THE CRITICAL ISSUE. Burning in the margins

Early one morning, Tara, a transwoman, set off on her Scooty, perhaps to run an errand, or to buy cigarettes, no one really knows. She never came back. Somewhere along the way, the police got hold of her. They confiscated her two-wheeler, and took away her belongings. What we know is that she tried to get them back, but without any success.

This part of the story is recorded. Here’s how it went at the Pondy bazaar police station, in Chennai, where Tara went to report that she’d been stopped by the police and they’d taken away her things.

“Sir, give me back my mobile phone and bike.”

“We can’t give, do what you can.”

“I won’t go from here.”

“Bloody ombodu (a pejorative for transpersons in Tamil). How dare you throw stones at a sub-inspector?”

“Sir, I don’t know anything about that incident. Give my bike and I’ll leave this place.”

“We can’t. What will you do?”

Subsequently, the video recording — which is circulating on the internet — shows Tara sitting in front of the police station, and trying to slit her throat with a stone, and demanding that she be given back her things.

We know little of what happened later, for the police claim that the CCTV cameras outside the station were not functioning. What we do know is that at some point, Tara is on fire, her body burning. No one seems to have stepped forward to help her — surely this is a sign of our times, that a human being can be burning outside a police station and there is no one to help — and by the time her friends arrive, and take her to hospital, she is grievously burnt. She does not survive. On the way to the hospital, she is believed to have told her friends that the police did this to her.

Later, the police claimed it was a suicide. But their claim begs a question — why would Tara choose to commit suicide, and that too outside a police station where she had gone to get her things back. Admittedly, the decision to take your own life is not always a rational one. But here’s a woman whose two-wheeler and belongings have been taken away. She’s pleading with the police to give them back to her. Why would she suddenly decide to take her own life, and indeed, where would she get the money (we’re on the first or second day of demonetisation, and no one, barring politicians and industrialists, has any money) and, more importantly, how did she manage to buy a can of kerosene, run back to the police station, pour it on herself and set herself on fire?

No one stepped forward to help. The argument in such cases is that no one saw anything (remember the Roop Kanwar sati, and the mass blindness around it?), or that they were not present there. And yet, even if we believe for a moment that Tara committed suicide, we need to ask another question.

Suicide as spectacle — which is presumably what Tara would have had on mind, if that was indeed what she was doing — requires an audience. An audience means that people have eyes and ears. The argument of absence or wilful blindness does not wash. And if they did indeed see, which is what seems most likely, why didn’t any of them try to save her?

This last question is not difficult to answer. There are too many instances of our police acting as criminals in uniform and with state sanction. But when they’re dealing with people on the margins — transpersons, Dalits, Muslims, women — the misogyny is deep (remember that they called Tara ‘ ombodu ’), the hatred fierce and the attitude ruthless.

This is very likely what happened to Tara. She was doing those ‘normal’ things that ‘normal’ people do. But because she was ‘different’, even these ‘normal’ things were taboo for her and came to acquire other meanings. Going out for cigarettes, or whatever else, early in the morning — how many of us have done that not once, but a million times. But unlike Tara, we’ve not lost our lives for it.

I did not know Tara but my heart broke when I read about her death. I could picture her — colourful, vibrant, using her sexuality like a badge of courage. And then her burnt body. And I could picture our police, threatening and resentful, lustful and violent, exercising their power over her. What did it matter if she died? She was just another marginalised life, they must have thought.

At Jantar Mantar on Monday, a group of young people held a vigil for Tara, mourning her death, demanding justice. Behind them sat a vast number of very poor women, and some men, rasoi workers from Jaunpur, who had come to Delhi to demand a raise in their daily wage of ₹30. “We’re not asking for much,” one of them said, “If they’d only increase it to ₹50, we could at least live off that. Who can manage on ₹30?” Who indeed.

At different places on that street, tents were pitched, with protesters and their banners. No one really seemed to be bothered about them as they shivered in the cold and dust. The rich, meanwhile, came to the dhaba and ate rice and rajma, kulfi and falooda . Clearly the blindness extends beyond the police. What a society we are.

(Views expressed are personal).

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