The six council members approved the lease, with the blessing of the local bishop. It was an important endorsement in Kerala, where the Church is a powerful social and political arbiter in a state that is nearly 20 percent Catholic. The Church has no official doctrine regarding transgender identity, but most Catholic churches (especially in the United States) have distanced themselves from the issue. However, the Carmelites are Catholic nuns whose mission revolves around three elements: prayer, community, and service. For Sister Pavithra and her convent’s council, helping the trans community through education seemed like a natural blend of the latter two elements.
When the school was inaugurated on December 30, 2016, media organizations reported that Sahaj had 10 students and intended to offer accredited online classes through the National Institute of Open Schooling as well as vocational training to trans dropouts in their 20s and 30s. It was the first school of its kind in India, and the first time the Catholic Church had gotten involved in such a capacity with the issue of transgender education.
But three months later, Sahaj has no teachers, no accreditation, and no students. Mallika never got around to hiring teachers, and the few students who briefly attended left, partly due to a lack of direction for the program. Sahaj is now functioning only as a shelter: The dormitory and kitchen are used by four trans people training to become workers for the forthcoming metro system. The school isn’t suffering because of a lack of need in this conservative South Indian state. Instead, various factors have impeded the school’s success: social stigma, weak direction, and a failure to anticipate the needs of the larger trans community. [...]
Faisal believes that the social stigma trans people face in Kerala is partly due to a lack of a hijra community in the state. Hijras are transgender, intersex, and transsexual people who live within a strict hierarchical community, and are found mostly in neighboring Tamil Nadu and further north in states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. While hijras are rarely integrated into society, they are often viewed as divine and are a known entity that does not arouse the same suspicion as trans people in Kerala. (Hinduism has a long tradition of embracing gender fluidity; in myths and religious texts, a god may appear as male and female at different times or even at the same time, and human beings can undergo sex changes through curses or blessings.)
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