BENGALURU : Transgender activist Akkai Padmashali has always chosen the road less taken despite knowing the consequences and hurdles it may pose. While she is in the news now for joining the Congress, Padmashali is not new to the spotlight, whether it was about realising early on that she was ‘different’, or even adopting her son, Avin, last year.
Her decision to join politics was in the making for over a decade. “I felt this was the right time to make an entry after seeing the intolerance, right to expression being curtailed and a general sense of gloom,” she says. Hailing from a family of Congress supporters, except for her BJP supporter father who passed away last month, her decision about which party to join came somewhat naturally. “My mother is a great Congress supporter and when we were having discussions at home, she was emphatic that I should be a part of the party. Right from Indira Gandhi’s times, the Congress has worked for the welfare of the transgender community. In fact, she made train travel free for us, ensured free food and also initiated setting up of living facilities for us,” she says.
Born a boy, Padmashali started feeling like a girl when she was around 10 years old. “As I grew older, I wanted to be a woman. Not just in dressing, but in every aspect,’’ she says. However, she emphasises that her vision is not restricted to the transgender or sexual minorities group, but keeps in mind people at large. “I don’t want people to assume that Akkai is a transgender so her entire focus will be minority communities. I have a longer vision than that.
I want to reexamine some of the anti-poor Acts and laws,” she says. But at the same time she mentions that whether it is the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014, or the abolishment of Section 377 in 2018, the decisions have been mere rulings on paper, without any ground-level implementations. “For any sort of implementation, there needs to be political participation, only after which we can start educating the public on sexuality and gender issues,” she says.
Padmashali, in her thirties, worries about the lack of transparency or accountability, which she points out is dangerous for the future of a democracy. “Just take the instance of Gauri Lankesh’s assassination. It goes to show that anyone with an activist bent of mind is curbed. There is just no freedom of expression. Whether it was demonetisation or CAA, we, as a country, are going down in our credibility. There are burning issues that I really need to look into,” she says.
While Padmashali may have had to fight with family during initial years, over time they have accepted and embraced her choices. “In fact, I wouldn’t be here without their support and acceptance. And definitely not without my paapu’s,” she says.