A question of identity

by Urvashi Butalia


The noted thinker J Krishnamurthy once asked: ‘Why do you identify yourself with another, with a group, and a country? Why do you call yourself a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or why do you belong to one of the innumerable sects?’ He went on to answer his own question: ‘Religiously and politically one identifies oneself with this or that group, through tradition or habit, through impulse, prejudice, imitation or laziness.’


Continuing his critique of the trap of identity, Krishnamurthy went on to say that once one aligns oneself thus, such identification puts an end to all creative understanding, and then one becomes a mere tool in the hands of political or religious leaders. Although one might argue with Krishnamurthy’s concern that adopting an identity and feeling part of a collectivity on whatever basis inevitably leads to exploitation by those in power, there’s little doubt that he is right about the ways in which identities constrain people.

Nonetheless, we can’t escape the fact that identities can also be personally, politically and socially important — as ways to mobilise around a particular issue or articulate a sense of oppression, or to escape the silence of isolation, or indeed to claim a place in society. And they don’t always have to be focused around religion — instead many things provide the basis of solidarities around identity: Gender, caste, sexuality, to name only three. And even here, things are not that simple. Let me explain.

I have, for many years now, been working with a eunuch, Mona Ahmed. For Mona, her identity as a eunuch is both a trap and an escape. When asked, she will say she is neither male nor female but she is the third gender. She is not heterosexual but she is not homosexual either — although for some years in her youth she did have a longish homosexual relationship.

Until the age of 18 she was a man — although she felt that her real self was female. Then she had herself castrated — as she said, ‘happily losing all the trappings of maleness’. Some time after that, she went one step further and had a sex change operation so that today she has a female body. Often, in the company of men, Mona assumes a male identity, and becomes Ahmed Bhai, and then, with women, she becomes female and becomes Baji, or Mona, or simply Behan. This shift in identity is sometimes only made through the name, and at other times, it’s done via clothes — a mardana salvar kameez or a zenana one.

During the many years that I have known Mona, I have met many young men in her home and it has taken me a while to understand that several of them are in the process of transiting from one identity (male) to another, possibly female, or perhaps to one of the many in-between identities (kothis, hijras, transvestites, msms and so on) that lie along the trajectory from one to the other.

More, everyone is not looking for just one, fixed identity: For some the occasional foray into another identity is what sustains them, and allows them to live what is called a ‘normal’ life, as well as explore alternative sexualities. At an organisation working on HIV/AIDs I met an engineer. Married, and with two children, this young man came to the NGO every Sunday afternoon for a few hours during which he shed his male identity, donned a sari and blouse, and ‘became’ the woman who lived inside him all week.

So what is identity really? Is it a trap? An escape? Is it enabling and empowering or the opposite? There’s no easy answer to this question. What we can say with some certainty is that identities are never only ‘natural’ and never only assumed, and that they are always shifting, sometimes expedient, and usually overlaid with many different layers. So, an identity that takes alternative sexuality as its base may be overlaid with a religious identity, or a class identity, or a caste identity.

Further, I think it’s not wrong to say that in some ways all identities are fearful of their ‘others’ for these latter raise difficult, uncomfortable questions. ‘Straight’ people often find gay and lesbian people difficult to understand and dismiss them as somehow being ‘unnatural’ — and if you ask them who prescribed heterosexuality as ‘natural’ they have no answer. And people of alternative sexualities often find their ‘others’ difficult to deal with.

Some years ago at a large international health meet in Delhi, a lesbian friend and I were watching a group of transvestites perform on stage. Their open, explicit sexual gestures and moves were somewhat difficult for a largely Indian and female audience to take, but my friend had another objection to them.

Here’s what she said: ‘It really annoys me to watch this kind of thing. Not for the overt sexuality of it, I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is that we queer women have fought so hard for this kind of public space to make ourselves heard, and here come these people who just usurp it. And it’s not even that I mind so much but the fact is that they are men and they have no solidarity with, or political commitment to women.’

I wasn’t sure what to say to her then, and I’m not sure what to say even now. I think we have to acknowledge that identities are important, and when assumed politically (whether on the basis of sex or religion or whatever) they enable us to make our voices heard, but I think we also have to recognise that they are not an end in themselves.

Mobilising on the basis of identity — as women, queer people, dalits — enables us to have a voice, to make demands, to make ourselves seen and heard, but we have to recognise that somewhere built into that articulation is a future when such articulation will not be necessary, when society will understand the need for and importance of multiple and shifting identities.

(The writer is an author and director of Zubaan publishers, New Delhi)