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 |  Subject: Funny: A Eunuch in India Campaigns as a Political ‘None of the Above’  Thu Dec 05, 2013 6:15 pm | |
| ... One could have looked right past her were it not for a certain bulge to her forehead, a squareness to her jaw or the fact that her campaign slogans, chanted by a group of similarly thickset 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’s been a “none-of-the-above” political season in Delhi, whose voters will go to the polls to choose a new state legislative assembly on Wednesday. Rising prices have soured the mood toward the Indian National Congress, even in poor, low-caste neighborhoods like this one, where voters have supported the party almost by reflex — and yet the main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is also unloved in many quarters.
For this reason, this fall’s election has opened the door to unorthodox new players, most important, the upstart Aam Aadmi, or Common Man Party, whose attempt to unseat the heavyweights has provided this week’s main suspense.
A similar logic inspired Rajkumar Gautam, who was hunting 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, part 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,” Mr. Gautam said from the narrow storefront that serves as headquarters for his organization, a little-known group that splintered off the socialist-leaning Bahujan Samajawadi Party. “This,” he said, nodding at Ms. Lili, “will be a radical change!”
She smiled grandly in acknowledgement, 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, Ms. Lili was castrated late in life, so her voice is a bit husky, but she can project a stiff, well-coiffed hauteur, like a scruffy Margaret Thatcher.
“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. This is our place.”
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 B.J.P. But then, propelled by public anger over upper-caste privilege and corruption, a few of them 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, and their blessings are believed to confer fertility. When displeased, often over the question of payment, they can be vengeful, spewing curses 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 pooh-poohed 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.”) Shewas 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.
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/world/asia/a-eunuch-in-india-campaigns-as-a-political-none-of-the-above.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss |
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