Transgender woman clears path to assistant professorship, calls it strong ‘message for society’

Transgender woman Sumana Pramanik overcomes poverty and discrimination to become eligible for assistant professor position.

A transgender woman from West Bengal who, since her childhood, fought poverty, neglect, and discrimination, has cleared the State government-conducted test that makes her eligible to be an assistant professor at a university or college.

Krishnanagar-based Sumana Pramanik, who always dreamt to be a mathematics teacher, has been appearing for the State Eligibility Test, or SET, since 2019 but success finally came this year — something she feels will send a strong message to the society as well as members of her community that transgender people were not about begging at traffic intersections.

“[My success] sends out the message that a transgender person has intellect and just because she is out of the man-woman matrix does not mean that she is not capable of anything and is fit only for certain professions. I have faced rejection all my life because of my gender; even when I would ask friends to get me students for tuition, they would say, “Do you know how difficult that is? What will they call you, Sir or Ma’am?’ My success is a slap on the face of rejections I faced at every step of my life,” Ms. Pramanik told The Hindu.

She was born into abject poverty in the town of Krishnanagar, facing neglect as long as she can remember. At the age of six, she was packed off to Karimpur Asha Sisu Ashram, an orphanage located about 80 km from home. She did her schooling at Jagannath High School and later Kabi Bijoylal H.S. Institute and subsequently went to Srikrishna College in Bagula and to Kalyani University. After post-graduation, she finished her B.Ed at Berhampore Union Christian College.

It was her love for studies — and ambition to be a teacher — that kept her going in spite of the repeated rejections from people around her, including her family. The older she grew, the more her relatives withdrew whatever little support they were providing. It was a tutor who, while being kind enough to teach her for free, made Ms. Pramanik aware that she was a transgender by constantly ridiculing her feminine side and telling her that she needed to get rid of it.

“In fact, she persuaded me to see a counsellor, saying I needed to be a boy. It was the counsellor who told me that I was as healthy as any male or female, and that it was the teacher — and those humiliating me — who needed counselling,” Ms. Pramanik said.

The counsellor’s kind words mattered only inside the clinic. Outside, the world remained cruel. In college, hardly anyone ever shared the bench with her. Outside, landlords were hesitant to take her on as a tenant. And not many students were willing to take tuitions from her, ever though she was eager to teach. It was her ambition that finally saw her through.