Internship location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Hosting Organisation: Nirangal
Nirangal’s Organisational Structure
Nirangal is a Community-Based Organisation (CBO), Registered by the Tamil Nadu Government as Charitable Trust. Its CBO status means that the people who make the decisions on behalf of the organisation must come from the same group of people that they officially represent; in this case, it is the LGBTQI+ community. As a Charitable Trust, funds allocated to the organisation are managed by a Board of Trustees, with charitable status making it officially non-profit. In addition to being run by the board, there are two employees on the payroll: Siva, who was a founding member of the organisation; and Delfina, who has worked with Nirangal for 3 years. In addition to securing the finances of the CBO, there are additional responsibilities that the board engages in, to be laid out in the following section.
Activities of the Board:
As part of being a CBO, Nirangal has a Vision (how Nirangal wants to see the area it services in the future) and Mission (the means through which they intend to realise their vision); it is the Board that verifies that actions taken by Nirangal are in-line with the contemporaneous Vision and Mission. Overall, the position of the board (aside from their financial
management obligation) is to serve in an advisory role in projects. At the onset and throughout the duration of a project, the Board monitors activities; this allows them to provide advice as well as to meet their financially-related obligation of monitoring the funding of these activities. Presently, the Board consists of 3 members: Shankari (the other
founder of Nirangal), Silbum, and Sowmya. When Nirangal registered itself as a CBO, it simultaneously swore in these 3 into the board.
Nirangal will keep the present board so long as it maintains its CBO status; the exception to this is if the board votes to change its composition. In order to accomplish this, the board needs to call a meeting to into session. The member of the board empowered with this is the Management Trustee, the only position within the Board; that position is presently held by Shankari. In addition to having the power to organise a Board meeting, they are the decision- maker within the Board should it be needed.
Nirangal’s Members
In total, Nirangal has 3 Board members and 2 employees on payroll, for a total of 5
permanent people. But because Nirangal engages in various projects, partnering with a wide variety of other organisations throughout the year, at times it calls upon the assistance of members of its volunteer network. Volunteers may be requested to partake in a particular project, but volunteers brought into the organisation are also encouraged to act of their own volition, joining in activities when it interests them. For example, a volunteer who has worked with Nirangal in the past participated in the CBO’s turn to lead the discussion in the Chennai Pride 2018 planning meeting. The philosophy behind allowing volunteers to participate where and when they would like to is that they will give their best work in those circumstances, being of greatest service that way.
Main Activities:
Informed by their Vision and Mission, there is a core of activities that Nirangal engages in.
As mentioned above, the annual Chennai LGBT Pride is organised by Nirangal, along with their partners collectively referred to as the Rainbow Coalition. This event takes place on the last Sunday of June and the week leading up to it, with the planning meetings beginning in the first 2 weeks of March. Although this is not an event that Nirangal engages in throughout the year, it is a function in which the organisation is one of the leading members and so it is of high priority every year. Throughout the year, they offer various services to members of the LGBTQI+ community. One of them is legal support – in India, homosexuality is
considered illegal. There can also be legal barriers to overcome to be officially recognised as transgender and to receive treatments such as sex reassignment surgery. Tamil Nadu is surprisingly progressive as far as laws are concerned with regard to rights for transgendered people. There still exist frequent social problems for all members of the LGBTQI+
community, however, and so Nirangal offers not only peer counselling, but also refer people to professional counsellors. I would like to add that, while limited, people who provide counselling as members of Nirangal have all gone through at least minimal training sessions;
although not qualified with an academic degree, they maintain credentials that give them experience and academic legitimacy in the field of counselling.
Beyond services provided to members of the LGBTQI+ community, Nirangal presents workshops to various groups. University students are commonly reached out to, particularly in the fields of media/communications, psychology, social work, and medicine – fields likely to encounter members of the LGBTQI+ community as their clients in need of their
professional assistance. The advantage to being able to go to universities is that it allows Nirangal’s non-Tamil-speaking interns and volunteers to directly engage in the workshops.
One of the workshops I was able to witness was for a group of mostly transgender women at
the headquarters of a Puducherry-based NGO for AIDES awareness. In addition to
workshops with students and community members, Nirangal has reported significant gains in the effectiveness of Chennai police in working with the LGBTQI+ public after conducting numerous sensitisation programmes for these professionals. Medical professionals have also received workshops from Nirangal before. In cooperation with one of their partners, Nirangal also travels to rural areas around Chennai, where the majority populations are Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes – there they provide workshops to increase awareness and acceptance within the general community as well as advocating for women’s rights. As a reward for the work that Nirangal engages in, the Government of Tamil Nadu accepts policy recommendations from them every year; although there is no obligation on behalf of the government to implement policies proposed by Nirangal, there has been progressive
legislation for LGBTQI+ rights in the past few years that could have been influenced by this agreement.
Partners (Rainbow Coalition):
-SIAAP (South India Aides Action Programme): for the time being, Nirangal does not have its own permanent office space. One of the most important dynamics in their relationship with SIAAP is that this organisation allows Nirangal to use their office space on an as-needed basis. The two permanent workers of Nirangal also sometimes perform tasks for SIAAP and even have permission in their current agreement to perform actions as part of SIAAP whilst also attaching Nirangal’s name it when appropriate.
-SAATHII (Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India): One of the main ways in which these two organisations collaborate is on the Chennai LGBT Pride event annually.
SAATHII also conducted a case study and asked for Nirangal to help with the collection and organisation of the data.
-Sahodaran (STI testing): this organisation’s headquarters is the host of the Chennai LGBT Pride events and organised the first meeting. I have information about what this organisation does, but their collaboration with Nirangal is something I would have liked to have learned more about before the end of my internship.
-Aranseivon (Dalit rights) This is the group that Nirangal works in conjunction with when they want to work with the Backward Castes.
My Internship Experience:
For the majority of my internship report, I will be writing about the actual activities I engaged in with the NGO. In order to better analyse my experience, I will begin with what the
expectations were – this will allow for a better measurement for me to personally asses my own experience as well as give insight to both the CBO and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, as I will be sharing my document with each of them.
Expectations
This will primarily be governed by the contract originally signed by Nirangal, myself, my Internship Supervisor from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, and the Faculty of Arts Mobility Office. Part of the work experience abroad is the culture and socio-political structure of the host country, so there will also be aspects brought up throughout this section when and where appropriate.
The original duration of the internship was going to be 2 full months, beginning in October and finishing in December, tentatively 16 October-15 December. I was required to obtain a visa to gain entry into India; my ability to conduct my internship on-time hinged entirely on this aspect of the process. After having researched what each visa is, their requirements, processing time, and duration of stay, I decided that the best visa for me to apply for was the e-Tourist visa. It would allow me to stay a maximum of 60 days, would be granted within 4 business days, and only required an online application directly through the Government of India’s website. When I shared this information with the organisation that was helping me to organise my internship, they told me that I should apply for an X-entry Visa, which requires first an online application and then an in-person application at VFS Global, a company contracted to process visa applications. I was not convinced, but they also showed me a copy of the e-Tourist visa, which specifically stipulated that the e-Tourist visa is NOT permissible for use as a means to enter the country for volunteer work. I had not found this information anywhere else, which having previously only lived in countries considered highly developed came as a shock to me: I would not have known that my visa was illegal until after it was granted.
Taking the advice of the organisation helping me, I made an application for the X-entry visa instead. When I showed up to the VFS Global office in The Hague (they have branches in Amsterdam and Rotterdam as well, but The Hague has open hours later in the day), they informed me that the X-entry visa was once valid for my purpose of visit, but laws had recently changed. They assured me that either the Employment visa or the Intern visa would be correct, with the Employment visa taking less time to be processed. They gave me a checklist of documents to procure for an Employment visa, which took 2 weeks to compile all the necessary paperwork for. When I submitted them to VFS Global, they told me they
would not process my application because it was for an internship. This contradicted not only the information given to me in my last visit, but even the document checklist they gave me which explicitly stated that the Employment visa was possible for “an unpaid internship with an NGO”. The reason for the rejection was that this is no longer the case and my invitation letter from the hosting organisation (Nirangal) listed that my purpose of visit was to conduct an internship; therefore, the correct visa was the Intern visa. I returned only 2 days later with the correct documents and successfully submitted my application. As a US national living in The Netherlands, it cost me ~€113 to submit this application, a cost that is non-refundable.
As I waited for my visa to be granted, I conducted research on the Intern visa. Information about this visa, made available in 2017. According to various online sources, the maximum number of Intern visa applications granted was set at a cap of 50 per country in a calendar year, with an allowance of 100 in countries with a significant Indian population. I was unable to submit my visa application before October, so this had me worried that they might not grant it, especially because all the sources I could find told me that it should take 4-6 business days to be processed. After 6 business days I called customer service; having spoken with them many times now, I must say that I am quite disappointed with the lack of training they have received. It is mentioned at the beginning of every call “please note that all information provided by customer service is also available on our website (website name)” and I believe this to be almost 100% true. The only two pieces of information I received from them that were not explicitly stated on the website were that my visa might not have been processed yet because as a US national applying from The Netherlands, it could take 8-10 business days;
and that it is not possible to contact local branches by phone, including a transfer from customer service to one of their branches. After 2 weeks had passed, I contacted them again to check the status of my visa and they said that it was still in processing with the Embassy.
I was determined to go to India, so I endured every day, albeit with some degree of doubt, until I received confirmation that my visa was accepted. That was the plan at least, until I finally called the Embassy on 9 January to tell them that if they do not expect to be able to grant me my visa by the end of the month, I would have to cancel my application – the financial burden of waiting was too great. (I will talk about this much later in the document since university infrastructure is less directly related to my internship.) It was at this time they informed me that my application was accepted by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 2 January.
I thought I paid VFS Global €113 to tell me when my visa was accepted and when it was available for pick-up, but apparently that is not on the list of services I paid for. However, after going back to VFS Global to see when I could pick my visa up, they informed me that the Embassy will still need to actually process and grant my visa; the acceptance by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which had taken from 04 October-2 January, was only a
prerequisite for the processing of my application. They also told me it could take anywhere from 4 business days to 6 additional months.
Thankfully, I only needed to wait another 2 weeks before I could pick up my visa, whereupon I could finally buy my plane ticket and plan out the duration of my internship. With the next payment cycle for tuition falling on 26 March and me needing to submit my final internship report to graduate, I planned out my internship to begin just 4 days after I received my passport (it took 24 hours for me to reach India due to time zones, distance, and layovers), returning on 23 March.
Reflections
My expectations about the whole internship were significantly influenced by this experience, which is one of the two reasons why I decided to write so much about it; the other reason is to demonstrate for anyone interested in conducting an internship in India just how difficult it can be to actually get there. If I can give you any potential interns a tip, it would be to go to VFS Global in The Hague and speak with Eva if she is still working there: she is the most experienced and knowledgeable person there and cares tremendously; even when being assisted by her colleagues, she would come over and check up on them to make sure they were doing everything correctly. (Addendum: when she was around.) Seriously, she is so worth being the only person you cooperate with that I would recommend not talking with anyone else except to ask for an appointment to meet with her.
Effects of the delay
Because the start time was so drastically different from originally anticipated, the available projects to work on also shifted. Opportunities were both gained and lost. One of the major activities I was supposed to engage in was workshops with university students, being able to present research-based perspectives on gender and sexuality, primarily focussing on
paradigmatic shifts in India and conditions internationally. When I was actually in India, however, the opportunity was missed: when we arranged for workshops at universities, it was already near the completion of my first half of the internship; March is the month of
midterms for universities in Chennai, and so no universities of the 6 that we inquired with accepted our offer of conducting workshops. An opportunity gained, however, was the ability to participate in at least the first Chennai LGBT Pride planning meeting. I attended both meetings, but my ability to engage was severely hampered by a combination of the lingua franca being Tamil and my inability to communicate in the language. Another opportunity
was to speak as part of a panel at the National Conference on Gender and Development in Ambattur. My ability to speak during the panel was limited due to three of us speakers having a combined hour to present on a topic of our choosing and answer audience questions. After speaking, we met numerous academicians and the guest of honour, Irom Chanu Sharmila, a human rights activist who went on a hunger strike for 15 consecutive years to gain better rights for oppressed ethnic groups in Northern India.
An important expectation that was not met was the workload and how work was arranged:
because Nirangal does not operate out of an office, time that is not spent directly on specific projects is completely unstructured. I was informed that work on projects would not be completely regimented, as they would be worked on when it is possible, so working days would change from week to week; however, the 9-5 mentality led me to assume that there would still be structured work time on days that I would work. This required me to maintain a high level of self-discipline to work on activities that were not directly connected to a
meeting. I understand that Nirangal works on many different projects and mostly takes up activities where and when they are able; however, I think that part of Nirangal’s operations are influenced by Indian work culture.
Indian work Culture
Appropriate work dress can vary from profession to profession, culture to culture, climate to climate. Being more of a relaxed culture with a tropical climate and primary interaction taking place with informal-style meetings with members of the LGBTQI+ community, overall the dress code was highly lax compared to Europe: shorts were always acceptable and shirts for males were not required to have buttons. The implications of this are not significant
in comparison to issues such as punctuality, but it is still worth mentioning in order to give a more complete picture of the business climate. One advantage to this lax dress code is that dealing with the heat was much more manageable if I would have been required to wear slacks and a long-sleeve button-down shirt. Every day was sunny with temperatures in the 30s so long as the Sun was up.
Similar to Mediterranean countries, India is laxer than The Netherlands about punctuality.
Events would typically start later than expected and a number of meetings had last-minute (or later than last-minute) cancellations. Traffic is often quite dense, leading to an expectation that delays will occur in commuting, but people were perhaps often optimistic about their ability to arrive at an event at the time that Google Maps suggested it would take. But people would also leave extremely late for events, to the point that even if traffic were less dense than expected, they would be at least a half-hour late. Because it is a major part of the culture, people are extremely accommodating of other’s tardiness. What resulted, however, was a lot of work taking longer than expected due to delays, sometimes to the point where other commitments needed to be cancelled. At other times, cancellations meant being unable to hold a meeting as planned. This was a consistent problem for the duration of my internship, although it was generally not severe.
An exception to severity of cancellations was my project for Autism Awareness. The leader for that project was a person working for a different organisation; he came to Nirangal asking for support. I met with him and we made a plan for how we would get the project started, which included visiting a school in another city, Puducherry, and use the knowledge gained from this visit to inform the sort of activities that would be included in the project. We did
successfully make the trip to Puducherry and met with the school, but he did not follow up with me afterward. I attempted to follow up with him but got no reply. I asked a mutual contact to talk with him and see what the issue was, which was when I learned that he had gotten a new side job that was occupying too much of his time, so he was not able to work on the autism awareness project whilst I would still be in India. Whilst I understand that activists are frequently underpaid and sometimes not even paid at all, and everyone needs money to survive, this cancellation did have a negative impact on the projects that I was able to
participate in. I am not mad at the person but I am disappointed that we were not able to work on this project, especially in the absence of the workshops for university students.
Something else that impacted productivity was travel time. Chennai has a diameter of over 10 miles, so appointments that were not in the neighbourhood (they rarely were) took a long time to get to. It was not always possible to travel with public transport, as connectivity was limited, particularly in the area that I was staying in for the majority of my time in India. At times, where and when it would be possible, the buses would not show up when expected and so waiting for them turned out to be a waste of time. In some instances it was possible to work on the way to a destination, but this was often difficult to accomplish due to needing particular people present and access to a laptop with Wi-Fi. Even if these logistics could be accounted for, a lot of travel took place in “autos”, three-wheeled carriages with no doors or windows and a loud engine. Communication was difficult and space was limited, particularly when three of us would sit in the back seat, which was most of the time. Although not eco- friendly, I was grateful for the ability to frequently travel by taxi, however – coordinating pick-up times and locations to be picked up and dropped off at are much simpler when you can order a pick-up. But due to the traffic, travel time was nearly always significantly slower than the estimated duration of a journey.
Twice I had work to accomplish in Puducherry, the first time spending the night and
returning the next day and the second time making a day trip. This epitomised the hindrance that travel times provided: in each case, the amount of time we spent working in Puducherry was less than the amount of time that we spent working there. The round-trip journey took about least 8 hours each time. It was also not possible to stay long for the networking at the conference in Ambattur because of travel time and the need to take public transport to get back to Chennai.
Adherence to Contract
Activity Time expected to be spent Time actually spent Gender & Sexuality
workshops
-Puducherry (in Tamil – observed)
-attempting to get workshops
36 hrs.
5 hrs.
8 hrs.
Research paper 32 hrs. 60 hrs.
Writing of case studies, reports, web articles, and training modules
160 hrs. 14 hrs.
Self-Defence Course 10 hrs. 0 hrs.
Final internship write-up 40 hrs. 50 hrs.
Chennai LGBT Pride Planning Meetings
0 hrs. 10 hrs.
Chennai Queer Film Festival 0 hrs. 4 hrs.
Conferences:
-Storytelling Workshop
0 hrs.
8 hrs.
-National Conference on Gender & Development
24 hrs.
Obtaining quotes for equipment
0 hrs. 12 hrs.
Film documentary 0 hrs. 25 hrs.
Autism Awareness Project 0 hrs. 10 hrs.
Interview by Journalism student
0 hrs. 2 hrs.
Interview of potential future intern
0 hrs. 2 hrs.
Meeting with Aranseivon 0 hrs. 2 hrs.
Consultancy with Sahodaran 0 hrs. 4 hrs.
Planning 0 hrs. 6 hrs
Meeting with members of the LGBTQI+ Community
0 hrs. 30 hrs.
Meeting with past intern 0 hrs. 4 hrs.
Total time 280 hrs. 280 hrs.
Assessment
I think that there are two aspects to consider with regard to adherence to the contract: flaws in the design (which would be improper planning and completely my fault) and errors in
execution (which is a combination of my fault and circumstances outside of my control). I will first start with errors in my own judgement with regard to planning. The self-defence course required sufficient interest to be taught; because it was not there, it made no sense to host it. I should not have automatically assumed that it would be relevant to this particular project, since self-defence is not something that Nirangal has dabbled in before. I was not expressly permitted to engage in the counselling services because I have no certifications. To the best of my knowledge, there were also no requests for counselling services for the
duration of my internship. The research paper probably did take about as long as I thought it
would to actually write…but in that case, I had not factored in looking up, reading, and making notes of sources. Because there is not much direct research being done into the topic, feminist narratives in Hindu theology, it was a lot of work to not only find relevant sources, but to gather enough of them to make an adequate paper with. Some of the sources I had read and made notes for ended up not being used in the final draft as the angle for our argument changed: we decided to focus on more specific methods, such as comparisons of Hindu iconography to Hindu scriptures. The reason I say “we” is because the original idea for the paper was from Delfina. We used some of the lines from a non-academic paper she wrote in the paper, she wrote a section herself, and I obtained her approval for each section before considering it completed as well.
I was able to engage a bit in case studies and reports, but the fact of the matter is that there was one case study being conducted during my time in Chennai. I was able to turn a transcript into a document that was ready for use in the study and taught the other intern working at the time how to do this; i.e., which information is relevant to the case study, how the document should be organised. I supervised her heavily on the first document she made and then assessed the second with less supervision. But academic writing was something I could have put a lot more time into than I did. I am putting 10 more hours into my final write- up for the sake of making sure I have 280 hours, but I could have filled that writing for the CBO. Whilst I mostly regret not doing so, the demand was also low: Nirangal do not update their site regularly with articles and they would be unlikely to continue this operation after I left. I must also admit to feeling intimidated after the research paper proved to be so much work to complete.
Circumstances outside my control
I think my expectations with regard to workshops was reasonable. The question then becomes why I did not lead any workshops myself, or work on materials as-planned. There were workshops planned for the time that I was expected to be in India originally (i.e. October, November, and December), so no work would have been needed to arrange for workshops. It was uncertain when I would arrive in India, so they had not arranged for any workshops specifically for me before I had arrived. And there were no workshops planned, except the one in Puducherry, based on demand. We tried to arrange for some workshops by travelling to various universities around the city to enquire by relevant departments, namely in the fields of medicine, psychology, and social work. I felt as though the planning for this was quite illogical: there was no previous announcement of our arrival to any of these
universities, there was no itinerary for which universities we would visit (even though I was asked to research universities we could visit the night before), and there were no materials that are used in the workshops that could be shown. I was able to exert influence over the order in which we visited universities to be able to be more efficient as far as travel/timing was concerned, but we were still not able to visit every university we intended to. More problematic was the timing: although we conducted this search in February, any workshop would have to take place in March for me to be in attendance, and March is the month of midterms for most universities. This meant that even the university that expressed the most interest (a medical university) would not write us in before the end of March. Even if we had executed our approach to universities better, for example by setting up appointments with administrators within our departments of interest, the fact that universities had no availability for us in March meant that we were doomed to fail. It is possible that, had we attempted to enquire with universities at the beginning of February we could have conducted at least one of those workshops before March, that is uncertain. We did actually work in conjunction with
the student who interviewed Delfina and myself in the second full week of February to try and get a workshop at her university, which was approved, but they rejected all March dates because of them also having midterms throughout the entire month.
As was mentioned earlier, there were conferences, meetings, and interviews that I was able to attend only because I arrived far later than expected. Regarding why it took so long, I believe that this is not at all my fault. Being incorrectly advised on which visa to apply for hindered me initially. But then, the visa I successfully applied for, the Intern visa, was supposed to only take 2 weeks to arrive. Instead, it took 3 months. Intern visas need pre-approval from the Ministry of Home Affairs in India and there can be a maximum of 50 visas issued to each country in a calendar year. Because my visa application was approved on 2 January, I suspect that the quota for The Netherlands in 2017 had already been met by the time I applied, so the Ministry elected to wait until the following year to process their decision so that they could approve my application. I did not learn of this until a week later, when I called the Embassy.
This bothers me, because visa applications have to go through a private company, VFS Global. Why did they not contact me to tell me that my visa application had been pre-
approved? I still needed to go back to VFS Global, give them my passport, which they would send to the Embassy, so the Embassy could conduct their operations to fully approve my visa application and put the visa in my passport, then send the passport back to me so I could pick it up. Thankfully, after I complained to one of the workers at the office in The Hague, I started receiving notifications, so I could see when my visa was ready for pick-up. It was not ready until 26 January, so even the Embassy itself took longer than the 2 weeks I was told it would take. In light of the circumstances, we felt it made sense for me to attend the activities that were presented to Nirangal during my time there, even though they did not adhere to my original contract that we had agreed upon.
Career prospects based on internship
Not being able to experience everything that I had hoped to has left me with a feeling of disappointment that I think has been expressed through various parts of my final report.
Whilst I think it is fair to say that I missed a critical opportunity to engage in direct activities that are fundamental to Nirangal’s Mission, there are still many valuable insights that I gained from coming to work with them for (just under) 2 months. I was particularly interested in finding work with an NGO for my internship experience because I want to work for an NGO, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and eventually found at least one NGO myself that is concerned with the developing world. Per the suggestion of my internship advisor, I looked in India for opportunities. As a result of the work I have done on a policy note for the United Nations, appealing to the NGO to intervene in the conflict between the ethnic minorities (known in India as Adivasi and the West as indigenous peoples), Maoist insurgents, and the Government of India, I have developed an interest in the welfare of the ethnic minorities in India as well as peaceful resolution of conflicts involving insurgents. I believe I could come back for either or both of these causes. But now I also have an interest in gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights, so I could even be working with Nirangal as a partner representing a Dutch NGO in the future. This internship has prepared me for working in India in any of these capacities in a few different ways.
I now have insight into the troubles that can be encountered when applying for a visa. More specific to my experience with the CBO, I have learned about how activists cooperate with one another. There is a network maintained informally that allows NGOs working for a particular cause to collaborate with NGOs working on similar things, like how the Rainbow
Coalition partners up for Chennai LGBT Pride and how Nirangal helped another member of the Coalition with data collection and preparation for a case study. If I were to enter a country for my work that is different from my country of employment, I would want to immediately seek out the network of organisations working for the same cause, opening up projects and opportunities for collaboration for all parties as well as allowing for a better and more pre- emptive opportunity for learning about the conditions in the place of operation.
I have also learned about how important it is to know how potential partners operate. The guy who wanted to make a project out of Autism awareness was not terribly reliable; expecting something to come from projects with this individual or others like him in the future would be detrimental to the effectiveness of my future NGO’s operations; another thing that could potentially be learned through the networks, although I think a delicate approach is necessary – asking an organisation to talk about the flaws of another erodes relationships. And networks can be used to start with doing projects that work, which is an especially important point for me. Whilst I like to bring in ideas to projects that I have learned about elsewhere, even that is part of a characteristic I have: I like new things. By bringing an idea from The Netherlands into India, for example, although I did not create the idea it is still trailblazing within India.
Whilst it is exciting and at times highly effective to introduce completely new strategies to an organisation’s operations or to a community that these organisations are working with, strategies that have been and continue to be effective should not be cast aside simply for the novelty of newness. Sahodaran has made significant inroads into spreading sexual health awareness throughout the LGBTQI+ community and Nirangal’s police sensitisation workshops have seen (perhaps not quantifiable, but they self-report) significant inroads in making for positive and effective interactions between police and members of the LGBTQI+
community. That is not to say that effective methods cannot be improved; maintaining the
effectiveness of activities often requires regular assessment to determine if any changes should be made, either because better methods have been found, or because paradigmatic changes cause the programmes to prematurely plateau.
Meeting of Learning Outcomes
Creation of public awareness documents
This outcome was partially met – the documentary was something that I helped with,
especially determining the questions which in turn affects what the public will specifically be exposed to when the film releases this summer. I also contributed to the case study which, whilst primarily an academic document, was assisted by Nirangal with the clause that the content of the transcripts could be used in the future for public awareness, provided the people involved in the interviews that produced the transcripts give their consent. I would have liked to have been in Chennai longer – I think that I could have made my flyer on the social expectations for everyone attending Chennai LGBT Pride, providing standards for all to follow and informing people with special needs about what to expect from events and what behaviour is expected of them. Even so, my suggestions were well-received, and I may even provide support from The Netherlands in this endeavour, even if it does not count toward my work observed by the university.
How to advocate for political change as a Non-Government Organisation
Nirangal has two major approaches and neither of them take on the traditional campaigning elements but both are still effective at creating long-term change. The first is the annual policy advice communiqués with the Tamil Nadu government. This has resulted in official
recognition of transgender and gender non-conforming people as Third Gender and Transgender people in the state receiving affirmative actions in a manner similar to
Oppressed Castes and Scheduled Tribes. By creating a CBO registered with the Government of Tamil Nadu, they have established trust and enabled them to work with the Government on such matters, and the results show.
The other is increasing awareness of and exposure to diverse sexualities and genders. This might have limited benefits as far as improving conditions for oppressed genders and sexualities, but greater awareness and exposure will, in the long term, eliminate discrimination more effectively than outlawing discriminatory behaviour will. That is because the cognitive processes behind the actions are fundamentally changed through this method, implemented by the Chennai LGBT Pride event, which is open to the public, and the workshops provided to university students. Regulations only changes the expressions of discrimination and thus will not end the thoughts or the still legal forms of discrimination, which also means that there could still be many violations of the protectionary laws put into effect – it is extremely important that the cognitive processes are changed for a long-lasting and effective impact on discrimination.
How to secure funding for non-profit NGOs
This learning outcome was difficult to do much with as there were no major funding projects that came up. I still did learn about how Nirangal more broadly maintains funding, which will likely still serve as a basis for when I look to funding for my own NGO. Nirangal’s funding comes from major international organisations that reserve grants for local organisations in developing countries. An option for me in the future is to scout people in a developing
country and bring them together to found an NGO, which would thus be potentially eligible for such funding, whilst also ensuring that locals are able to take the initiative in the process of improvement of the area, whether through advocacy, development, or something else entirely.
Ability to convert effective advocacy strategies from developed world to the developing world and vice-versa
The strategies employed by Nirangal relating to workshops would easily be implemented in other contexts. I am especially impressed by the police sensitisation workshops they conduct, even if I did not get to see one. This is something that could be hugely beneficial even in countries known for being progressive on gay rights, such as The Netherlands. I would like to introduce this practise here. I would like there to be gender and sexuality workshops for teachers of all grade levels, with the expectation that the knowledge they gain through this would be implemented in classrooms throughout children’s scholastic career, with the
opportunity for lessons to include diverse genders and sexual orientations – exposure to other groups is an important part of understanding and accepting them. Teachers, counsellors, and administrators could benefit from these workshops as a way of strengthening how they deal with students with any gender and with any sexuality.
Because most non-straight and non-cisgender people in India are in the closet, many have taken to internet communities to meet other people like them. This provides an opportunity for organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights to reach out to these people by becoming active in these community groups. This could be problematic for simply advertising for a particular organisation such as Nirangal – they have tried this in the past and people who
claimed to want to meet the organisation only had the intention of meeting people for sex – but in The Netherlands, it has been used to promote safe sex practises. HIV is an STI that is not commonly spread in Tamil Nadu, thanks in part to the efforts of SIAAP and Sahodaran, but many other STIs are still spread frequently from sexual activity. A campaign for safe sex practises could be put on an application such as Tinder providing people with basic
information about the importance of these practises and basic tips for health and safety, with possibly a link to a website for more information and/or utilising more picture slots and the description box in the Tinder profile to provide information that could not fit in the initial picture that everyone swiping will see. It could make a big difference because it targets the community it needs to on media that only they use, making it both discreet and widespread.
Creation of research-based documents for use outside of academia
The article would need to be simplified, but the research paper I wrote in conjunction with Delfina can educate people about the existence of queer feminist narratives native to Hindu theology for the purpose of shaping Hinduism into a more inclusive religion from within.
This would have sweeping implications in India in particular as a Hindu-majority country, particularly now that it is led by a Hindu-extremist Party. (Or they at least have connexions to an organisation that are Hindu-extremist.) More research is needed to truly fulfil this goal, but the paper enables both academicians to find such sources in both texts and iconography, but can also engage theologians and the rest of practitioners to seek out these narratives within the religion themselves. This paper was worth the huge time investment because of the potential it creates and am proud to say that it will be published in an academic journal in April. For my goal to be realised, however, there needs to be follow-up. I think that in terms of the populace finding empowering narratives, there is significant intersectionality with the
Oppressed Castes, women, and the LGBTQI+ community, so this project should be taken up within those particular groups. I must admit that this learning outcome was possibly poorly- designed, since non-academic media was already outlined above; it might have better been left as “creation of research-based documents”, but the inclusion of that in addition to the previous and related learning outcome is logical.
Conclusion
Due to logistical problems, timing, and lapses in my own judgement (perhaps due to unrealistic expectations), my internship experience turned out far different from how I expected. Although for many people, most things turn out more how they expected than not;
for me, it is a rarity; therefore, I do not see variance as an inherent problem. But it is still important to determine if the internship experience was still worthwhile and worthy of 10 ECTS in spite of the divergence. I would argue that it is, because the knowledge and
experience I gained were still significant, I still used skills taught to me by the university, and the biggest logistical problems that affected the course of the internship were problems outside the control of Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Nirangal, and myself. I would have liked to have had more time and to have been able to have done more with Nirangal, but I have gotten introduced and connected with the network of individuals fighting for LGBTQI+, women’s, and Oppressed Caste rights; I can always return in the future as part of a project for a job at an NGO or even the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I think the work I contributed was significant enough to be welcomed back warmly and I ask that the university take into consideration my own comments as well as those of Nirangal in this regard.
