A transgender activist
Born and raised in Hyderabad, Anjali Rimi is a trans rights activist now living in California. Rimi is co-founder of Parivar Bay Area, the first transgender-led and transgender-centric non-profit led by kinnar and hijra South Asians that empowers and advocates for LGBTQIA+ immigrants. Rimi offered insights into the complex identities of kinnar and hijra folk and what the South Asian community at large can do to understand them better.
We Belong is a visual series highlighting different experiences of South Asian and Indian identity. This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Photographs and interviews by CatchLight Fellow Sree Sripathy.
Portraits were made in the Bay Area, Calif., on Feb. 8, 2023 and the interview took place on May 31, 2023 via Zoom. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Anjali, can you tell me about your origin story? Where were you born and raised?
I was born in India, in the city of Hyderabad, where I spent the first two decades, almost half my life. I was born to lower-middle-class, multi-caste, multi-class parents and grew up in a small household. Being the youngest I was always the loudest.
Are your parents both from Hyderabad? Where are they from?
Neither of them is from Hyderabad. They’re transplants. My mom is from rural Andhra Pradesh. And my dad has origins from West Bengal to Odisha. So he kind of identifies as Bengali. They speak multiple languages, but they don’t come from the same place.
What language did they communicate in when you were growing up?
My dad and my mom spoke Telugu. We grew up in Hyderabad so Urdu was (commonly spoken) like Hindi.
When you were growing up, did you identify as an Indian? How did you connect with culture and heritage in those first 20 years?
It wasn’t anything that I needed to identify. Those kinds of words were not even in my vocabulary. I just knew I was Indian. And I was born in India and I was a proud Indian. I still am. I was very much in society as an Indian, as a contributing member of society at a very young age.
I think the society of India, the fabric of India, taught me to be somebody who will be contributing responsibly. I’ve always believed that India is the greatest country in the world. It’s still is. If I wasn’t transgender kinnar who still doesn’t get respect anywhere, including in India, I would be in India, if we had any ounce of respect for my gender identity.
Why did you decide to leave India? What prompted that?
That’s a very tough question. It was not because of the tech boom in the early 2000s, late 90s, with everybody saying, “Oh, let’s just go to the US. That’s our path to freedom and land of opportunity.” My [path] was India. I was very happy and content there. My communities lived in large groups. I had a lot of friends and I still was able to boldly be myself, even though I couldn’t necessarily dress myself as a woman or present myself as such.
There was a lot of abuse — from taunting to bullying, to hazing to outright rape and sexual assault and being beaten up, thrown out of buses, kicked out of temples, spat on, gang raped. By the time I was 16, I had kind of become this very tough, emotionless person. Then my mom felt it wasn’t safe for me to keep staying there. I had to make a choice and go to a foreign land — America, Australia, and France were the options. My mom sold most of her jewelry, got me my plane ticket, and I landed in the U.S. 22 years ago.
You mentioned earlier that you used to live in Canada at some point?
Yes. Anywhere I’ve gone is not a choice. It was a necessity; it was desperation. I couldn’t be in the U.S. as I tried to transition in California. Gender identity wasn’t protected. I got kicked out of my job, became homeless. I was walking the streets and working the streets. Eventually, someone told me “Go to Canada. They treat trans people well and give them asylum.” That’s why I went to Canada. I sought asylum and rebuilt my life. If it wasn’t for Canada, I would not be here. I don’t think I would have been able to transition in a very hostile America.
When did you move to Canada and come back?
In 2006, five years after I came here (U.S.) I came back in 2012. I still had a household in Canada, and I had a second household in New York. In 2015, I completely moved to the U.S.
How did you settle into your identity during those first five years in the US?
Someone told me when I was working in India at a call center, “Live with freedom in America! They’re not begging on the streets like India or getting their genitalia cut off by pouring hot oil. You would have all this care.” So I came with that oblivious understanding of America, only to realize very quickly that there was something called racism, there was something called xenophobia, there was something called anti-Asian hate. I learned all those terms coming here, but more importantly, those stunted my attempts to express my gender or try to be myself.
So yes, I came here in 2001. But I did not access or couldn’t access actual, sustainable consistent gender care until 2007. Because I tried to express myself, I got beat up. Maybe because I was wearing a saree, maybe because they figured that out that’s a dude wearing a wig. I tried to transition here in California, a sanctuary state, but gender identity wasn’t protected. I lost my job, because my then boss said, “You show up in that, I’m going to make sure you don’t show up here anymore.” And he came through on his words.
You know the immigrant struggle. I still tell people, “Don’t commit to a lot of expectations to America, India is actually in a better place when it comes to laws.” You don’t have half of the country hating on trans people in passing anti-trans legislation. The other piece here you have to recognize is that I am a culturally diverse trans person.
There is no real identity of mine that can be equated to a trans person. I am a kinnar. I belong to a system that is unheard of and you don’t see in the U.S. So that’s a compounded aspect of my identity that will never be understood even by those who claim to be Indians, even by those who are South Asian, because there is a level of colonization in their minds that will never go away.
Can you explain what kinnar means?
Kinnar, hijra — there are so many identities that are woven into the cultural and historical heritage of the land that used to be the Indic land, whether that’s now Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, or to an extent, Sri Lanka. We were treated how the Two Spirit people were treated in the indigenous communities and how they’re still treated.
This identity is about being genderless. But it’s also mystical. It’s also spiritual. It’s also tied to a profession. We have trans people who are dancers, and they have done that generation after generation, but they don’t identify as trans. Gender fluidity is paramount. It is an integral part of the entire identity.
We lived in society, integrated into society, and did our part in society until the English came. They came into this mix and punished us because they believed that there are only two genders. So they criminalized us with the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act. They introduced the word eunuch. Overnight, we became criminals. We were treated badly and our people were helpless under the rule of the white man.
And so this identity started losing its relevance and reverence in community. We ended up becoming people who are begging on the street. But we are blessing you as you give us some money. That identity is not translatable, transferable to trans in the western hemisphere, A kinnar or a hijra has a bigger identity than just the gender fluidity, the gender expression.
We don’t see ourselves flourishing or existing in the greater trans community in America, even within the South Asian trans community. You see us in front of the PRIDE marches in India, you see us in front of the parliament fighting for our rights or any social justice cause. But I would not be welcomed, and I was not welcomed into many South Asian LGBTQ spaces.
You have to have a lot of cultural humility to understand the wholeness of our existence. And when you don’t, you’re going to attribute some of our identities to things that you believe are problematic, and then you start erasing our gender fluidity and our trans identity.
Is your trans identity entwined with your Indian identity? Or are they separate?
I don’t know if those two alone exist together. When I was growing up, across from me was a Yellamma temple. There would be folks with cis families or heterosexual men that would present themselves as women, and go seek the blessings of Yellamma. That’s what I grew up watching.
For me, that is an integral part of identity as gender because it is not about me transitioning from male to female, or being nonbinary and using a sheet of pronouns. It’s the beauty of that fluidity, that anybody can be any way because it’s a soul. It’s a spiritual thing.
Coming from a rich country full of values, cultures, and traditions that intertwine, it’s a very amalgamated identity for any person to begin with. But when you’re talking about trans, adding that new layer upon a very rich culture like that, it becomes a part of your brain, your journey. When you are coming here to America you want to preserve that.
I realized that when we come to these lands, where we have no one else looking like us, or even if they are, they come from a different part of the country of origin, we hold on to try to preserve the togetherness of ourselves, our community, our culture, and our traditional identities. So I would say they intertwine somewhere.
I can exist as an Indian or a South Asian in the trans community, as a kinnar, or hijra, with people being empathetic or inclusive. But after 22 years in America, I cannot be trans in Indian or South Asian communities. When I say trans, please note that with great liberty I’m associating trans with kinnar or hijra. I start code-switching. I go into so many Indian and South Asian communities, to temples, to restaurants with my parents. We don’t give out the vibe or explicitly say that I’m kinnar or trans because we are lightyears away from accepting a kinnar or hijra to be sitting next to you and eating at a restaurant, even in California.
How do you connect to your Indian or South Asian roots in the US?
I exist and proudly wear my salwars and my sarees when going out. I exist in proudly educating people to an extent on what it means to be South Asian or Indian. I cook Indian food very well. I love to have people and feed them Indian food that I make. I try to stay integral with my parents, who live with me, and our practices, our cultures, and our religion and all those aspects that keep me Hindu, keep me Indian, keep me trans, keep me kinnar, keep me a global South Asian person.
I think we, as immigrants, have the syndrome of trying to be adjacent to white supremacy. We don’t want to turn back and look at other immigrants who might be struggling like we did a few years or many years back. It becomes problematic when I am too Indian or too South Asian and in somebody’s face.
You’re not allowed to be your whole self. Being in America and being in Canada, I can tell you that America is a melting pot. You’ve got to give up your identity at some point. Whereas in Canada, I think if you’re 50% to 60% immigrant then you can continue to exist in your whole self.
In America, you have to take the bindi or the pottu off your forehead because if you’re going into the office, you better be ready for somebody to be making fun of you. They try to normalize and homogenize our existence.
You wear a saree very well and you wear them often, almost daily. Can you talk about why you do that and what that means to you?
I grew up watching my mom wear sarees, Sridevi wearing sarees, and other South Indian actresses in the 80s and 90s. I thought I would be like them, that when I grew up, magically it would happen. There’s a certain level of womanhood that I attribute to [myself] when I wear a saree. I see my grandmother, my mom’s five sisters and it gives me strength.
The courage and confidence come out in me when I wear a saree. In a way, I am defying the world’s way of saying you were born a man, you cannot be a woman and then on top of that, I get glamorous in a sari! The other piece is the xenophobia that we have in communities of color, but also in American society at large. You got to amalgamate, you got to blend in, you can’t stand out. I refuse to do that.
People have known me to dress up. I worked in fashion, and I can walk in six-inch heels in Manhattan owning my beautiful dress. I would also be very proud of my 400-plus sarees, because there’s a charm in it, there is heritage in it, and I also feel like I’m invoking my ancestors when I wear them.
The many sarees I have came to me from my hijra community, they came to me from my kinnar community, they came to me from trans elders who blessed me with them. So whenever I wear them, I am actually paying my tribute to them. Nobody understands that. They just think, oh, I’m wearing a saree to propagate this and promote that and I couldn’t care less.
Out of the seven attacks I’ve had in America, the first one and the latest one, both happened when I wore a saree. The most brutal ones happened when I was wearing a saree.
What can people do to begin to understand the kinnar and hijra communities?
I would say, start a journey to get back to their roots in their country, through their elders, and try to understand the origin and their whole life journey. You’re not going to find a lot of us in America, but stop generalizing us to be trans, stop thinking we have access to mainstream things like South Asian LGBTQ people have.
The third thing they can do is, for those who come to this country and are knowingly or unknowingly, identifying with the culturally diverse identity which has trans or gender fluidity as an integral part of it, to try to understand the wholeness of them. I think it begins there, by educating yourself and then giving us access to spaces that you think are going to make others uncomfortable to be in.
A call for portrait volunteers was promoted in the India Currents newsletter and on social media for this series.
This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Contributors include Vandana Kumar, Meera Kymal, Mabel Jimenez, and Jenny Jacklin-Stratton. Learn more about CatchLight Local’s collaborative model for local visual journalism at https://www.catchlight.io/local
This series was made possible in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program.
