A trans teacher was denied work at two schools. She’s now fighting for her right to employment at India’s top court

Jane Kaushik, 31, was delighted to land a teaching job after several unsuccessful interviews.

She would have to relocate from India’s bustling capital of Delhi to the remote city of Jamnagar, located 1,200km away in the western state of Gujarat. But she didn’t mind that, as it gave her a shot at leading a life of dignity.

However, hours before joining she decided to call the JP Modi School, requesting the human resource department arrange her some accommodation. Little did she know that her request would trigger a chain of events that would ultimately culminate in her losing the job, even before she could set foot inside of the school’s premises.

The first panic-inducing phone call from the school came after the authorities asked for her biometric ID proof, or Aadhaar, to book her a hotel room. It gave away her identity as a trans woman.

“When I sent them its picture on WhatsApp, they saw that it referred to me as transgender,” she tells The Independent.

India is one of the few countries in the world that recognises transgender as a third gender on official documents. In its landmark 2014 ruling, the Supreme Court also directed the government to ensure that trans people are provided equal access to education, and healthcare and welfare programmes, ordering that campaigns be designed and set up to spread awareness on the issue.

A decade on though, and the stigma still runs deep, as is evident in Kaushik’s case. Remembering a phone call she received from a woman in the HR department, Kaushik says: “The lady was literally scolding me, asking why I did not tell her about my transgender identity.”

Kaushik could sense what was to come before the school authorities could even say it. There was a grim sense of deja vu taking her back to November 2022, when she was first fired following a prejudiced response to her gender identity, she says.

She had been offered a job at Uma Devi Children’s Academy in a remote district of Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh after she cleared several rounds of interviews.

Having travelled 450km from Delhi, she was filling out documents and undergoing formalities before joining, when one of the school coordinators found the name on her identity document to be inconsistent with her educational records. As she informed him of her previous gender identity, the matter was escalated to senior school authorities.

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Kaushik was allowed to continue with the job but on the condition that she would not share her “gender-related details with others”.

“I went along with it because I really wanted a job,” she said. The secret, however, lasted only a week. “Soon after, the principal learnt that one of the students knew about my trans identity and the school fired me.

“The principal mercilessly insulted me before throwing me out. They forced me to write a resignation letter.”

Eight months later, the Jamnagar incident seemed like a flashback from her past.

This time, however, Kaushik was keen on an alternative outcome. She promptly dialled her attorney’s office in Delhi. “I got really scared because it was the same thing that had happened [before],” she shares.

After the lawyers spoke with the school administration, “the HR asked me to come, telling me to not worry about [the job or accommodation]”. However, the lawyer’s intervention only slowed the process by a few hours. The outcome remained the same. She lost her job yet again without due process, she says.

“I reached [Jamnagar]. They booked me in a hotel room. Then a meeting took place, where members of the school committee forced me to leave, saying [that my admission to the school as a teacher] would negatively affect the teaching environment.

“They said that at the time when the same-sex marriage issue was being argued in the Supreme Court, the locals [went] to the [District Magistrate’s] office, informing him about their stance against it. ‘You think the people who don’t want same-sex marriage will accept a trans woman teaching their children?’”

“Basically, they wanted me to not join the school and return to Delhi,” said Kaushik of the JP Modi School’s administration. The Independent has reached out to the school as well as to the Uma Devi Children’s Academy with questions regarding Kaushik’s allegations.

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For Kaushik, losing the job was not the only blow. After the incident at the Gujarat school, Jane says her family also disowned her. She says they were not able to understand how she would be able to survive with the extent of the discrimination. The bickering got out of hand, and she ultimately moved out.

Having named herself after the protagonist from the classic Charlotte Bronte novel, Jane Eyre, Kaushik could start to see parallels between her and the literary character’s journey.

“There were a lot of challenges in Jane’s journey,” she says. “She was an orphan who was not taken care of by society. I think that’s how I felt all along. I was able to associate with her,” says Kaushik, as she speaks of the harassment and ostracisation she faced during her formative years.

“In school, boys used to hit my private parts as they would call me names. Not just behind my back but even to my face… I never enjoyed my school or college life like others did. They were my nightmare, the ugliest period of my life,” she shares.

This was exacerbated by her lack of knowledge about her transgender identity. “I felt like a woman trapped inside a man’s body but I did not know how to verbalise [it],” she says.

But the vocabulary and her own understanding became clearer in 2010 with the story of Rose Venkatesan – a trans woman from India who underwent sexual reassignment surgery in Thailand, receiving significant media attention.

“It was then I learnt how we can transform our bodies and got acquainted with terms like gender dysphoria.”

However, it took another eight years for her to come out to her parents, as they started pressing her to get married. “I told them: ‘I cannot marry a girl as I am myself a woman.’ They were not able to understand me at the get-go,” she says. “But they did not reject me either. They took their time.”

Despite being shunned, she remained insistent on pursuing higher education. “I thought that if I [was] possibly educated enough, things would change. That the perspective of others would change and they would respect me,” she says. “But upon completion of my education, I found that we are not only discriminated against in schools and colleges but also in the employment sector.”

A study commissioned by India’s National Human Rights Commission found that, in 2017, just 6 per cent of transgender people were formally employed in either the private or non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector. About 5 per cent engaged in sex work and domestic labour respectively.

Thirteen per cent sold food and other items while 11 per cent reported begging. Around half of the over-400,000-strong transgender population in India never attended school. All this while the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act prohibits employment discrimination against trans people in both the public and private sectors.

Kaushik has now taken her issue to the country’s top court in the hope of seeking a “remedy against the endless, humiliating and degrading discrimination that she faces as a transgender person” referring to the union government and the two state’s respective administrations, along with the schools.

In arguing that the discrimination based on her gender does “not result in just unfair treatment – but also in gross violations of her right to life and livelihood”, Kaushik has demanded the court direct the appropriate government to ensure non-discrimination of transgender persons.

She also demanded the court issue a direction that allows her to be reinstated as an English teacher in the Gujarat school and has asked for compensation from the school in Lakhimpur Kheri over the termination of services “that she deemed in violation of her fundamental rights” protected under Indian constitution.

“I am transgender and educated. I have self-respect. But no one is employing me,” she says.

As the apex court admits her plea, Kaushik says that she hopes she can achieve justice and that “no one faces the discrimination that I have faced”.