Brave New Rhythm

Padma Award winner Manjamma Jogathi vows that it is her art that has taken her all the way from a remote village in Karnataka to Rashtrapati Bhavan

- B. Manjamma Jogathi

ON the eve of the Padma Award ceremony, when I sat down for an interview with Harsha Bhat, who is now the co-author of my book, it was this one line I told her that provoked her to ask me if we could work on a biography. I had summed up my conversation by saying, “it is my art and not any activism that has taken me from the footpath to Rashtrapati Bhavan” and that, she said, made my journey different. That’s what made the book happen. The fact that here was a transgender person from a remote village in Karnataka who had been given the country’s fourth highest civilian award, the Padmashri, for pursuing a folk art form, taking it from the streets to the stage and popularising it.

My art has accomplished what no other means could. My activism has also been through my pursuit of art and I see it has already begun to bear fruits. People now share that they do not roll up the car windows when they spot transgenders at traffic signals, instead, they roll down the windows and offer them something. My own community says my journey of reaching people has changed their perception of us. It has also inspired many young transwomen to take to respectable means of earning and living. Though it began as a means of survival, I have seen that art is a powerful tool and can be a catalyst for change.

But the change has taken almost a lifetime for inclusiveness cannot be accomplished overnight nor by legislation or force. It takes love and acceptance that come from within people and society.

I completed my term as the President of the Karnataka Folklore Academy in November 2022. This was the first time a government academy had a transperson leading it. And during my term, when I would attend sessions to qualify rural artists and performers when they sought a government pension, it would often take me back in time to the days when I started out.