Gauri Sawant is a transgender activist from Mumbai, India.

She is the director of Sakshi Char Chowghi that helps transgender people and people with HIV/AIDS. She was featured in an ad by Vicks. She was made the goodwill ambassador of the Election Commission in Maharashtra.

Sawant was Born in Bhavanipeth in Pune as Ganesh Sawant, she was a police officer’s son being raised in an even more masochistic environment than normal, in the Sarkari quarters.

Her childhood, firstly, wasn’t enjoyable. Gauri did not feel different—she was just as human as the next person, after all. But as she grew older, and people tried to put her into a rigid box that her feminine disposition made her too flamboyant for, she started understanding that she was not like the others.

Her mother died when Gauri was barely five, and after her passing, neither did anyone double up as her mother figure, nor did her father carry out his parental duties proactively.

She was 17, Gauri left behind her home, her family, and her city, but not her identity. She had a friend, a gay-turned-trans sex worker, who agreed to put her up for three or four days.

She earned Rs 1,500 a month. Her communication skills put her right up there with Hitler and Obama—she speaks with authority even as her words drip with wit, humor, and generally great diction, and so, she was deployed to the communications and outreach team—to motivate and advise people undergoing an identity crisis to embrace themselves and their true identities.

Formally rejecting her biological sex, she also chose to transform into a ‘hijra’—which, as of a landmark ruling by the Indian Supreme Court, has now been recognized as the official third gender, popularly referred to as eunuchs. Biologically, they are neither male nor female.

She came to work with a lot of people, and it was one of her main tasks to spread awareness about STDs and encourage sex workers to get tested. One of them was Gayatri’s birth-mother, an HIV-positive sex worker.

Gayatri was never breast-fed, and the disease eventually claimed her birth mother’s life, when Gayatri was five. After her passing, there was the talk of selling Gayatri off for sex work in Sonagachi, which fell on the ears of Gauri.

Society told her that she is not a woman, but she became a mother . Gauri has an adopted daughter, who she adopted at the age of 4. she had adopted her after her biological mother, a sex worker who had died from AIDS, leaving her alone, to be sold in the sex-trafficking industry.The transition to becoming a mother figure, and then, quite simply, her mother, was organic. Gauri would feed her, bathe her, send her to school, and take care of her studies—and very naturally, the two came to share the most special of bonds—that of a mother and her daughter, the two of them against the world!

She had been featured by various publications even before the Vicks opportunity came knocking. However, shooting this campaign catapulted her into overnight stardom. She turned down the offer at first, but agreed six months later, when they revisited the script and made it less daunting for the exuberantly confident activist who secretly and rather comically harbors stage-fright. But the fact that Gauri simply had to be herself—something that she is consistently denied the right to do—had sold her on it.

While raising Gayatri, Gauri has witnessed the unfolding of a brand new sexist syndrome—“man-raising”. “In the absence of a father, all the men around her—neighbours, uncles, etc—feel the need to kick into overdrive and become primary caregivers, in spite of the fact that Gayatri still has one parent— Gauri.
As for her activism, Gayatri, besides working with 1,000 to 2,000 people for sensitisation about their legal rights and STDs, is actively involved in the running of a shelter for young trans individuals who are turned away by family. She also has a pet cause – saving the turtles and nurturing the street dogs!

Gauri founded the Sakshi Char Chowhi Trust in 2000. The NGO promotes safe sex and provides counseling to transgender people. She became the first transgender person to file a petition in the Supreme Court of India for the adoption rights of transgender people. She was a petitioner in the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) case in which the Supreme Court recognized transgender as the third gender.