold up their voter cards. Picture: AP

She might not have been particularly noticeable were it not for a certain bulge to her forehead, a squareness in her jaw and the fact that her campaign slogans, chanted by a group of similarly thick-set women, included “Long live Lili the Eunuch,” and “Put your stamp on Lili the Eunuch” and “You’ve tried men, you’ve tried women, now it’s Lili’s turn!”

It has been a “none-of-the-above” political season in Delhi, where voters went to the polls to choose a new state legislative assembly on Wednesday. Votes are to be counted today.

Rising prices have soured the mood toward the Indian National Congress, even in poor, low-caste neighbourhoods where voters have supported the party almost by reflex. Yet the main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is also unloved in many quarters.

As a result, the election has opened the door to unorthodox new players, most importantly, the upstart Aam Aadmi, or Common Man Party, whose attempt to unseat the heavyweights provided last week’s main suspense.

A similar logic inspired Rajkumar Gautam, who was searching for people to represent his Indian Bahujan Samajawadi Party but did not have much money to spend on advertising. What candidate could embody “none of the above” better than the eunuch Ramesh Kumar Lili, a member of a mysterious, intricately structured subculture that has been part of Delhi history for more than a thousand years?

“We hear people saying that, this time, they want a change,” Gautam said from the narrow storefront that serves as headquarters for his organisation, a little-known group that splintered off the socialist-leaning Bahujan Samajawadi Party. “This,” he said, nodding at Lili, “will be a radical change”. Lili smiled grandly in acknowledgment, reeling off a list of grievances over water and electricity prices, corruption, education and jobs.

Unlike some of the eunuchs who live in her commune, Lili was castrated late in life, so her voice is a bit husky, but she can project a stiff, well-coiffed hauteur.

“If people were happy with their government, I would not have a chance,” she said matter-of-factly. “Morally, eunuchs are better than other people. We are like beggars. We are like saints. We dance. We beat on the drums. We share people’s happiness.”

Eunuchs began to surface as bit players in Indian politics more than a decade ago. At first, their candidacies seemed like a stunt, a creative way of expressing disdain for both the Congress Party and the BJP. But then, propelled by public anger over upper-caste privilege and corruption, a few eunuchs began to win, taking advantage of seats set aside for women and oppressed castes.

India’s eunuchs are outcasts who typically live apart from their families in hierarchical communes. But they are also granted a rare space in public life, as adults who are free of social constraints, like jesters in a king’s court.

When a family is celebrating a wedding or the birth of a child, eunuchs show up to perform dances in exchange for money. When displeased, often over the question of payment, they can be vengeful, cursing and threatening to strip naked until their target relents. Each time a eunuch wins an election, it makes national headlines, but things have not always gone smoothly after that.

Kamla Jaan, who won a mayoral election in the city of Katni in 2001, immediately rejected the advice of the businessman who had sponsored her campaign.

“We can’t control her,” he said at the time. “She’s completely unpredictable. And people are afraid to offend her because she can be abusive.”

Jaan was removed from office two years later after a court ruled that she had illegally won a post reserved for a woman. Another eunuch mayor was removed from office for the same reason in 2009.

Shabnam Mausi, who in 1998 became the first eunuch to win state office in India, was treated as a celebrity but has since found herself adrift, managing only 118 votes in a run last year. Elavarthi Manohar, a rights activist in Bangalore, said activists’ hopes that Mausi would advocate for more freedoms for sexual minorities were bitterly disappointed.

On the contrary, Manohar said, Mausi represented a deeply conservative, hierarchical tradition that dates to the Mughal era, which stretched from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The hierarchy protected eunuchs but also controlled their behaviour with the threat of severe punishment, enforcing strict bans on wearing male clothing, eating pork or having sexual intercourse.

“Here is this big person in the eunuch hierarchy, what-ever,” Manohar said. “But definitely human rights in her own family group is not her agenda.”

Among Lili’s unlikely political supporters is Sunita Kogra, Lili’s wife, who is now raising their three children. During an interview, she looked up at a studio portrait, taken when Lili was still a man named Ramesh Kumar, sporting pointy white loafers and a luxuriant moustache. “Earlier,” she said, “this was my life.”

Kogra was philosophical when asked about her husband’s transformation, which she said took place four years ago and against his will. She said he had a job playing drums with a troupe of eunuchs and had been drawn deeper and deeper into internal rivalries until one day he was abducted, underwent surgery and returned as one of them.

“He is basically a simple man; somebody called him, and he went,” she said. “Now, he is a changed man, because he lives with eunuchs. Yes, he is a woman.”

Kogra sighed. “It was a very shocking incident,” she said. “But what can you do?”