Meet Manabi Bandhopadhyay, India s first transgender college principal from West Bengal
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A transgender from West Bengal, Manabi Bandopadhyay, made history on June 9, 2015, when she was made the college principal at Krishnagar Women s College in Nadia district. She is the first transgender to have achieved this feat.
For me, it’s a long battle against ignorance. There was a time when I and even my father were threatened with (dire) consequences as I am a transgender. I spent my childhood in Nadia and it’s a comeback to my home with pride and dignity after a long battle.
Ever since childhood, Manabi took preference to feminine habits and showed signs of being a girl. However, this irked her father who wanted her to work and earn, since she was the only son among two sisters.
Satyajit Ray (2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992), Photo courtesy: Nemai Ghosh Films cannot change society. They never have. Show me a film that changed society or brought about any change, said master director Satyajit Ray in an interview for the American magazine Cineaste more than three decades ago.
Poster of Ganashatru
The remarks came from a man who was one of the most politically conscious directors India had ever produced and was never constrained by it. It s a political consciousness derived from the tumultuous years of the Naxalbari movement of the 1960s and 70s and the Emergency in the mid-seventies. It is reflected in Ray s films, such as Jana Aranya (The Middleman) and Pratidwandi (The Adversary). Later, he returned to the political theme in Hirok Rajar Deshey (In the Land of Diamond King) and in a different setting in Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People). Ray s Ghare Bairey (The Home and the World) also makes a strong political statement in pre-independent India,