Gender discrimination by Indian Railways

Santhi Soundarajan failed a “gender” test and had to forfeit the silver medal she won in the 800 m race at the Doha Asian games.

Apparently this is not the first time she has failed this kind of a test. An athletics selector has said that “officials knew before the competition that Santhi had been denied a job in the Railways on similar grounds.”

There are two things worthy of note here. Firstly, this issue of a failed “gender” test should’ve been handled far more sensitively by the media and sports officials. But knowing them for the thick-skinned species that they are, I am not surprised that the issue has been played out in a tasteless manner. When a respected national daily prints a headline that goes “Santhi not a woman…” one cannot expect anything better!

The second and the more important point here is about Railways refusing a job to Santhi due to a failed gender test. This implies that a government entity (Indian Railways is a state-owned company) has denied employment to an Indian citizen on a gender/sex based criterion. Surely, this is unconstitutional!!

Shouldn’t the media report and question this rather than subjecting Santhi to humiliation by tasteless reporting?!

Update: Well some people say that Indian Penal Code’s Section 377 denies the basic constitutional rights to people who are of “unnatural sex”. But I wonder how that is possible! Section 377 of the IPC talks about “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal…”. I fail to understand how it applies in the case of a transgendered person! Please enlighten me if you can. But until that happens, the point I raised in my post still stands. Indian Government, through it’s agency Indian Railways, acted unconstitutionally in denying employment to Santhi based on the results of a gender test! It was sexual discrimination. Period!