Dichotomy of the Centre and Margin in LaxminarayanTripathi’s Me Hijra, Me Laxmi

Abstract

Though the Supreme Court of India on 15^th April 2014 accorded legal recognition to the third gender community in India yet even today they continue to face discrimination. The politics of gender and sexuality in contemporary India is essentially constructed on the notion of the ‘normative’ and the ‘alternative’. In such context the alternative identities are rendered invisible and pushed to a marginal existence. However, refusing to remain in closet LaxminarayanTripathi in her autobiography Me Hijra, Me Laxmi transgresses the boundaries of normative gender and asserts her identity as a hijra. It is a narrative that attempts to dismantle and challenge the stereotypes that aids in providing legitimacy to the normative discourse of gender identity. It interrogates the ways in which mainstream society allows only those bodies to be comfortable which have been legitimized through narratives and in the process naturalised. It is through her writing and activism that Laxmi disrupts the normative boundaries and creates a centre even in the peripheral space bridging the gap between the centre and periphery. This proposed paper attempts to analyse the experiences of marginalisation of the third gender community due to the antipathetic attitude of the mainstream society. The paper will examine how certain bodies at the margin can become a site of resistance. It will also examine the ways ‘deviant’ bodies are coerced to confirm to the norm of the society and how the same bodies through resistance can create a space even in the peripheral space.