The journey of Oorvasi Gandhi has been through a gritty path, punctuated with struggles that came with her embracing her identity as a transperson. The senior trans rights activist of Usilampatti in Madurai district, is now a member of the Council and Executive Committee of the National Culture Fund (NCF) under the Ministry of Culture.
Oorvasi Gandhi has been working for the rural transgender communities of Tamil Nadu for more than two decades. “My partner and in-laws are elated and said they will support me in my endeavours,” she said.
She told The Hindu that she would undertake measures to protect the indigenous gender-variant communities’ tradition and gender-specific sacred places across the nation. “Further, awareness programmes for the development and welfare of transgender communities will be conducted,” she said.
It was during her Class VIII when she first realised she was different from others. “My mother passed away in 1998. My father and brother did not accept me and pressurised me to continue life as a man despite knowing about my identity. I fled to Mumbai,” she recounted.
The reality there pained her. “I did not like what most transgender people were forced to do to earn money: sex work. I managed to escape the horrendous situation and came to Madurai,” she said. After discontinuing her studies, she joined Arogyaham, an NGO in Andipatti, near Theni, working for creating awareness about the rights and benefits of transgenders. She underwent counselling and capacity-building training there and became a supervisor for fellow transgenders, who took training in Arogyaham, for two years.
In 2005, she became a community advisor, working under the Tamil Nadu AIDS Initiative project, initiated by Voluntary Health Services hospital in Chennai, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create awareness on HIV-AIDS among transgender and underprivileged women. Ms. Oorvasi focused on collecting data on the transgender community across the State, recording the census, registering trans people under organisations, and conducting welfare activities as part of the project. She got an opportunity to meet Bill Gates and Melinda Gates in 2008.
She was the president of Madurai District Aravanigal Association for four years and ensured identity cards, basic certificates and house pattas to the members of the community. In 2018, she also worked as a placement officer at a private recruiting firm in Chennai to help recruit transgender people in workplaces across the State. She has conducted seminars on various topics in prominent colleges in Madurai and attended conferences across the country.
She inherited a share of her mother’s property under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 after a struggle of eight years. Her plans of doing organic farming were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, she married a transman, in a Hindu ritual ceremony, amidst their friends and well-wishers, and is now residing in Coimbatore.
Ms. Oorvasi is currently pursuing masters in Tamil literature from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, and is happy to be finally resuming formal education.
