The social discourse in Pakistan needs a radical reformulation to include the traditionally excluded groups of people. One such social group in Pakistan is that of the trans-people. There is an urgent need to formulate a response to the current crises of fatal targeting of trans-people for their occupational choices. It can be done by reverting to the Islamic tradition of universal human equality and the historical precedents of such legal traditions like those of the Sublime Porte.
Trans-people deserve to live and die like any other group of people. It is not a question that is dependent on the difference in their physical attributes for its answer. Rather, it is a question that needs to be understood and answered from the vantage point of similarities between them and straight people. Too much has been said for the inclusion of trans-people into the social mainstream. A few lines more in favour of this cause, which is the only proper cause, will certainly help.
No matter what happens, Pakistan’s tradition is rooted in South Asian culture and history. It also has a strong influence on the tradition of Islam. This makes for a mix that has not been helpful, as of yet. Where on side cultural memory calls for an exclusion of the trans-people, religious tradition can be used for their proper inclusion. Islam is as liberal religion as is necessitated by the needs of time, pragmatism and demands of social justice. Trans-people are humans, just like all other humans excepting socially inconsistent anatomy. If they are segregated and relegated to an inferior status, it is a violation of a very fundamental stipulation of Islamic doctrine and that is that all humans are equal. It will do well to remember that superiority and inferiority depends on the nature of one’s actions whether they are virtuous or vicious, and not on the differences of anatomy.
The relegation of trans-people to an inferior social status, based on a difference in anatomy is a violation of very simple but universal religious stricture. The violation of that religious stricture then puts those who indulge in such folly, to an inferior status themselves. Without knowing people violate the fundamentals of a very humanistic religious tradition. As soon as they do so, they leave the domain of a pure religious structure and enter into the treacherous realm of dogma. And that is where the seeds of social discord are sown.
It may come as a surprise to many, but not all people in the Pakistani society believe in the equality of humans. “Human” is a universal word. It encompasses all forms of humans and certainly without any distinction of differences in anatomy. While doing so they forget that they are equalizing their worldview with that of the fascist overlords in the country next door. “All people are not equal,” was a definitive statement given by Subramaniam Swamy of BJP in an interview with Isobel Yeung of VICE news. He holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard. God forbid. Although his differentiation was based on religion, the differentiation that people in the Pakistani society establish is based on a retarded culture and inverted interpretations of pure beliefs.
Trans-people deserve to live and die with dignity as equals in modern society. In our own time, the evolution of human thought has reached a point where relegation to an inferior status of fellow humans reeks of a rigidity resulting from millennial stasis. It is important that human imagination is stimulated again by establishing firm foundations, for a proper reversal of social currents. True foundations can be laid by giving out definitive statements, right at the beginning of a new process, or in the middle of a negative process to stem its further advance in that direction.
All humans are equal irrespective of differences in anatomy, colour, religion, language, and nation. Equality of opportunity is a right of every human: Of trans-people all the more because of their historical exclusion and attendant social stigma. Education, employment, and social acceptance are their fundamental rights like they are of everybody else. Their rights are our duties. These duties do not necessarily stem from the further exposition of liberal thought. Their roots can be found in the proper understanding and revitalization of religious necessities.
This is not to say that nothing positive is happening at all. The only problem is that we are consistently failing in tracing the roots of fundamental human equality to the religious tradition of Islam. It serves to create a contradiction, where something that can be found in Islamic tradition is being looked for somewhere else. That somewhere else is the liberal-enlightenment tradition, which is not wrong per se, but what happens is this, that in a highly religious-indoctrinated society liberal traditions are not readily accepted-adopted. If only it is realized that proper interpretations of Islam can be used to establish the equality of humans and in furtherance of the cause of social justice, liberal-enlightenment traditions obnoxious to right-leaning population become redundant, virtually. All along we stayed closest to the mosques but furthest from God.
What happened in Mansehra in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, recently, and happens in other cities of the country often, is not because trans-people are fond of taking up trades for which they are targeted. They are left with no other choice. Social expectations have so restricted the space for them that they cannot by other means earn a proper living. Social exclusion on the other hand has left them vulnerable and so they band together to watch out for others similar to them. This is no money-making profit-maximizing tactic. They do this out of the sheer need for survival in a society where predation is rampant. In this case, rigid-morbid attributes of the society have so excluded them that they fail to identify themselves as equals with their straight peers.
For all the talk of progress, democracy, liberalism, social evolution and modernity, there is so much that is still bleak and outdated. We cannot signify our social existence as long as we keep denying them their proper dignified social existence. Equality of all human beings is a fact. Our non-acceptance of it does not make it less so. The sooner we understand this and translate it into our social behaviours and attitudes, the sooner we will be able to compete globally.
