Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju
Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | Kasturba Medical College, Manipal |
Occupation(s) | Medical Doctor Actress Activist Content Creator |
Years active | 2021–present |
Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju is an Indian actress, medical doctor, content creator, and transgender activist known for her works in Television, and Hindi cinema. She began her career as a primary care physician and made her acting debut with Made in Heaven, an Indian web-series that premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 8 March 2019.[1][2]
Early life[edit]
Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju was born on 17 June 1997 in Bangalore, Karnataka into a Telugu/Bengali-speaking family.[3][4] She was assigned male at birth. She lived as a boy for the first 20 years of her life. Her father Suresh Gummaraju is an engineer, her mother Haima Haldar is an architect, and she has a younger brother Agastya Gummaraju who is a Computer Science engineer.[3][4] Dr Trinetra completed M.B.B.S. in 2021 and her internship in 2023. She shot for her acting debut in Amazon Prime Original - Made in Heaven 2 entirely during her medical internship.[5] She experienced gender dysphoria as a boy, and began presenting herself as female during college. She would dress up in drag for college fest fashion shows. She came out in 2018 as a transgender woman and changed her first name to Trinetra. She went through sex reassignment surgery in 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand. Her family eventually supported her through the process.[6] She experienced gender incongruence and depression tracing back to her younger years.[3][4]
Upon completing her internship at Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, Haldar Gummaraju moved to Mumbai to pursue content creation and acting full-time in April 2023.
Career[edit]
Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju is a primary care physician and received her M.B.B.S. degree from Kasturba Medical College, Manipal. She received a government seat in 2015 via the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (CET), wherein her rank was 163.[7] She is reportedly Karnataka’s first transgender doctor.[8][3][9][10][11] After coming out, her content focused on mainstream representation of LGBTQIA+ people and brought awareness around transgender rights.[5] Her work has highlighted the lack of queer-inclusive information in medical education and transphobia in medical curricula and colleges across India.[12][13]
She began her acting career with the Amazon Prime Original - Made in Heaven Season 2, where she played the role of Meher Chaudhry, a wedding planner, becoming the first trans woman to play a main character in an Indian web series.[14]
In 2022, she was listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 - India as well as Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia - Media, Marketing & Advertising.[15][8] She was on the Forbes Top 100 Digital Stars Lists in 2022 and 2023.[16] She was enlisted under the GQ 25 Most Influential Young Indians List in 2021[17] and GQ 30 Most Influential Young Indians List in 2022.[18] She has featured on the covers of magazines likes Forbes India, Femina and Elle India.
Activism[edit]
Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju is one of India’s first transgender people to digitally document her medico-socio-legal transition from male to female.[8][19] She extensively documented[3] her surgical processes and recovery on YouTube through a series of vlogs. Her Instagram contains information and timelines of her transition as a reference for younger queer and trans people. Her work has documented the lack of queer-inclusive medical education in India and the state of trans rights in the country.[12] She has conducted many sensitisation and awareness sessions at educational institutions and in corporate settings alike.
Given the lack of queer and trans affirming healthcare in India, Haldar Gummaraju created a crowdsourced list of LGBTQIA+ friendly doctors in India called The Rainbow Pill List, accessible on her Instagram bio. It contains over 200 entries.
In Madras High Court case of S Sushma v. Commissioner of Police, Justice N Anand Venkatesh sought to educate himself on LGBTQIA+ issues.[20] Haldar Gummaraju was among those from the community he consulted to seek information.[21] He stated that Vidya Dinakaran, a psychotherapist, and Haldar Gummaraju became his “gurus” and “pulled (him) out of darkness.”[20][22] In a report filed to the court by Haldar Gummaraju, she elaborated on the need for queer inclusive medical education and for archaic and outdated queerphobic texts to be removed[21][12] and spoke of the rampant practice of conversion therapy, whereby medical practitioners claim and attempt to “cure” LGBTQIA+ identities via unscientific and unethical means. Justice Venkatesh passed a series of orders, eventually directing the National Medical Commission to remove queerphobic information from medical curricula in India and to push for the banning of conversion therapy.[23][24][25] “Medical practitioners who claim to be able to “cure” homosexuality should have their licenses revoked,” he said.[20] The National Medical Commission went on to deem conversion therapy “professional misconduct”[26][27] and constituted a working committee to look into queer inclusive medical education.
Upon being denied a girls’ hostel in college despite having changed her legal documents, Haldar Gummaraju via the Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bengaluru filed a Public Interest Litigation[28] asking the Karnataka High Court to direct public and private institutions to create gender neutral accommodation for trans people, and house according to changed legal documents.
Filmography[edit]
Year | Title | Role(s) | Language(s) | Notes | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 | Made in Heaven | Meher Chaudhry | Hindi | Amazon Prime Video | [22] |
Rainbow Rishta | Herself | Hindi/English | Amazon Prime Video | [29] |
References[edit]
- ^ "Zoya Akhtar's web series Made in Heaven to air on March 8, first look revealed". 17 January 2019.
- ^ Entertainment, Quint (8 February 2022). "Dr Trinetra Featured on Forbes India Cover; Adarsh Gourav in '30 Under 30' List". TheQuint.
- ^ a b c d e "Meet Trinetra Haldar, Doctor And Actor Winning Hearts As Made In Heaven's Meher". NDTV.com.
- ^ a b c "Dr Trinetra Haldar: Transgender Influencer, Forbes 30 Under 30, Acting Debut With 'Made In Heaven 2'". BollywoodShaadis. 12 August 2023.
- ^ a b Anil, Aswetha (7 June 2022). "This trans doctor has created a platform for voiceless and queer community". mint.
- ^ "'Made in Heaven 2' actress Trinetra on transgender representation: I think it's very..." India Today.
- ^ "Trinetra set to be Karnataka's first transwoman medico". The Times of India. ISSN 0971-8257. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ a b c "Dr Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju: Empowering Others To Own Their Story". Forbes India.
- ^ "Against All Odds: The Inspirational Journey of Karnataka's First Trans-woman Doctor". India.com. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "Meet Made in Heaven 2's Trinetra Haldar, First Transgender Doctor From Karnataka". TimesNow. 22 August 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "Meet Trinetra Haldar, Karnataka's first trans woman doctor, quit medicine for acting and will star in Made In Heaven 2". www.dnaindia.com. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ a b c "Madras HC reaffirms 'queerphobia', calls for revamp of medical education". Hindustan Times. 2 September 2021. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "Dr Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju Creator Stats, Biography | About Dr Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju". Forbes India.
- ^ Loganathan, Sonikka (7 August 2023). "Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju interview: On 'Made in Heaven' and representation of trans characters". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju". Forbes.
- ^ "Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju Creator Stats, Biography | About Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju". Forbes India. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "Innovators, entertainers, disruptors, game changers: Meet GQ's Most Influential Young Indians". GQ India. 11 February 2021. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "Meet GQ's 30 Most Influential Young Indians of 2022". GQ India. 29 April 2022. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "Meet Trinetra Haldar, Doctor And Actor Winning Hearts As Made In Heaven's Meher". NDTV.com. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ a b c "Ignorance Can t Justify Normalising Discrimination : Madras HC Judge on LGBTQIA+ Issues". thewire.in. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ a b "Queerphobia among doctors worrying, update courses: Madras high court". The Times of India. 2 September 2021. ISSN 0971-8257. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ a b "All about Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju, trans doctor making debut with Made in Heaven season 2 - The Statesman". The Statesman. 3 August 2023.
- ^ "Madras high court bans 'cure' for LGBTIQA+ members". The Times of India. ISSN 0971-8257. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "Treat 'Conversion Therapy' as Professional Misconduct: Madras High Court to NMC". 10 July 2022.
- ^ Sajeev, Upasana (10 July 2022). ""Conversion Therapy" For LGBTQ+ Persons Must Be Treated As Professional Misconduct: Madras High Court Directs National Medical Commission". Live Law. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "NMC: Practising conversion therapy is a professional misconduct". Hindustan Times. 5 September 2022. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "'Conversion therapy' for LGBTQ+ people misconduct by doctors: NMC to Madras HC". The Times of India. ISSN 0971-8257. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ Correspondent, Special (24 March 2022). "HC notice to State on PIL seeking separate hostel facility for transgender students". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
- ^ "'Rainbow Rishta': Prime Video's queer docu-series to premiere on November 7". The Hindu. 30 October 2023. Archived from the original on 3 November 2023. Retrieved 9 November 2023.