Chandraprabha Saikiani Centre for Women Studies, Tezpur University organized a talk on LGBTQ Movement in Assam on 15th March,2021. It was an interactive session with LGBTQ activist Milin Dutta. 90 participants including students, faculty, staff were present online in the meet. Milin Dutta narrated his childhood life and his first realisation that he was born in a wrong body. He was born as a girl in Guwahati. His father was a faculty in Cotton College. He was the fourth child of the family. He said that he was a tom boy and felt uncomfortable in wearing traditional dress. When he was in 7th standard, he realised that he is different. He did engineer at NIT Surat, India. After that he went to USA, studied and lived an independent life there. He founded organisation like “Out in the Backyard” in US to support rights of the LGBTQ and “Xukia” in Guwahati. He also founded “Anajori” through which he handles different projects to empower young leaders to make social changes. Milin got ovaries, breast removed and took hormone injections. In 2017 he took retirement from job and came to Assam. Milin spoke about different problems besides LGBTQ like scarcity of water, broken roads, entrepreneurs, education, health animal welfare art craft etc. which is worked under the banner “Anajori”. Milin Dutta encouraged that educational institutions should have a cell or a small unit like Gender Sexuality Aliance (US) to tackle such problems. After the session the speaker had an interesting interactive session.

Target: Students, research scholars, faculty

Impact: Presentation on LGBTQ

Impact: The speaker motivated students to stand on their own feet and fight for their rights and for social problems.