In this episode, activist, educator, and organizer Summi Dass shared how she started the Moitrisanjog Society, Cooch Behar, and collaborated with donors and academics. We also discussed the centricity of Kolkata in queer and trans organizing and how that impacts the community in rural Bengal. Rajorshi Das (RD): Today, we have Sumi Das with us. She established the Moitrisanjog Society in 2009. It is the only organization in North Bengal, which works for the rights of koti, hijra, and transgender communities, particularly fighting for their livelihood and right to work. Her organization also made a documentary named Alpo Jana Golpo Guli (The Lesser Known Stories) (2018), portraying her journey as an intersectional marginalized Bahujan transgender woman. She also runs a gurukul now and is associated with many struggles including students’ and anti-caste movements. Thank you, Sumi. We were supposed to have this interview for quite some time, and finally, it’s taking place. Sumi Das (SD): Greetings everyone. I’m Sumi Das. I am speaking from Cooch Behar, North Bengal, from the state of West Bengal. RD: Oh yes, I am in Iowa City now. Like most of my podcast interviews, this is being done virtually via Zoom. I am keen to know, and you must have shared this in other interviews, but how did Moitrisanjog begin, and why in Cooch Behar? Were you born in Cooch Behar? Were you always eager to work for the koti-transgender-hijra community in Cooch Behar? SD: I was born in Bonkoma subdivision of Dinhata, Cooch Behar. It’s a more of rural area. I was brought up in a middle-class family. When I was growing up, nobody used to talk about the issues regarding the trans-koti community, and even if it was there, it was limited to the town of Siliguri. We used to hear terms like homo, somokami and homosexual a lot at that time. And my journey started…yes, I wasn’t thrown out of the house, but a situation was created that would have led to that. Hence, when I was around 14-15 years old, I left my house. My mother expired at a young age when I was in Class I, and my father got remarried. Living itself had become very challenging. After leaving my house, my initial destination was New Jalpaiguri station, Siliguri, and there I got involved in sex work, to meet my economic needs. Afterward, a person from the community, associated with the hijra occupation took me to her home. That’s when my journey started. At that time, there was this organization called Manas Bangla, which since 2006 had been working on HIV-AIDS intervention in Bengal, particularly with hijras, homosexuals, and the community in general. Back then, the word was MSM, men who have sex with men. It was the technical language of TI- Targeted Intervention. Our journey started with sexual health, but later I felt that we were losing our rights. Within the global crisis of HIV-AIDS crisis, we were identified as a high-risk group. Back in 2007-8, I felt that nobody was discussing our rights and demands. Koti, somokami, hijra: no matter which name you use, we all are stigmatized. When the condoms were being distributed with our hands, we were being doubly stigmatized. Hence, I left the job in 2009 and returned to Cooch Behar. I didn’t have any idea regarding NGO as I didn’t have any understanding of it, so I tried to make a collective of people from the community. People used to come, dance, enjoy, chitchat and gossip at the place where I lived. We used to go for outings and picnic together. I took the initiative to create a sense of bonding. Finally in 2011, 2 years after starting it, we registered Moitrisanjog. We started to do it systematically. This was the start of Moitrisanjog’s journey and the beginning of the consciousness that we should stay united. RD: You spoke about the HIV organizing work that Manas Bangla was doing in West Bengal. Whenever we talk about any kind of representation, be it news, Bengali cinema, or LGBT activism, it is very Kolkata-