essay on transgender community in india

India’s transgender community celebrates victory, but needs more

Karnataka state recently ruled that education institutes must allow people to officially change name and gender.

Bangalore, India – Born in the late 1990s to a middle-class family in Bangalore, Jeeva M had always felt trapped in the wrong body.

“It was the girl I was in love with in my first year of [junior college] who made me come out. She made me realise I’m a man – I knew this, but she helped me accept,” he told Al Jazeera.

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Jeeva M, now 20, was 18 when he fell in love. The girl thought he was joking about his transition, but wanted to remain friends.

His anxiety rose over the rejection and sense of not belonging in his body – he was born female, and he soon became suicidal and quit school. There are still cuts and scars on his wrist from his attempts to take his own life.

When his parents found out about the girl, he poured out his feelings.

They took him to psychiatrists thinking he would change, telling him it was a “phase”.

A year of prayers, pilgrimages and priests coming over to “fix him” saw him turn to alcohol.

His parents found it difficult to understand him, while psychiatrists provided little support.

Eventually, Jeeva’s grandfather agreed to accompany him to Delhi to meet another doctor, who diagnosed him with gender dysphoria and phoned his parents to explain their son’s condition.

Only two percent of transgender people in India live with their parents, according to a 2018 study by the Kerala Development Society, backed by the National Human Rights Commission of India, which warns of criminal action against parents who disown transgender children.

In that regard, Jeeva considers himself fortunate.

After his hormone therapy began and his body started to change, his parents agreed to pay for surgery, which will cost up to $8,500.

Sex reassignment is considered cosmetic surgery in India, and cannot be claimed under medical insurance.

Jeeva has successfully undergone top surgery and is in the process of undergoing bottom surgery.

“I couldn’t touch a girl with this body. There was deep love but I didn’t know what to do,” he said.

As his transition began, he changed his name and gender on legal documents.

He got an affidavit to identify as male and then changed the details on his Aadhaar card – a unique identification number similar to America’s social security number.

But getting his information changed at the educational level was impossible without a court order.

In March 2019, he filed a writ petition in the Karnataka High Court seeking permission.

He approached the Center for Law and Policy Research, an NGO offering pro-bono legal services headed by Jayna Kothari, a senior advocate in India’s Supreme Court.

Kothari, who worked on the case that led to the landmark judgement decriminalising homosexuality in India in September 2018, argued for Jeeva in the Karnataka High Court and won the case.

“The writ petition was filed just for Jeeva but the judge (Justice S. Sujatha) was actually very progressive and … the case took a turn,” Kothari told Al Jazeera.

The judge ordered the state government to issue a circular to educational institutions across Karnataka, instructing them to allow name and gender change, making it the first state in India to do so.

Karnataka is a southwestern state of more than 60 million people, of which Bangalore is the capital.

Zainab P. Rifai, who works as the national manager of health and human rights at the United Nations Development Programme, also wants to change her name and gender in her academic documents in Maharashtra, a central state more than 500km from Karnataka.

She plans to turn her case into a public interest litigation to serve the interests of the larger community.

Rifai was one of the petitioners in the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) vs. Union of India case in 2014.  

The NALSA judgement was a landmark decision passed by the Supreme Court of India that legally recognised the fundamental and civil rights of transpersons and allowed them to self-identify as male, female or third gender.

“The struggle [for] 20 years of the movement has been to recognise an existence,” said Akkai Padmashali, an activist in Bangalore who also petitioned the NALSA case.

This kind of judgement allows “people like Jeeva who are part of diverse identities to slowly come to the public realm”, said Padmashali.

She hopes the decision in Karnataka will set an example to all Indian states.

Now they introduce me as their son because they know I'll get p***** off if they introduce me as their daughter. But they are sad their beautiful girl is gone. by  Jeeva M, transgender student

Jeeva said even though the law has been changed, the process of changing his academic papers remains complicated.  

As he waits for the bureaucracy to end, his anxiety is once again rising.

“If cis (people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth) boys [at college] find out I’m a transman who hasn’t done full surgery, I will be harassed in the bathroom,” he said. “I have heard terrifying stories about groping and other things. If I’m not going to college, then I have to get this done with so I can move on with my life.”

And while his family have accepted him, tension remains.

“Now they introduce me as their son because they know I’ll get p***** off if they introduce me as their daughter. But they are sad their beautiful girl is gone.”

His grandmother, meanwhile, worries about who might marry him. In Hindu marriages, families often compare birth certificates of the potential bride and groom to see if their horoscopes match.

“The birth certificate is what you’re stuck with,” said Kothari. “If this happens at the educational level, then this could also be a lead to seek a change with the municipal authorities issuing birth certificates.”

Back in Bangalore, Jeeva, who does not know if and when his birth certificate might reflect his identity, says: “I will have to find someone who understands me.”

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Article Contents

Introduction, beyond progress and persistence, politics of enumeration and (in)visibility, the political economy of queer & transgender existence in plr india, uneven geographies of queer articulations, brittle bonds, acknowledgements, author biographies, queer and trans community building in post-nalsa and post-377 india: a critical reflection.

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Pushpesh Kumar, Sayantan Datta, Neha Mishra, Queer and trans community building in post-NALSA and post-377 India: a critical reflection, Community Development Journal , Volume 59, Issue 2, April 2024, Pages 209–229, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsae010

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This article reflects on contestations that mark queer and trans community building in post- National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) and post-377 India. In the past decade, queer and trans communities in India have witnessed two landmark judgements: the NALSA v. Union of India judgement 2014 and the Navtej Singh Johar and Ors. v. Union of India judgement 2018 . The former granted transgender persons legal recognition and a promise of civil and substantive rights. The latter read down the draconian Sec. 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalized consensual adult homosexual sex acts. In light of these two judgements, this article traces challenges faced by queer and trans communities and challenges to queer and trans community building in contemporary India by tracing recent developments in the contexts of health, public policy, jurisprudence, social institutions, education, popular culture, and the precarity of gender and sexually transgressive communities during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the authors also trace narratives of hope that demonstrate how queer and trans people in post legal reform India continue to build enabling and affirmative communities in the face of an increasingly neoliberalizing country.

The present issue of the Community Development Journal provides a window into the continuing struggles of and attempts at community building by queer and trans communities in contemporary India. At the outset, it is imperative to clarify the expression, ‘Post-NALSA and Post-377 India’. ‘Post’ in the phrase implies the time following the extension of citizenship rights to transgender communities in 2014 1 and the decriminalization of homosexuality in 2018 2 , respectively in India. These two landmark verdicts emanating from the apex court, i.e. the Supreme Court (SC), in India, following more than two decades of queer struggle ( Mishra and Chandiramani, 2005 ; Narrain and Bhan, 2006 ; Kole, 2007 ; Kumar, 2020 ), have posed new questions and concerns around slow-going changes, emerging violence and continuing trans- and queer-phobia that affect the quality of life of queer and trans communities in India during the post-legal reform (PLR) years. Over the two years that we spent putting together this issue and as we begin writing this reflection, many contradictory news items pertaining to Indian queer and trans lives surface on social media platforms: the announcement of a royal destination gay wedding even as the Indian Supreme Court refuses to decide on marriage equality for non-heterosexual persons 3 ; the death by suicide of a queer and gender non-conforming teen social media influencer ( Bijolia, 2023 ); the ongoing consultation on establishing a health centre, directed towards transgender healthcare, within the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) by the Ministry of Health; and the emergence of ‘Stale Rumours’, a queer collective of artists in Mumbai that uses art to challenge societal norms and evoke joy through their creations ( Chadha, 2022 ), among others. On the surface, one can read these developments simultaneously as (i) progress for the community and (ii) the persistence of violent realities reversing and subverting queer (legal) freedom in the PLR era. These apparent binary stories of ‘progress’ and ‘persistence’ and hope and despair, however, fail to address the deeper malaise and inabilities of the law to produce substantive justice for the community ( Kumar, 2020 , 2021 ).

We begin by asking what these aforementioned developments mean for queer and trans community building in contemporary India. To do so, we ‘squint’ through a ‘critical queer perspective’ ( Kumar, 2014 ) at the said developments and reflect on queer freedom, hopes, and agonies.

The royal gay wedding ( Soni, 2023 ) at Udaipur city invokes memories of the pre-PLR times. Such royal and elite gay marriages have occupied pages of glossy magazines at least since mid-1990s in globalizing and liberalizing India. Udaipur city – a historic and tourist city – in the state of Rajasthan is known for celebrities’ and film stars’ destination weddings. The aforementioned marriage of the two gay men working together in corporate America was also set up within caste-Hindu traditions and rituals, including Mehandi (henna) ceremony and in the presence of selected guests ( ibid ). This shows the ability of elite queer men to undermine law and negotiate caste-class and Hindu traditions without much tension. Such privileged and hegemonic gay constituencies are welcome in neoliberal India as consumer citizens ( Kumar and Sreenivas, 2022 ; Sircar, 2022 ), and their presence within heterosexual families and kin is sometimes considered a sign of progress when their cis-privilege does not disturb the heteronormative order and caste equation. Moreover, such (queer) children are migrants in different cities or countries, and they barely stay at their natal homes with their respective families and kin, indicating that at the heart of such ‘progress’ is a negotiated and incomplete departure from the heteronormative family structure. That is, while physical distance separating the queer progeny from their parents helps the progeny live a relatively less heteronormative life, this progress can continue only by subsuming the queer subject into the fold of the Indian society that is structured through caste, class, and religion.

While the media might celebrate such marriages as freedom, we would rather see it as an aspiration of the elite queer towards what Duggan (2003) calls ‘homonormativity’, integral to which are consumerism, mainstreaming, ‘familism’, conjugality, and, as Chakrabarti calls in this volume, the ideology of familialization (see Chakrabarti in this volume 4 ). In fact, the above marriage is publicly announced in face of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to not intervene into laws that forbid gay marriage despite multiple litigations filed by the queer community ( Datta, 2023 ; Kumar and Vallala, 2023 ).

Even as the city hotel and tourism industries and the media benefit from such gala events involving elite gay couples consisting of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and foreign nationals, we also see the Indian Law Ministry refusing to appoint Saurabh Kirpal as a judge at the Delhi High Court on account of his homosexuality and his relationship with his partner, who is a Swiss national ( The Wire Staff, 2023 ). Kirpal’s ordeal – despite the Supreme Court collegium reiterating its recommendation of nominating him as a judge at the High Court – reminds us of the MacArthur era in the United States during 1950s when employees suspected to be gay and lesbian were thrown out of their federal jobs as they were imagined to be loyal friends of communists ready to divulge the secrets of American state with the rival camp ( Johnson, 2006 ) 5 . While it is heartening to see the collegium stand in support of Kirpal – what can be seen superficially as a narrative of ‘progress’, it is also hard to deny that the promises of progress are freighted by the burdens of the past.

We also identify similar tensions in narratives of so-called ‘progress’ in the context of queer and trans healthcare and education in contemporary India. For example, consider the recent initiative of the Health Ministry to create within AIIMS, New Delhi, a comprehensive health facility for transgender communities. While this initiative might point towards a ‘progressive’ gesture of the government 6 , we remain inspired by queer and transgender persons’ careful readings of government-led initiatives by paying special attention to contradictions and slippages on the ground. While AIIMS is gearing for a holistic and comprehensive healthcare for transgender persons, the undergraduate medical curriculum does not include enough information regarding transgender health ( Divya and Menon, 2022 ). In fact, it is only in 2022 that the Madras High Court criminalized conversion therapy in India and directed the National Medical Commission (NMC), the apex regulatory body of doctors and medical education in India, to recognize conversion therapy as ‘professional misconduct’ ( The Quint, 2022 ). So, even as the map of comprehensive health facilities is being drawn, do we have enough trained doctors to cater to trans health? The need for trained doctors becomes apparent when one recounts the death of Anannyah Kumari Alex, a twenty-eight-year-old radio jockey and transgender woman in Kerala who, in 2021, died by suicide owing to gross medical negligence during her gender-affirmation surgery ( Saraswat, 2022 ).

Even as transgender persons continue to die as a result of negligent healthcare, profit-making medical professionals and the burgeoning health market claim to be offering a uterus transplant to trans women in order to enable them to attain biological motherhood ( Datta and Kumar, 2022 ). There are medical, legal, and ethical issues involved in this scientific imagination and market enthusiasm ( ibid ), including a risk to the transgender woman’s life. That is, lives of transgender women remain dispensable irrespective of whether the medical ecosystem’s interaction with trans bodies show up as failure or as futuristic imaginations. Moreover, every transgender woman does not aspire to become a biological mother to replicate cis-womanhood, despite the doctor’s claim that ‘every transgender woman wants to be as female as possible’ (qtd. from ibid ). Aqsa Shaikh (2023) , a transgender medical professional and an associate professor of community medicine at a health university in India, reflects that India’s Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 protects transgender people against discrimination in the healthcare ecosystem and entitles them to gender-affirmative healthcare. Further, it says that every district and every state should have these services available to trans communities ( ibid ). However, these mandates are yet to be implemented. Shaikh adds that despite the governmental provision of (health) insurance ( Ayushman Bharat ), a majority of trans people in India lack the insurance cards; even when they manage to procure the card, they fail to get quality healthcare owing to government hospitals’ lack of understanding of transgender health needs. For the health ecosystem to evolve into a version that is more trans-friendly and affirmative, Shaikh advocates for a transformation in the communities that constitute this ecosystem. That is, a health ecosystem that does not have trans doctors, trans nurses, and trans-friendly hospitals cannot be transgender affirmative. The medical curriculum too must actively engage with physical and mental health issues of transgender persons, indicating that the aspiration for a trans-friendly and -affirmative health ecosystem is inexorably entangled with the aspiration for a trans-friendly and -affirmative education ecosystem.

In the context of education, it is important to recount the landmark 2014 NALSA v. Union of India judgement from the Supreme Court that not only recognized transgender persons’ right to self-identify their gender but also recognized them as a socio-economically backward class (SEBC) that requires affirmative action for inclusion in spaces of education and employment ( Datta et al. , 2022 ; Datta et al. , 2023 ). A decade after this landmark judgement, we find that trans and queer students find it hard to cope with phobias and heterosexism instituted in pedagogies and campus culture. Datta’s paper in this volume, for example, uses science higher education institutions as a case to study transphobia, heterosexist pedagogy, and an ecosystem uncongenial to trans and queer students. A 2020 report reveals that 60 percent queer students experience bullying at schools, 43 percent were sexually harassed, and only 18 percent reported these harassments to the authorities ( Srivastava and Dudeja, 2020 ). Further, 70 percent of those who faced bullying suffered from anxiety and depression and lost focus on study ( ibid ). Thickening the plot of queer and trans exclusion from the education ecosystem in India, in 2021, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) removed a teacher-training manual aimed at transgender-inclusive school education; the draft, prepared in consultation with transgender scholars, intellectuals, and activists, was aimed at sensitizing teachers about transgender, gender non-conforming, and gender non-binary children and make incisive interventions into school curricula and pedagogy ( Datta, 2021 ). NCERT’s move to take down the manual was attributed to social media outrage along the lines of hetero- and cis-normative moral anxiety around the manual’s content. A complaint was lodged with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) alleging that the manual will expose children to problematic contents and shock their sensibility ( ibid ). Once again, we see a rift between imaginations of progress and the fructification of these imaginations: ghosts of the colonial past – symbolized by an anxious and threatened Victorian morality – return to tug at these thin threads of progress.

In 2011, the transgender communities were enumerated for the first time during the 15th population census of India. According to the census report, the communities were enumerated to comprise a mere 487,803 individuals. This number has always been disputed as a gross underestimation by transgender persons. In 2014, under the Intensive Household Survey ( Samagra Kutumba Survey ) 7 in the state of Telangana in South India, the transgender population was estimated as 58,918. This enumeration only considered the most visible faces of transgender communities in India – the Hijras and the Kinnars – leaving out transmen and all other trans identities. Such gross invisibilization of several indigenous transgender communities by contemporary governmental efforts reprises colonial concerns against the public presence of the transgender subject ( Hinchy, 2019 ). As Hinchy notes, the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 wished to eliminate the public presence of the Hijras through imprisonment and fines, and, thus, seek their ‘cultural elimination’ ( ibid ). By not granting visibility to a large section of the indigenous transgender communities in India, the Central and State governments carry forward the project of their cultural elimination – after all, the state cannot serve the subjects it cannot see. Interestingly, while it was through a targeted enumeration that the transgender communities were subject to a cultural elimination in colonial India, the project of cultural elimination occurs by evading accurate enumeration in contemporary India.

Further, there is hardly any attempt to survey the working-class queer community who remain largely invisible with the prevalent stigma and queerphobia discouraging people to come out in the open with their sexuality. The only option available to working-class queer people, whose assigned sex at birth is men, is to flee from natal homes and families to join the hijra and Jenana 8 subcultures in bigger cities. Only a few Dalit families accommodate queer children, but this familial accommodation remains under-investigated by scholars and voluntary organizations. Persons whose assigned sex at birth is female, particularly among the working class, find almost no options to join any alternative community as there is hardly any cultural community parallel to that of hijras 9 . With lack of community to provide support and succour, such persons lead the life of silent oppression even during PLR; only a few among them dare to leave home and flee the immediate family and kin contexts through the mediation of voluntary organizations located in bigger metropolitan cities, as Purayil’s paper in this issue indicates.

Another community that remains almost entirely invisible are intersex people. Their demand for a separate recognition as against incorporating them within the umbrella ‘transgender category’ is still not considered even within the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019. As Jain and Rhoten (2020) note, this counts as an act of ‘hermeneutic injustice’ that compels intersex persons – along with other indigenous gender-transgressive communities – to conform to the state’s vision of a ‘transgender’ subject in order to seek the civil and substantive rights promised by ‘progressive’ judgements like the NALSA v. Union of India judgement 2014. The specific health needs of intersex people remain discounted and not of serious concern in PLR times. Further, as Datta (2024) notes in the context of science higher education in India, higher education spaces continue to marginalize and discount the lived realities of intersex people in order to bolster the symbolic order of a binary ‘normal’ sex even in the face of contradictory non-binary ‘biological’ (inter)sex.

In 2022, the Indian government’s Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE) launched a project titled ‘Support for Marginalized Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise’ (SMILE). The SMILE scheme includes ten comprehensive rehabilitation welfare schemes, including scholarship for transgender students, gender-affirmative surgeries for transgender individuals through selected hospitals, transgender welfare cells in each state, survey and identification of transgender persons, and their rescue, shelter, and resettlement. Under SMILE, the government has introduced Garima Greh (shelter homes) for transgender persons in select cities. The implementation of any project depends upon budgetary allocation. In 2023, an operational sum of 6 crore – a mere 0.02 percent of gender budget – was allocated to SMILE ( Das, 2023 ), which is highly inadequate to implement welfare schemes. The MoSJE has created twelve Garima Grehs under the SMILE scheme, but has time and again failed to take cognizance of the multiple complaints coming from various shelter homes concerning the non-disbursal of funds ( Gupta, 2023 ). Further, while several Indian states have put in place policies for the welfare of transgender citizens, one has to see how they unfold and whether they enable community empowerment or remain limited in scope due to inadequate budgetary allocation and poor implementation.

Furthermore, the 2011 population census identified about 54,854 transgender children in the 0–6 age group, but in 2020–2023, the Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE) reported that only nineteen transgender persons in class 12 and six transgender persons in class 10 appeared for board examinations ( Das, 2023 ). Without attempting to speculate on who constitutes a ‘transgender’ child, it remains unclear what happened to the other transgender children who would be ten to sixteen years between 2011 and 2020–2023. Despite many directions from the government including announcement of scholarships for trans students, very few institutes in India have created inclusive spaces for LGBTQI+ students ( Datta, 2022 ; Thachappilly, 2022 ).

Then, all the governments are silent on sex work, the mainstay occupation of majority transfeminine community. Away from this ‘murky world’, elite queer participate in everyday life as consumer citizens 10 having access to a disposable income, credit card, and inviting homes ( Kumar, 2020 ; Sircar, 2022 ). The distance between this queer constituency and the working class, lower–middle class, and subaltern queer groups appeared sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic in substantive ways where the latter were fighting existential battle while the former remained concerned with civil rights, such as marriage equality, adoption, and inheritance. These are important civil rights, but why should adoption, inheritance, and other rights follow the ‘right to marry’? The right to marry might normativize queer lives while delegitimizing other ways of queer friendship, partnership, and kinship ( Banerjea and Basak, 2023 ; Shah, 2023 ). For example, the Hijras exist in an alternative discipleship–kinship structure ( Goel, 2022 ). With marriage becoming the transaction through which queer lives become ‘legitimate citizens’ ( Dutta, 2013 ), the risk to such alternative ways of building families and communities remains largely ignored by mainstream urban elite queer groups.

Contrary to the celebratory NRI wedding, the death by suicide of Priyanshu Yadav, a teenager influencer from Ujjain, a smaller city in central India, following their cyberbullying and abuse on social media, reveals the insecurity that pervades the lives of queer people who do not belong to privileged classes and do not articulate cisgender identities. While social media platforms have allowed queer expressions to thrive and resonate ( Kumar and Mukherjee, 2020 ), they have also allowed an outburst of abusive expressions of misogyny, homophobia/transphobia, and hate mongering; further, it is difficult to claim that megacorporations operate in an ethical and responsible manner to curb such anomalies ( Rao, 2020 ; Hynes, 2021 ). The sixteen-year-old staying with their single mother and articulating on Instagram the identity of a make-up artist and content creator was thoroughly abused as they used to express themself through videos featuring in saree and make-up ( Bijolia, 2023 ). Priyanshu’s failure to conform to cisgender expressions of identity, lack of access to a relatively organized queer community in a small city, a relatively less elite class background, and their articulation of a femme identity cost them their life. The world of difference between NRI, cis-normative, and upwardly mobile elite queers – with stable income and stable partners – and those who are not so well-off and openly violate the gender codes are still stark and conspicuous.

Yadav is not the only one we lost in recent times to homophobic and transphobic bullying. In 2023, Swapnadeep Kundu, a first-year undergraduate student at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, West Bengal, died by suicide. Before his fall to death, Kundu repeatedly said to his fellow students, ‘I am not gay’ ( Saha, 2023 ). Hailing from Bagula, a small town, and migrating for higher education in a supposedly progressive and reputed university, Kundu’s death reflects the positioning of queer subjects in contemporary India. It’s a pointer to the unevenness in assertion of queer identity and accessibility of resources and spaces and reflects the (dis)comforts of queerness in contemporary India showing the limits of law in social transformation ( Spade, 2015 ; Browne et al. , 2021 ; Shah, 2021 ).

These ‘premature deaths’ ( Kumar, 2020 ) – and those of others in the past decade 11 – show that queer and gender non-conforming folks from small towns – i.e. those who remain ‘unassimilable’ in the rights and representation projects of both the government and the elite urban queer communities – constitute ‘disposable’ lives. The necropolitical reality of marginalized queer, transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming subjects indicate that the uneven assertion of queer identity and accessibility we highlight above ebbs and flows through the changing contours of rurality and urbanity in contemporary India. In other words, the different ways in which queerness is (un)articulated in PLR India interrupts the imagination of a homogenous ‘community’, instead drawing our attention to ‘brittle bonds’ that simultaneously conjunct and separate, unite and rupture, and repair and fracture queer communities in contemporary India.

Beyond the binary of affluent and subaltern queers, there are ‘invisibilized’ queer existence, such as rural and semi-urban queers, and those who fall in different categories, viz. married queers, aging queers, and married bisexual persons. Their hidden existence in PLR times reaffirms the claim that the shame culture about sexualities implanted through Section 377 of the IPC by colonial rulers in the nineteenth century ( Vanita and Kidwai, 2000 ) continues in the contemporary times amidst legal and social changes in queer lives.

How can these queer and transgender communities who inhabit different lifeworlds even begin to dialogue? Mokkil, in her contribution to this volume, invokes the term ‘brittleness’ to refer to the ‘fleeting possibilities of reaching towards one another in spaces carved through the operations of exclusion and discrimination’. Through her analysis of how queer relational worlds are structured through caste, class, and ethnicity, Mokkil indicates that paying attention to the desire for ‘connection’ is as critical to conceptualizing queer community building in India as is the short-lived and temporary nature of such connections. Taking a cue from Mokkil, we now turn our attention to how we envision addressing the brittleness of queer bonds and initiate dialogue between queer and trans communities along these lines.

Perhaps a starting point is to recognize that despite contradictions and limits to queer freedom, community-building processes continued during PLR times. For example, some corporate groups like Godrej India have opened up their doors to queer and trans persons, access to online dating apps have created hook-up cultures and communities, and many online queer and trans groups have proliferated to discuss and mobilize around community concerns. Caste questions have begun surfacing within transgender movements and Dalit trans-groups have begun asking for vertical and horizontal reservation in job and education. Post-NALSA and Post-377 India, therefore, offer possibilities even in the face of despair for the community. It is only through dialogues and through robust movements privileging the voices of ‘grassroot’ and ‘invisibilized queers’ that a democratic futurity for queer community can be visualized.

The present volume offers a small slice of a deep dialectics of hope and despair in neoliberal India that is heading towards chaos, fundamentalism, and sharpening disparities of wealth and income ( Dang and Lanjouw, 2021 ). The first paper by Kottai reflects on the heterosexism built into the mental health system in India. He emphasizes that the mainstream western bio-psychiatry paradigms are largely silent on the LGBTQI+ discourses, as the former institute pathological and reductive conceptualization about sexualities, psychological disabilities, and resultant sufferings. These medicinal, clinical, and therapeutic practices and theories have mostly travelled to other contexts via colonialism and carried similar biases ( Meer and Muller, 2017 ; Kottai and Ranganathan, 2019 ). Such de-humanized medical health care systems provide a window to the world of India’s mainstream mental health system in post-377 India. Drawing on the ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two non-governmental and a governmental Community Mental Health Programme (CMHP) in Kerala, South India, the author illustrates the lack of human-rights approach to sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity due to which pressing concerns of sexual life are mis-overdiagnosed as mental ‘disorders’ to be treated within a biomedical framework. The author concludes that queer and trans-community building that produce counter discourses to the individualized bio-medical framework in CMHP hold emancipatory promise of queer and trans distress that is pathologized as mental disorder.

The second paper by Mukherjee et al. deliberates on a subaltern queer community: the Shivashaktis from Telangana State in Southern India. Shivashaktis are a gender-transgressive religiously accepted identity believed to be endowed with magico-religious and shamanistic power and the capability to prognosticate. The authors begin by highlighting how the community development and public policy agenda ignore gender transgression and magico-religious practices associated with mundane problems and healing practices of communities across the globe. Such practices have accommodated gender transgression within community contexts and have been a source of sustenance available to (gender-transgressive) communities. The ritual and healing services rendered to a clientele belonging to non-upper caste groups and communities within Telangana region constitute the ‘relational world’ of the Shivashaktis and Dalit-Bahujan communities. Being part of heteronormative families, kin and community life, the Shivashaktis’ ritual and healing services have not only sustained them but also their dependent kin and families. The COVID-19 lockdowns and fear of contagion shattered this whole relational world of the Shivashaktis and reduced them to a ‘dissipated subjectivity’ ( Berlant, 2004 ). Being part of heteronormative families, the Shivashaktis do not constitute a community in a similar way as Hijras and Jenana whose presence outside the ‘normative’ community allows them an organized fight and negotiation with the state and non-state actors. For the Shivashaktis – considered an embodiment of divine and healing powers – asking for help and support during a ‘mundane’ crisis was debilitating as it would have meant delegitimizing their own shamanistic and healing power in their perception. Further, as many of the Shivashaktis are heterosexually married, it becomes difficult for them to obtain a transgender identity card. Ironically, they are included within the ‘Transgender’ category in the NALSA v. Union of India judgement.

Datta’s paper addresses another pertinent issue in times of trans-queer legal reforms and mobilizational politics in India: that of lived experiences of trans, gender non-conforming (GNC), and gender non-binary (GNB) persons in science–technology institutions. Cultures of science remain masculinist and Brahmanical in India with male bonding as central to its ecosystem ( Kondaiah et al. , 2017 ). The author raises a crucial point: if the social capital in said institutions is woven through caste, masculinity, and male bonding, how do trans, GNC, and GNB people negotiate such capital and, in turn, what do these negotiations tell us about the nature and culture of science institutions? While demonstrating how trans, GNC, and GNB people are systematically excluded from science communities ( Toynton, 2007 ), Datta simultaneously demonstrates the community-building potentials from the Trans-GNC-GNB perspectives, which might rescript the positioning of these groups and communities in such elite and patriarchal institutions. The worrying flip side of such emerging configurations, however, surface through the trope of caste-class respectabilities with the trans-assertions drifting towards the image of ‘respectable transgender’ 12 . A felicitous moment emerges, however, when these gender and sexual minority groups tend to forge solidarity with other marginalized groups on campus. To the author, this gives a glimmer of hope within such masculinized and Brahmanical institutions.

Continuing a vision of queer and trans community building that is glimmered with hope, Dasgupta’s paper presents a different aspect of community-building through pedagogic exercises in the context of liberal arts. The author deliberates on the introduction of ‘writing centres’ in the emerging private universities in contemporary neoliberal India. Witnessing and considering writing as a process rather than as an end product , she argues that writing pedagogy is creating queer communities because it invites and supports unsettled subjective rules to the process of knowledge productions away from the defunct reproduction of prescriptive, heteronormative, and savarna 13 pedagogy. She also uses the expression ‘queerious communities’ to describe the writing centres in these universities, which, though fragmented and indeterminate, are giving classroom participants the scope to consciously grow into communities that are curious, inclusive, and pedagogically progressive. To the author, what brings queerness to writing pedagogy is its indeterminacy and difference; combined with queer pedagogy, writing pedagogy allows an expansion in the definition of identity to allow other markers that are both structural and performative.

Like any other community formation, queer community building is fraught with tension and contradictions. Mokkil, through her analysis of contemporary ‘queer films’ along with a ‘queer novel’, brings out caste, class, and ethnicity issues within queer relationalities. Her analysis contests any easy celebration of community without addressing those contradictions and structural inequalities 14 and critical analysis of caste, gender, and ethnicity. She talks about the brittleness of queer bonds formed through the hierarchized operation of class, caste, and ethnicity to demonstrate how queer bonds that are made and broken in spaces formed through vectors of exclusion. The paper stands beyond the assumed organicity of the concept of community and engages with the living networks of connection in an ‘everyday social’ that is centrally constructed through acts of sensing. To the author, the film under discussion carefully delineates the looks, smells, tastes, and touches that bring (queer) bodies in contact and yet keep them separate. The novel My Father’s Garden shows the sexual encounter between two medicos: a Santhal man 15 and Samir, a caste-privileged male, in the hostel of a medical college. The aftermath of the sex shows an abrupt full stop to the relationship by Samir, the privileged counterpart in the sex act. The sexual encounter between the socially privileged and underprivileged may not translate into a relationship; members of queer community similarly are bestowed with differing degrees of (under)privileges, and the task of democratic community building is more complex and onerous than it might appear. The trajectories emerging through Dasgupta’s and Mokkil’s paper pull the readers in two different directions – hope and disenchantment; yet, queer community building takes this muddled and sinuous path in contemporary neoliberalizing India 16 .

The next paper by Purayil takes us to a hitherto unexplored theme in Indian queer studies: the experiences of cisgender women partners of trans men who have migrated to bigger cities from their respective semi-urban and rural places. Such migrations are facilitated by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which also help them deal with the challenges of post-migration. The author writes that as non-heterosexual families, they seem to reproduce the similar sexual division of labour as the heterosexuals, yet through mingling with other such families in the city space, they experience a sense of belongingness to an alternative community life. These instances also reveal that the expansion of queer life and community building is still limited to urban-metropolitan centres. This is happening within bigger city spaces despite the invisibility and ‘misrecognition’ of trans men among the city dwellers as well as within the bureaucracy and welfare agency. The author describes that the trans men, constituting a rather invisible community, are exhausted in explaining to people their identity and, hence, are partly compelled to perform a heterosexual symbolism and similar model of sexual division of labour. That said, Purayil also demonstrates through her ethnography that the cisgender women partners are not passive victims of a reincarnated heteronormativity and, instead, strategize their roles and negotiate their locations in these heterosexual-like households.

The last paper by Chakrabarti draws a very interesting trope in the queer community building project through Indian mainstream cinema. Through an ‘ideological reading’ of three Indian films from both pre- and post-377 times, Chakrabarti foregrounds how these mainstream Hindi films insulate the individual queer subject from the possibility of building a critical queer community. Such queer community building would entail addressing the structural inequalities within and outside the community, critical intersectionality, and forging alliance with other marginal subjects in a greater fight. But the queer subjects in these films seem to be assimilated within the dominant social structures and serve the interest of neoliberal state, market, and the upper-caste Hindu idea of family. The author calls it the ideology of ‘familialization’. In her understanding, the parental acceptance of a child’s deviant gender/sexuality is indicative of the necessary precondition of their entry into the neoliberal economy that champions the freedom of choice and the spirit of diversity to accommodate every individual into the workforce. The queer characters in these films belong to either upwardly mobile middle or are aspiring members to an emerging ‘new middle-class’ 17 .

Thus, the papers in this issue touch upon different aspects of the process of queer community building in PLR India. The community, despite legal acceptance through two landmark Supreme Court verdicts, continue to struggle for acceptance. Heterosexist mental health pedagogy and practice is yet to change, dalit transgender groups continue to demand vertical and horizontal reservations in jobs and education, homophobia and transphobia circulate on social media, working-class queers – except the (hypervisible) transgender person – remain underground, trans men mostly have to flee to bigger cities to negotiate life, and budgetary allocations to welfare schemes for transgender are dismal and low. There is hardly any serious attempt to carry out an official survey of LGBTQI+ community during PLR times 18 . Bollywood has begun engaging with queer lives, but the queer subjects and lifeworlds depicted in recent films fail to represent the working-class queer. Queer subjects in these films participate in caste and class privilege and receive familial acceptance and are homonormativized. Despite these upsetting pictures, liberal arts classrooms in private universities are forming queerious communities, trans students are visible in university campuses, voluntary organizations have established trans-friendly hospitals in certain Indian cities, and NGOs are helping trans men to migrate and negotiate life in bigger cities. For a queer community to emerge, we envision a robust movement and firmer alliance with other marginalized groups towards a better future.

The editors would like to thank Dr Kirsty Lohman and Dr Ruth Pearce for their overwhelming support and patience during the production of this issue despite unexpected delays. Papers in this issue were first discussed in a 2022 two-day international online conference titled ‘Queer and Trans Community-Building: Possibilities and Challenges’ co-organized by the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, and the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, Krea University. We thank all the speakers, chairs, discussants, attendees, and volunteers of the conference who engaged with this project and provided critical feedback from time to time. We also thank the scholars, activists, and researchers who accepted our invitation to peer review the contributions. The Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, Krea University, deserves a special note of thanks for offering academic writing workshops in order to help the writers whose contributions this issue features make their work more effective. Pushpesh and Sayantan would also like to thank Neha Mishra for accepting our invitation to join as an editor much after the issue had been conceived; Neha’s timely contribution to compiling this issue was critical to its fructification. We must also apologize to the authors whose works we could not accommodate in this issue; however, we thank them for their persistent engagement with our feedback and their insightful perspectives, which we hope will find suitable homes in due course.

National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) filed a case in the Supreme Court of India on behalf of the communities falling beyond the gender binary. The Supreme Court of India delivered its verdict in 2014 in the case of NALSA v. Union of India, popularly known as the NALSA Verdict. The verdict constitutes a substantive text articulating the historical oppression and marginalization of transgender communities while suggesting pathways for their liberation.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), introduced by the British way back in 1869 to regulate homosexuality, has been misused by police and authorities in power to exploit and oppress lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and/or other gender non-conforming and non-heteronormative (LGBTQI+) communities. It simultaneously implanted a shame culture about persons with alternative sexual and gender sensibilities ( Vanita and Kidwai, 2000 ). The section criminalizing homosexuality was finally read down by the Supreme Court of India in September 2018 after more than two decades of the sexuality rights movement in India (see Kole, 2007 ).

In November 2022, petitions seeking the recognition of same-sex marriages were filed in the Supreme Court of India. On 17 October 2023, the apex court ruled against the plea (3:2 majority) for queer persons’ right to enter into same-sex marriages. To justify its decision, the court (i) cited the doctrine of separation of powers (between executive, legislative, and judiciary organs of state) in India and argued that only the legislative bodies had the power to recognize the queer persons’ right to marry; (ii) argued that marriage is not a fundamental right as per the Indian constitution, but a fundamental freedom; (iii) refused to recognize the unconstitutional nature of the Special Marriage Act, 1954 despite its violation of article 14 (right to equality) of the Indian constitution given the discrimination against queer persons, and (iv) refused the possibility of reading the queer persons’ right to marry in the Special Marriage Act, 1954 as the justices believed it would have a cascading effect on other legislations, such as the Hindu Succession Act. This, they believed, would once again breach the territory of legislative powers. In denying this petition, the Supreme Court also ended up denying the rights of queer persons to enter into civil unions and their right to adopt ( Vora and Kashyap, 2023 ).

Chakrabarti’s essay in this volume mentions how contemporary Indian queer films depict and legitimize queer life within the family- and kin worlds of upper and middle classes without visualizing their participation in queer and trans community politicization for structural and transformative change. See later for a detailed note.

The marriages of working-class and less well-off queers have been rather full of tensions, insecurities, and precarities unlike their privileged counterparts ( Vanita, 2005 ).

Given the long-drawn-out battle between the transgender communities and the government upon the latter’s reluctance in translating the SC Verdict of 2014 into law and policy (see Kumar, 2021 ), one needs to be a little circumspect till the facilities are in place.

The Samagra Kutumba Survey was conducted in all districts of Telangana ensuring that each household is surveyed once at one place. For more details, see ‘Integrated Household Survey’ at https://data.telangana.gov.in/dataset/integrated-household-survey .

According to Reddy (2005) , the term jenana/zenana is used ‘specifically with reference to an individual or group of individuals, different from but “related” to hijras—part of their koti family’.

Purayil’s paper in this issue shows that at least in an urban centre in South India, two NGOs have provided community support to trans men and their cisgender women partners from semi-urban and rural regions, helping them migrate as well as sustain themselves during the post-migration period.

For queer consumerism, see Binnie (1995) ; Sender (2001) ; Hennessy (2002) ; Duggan (2003) .

The list of untimely deaths of queer and gender non-conforming persons, similar to Yadav’s, is unfortunately long. Without attempting to produce an exhaustive list of such deaths, here we note three such deaths as examples. In 2013, Mudassir Kamran, a Kashmiri student at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) died by suicide upon repeated harassment by a student, which not only remained unaddressed by the university and the police, but was actively reinforced by both institutions ( Henry, 2013 ). In 2016, another trans woman, Tara, died in Chennai after succumbing to serious burn injuries with which she was found next to a police station ( Banerjie, 2016 ). The death of Bhavitha, a hijra person, in Warangal, Telangana in 2017 revealed the state’s refusal to recognize kinship practices – outside of blood relations – integral to trans and queer communities when the police refused to hand over Bhavitha’s body, found near a dustbin, to other hijra persons ( Datta, 2017 ).

Respectable transgender implies the idea of being transgender similar to a respectable woman and man. A respectable woman (generally upper caste-class) is expected to conform to prescribed gender norms and accept her subordination. She never attempts to transgress the boundaries prescribed for her (see Madriz, 1997 ). A good transgender is one who is not flamboyant, loud, critical, promiscuous, and what is regarded as ‘overtly transgressive’. Furthermore, trans women in urban India were seen to set themselves in opposition to ‘the disreputable hijra ’ in order to claim identities resonant with that of ‘middle-class respectable womanhood’ ( Mount, 2020 ).

Savarna indicates upper-caste worldview incorporating ideas of purity and tradition combined with science and technology (see Srinivas, 2018 ; Subramanian, 2019 ). In the context of black queer community’s pedagogic practices, see Johnson (2017) .

See Reddy (2005) ; Brim (2018) ; Tellis (2012) ; Upadhyay (2020) .

Santhal is a community officially categorized as one of the Scheduled Tribe. They are mostly located in eastern India.

Queer and trans groups are also divided in terms of their political ideology. Though many groups articulate left liberal ideology, others are inclined towards Hindutva Ideology. See Das and Bund (2020) .

‘New Middle Class’ is mostly associated with the new consumerist lifestyle and workers in software companies as engineers and managers. They prefer living in expensive apartments and gated communities. They are visible in posh shopping malls with multiplex theatre, upscale restaurants, and specialty stores (see Upadhya, 2011 ).

We believe that survey methodologies have to be queered to carry out such a survey as the lack of acceptance pushes many members of the community underground. Reflections on what would constitute queering of the survey methodologies is beyond the scope of this editorial note.

Pushpesh Kumar is Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana.

Sayantan Datta is Assistant Professors at the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, Krea University, Sri City, Andhra Pradesh.

Neha Mishra is Assistant Professors at the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy, Krea University, Sri City, Andhra Pradesh.

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Explained: A brief history of India’s transgender community

While many critics called the starbucks advertisement "foreign propaganda", the transgender community in india has a long and storied history in india..

Starbucks India, in the month of May, stirred up controversy with an advertisement, which featured transgender model Sia as Arpita, who meets her parents at an outlet of the multinational coffee chain. The ad shows the trans woman introducing herself as Arpita and not Arpit, her birth name. Her parents, who were visibly hesitant initially, end up accepting her for who she is towards the end of the ad.

However, a story that ended happily onscreen did not fare well with all of its viewers. While some applauded Starbucks for its message of inclusivity, others called it “too woke” and “a foreign propaganda.”

While the Starbucks ad was always bound to rile up some people, the claim that it is “foreign propaganda” is interesting. Throughout Indian history, transgender individuals have been portrayed in various ways — through both positive and negative lenses.

We briefly trace the history of the transgender community in India.

Depiction of trans people in Hindu mythology

M Michelraj, a PhD research scholar in Public Administration, tracing the historical evolution of transgender community in India, shares that the concept of tritiyaprakriti (third-nature) or napumsaka has been integral to Hindu mythology, Vedic and Puranic literature, epics and folktales. The term napumsaka here indicates the absence of the ability to procreate, thus, distinguishing them from both masculine and feminine markers.

The article highlights that the transgender community comprised of h ijras , eunuchs, Kothis , Aravanis , Jogappas , Shiv-Shakthis etc.

According to researchers Shiva Prakash Srinivasan and Sruti Chandrasekaran, the female avatar of Vishnu — Mohini , who appears in the Mahabharata, counts as the first reference to trans people in the Hindu mythology. Mohini also appears in Vishnu  purana  as well as the Lingapurana , where Shankara-Narayanan’s origins (Hariharan) is attributed to the merging of Shiva and Mohini (Vishnu).

As cited in The New York Times , the trans persons  ( referred to as hijras in the Ramayana ) were the ones who waited in the woods for 14 years after Lord Rama asked “men and women” to “wipe their tears and go away,” after being exiled, because they did not fall within the gender-binary.

The epic Mahabharata carries two main references to trans persons — one, Aravan (translated from the Tamil as the son of a snake), and two, Shikhandi. Srinivasan and Chandrasekaran highlight that for Aravan , who was offered to be killed for Goddess Kali  to ensure the victory of Pandavas in the war, the condition was that he should spend the last night as a married man. As women refused to be married to Aravan , Lord Krishna is believed to have taken the form of  Mohini  and marry him.

Moreover, Princess Amba had sworn to take revenge from Bhishma after he abducted and rejected her in marriage. According to the article,  Transsexualism in Hindu Mythology , Amba, reborn as Shikhandini, changed her sex to become Shikhandi. As Bhishma recognized Shikhandi as Shikhandini during the Kurukshetra war, and refused to fight a “woman,” he lowered his weapons as Shikhandi appeared in Arjuna’s chariot, assisting Arjuna kill Bhishma with his arrows. Shikhandi’s character, thus, became crucial in the victory of the Pandavas.

Trans people during the Mughal era

Michelraj, in his paper, mentions that hijras  served as political advisors, administrators and guardians of the harems, during the Mughal-era. They also served in the royal courts during the Mughal rule in India, according to the paper, and wielded influence in important matters of the state.

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For instance, Itimad Khan was a eunuch-officer in Akbar’s court with the charge of administering the finances of the state. According to historian Shadab Bano’s article ‘Eunuchs in Mughal households and court’, Khan became a sovereign confidant, with not just great influence, but also a tremendous wealth.

The wealth and stature of trans people was noted, often with surprise, by European travellers to Mughal India.

“They can get whatever they desire — fine horses to ride, servants to attend them outside, and female slaves inside the house, clothes as fine and smart as those of their master himself,” Dutch merchant Francisco Pelsaert noted during his visit to the Mughal court in the seventeenth century.

The British and the stigmatisation of trans persons

During British rule, hijras continued to receive protections and benefits from a few Indian states, including provision of land, food, and money. But the British themselves brought with them European attitudes towards transness.

According to an article by The New York Times, the third gender enjoyed a certain degree of respect in the country, under traditional Hindu culture. However, besides other factors, British rule in India has greatly influenced the way people perceive the transgender community today.

What accompanied colonisation in the mid-19th century was a “strict sense of judgment to sexual mores,” which criminalised “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” According to Michelraj, criminalisation of their existence meant denying them civil rights.

Over time, the discrimination against transgernder people by the state percolated into the society, influencing attitudes and eventually, turning the trans community into a shell of its former self.

Today, the precarity and vulnerability of trans people in India is in part a product of a social and ideological change that occured during British rule.

Contemporary struggles (and victories)

In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court, in April 2014, legally recognized transgenders or eunuchs as ‘the third gender,’ directing the Centre as well as the states to treat them as socially and educationally backward classes and extend reservations in admission in educational institutions and for public appointments. The historic move came to be referred to as the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) judgment.

Within the judgment, the apex court directed governments to take steps to remove problems faced by them such as fear, shame, social pressure, depression, and social stigma. The court affirmed the constitutional rights of transgender persons under Articles 14, 15, 19 and 21 of the Constitution.

Further, it was only in 2018 that the Supreme Court widened the ambit of individual autonomy and decisional privacy by decriminalising homosexuality . Reading down the provisions of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalised same-sex relationships, the top court held that the law violated the fundamental rights of citizens. The court noted that the said Section was used as a weapon to harass the members of the LGBTQ community, resulting in discrimination.

Although the Bill to ensure horizontal reservation for transgender persons and people with intersex variations was passed in the Rajya Sabha in 2014, the amendments made to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act in December 2019, led provisions, including that of horizontal reservation, to be scrapped. Grace Banu, the founder of The Trans Rights Now Collective, filed an application demanding horizontal reservations from the Tamil Nadu government, the SC refused to entertain the same.

It was in 2021 that Karnataka emerged as the first and only state to extend one per cent reservation for trans persons in any service or post in all categories of employment to be filled through the direct recruitment process in the state. The amendment to Rule 9 of the Karnataka Civil Services (General Recruitment) Rules, 1977, also directed recruiting authorities to provide a separate column to allow applicants to identify as ‘others’, apart from male or female.

According to Sudipta Das, a Dalit-queer feminist writer working with The YP Foundation, horizontal reservations “is an intersectional approach that is provided for within each vertical reservation category.” In a column , Das explains, that within the queer community,  “People coming from certain socio-economic locations often have easier access to healthcare, educational and career opportunities, and forms of capital, which might not be the case for Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi (DBA) trans people.”

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Writers’ Workshop on Transgender Rights and the Law in India: A Report on TransForm 2022

On 10th December, the Centre for Law and Policy Research held a Writers’ Workshop as part of TransForm 2022 . The workshop foregrounded preliminary work on the edited collection titled Transforming Rights: How Law shapes Transgender Lives, Identity, and Community in India . With this edited collection of papers, Centre for Law and Policy Research aims to have a rigorous, academic focus on transgender rights in India substituted by a strong call for action and affirmative changes in public policy towards trans equality.

The workshop consisted of four sessions traversing various themes pertaining to transgender rights, continuing several conversations that began at previous editions of TransForm. The first session pertained to Transgender Rights and the Constitution . It began with a paper by Mihir Rajamane and Vibha Swaminathan on navigating reservations for transgender persons. This was followed by Jayna Kothari’s piece on the expansion of equality through trans rights jurisprudence, and Dr. Svati Shah’s piece on examining the slate of proposed laws and existing judgements on sexuality and gender identity and understanding them in political terms.

The next session was on The Right to Intimacy, Love and Family . Chayanika Shah presented her paper on intimacies and families of trans persons, and validity, recognition and protections for the same. Next, Dr. Aqsa Shaikh and Raghavi discussed the right to reproduce and the legal framework for the same. The session ended with Dr. Siddharth Swaminathan presenting his work on intimate queer relationships in India, drawing from a large public opinion survey.

Post lunch, the writers reconvened for the third session on Legal Developments: Labour, Livelihood and Human Rights. In this session, Chand and Avi scrutinised the right to livelihood, followed by Santa Khurai who presented her paper on citizenship rights for the Manipuri indigenous Nupi Maanbi and Nupa Maanba, and Sayantan Datta delved into transgender-inclusive education policyscapes in India.

The concluding session was on The Future of Trans Activism in India . The session began with Vyjayanti Mogli presenting her paper based on a conversation with Grace Banu that foregrounded caste, gender and material inequalities of transgender subjects in India. Next, Arvind Narrain presented his paper on a ‘trans inspiration’ for queer politics, drawing on the life and work of Chelsea Manning. The concluding paper of the workshop was presented by Ditilekha and Vihaan – on the impact of militarism and surveillance of transgender persons.

Every paper presentation was given a detailed feedback by an assigned author followed by insights from the other authors and specially invited academics and trans activists at the table.

The authors who contributed to this collection are Dr. Svati Shah, Vibha Swaminathan, Mihir Rajamane, Jayna Kothari, Vqueeram, Chayanika Shah, Dr. Aqsa Shaikh, Raghavi, Dr. Siddharth Swaminathan, Chand, Avi, Santa Khurai, Christy Nag, Sayantan Datta, Vyjayanti, Grace Banu, Arvind Narrain, Diti, and Vihaan . Additionally, Dr. Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Kalki Subramaniam had been invited to the Workshop to provide valuable feedback to the authors. CLPR Research Associates Mansi Singh and Rajeev Anand Kushwah moderated the workshop, and shared their inputs for the papers. The aim of the final publication is to serve as a sourcebook for academics, activists, lawyers, researchers, members of the queer-trans community and anyone interested in engaging with transgender rights in the country. The workshop was conducted successfully, with the authors receiving valuable feedback to their papers and the platform bringing together queer-trans persons from different sectors to discuss and push new boundaries for a trans-formation of the law.

TransForm is organized annually by the Centre for Law and Policy Research , Bangalore in collaboration with Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit .

TAGS: CLPR Transform , Gender , sexuality , Transform , transgender rights

India’s LGBTQIA+ community notches legal wins but still faces societal hurdles to acceptance, equal rights

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While there has been some recent progress for India’s LGBTQIA+ community, there is still a long way to go to overcome social stigma and prejudice, and to ensure that all people in the country feel their rights are protected, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

UNAIDS , the main advocate for coordinated global action on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the UN Development Progarmme ( UNDP ) offices in India have been important partners in this effort. 

On this International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), celebrated annually on 17 May, we reflect on the journey of some members of this community in India and shed light on the challenges they are still faced with.

‘All hell broke loose’

Noyonika* and Ishita*, residents of a small town in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, are a lesbian couple working with an organization advocating for LGBTQIA+ rights.

But despite her advocacy role in the community, Noyonika has been unable to muster the courage to tell her own family that she is gay. “Very few people know this,” she says. “My family is very conservative, and it would be unthinkable for [them] to understand that I am gay.”

Noyonika’s partner, Ishita, is Agender (not identifying with any gender, or having a lack of gender). She says that she realized in childhood that she was different from other girls and was attracted to girls rather than boys. But her family is also very conservative, and she has not told her father about her reality.

Twenty-three-year-old Minal* and 27-year-old Sangeeta* have a similar story. The couple are residents of a small village in the northwestern state of Punjab. They now live in a big city and work for a well-regarded company.

Sangeeta said that although her own parents eventually came to terms with the relationship, Minal’s family was extremely opposed to the point of harassing the couple. “All hell broke loose,” said Minal.

“In 2019, we got permission to live together through a court order,” Sangeeta explained, but after this Minal’s family started threatening her over the phone.

“They used to say that they would kill me and put my family in jail. Even my family members were scared of these threats. After that [Minal’s family] kept stalking and harassing us for two to three years,” she said.

Today, Sangeeta and Minal are still struggling to have their relationship legally recognized.

*Names have been changed to protect identities.

Struggles for acceptance

Heart-rending stories like these can be found across India, where societal prejudices and harassment continue to plague lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex communities.

Sadhna Mishra, a transgender activist from Odisha, runs a community organization called Sakha. As a child, she faced oppression because she was seen as not conforming to societal gender norms. In 2015, she underwent gender confirming surgery and her journey towards her authentic self began.

Recalling the painful days of her childhood, she said, “Because of my femininity, I became a victim of rape again and again. Whenever I used to cry, my mother would ask why, and I would not be able to say anything. I used to ask why people called me Chhakka and Kinnar [transgender or intersex]. My mother would smile and say that’s because you are different and unique.”

It is because of her mother’s faith in her that Sadhna is now active in fighting for the rights of other transgender persons.

Still, she remembers well the hurdles she has faced, like the early days of trying to get launch her organization and the difficulties she had even finding a place for Sakha’s office. People were reluctant to rent space to a transgender person, so Sadhna was forced to work in public places and parks.

Social prejudices

A lack of understanding and intolerance towards the LGBTQIA+ community are similar, whether in larger cities or in rural areas.

Noyonika says that her organization sees many instances where a man is married to a woman because of societal pressure, without understanding his gender identity. “In villages and towns, you will find many married couples who have children and are forced to live a fake life.”

As for the rural areas of Assam where her organization works, Ishita gave the example of a cultural festival Bhavna being celebrated in Naamghars , or places of worship, where dramas based on mythological stories are presented. 

The female characters in these dramas are played mostly by men with feminine characteristics. During festivals they are widely praised, and their feminine characteristics are applauded, but out of the spotlight, they can become victims of harassment.

“They are intimidated, they are sexually exploited, they are molested,” Ishita explained.

A slow path to progress

In recent years, there have been positive legal and policy decisions acknowledging the LGBTQIA+ community in India. This includes the 2014 NALSA (National Legal Service Authority) decision, in which the court upheld everyone's right to identify their own gender and legally recognized hijras and kinnar (transgender persons) as a ‘third gender’. 

In 2018, the application of portions of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to criminalize private consensual sex between men was ruled unconstitutional by India’s Supreme Court. Further, in 2021, a landmark judgment by the Madras High Court directed the state to provide comprehensive welfare services to the LGBTQIA+ communities.

United Nations advocacy

Communication is an important way to foster dialogue and help create a more tolerant and inclusive society, and gradually, perhaps even change mindsets.

To this end, UN Women , in collaboration with India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development, has recently contributed to the development of a gender-inclusive communication guide.

Meanwhile, the UNAIDS and UNDP offices in India are working to assist the LGBTQIA+ community by running awareness and empowerment campaigns, as well as provide those communities with better health and social protection services.

“UNAIDS supports LGBTQ+ people’s leadership in the HIV response and in advocacy for human rights, and is working to tackle discrimination, and to help build inclusive societies where everyone is protected and respected,” said David Bridger, UNAIDS Country Director for India.

He added: “The HIV response has clearly taught all of us that in order to protect everyone’s health, we have to protect everyone’s rights.”

In line with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Organization’s broad commitment to ‘leave no one behind’, UNDP, is working with governments and partners to strengthen laws, policies and programmes that address inequalities and seek to ensure respect for the human rights of LGBTQIA+ people. 

Through the “Being LGBTI in the Asia and the Pacific” programme, UNDP has also implemented relevant regional initiatives.

Opportunities and challenges

UNDP India’s National Programme Manager (Health Systems Strengthening Unit), Dr. Chiranjeev Bhattacharjya said, “At UNDP India, we have been working very closely with the LGBTQI community to advance their rights.” 

Indeed, he continued, there are currently multiple opportunities to support the community due to progressive legal landmarks like the NALSA judgement, decriminalization of same sex relationships (377 IPC) and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of 2019 which has raised awareness regarding their development. 

“However, there are implementation challenges which will need multi-stakeholder collaboration and we will continue to work with the community to address them so that we leave no one behind,” he stated.

Even as the Indian legal landscape has inched towards broader inclusion with the repeal of Section 377, the country’s LGBTQIA+ communities are still awaiting recognition – and justice – when dealing with many areas of their everyday lives and interactions, for example: who can be designated 'next of kin' if one partner is hospitalized; can a partner be added to a life insurance policy; or whether legal recognition could be given to gay marriage. 

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A Framework for Transgender-Inclusive India

A framework for Transgender Inclusive India

April 15, 2021

A Framework for Conceptualising, Designing and Implementing Welfare and Well-being measures for Transgender People in India

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India and the Global Fight for LGBT Rights

In striking down a ban on gay sex, the supreme court inspired activists across the world..

In September 2018, LGBT people in India celebrated after the country’s Supreme Court unanimously struck down a colonial-era ban on gay sex. It was an important moment for LGBT rights that not only reversed a relic of British oppression but also ordered that LGBT Indians be accorded all the protections of their constitution. This was a welcome victory, but it does not necessarily mean that LGBT people in India are fully free or perceived as equal among their fellow citizens—and it underscores how much work remains to be done in the rest of the world to overturn antiquated and repressive anti-gay laws.

Let’s be clear: Criminalizing same-sex relations makes it illegal to be LGBT. My country, Uganda, still has laws on the books similar to those that were struck down in India—and LGBT people in Uganda continue to face persecution and discrimination. Criminal laws hang over our community like a dark cloud. Individuals live in fear of harassment and prosecution for being who they are. As the Indian Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged, the criminalization of same-sex intimacy brings with it shame and rejection. LGBT people effectively become unapprehended felons and pariahs.

The most remarkable part of the Indian court’s decision is that it didn’t just use a universal standard of human rights to decriminalize homosexuality; it also acknowledged the responsibility of the state to help end the stigma attached to being LGBT. The court could have gone even further and emphasized that the Indian government should put in place mechanisms that would allow the reconciliation of shunned LGBT children and their parents. Doing so would help end the practice of parents forcing arranged marriages on those children—something that can lead to trauma and other mental health problems. It would also help end the shocking practice of “corrective rape,” in which families subject their LGBT children to nonconsensual sex.

[ The Little Ice Age could offer a glimpse of our tumultuous future, Amitav Ghosh writes. ]

“History owes an apology to the members of this community and their families, for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism that they have suffered through the centuries,” Justice Indu Malhotra wrote in her judgment. But one wonders whether these rights include the freedom of marriage or divorce. For true equality to prevail, those rights must be explicitly and fully extended to LGBT people.

India also needs to help reconcile LGBT Indians with their various religious communities; following the court’s decision, many conservative Christian, Muslim, and Hindu leaders, who are often at loggerheads, blasted the ruling as shameful and promised to contest it. Such a reconciliation would right a historic wrong. It was not local religious leaders but British colonialists who introduced these barbaric laws to India. Hinduism, which is the dominant religion in India, was quite accepting of LGBT people before the British introduced Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in the 1860s, imposing harsh penalties on whoever has “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” That provision was then extended from India out across the British Empire. It is the reason why most former British colonies are still, to this day, not only hostile to same-sex love but also actively opposed to it.

Uganda has similar laws dating back to the colonial period—and these laws have long been used to abuse the rights of LGBT people through arbitrary arrests and unfair trials. We cannot hold events and trainings in public or private without authorities seeking to arrest us. For the last two years, we have been unable to hold a pride parade; when we tried in 2016, we were brutally arrested by the Ugandan police. Anti-gay laws also empower mob violence, forced evictions, and social exclusion.

Britain today is far less homophobic than it once was. Indeed, the British government is strongly advocating for the decriminalization of LGBT relations in its former colonies—but words and statements aren’t enough. The Commonwealth and the British government must be more active in ending the scourge of homophobia and acknowledge their historical role in fostering it.

Until then, even as we celebrate India’s success, Uganda’s LGBT community won’t have the chance to enjoy the sweet taste of equality.

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of  Foreign Policy magazine .

Frank Mugisha is the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda. Twitter:  @frankmugisha

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How Inclusive Is The Indian Education System For Trans Students?

Education is a human right that can transform lives. While this transformation comes naturally to certain sections of society, for others it is merely a far-fetched dream. For years, the transgender community has been fighting for the very fundamental rights that should be guaranteed to every individual by default. There still exists an invisibility of transgender community in the public sphere. This marginalisation of the community begins at the very first step of accessing education. 

According to the 2011 census, the national literacy rate is noted to be 74. 04 per cent , while the literacy rate of the transgender community stands at a disturbing 56.1 per cent. In the Census of  2011, the population of trans persons were accounted for the first time. The estimated population was 4,87,803. This number, however, must be socially contextualised.

The audit was done at a time in India when homosexuality was still criminalised and trans persons were not constitutionally recognised as gender in India . Thus, in actuality, the population of trans persons is going to be way more than the recorded data. These people, absent from the recorded data are then expected to also be absent from the public sphere, deprived of getting an education as well. 

From a very young age, we are trained to see the world in binary and heteronormatively. This viewing of the world through a male-female lens manifests itself through the ‘ othering ‘ of the transgender community. The cis-normative mindset gets internalised in children through the educational institutes further depriving the transgender children from finding a space in these institutes. 

The gender binary

The gender binary can be noted in school uniforms and seating arrangements. The uniforms being different for boys and girls, not only propagates the idea of gender binary but also forces the trans students to choose between one of the two. This whole process is rather filled with bullying and social exclusion.

Teachers also often use the pronouns he/she to address the students which further leaves the transgender students difficult to fit themselves in the system. Adding to that, people like Bhavish Aggarwal, OLA CEO, problematise the issue by calling the inclusion of they/them pronouns in language a “pronoun illness .” Such statements not only propagate transphobia but also alienate the community. 

The mental health of trans students

Alienation of trans students in educational institutes can have a toll on their mental health . The othering of the community leads to trans kids getting bullied by peers at school, leaving a deep scar on their emotional and mental well-being. Further, as these educational institutes divide the students in binary, trans students may find it tough to make friends in such a social design. Loneliness becomes another major issue in the life of such students.  

According to a 2019 survey conducted by the United Nations that covered 371 trans persons and MSM individuals, 60 per cent faced bullying in middle/high school and 43 per cent were sexually harassed in primary school. Due to the social stigma and the school’s inadequacy in providing a safe environment to these students, only 18 per cent reported instances of harassment and bullying. And one out of every three participants in the survey dropped out of school due to bullying. 

Lack of infrastructure 

Even if we consider trans students to continue schooling despite all the discrimination and hardships that they face in schools, it is important to ask if the Indian schools have adequate infrastructure for their inclusion. The lack of gender-neutral toilets and restrooms is a major issue faced by trans students in schools as well as colleges.

Though you might still find a handful of higher education institutes with one or two gender-neutral toilets on the campus, schools in India strictly adhere to the gender binary. This non-availability of necessities like toilets, may then eventually lead either to health issues or increased dropout rates. 

Increasing dropout rates among trans students

To encourage trans students to get enrolled in education institutes, the government has come up with schemes like SMILE. Under the scheme, the government provides scholarships to students of class 9th and above. However, only formulating schemes is not enough.

One needs to understand and identify the transphobia that exists in the education system and our culture which leads to scarce enrollment of trans students in education institutes and high dropout numbers. The 2011 Census enumerated 54,854 transgender children between the age of 0 and 6 and from 2020 to 2023 most of these children must be around 10 to 16 years of age. 

But CBSE reported in 2020 that only 19 and 6 transgender students appeared for class 12 and 10 board exams. The numbers are disturbing and adequate steps should have been taken by the government to understand why transgender people are missing from the education system.

Scenario in higher education

As high dropout rates are evident in the board examination audit, this also results in the scarce population of trans persons pursuing secondary education. In 2019, the then Minister of Human Resource Development, Ramesh Pokhriyal “ Nishank ” stated that except the Indira Gandhi National Open University(IGNOU) with around 814 transgender students enrolled over the last five years, there is no other central university with a record of transgender students or staff.

Moreover, the All India Survey of Higher Education(2018-19), didn’t include the data for transgender individuals in the total of 37.4 million students enrolled in higher education across various institutions. 

A hazy future

A democracy, as popularly defined, is the government of the people, by the people and for the people. It becomes alarming when these People exclude a major chunk of the population at the margins of society. As the transgender community has been deprived of the very right to education using social as well as physical barriers, the government needs to take adequate steps for the community.

From running programs to eliminate social stigmas around them to formulating policies that ensure their empowerment through education, the government and our society have a long way to go. Because to let the people have the freedom to live and express freely is the essence of a true democracy. 

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By Kanav Narayan Sahgal

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• v.19(3Suppl 2); 2016

Transgender social inclusion and equality: a pivotal path to development

Vivek divan.

1 United Nations Development Programme Consultant, Delhi, India

Clifton Cortez

2 United Nations Development Programme, HIV, Health, and Development Group, New York, NY, USA

Marina Smelyanskaya

3 United Nations Development Programme Consultant, New York, NY, USA

JoAnne Keatley

4 University of California, San Francisco, Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, San Francisco, CA, USA

Introduction

The rights of trans people are protected by a range of international and regional mechanisms. Yet, punitive national laws, policies and practices targeting transgender people, including complex procedures for changing identification documents, strip transgender people of their rights and limit access to justice. This results in gross violations of human rights on the part of state perpetrators and society at large. Transgender people's experience globally is that of extreme social exclusion that translates into increased vulnerability to HIV, other diseases, including mental health conditions, limited access to education and employment, and loss of opportunities for economic and social advancement. In addition, hatred and aggression towards a group of individuals who do not conform to social norms around gender manifest in frequent episodes of extreme violence towards transgender people. This violence often goes unpunished.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) views its work in the area of HIV through the lens of human rights and advances a range of development solutions such as poverty reduction, improved governance, active citizenship, and access to justice. This work directly relates to advancing the rights of transgender people. This manuscript lays out the various aspects of health, human rights, and development that frame transgender people's issues and outlines best practice solutions from transgender communities and governments around the globe on how to address these complex concerns. The examples provided in the manuscript can help guide UN agencies, governments, and transgender activists in achieving better standards of health, access to justice, and social inclusion for transgender communities everywhere.

Conclusions

The manuscript provides a call to action for countries to urgently address the violations of human rights of transgender people in order to honour international obligations, stem HIV epidemics, promote gender equality, strengthen social and economic development, and put a stop to untrammelled violence.

Those who have traditionally been marginalized by society and who face extreme vulnerability to HIV find that it is their marginalization – social, legal, and economic – which needs to be addressed as the highest priority if a response to HIV is to be meaningful and effective. Trans people's experiences suggest that although HIV is a serious concern for those who acquire it, the suffering it causes is compounded by the routine indignity, inequity, discrimination, and violence that they encounter. Trans people, and particularly trans women, have articulated this often in the context of HIV [ 1 ].

For a reader who is not trans, imagine a world in which the core of your being goes unrecognized – within the family, if and when you step into school, when you seek employment, or when you need social services such as health and housing. You have no way to easily access any of the institutions and services that others take for granted because of this denial of your existence, worsened by the absence of identity documents required to participate in society. Additionally, because of your outward appearance, you may be subject to discrimination, violence, or the fear of it. In such circumstances, how could you possibly partake in social and economic development? How could your dignity and wellbeing – physical, mental, and emotional – be ensured? And how could you access crucial and appropriate information and services for HIV and other health needs?

Trans people experience these realities every day of their lives. Yet, like all other human beings, trans people have fundamental rights – to life, liberty, equality, health, privacy, speech, and expression [ 2 ], but constantly face denial of these fundamental rights because of the rejection of the trans person's right to their gender identity. In these circumstances, there can be no attainment of the goal of universal equitable development as set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [ 3 ], and no effort to stem the tide of the HIV epidemic among trans people can succeed if their identity and human rights are denied.

The human rights gap – stigma, discrimination, violence

The ways in which marginalization impacts a trans person's life are interconnected; stigma and transphobia drive isolation, poverty, violence, lack of social and economic support systems, and compromised health outcomes. Each circumstance relates to and often exacerbates the other [ 4 ].

Trans people who express their gender identity from an early age are often rejected by their families [ 5 ]. If not cast out from their homes, they are shunned within households resulting in lack of opportunities for education and with no attempts to ensure attention to their mental and physical health needs. Those who express their gender identities later in life often face rejection by mainstream society and social service institutions, as they go about undoing gender socialization [ 6 ]. Hostile environments that fail to understand trans people's needs threaten their safety and are ill-equipped to offer sensitive health and social services.

Such discriminatory and exclusionary environments fuel social vulnerability over a lifetime; trans people have few opportunities to pursue education, and greater odds of being unemployed, thereby experiencing inordinately high levels of homelessness [ 6 ] and poverty [ 7 ]. Trans students experience resentment, prejudice, and threatening environments in schools [ 8 ], which leads to significant drop-out rates, with few trans people advancing to higher education [ 9 ].

Workplace-related research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) individuals reveals that trans workers are the most marginalized and are excluded from gainful employment, with discrimination occurring at all phases of the employment process, including recruitment, training opportunities, employee benefits, and access to job advancement [ 10 ]. This environment inculcates pessimism and internalized transphobia in trans people, discouraging them from applying for jobs [ 11 ]. These extreme limitations in employment can push trans people towards jobs that have limited potential for growth and development, such as beauticians, entertainers or sex workers [ 12 ]. Unemployment and low-paying or high risk and unstable jobs feed into the cycle of poverty and homelessness. When homeless trans people seek shelter, they are housed as per their sex at birth and not their experienced gender, and are subject to abuse and humiliation by staff and residents [ 13 ]. In these environments, many trans people choose not to take shelter [ 14 ].

Legal systems often entrench this marginalization, feed inequality, and perpetuate violence against trans people. All people are entitled to their basic human rights, and nations are obligated to provide for these under international law, including guarantees of non-discrimination and the right to health [ 2 ]; however, trans people are rarely assured of such protection under these State obligations.

Instead, trans people often live in criminalized contexts – under legislation that punishes so-called unnatural sex, sodomy, buggery, homosexual propaganda, and cross-dressing [ 12 ] – making them subject to extortion, abuse, and violence. Laws that criminalize sex work lead to violence and blackmail from the police, impacting trans women involved in this occupation [ 15 ]. Being criminalized, trans people are discouraged from complaining to the police, or seeking justice when facing violence and abuse, and perpetrators are rarely punished. When picked up for any of the aforementioned alleged crimes or under vague “public nuisance” or “vagrancy” laws, their abuse can continue at the hands of the police [ 16 ] or inmates in criminal justice systems that fail to appropriately respond to trans identities.

The transphobia that surrounds trans people's lives fuels violence against them. Documentation over the last decade reveals the disproportionate extent to which trans people are murdered, and the extreme forms of torture and inhuman treatment they are subject to [ 16 – 18 ]. When such atrocities are perpetrated against trans people, governments turn a blind eye. Trans sex workers are particularly vulnerable to brutal police conduct including rape, sometimes being sexually exploited by those who are meant to be protectors of the law [ 15 ]. In these circumstances, options to file complaints are limited and, when legally available channels do exist, trans complainants are often ignored [ 19 ].

These experiences of severe stigma, marginalization, and violence by families, communities, and State actors lead to immense health risks for trans people, including heightened risk for HIV, mental health disparities, and substance abuse [ 20 , 21 ]. However, most health systems struggle to function outside the traditional female/male binary framework, thereby excluding trans people [ 22 ]. Health personnel are often untrained to provide appropriate services on HIV prevention, care, and treatment or information on sexual and reproductive health to trans people [ 20 , 23 ]. HIV voluntary counselling and testing facilities and antiretroviral therapy (ART) sites intimidate trans people due to prior negative experiences with medical staff [ 21 , 24 , 25 ]. Additionally, when trans women test HIV positive, they are wrongly reported as men who have sex with men [ 4 ]. Consequently, testing rates in trans communities are low [ 26 ], which serves to disguise the serious burden of HIV among trans people and perpetuates the lack of investment in developing trans-sensitive health systems. The economic hardships that trans people face due to their inability to participate in the workforce further complicate access to HIV, mental health, and gender-affirming health services. In short, hostile social and legal environments contribute to health gaps, and public health systems that are unresponsive to the needs of trans people.

In addition, understanding of trans people's concerns around stigma, discrimination, and violence, related as they are to gender identity, is often limited due to their being combined with lesbian, gay, and bisexual sexual orientation issues. However, trans people's human rights concerns, grounded in their gender identity, are inherently different and necessitate their own set of approaches.

Imperatives for trans social inclusion

In order to overcome the human rights barriers trans people confront, certain measures are imperative and should be self-evident, given the standards that States are obliged to provide under international law to all human beings. Paying attention to these is key to effectively addressing the systemic marginalization that trans people experience. Such action can have immeasurable benefits, including the full participation of trans people in human development processes as well as positive health and HIV outcomes. For trans people, the change must begin with the most fundamental element – acknowledgement of their gender identity.

The right to gender recognition

For trans people, their very recognition as human beings requires a guarantee of a composite of entitlements that others take for granted – core rights that recognize their legal personhood. As the Global Commission on HIV and the Law pointed out, “In many countries from Mexico to Malaysia, by law or by practice, transgender persons are denied acknowledgment as legal persons. A basic part of their identity – gender – is unrecognized” [ 19 ]. This recognition of their gender is core to having their inherent dignity respected and, among other rights, their right to health including protection from HIV. When denied, trans people face severe impediments in accessing appropriate health information and care.

Recognizing a trans person's gender requires respecting the right of that person to identify – irrespective of the sex assigned to them at birth – as male, female, or a gender that does not fit within the male–female binary, a “third” gender as it were, as has been expressed by many traditionally existing trans communities such as hijras in India [ 27 ]. This is an essential requirement for trans people to attain full personhood and citizenship. The guarantee of gender recognition in official government-issued documents – passports and other identification cards that are required to open bank accounts, apply to educational institutions, enter into housing or other contracts or for jobs, to vote, travel, or receive health services or state subsidies – provides access to a slew of activities that are otherwise denied while being taken for granted by cisgender people. 1 Such recognition results in fuller civic participation of and by trans people. It is a concrete step in ensuring their social integration, economic advancement, and a formal acceptance of their legal equality. It can immeasurably support their empowerment and act as an acknowledgement of their dignity and human worth, changing the way they are perceived by their families, by society in general, and by police, government actors, and healthcare personnel whom they encounter in daily life. UN treaty bodies have acknowledged this vital right of trans people to be recognized. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has recommended that States “facilitate legal recognition of the preferred gender of transgender persons and establish arrangements to permit relevant identity documents to be reissued reflecting preferred gender and name, without infringements of other human rights” [ 28 ].

Freedom from violence & discrimination

Systemic strategies to reduce the violence against trans people need to occur at multiple levels, including making perpetrators accountable, facilitating legal and policy reform that removes criminality, and general advocacy to sensitize the ill-informed about trans issues and concerns. Strengthening the capacity of trans collectives and organizations to claim their rights can also act as a counter to the impunity of violence. When trans people are provided legal aid and access to judicial processes, accountability can be enforced against perpetrators. Sensitizing the police to make them partners in this work can be crucial. When political will is absent to support such attempts in highly adverse settings, trans organizations and allies can consider using international human rights mechanisms, such as shadow reports made to UN human rights processes like the Universal Periodic Review, to bring focus to issues of anti-trans violence and other human rights violations against trans people.

Providing equal access to housing, education, public facilities and employment opportunities, and developing and implementing anti-discrimination laws and policies that protect trans people in these contexts, including guaranteeing their safety and security, are essential to ensure that trans individuals are treated as equal human beings.

The right to health

For trans people, their right to health can only be assured if services are provided in a non-stigmatizing, non-discriminatory, and informed environment. This requires working to educate the healthcare sector about gender identity and expression, and zero tolerance for conduct that excludes trans people. Derogatory comments, breaches of confidentiality from providers, and denial of services on the basis of gender identity or HIV status are some of the manifestations of prejudice. The right to non-discrimination that is guaranteed to all human beings under international law must be enforced against actions that violate this principle in the healthcare system. Yet, a multi-pronged approach that supports this affirmation of trans equality together with a sensitized workforce that is capable of delivering gender-affirming surgical and HIV health services is necessary.

Building on the commitments made by the UN General Assembly in response to the HIV epidemic [ 29 ], the World Health Organization (WHO) developed good practice recommendations in relation to stigma and discrimination faced by key populations, including trans people [ 30 ]. These recommendations urge countries to introduce rights-based laws and policies and advise that, “Monitoring and oversight are important to ensure that standards are implemented and maintained.” Additionally, mechanisms should be made available “to anonymously report occurrences of stigma and/or discrimination when [trans people] try to obtain health services” [ 30 ].

Fostering stigma-free environments has been successfully demonstrated – where partnerships between trans individuals and community health nurses have improved HIV-related health outcomes [ 31 ], or where clinical sites welcome trans people and conduct thorough and appropriate physical exams, manage hormones with particular attention to ART, and engage trans individuals in HIV education [ 32 ].

Advancing trans human rights and health

For all the challenges faced by trans people in the context of their human rights and health, promising interventions and policy progress have shown that positive change is possible, although this must be implemented at scale to have significant impact. Change has occurred due to the efforts of trans advocates and human rights champions, often in critical alliances with civil society supporters as well as sensitized judiciaries, legislatures, bureaucrats, and health sector functionaries.

Key strides have been made in the context of gender recognition in some parts of the world. In the legislatures, this trend began in 2012 with Argentina passing the Gender Identity and Health Comprehensive Care for Transgender People Act , which provided gender recognition to trans people without psychiatric, medical, or judicial evaluation, and the right to access free and voluntary transitional healthcare [ 33 , 34 ]. In 2015, Malta passed the Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act , which provides a self-determined, speedy, and accessible gender recognition process. The law protects against discrimination in the government and private sectors. It also de-pathologizes gender identity by stating that people “shall not be required to provide proof of a surgical procedure for total or partial genital reassignment, hormonal therapies or any other psychiatric, psychological or medical treatment.” It presumes the capacity of minors to exercise choice in opting for gender reassignment, while recognizing parental participation and the minor's best interests. It stipulates the establishment of a working group on trans healthcare to research international best practices [ 35 ]. Pursuant to its passing the Maltese Ministry of Education working with activists also developed policy guidelines to accommodate trans, gender variant, and intersex children in the educational system [ 36 ]. Other countries, such as the Republic of Ireland and Poland, have also passed gender identity and gender expression laws, albeit of varying substance but intended to recognize the right of trans people to personhood [ 37 , 38 ]. Denmark passed legislation that eliminated the coercive requirement for sterilization or surgery as a prerequisite to change legal gender identity [ 39 ].

Trans activists and allies have also used the judicial process to claim the right to gender recognition. In South Asia, claims to recognition of a gender beyond the male–female binary have been upheld – in 2007, the Supreme Court of Nepal directed the government to recognize a third gender in citizenship documents in order to vest rights that accrue from citizenship to metis [ 40 ]; in Pakistan, the Supreme Court directed the government to provide a third gender option in national identity cards for trans people to be able to vote [ 41 ]; in 2014, the Indian Supreme Court passed a judgement directing the government to officially recognize trans people as a third gender and to formulate special programmes to support their needs [ 42 ]. These developments in law, while hopeful, are too recent to yet discern any resultant trends in improvements in trans peoples’ lives, more broadly.

More localized innovative efforts have also been made by trans organizations to counter violence, stigma, and discrimination. For instance in South Africa, Gender DynamiX, a non-governmental organization worked with the police to change the South African Police Services’ standard operating procedures in 2013. The procedures are intended to ensure the safety, dignity, and respect of trans people who are in conflict with the law, and prescribe several trans-friendly safeguards – the search of trans people as per the sex on their identity documents, irrespective of genital surgery, and detention of trans people in separate facilities with the ability to report abuse, including removal of wigs and other gender-affirming prosthetics. Provision is made for implementation of the procedures through sensitization workshops with the police [ 43 ]. In Australia, the Transgender Anti-Violence Project was started as a collaboration between the Gender Centre in Sydney and the New South Wales Police Force, the City of Sydney and Inner City Legal Centre in 2011. It provides education, referrals, and advocacy in relation to violence based on gender identity, and support for trans people when reporting violence, assistance in organizing legal aid and appearances in court [ 44 ].

Measures have also been taken to tackle discrimination faced by trans people, in recognition of their human rights – in 2015, Japan's Ministry of Education ordered schools to accept trans students according to their preferred gender identity [ 45 ]; in 2014 in Quezon City, the Philippines the municipal council passed the “Gender Fair City” ordinance to ensure non-discrimination of LGBT people in education, the workplace, media depictions, and political life. This law prohibits bullying and requires gender-neutral bathrooms in public spaces and at work [ 46 ]; in Ecuador, Alfil Association worked on making healthcare accessible to trans people, including training and sensitization meetings for health workers and setting up a provincial health clinic for trans people in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, staffed by government physicians who had undergone the training; and Transbantu Zambia set up a small community house providing temporary shelter for trans people, assisting them in difficult times or while undergoing hormone therapy. Similar housing support has been provided by community organizations with limited resources in Jamaica and Indonesia. 2

Towards sustainable development: time for change

Although there are other examples of human rights progress for trans people, much of this change is isolated, non-systemic, and insufficient. Trans people continue to live in extremely hostile contexts. What is required is change and progress at scale. The international community's recent commitment towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) presents an opportunity to catalyze and expand positive interventions [ 3 ].

Preventing human rights violations and social exclusion is key to sustainable and equitable development. This is true for trans people as much as other human beings, just as the achievement of all 17 SDGs is of paramount importance to all people, including trans people. Of these SDGs, the underpinning support for trans people's health and human rights is contained in SDG 3 –“Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages,” SDG 10 – “Reduce inequality within and among countries,” and SDG 16 – “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”

The SDGs are guided by the UN Charter and grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They envisage processes that are “people-centered, gender-sensitive, respect human rights and have a particular focus on the poorest, most vulnerable and those furthest behind” and a “just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which the needs of the most vulnerable are met” [ 3 ]. They reiterate universal respect for human rights and dignity, justice and non-discrimination, and a world of equal opportunity permitting the full realization of human potential for all irrespective of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, disability, or other status . The relationship between the SDGs and trans people's concerns has been robustly articulated in the context of inclusive development [ 47 ].

UN Member States have unequivocally agreed to this new common agenda for the immediate future. The SDGs demand an unambiguous, farsighted, and inclusive demonstration of political will. Their language clearly reflects the most urgent needs of trans people, for whom freedom from violence and discrimination, the right to health and legal gender recognition are inextricably linked.

Specifically in regard to trans people, the SDGs are a call to immediate action on several fronts: governments need to engage with trans people to understand their concerns, unequivocally support the right of trans people to legal gender recognition, support the documentation of human rights violations against them, provide efficient and accountable processes whereby violations can be safely reported and action taken, guarantee the prevention of such violations, and ensure that the whole gamut of robust health and HIV services are made available to trans people. Only then can trans people begin to imagine a world that respects their core personhood, and a world in which dignity, equality, and wellbeing become realities in their lives.

Acknowledgements and funding

The authors are grateful for the work of courageous trans activists around the world who have overcome tremendous challenges and continue to battle disparities as they bring about positive change. Many encouraging examples cited in this manuscript would be impossible without their contribution. The authors also thank Jack Byrne, an expert on trans health and human rights, whose work on the UNDP Discussion Paper on Transgender Health and Human Rights (2013) served as an inspiration for this piece, and JoAnne Keatley's effort to provide writing, editorial comment, and oversight. UNDP staff and consultants, who contributed time to this manuscript, were supported by UNDP.

1 Cisgender people identify and present in a way that is congruent with their birth-assigned sex. Cisgender males are birth-assigned males who identify and present themselves as male.

2 These illustrations are based on information gathered in the process of developing a tool to operationalize the Consolidated Guidelines on HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for key populations (WHO, 2014), through interviews with and questionnaires sent to trans activists. See also reference 31.

Competing interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Authors' contributions

The concept for this manuscript was a result of collaborative work between all four authors. VD provided key ideas for content and led the writing for the manuscript. CC provided thought leadership and contributed writing, particularly on the SDGs, while MS provided writing and editorial input, as well as other support. JK advised on content and provided writing and editorial input and guidance. All authors have read and approved the final version.

Transgender Community and Their Welfare in India

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued an advisory to the Centre, States and UTs to ensure the welfare of transgender persons.

Table of Contents

Context: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued an advisory to the Centre, States and UTs to ensure the welfare of transgender persons.

Key Highlights of the NHRC’s Advisory

• Discrimination Concerns: The NHRC notes that despite legal reforms , transgender individuals in India still face discrimination, which leads to disparities in employment opportunities, limited access to healthcare, and exclusion from social circles.
• Family Pension: The advisory suggests that a single transchild of a deceased government employee or pensioner should be treated as an unmarried daughter for the purpose of family pension and other benefits.
• Inheritance Rights: Transgender persons should be allowed to inherit ancestral agricultural land, according to the advisory.
• Identity Card: The NHRC recommends providing a multi-purpose identity card to transgender individuals. This card can help them access government schemes and other benefits more easily.
• Insurance Acceptance: Insurance companies are advised to consider and accept the Transgender Certificate issued by the appropriate authority for document verification purposes.
• Timely Release of Funds: The NHRC urged the government to ensure the timely release of allocated funds for the Garima Greh shelter scheme.
• Implementation and Reporting: The NHRC has asked the stakeholders to implement its recommendations effectively and submit “action-taken” reports within two months.

About Transgenders

• According to the World Health Organization, Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and expression does not conform to the norms and expectations traditionally associated with the sex assigned to them at birth.
• They are referred to as transsexuals if they desire medical assistance in order to make the transition from one biological sex to another.
• The highest proportion of the trans-gender population, about 28%, has been identified in Uttar Pradesh followed by Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.
• In India, there are a wide range of transgender related identities which includes the Hijras, Aravanis, Kothis, Jogtas/ Jogappas, Shiv Sakthis.

Challenges Faced by the Transgender Community

• Discrimination: They experience discrimination at work, in educational institutions, and in their own homes, which negatively impact their well-being.
• Social Stigma: Transgender individuals often face social stigma and exclusion, making it difficult for them to adopt children, inherit property, or access basic rights and services. They may be marginalized and forced into menial jobs or pushed into sex work as a result of limited opportunities.
• Unemployment: Due to the associated societal stigma, the community has few employment options and experiences severe discrimination at work.
• Lack of public amenities: They have trouble accessing public restrooms and other public areas. In hospitals, schools, and prisons, they frequently encounter issues.
• Gender-based violence: Transgenders are often subjected to sexual abuse, rape and exploitation.
• Healthcare Disparities: Transgender people often encounter challenges in accessing adequate healthcare services that are sensitive to their specific needs.
• Lack of Representation: They are often underrepresented in media, politics and governance and are not included in mainstream society. This can make it difficult for them to have their voices heard and for their needs to be addressed.

Transgender rights in India

• The court held that all transgender persons are entitled to fundamental rights under Article 14 (Equality), Article 15 (Non-Discrimination), Article 16 (Equal Opportunity in Public Employment), Article 19(1)(a) (Right to Free Speech) and Article 21 (Right to Life) of the Indian Constitution.
• In 2020, the parliament legally recognized ‘transgender’ as an official gender in India.
• Liberty to Choose Sexual or Gender Identity: In the case of G. Nagalakshmi v. Director General of Police (2014), the Madras High Court observed that in the absence of any special law, any person has the liberty to choose their sexual or gender identity and upheld the petitioner’s right to choose their own gender.
• Right to Privacy: In Puttuswamy v. Union of India (2017), the Supreme Court noted the constitutional right to privacy inherent in the right to life, equality and fundamental freedoms. This includes the right to have intimate relations of one’s choice and the right to sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Decriminalisation of Section 377 of IPC: In Navtej Singh Johar v. the Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court (SC) decriminalised homosexuality by striking off parts of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which were held violative of Fundamental Rights of LGBTQ Community.

Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019

The Act aims to end discrimination against transgender persons in accessing education, employment and healthcare. Key Provisions of the Act Include:

• It includes trans-men and trans-women, persons with intersex variations, gender-queers, and persons with socio-cultural identities, such as kinnar and hijra.
• Intersex variations are defined to mean a person who at birth shows variation in his or her primary sexual characteristics, external genitalia, chromosomes, or hormones from the normative standard of male or female body.
• Prohibition against discrimination: The Act prohibits the discrimination against a transgender person, including denial of service or unfair treatment in relation to: (i) education; (ii) employment; (iii) healthcare; (iv) access to, or enjoyment of goods, facilities, opportunities available to the public; (v) right to movement; (vi) right to reside, rent, or otherwise occupy property; (vii) opportunity to hold public or private office; and (viii) access to a government or private establishment in whose care or custody a transgender person is.
• If the immediate family is unable to care for the transgender person, the person may be placed in a rehabilitation centre, on the orders of a competent court.
• Every establishment is required to designate a person to be a complaint officer to deal with complaints in relation to the Act.
• Education: Educational institutions funded or recognised by the relevant government shall provide inclusive education, sports and recreational facilities for transgender persons, without discrimination.
• The government shall review medical curriculum to address health issues of transgender persons, and provide comprehensive medical insurance schemes for them.
• Certificate of identity for a transgender person: A transgender person may make an application to the District Magistrate for a certificate of identity, indicating the gender as ‘transgender’.
• Offences and penalties: The Act recognize the following offences against transgender persons: (i) forced or bonded labour (excluding compulsory government service for public purposes), (ii) denial of use of public places, (iii) removal from household, and village, (iv) physical, sexual, verbal, emotional or economic abuse.  Penalties for these offences vary between six months and two years, and a fine.
• Union Minister for Social Justice (Chairperson);
• Minister of State for Social Justice (Vice- Chairperson);
• Secretary of the Ministry of Social Justice;
• one representative from ministries including Health, Home Affairs, and Human Resources Development.
• Other members include representatives of the NITI Aayog, and the National Human Rights Commission.
• State governments will also be represented.
• The Council will also consist of five members from the transgender community and five experts from non-governmental organisations.

Initiatives for Transgender Community in India

• Counseling, basic documentation, education, skill development, financial assistance to transgender students.
• Composite medical health and setting up of Garima Grehs in each state for providing shelter facility for abandoned and orphaned transgender persons.
• Transgender protection cells in India for providing quick redressal of offences & crimes against transgender persons.
• A ‘Gender-Inclusion Fund’ will be constituted under the new policy to build the nation’s capacity to provide equitable quality education for all girls as well as transgender students.
• PM-DAKSH: The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is imparting skill development training to the Transgender beneficiaries of the SMILE Scheme through PM-DAKSH.

State laws to protect the transgender population:

• Odisha – ‘Sweekruti’:  To secure the rights of transgender persons and ensure equitable justice. Skill up-gradation, legal aid, health care provision.
• Kerala: Transgender policy in 2015, Schools, Justice board for welfare of transgenders, Fully Transgender run metro station, G-Taxis: entirely owned and run by transgenders, free sex-reassignment surgeries.
• Tamil Nadu: Transgender welfare policy, free surgeries, the first state to form a Transgender board with members from the community.
• Chandigarh: Transgender board comprising members from all departments viz., police, health, social welfare, education and the law department.

Way Forward

• To recognize the transgender community as an essential part of societal life, there needs to be widespread sensitization, beginning at the school level.
• Education: It’s crucial to develop an efficient system for educating students at colleges and universities on the needs and makeup of the transgender community.
• Financial Security: To begin their career as an entrepreneur or businessman, it is important to guarantee liberal credit facilities and financial help.
• Employment: Plans and initiatives should focus on enhancing the skills of transgender communities. The hiring, retention, and promotion processes must successfully abide by anti-discrimination policies.
• Transgender-Inclusive Policies: Legal and the law enforcement systems need to be empowered and sensitized on the issues of Transgender community.

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Last updated on April 8, 2024 by ClearIAS Team

LGBTQIA+ is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and more. These terms are used to describe a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The community through long struggles and movements has been officially recognized for its rights in several nations. Read here to understand more.

Several countries, including India, have formally recognized third sex and homosexuals as equal citizens after a protracted campaign that included several protests and demonstrations in various areas of the world.

In September 2018, as part of its review of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, the Supreme Court of India issued a decision legalizing adult same-sex marriages based on consent.

This ruling is largely recognized as a historic one because of how broadly it interprets constitutional rights and the authority it gives the LGBTQIA+ community.

Table of Contents

What does LGBTQIA+ signify?

The acronym LGBTIQ+ primarily refers to people who identify as being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (one’s sexual or gender identity), intersex, and asexual.

It is even though no single phrase can adequately describe the various genders and sexual identities that exist in the world today.

Here is a general idea to understand what each term stands for, even though what follows is a by-no-means inclusive list of vocabulary, it will give one the basic understanding:

Lesbian: A woman whose enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction is to other women. Some lesbians may prefer to identify as gay or as gay women.

Gay: The adjective describes people whose enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attractions are to people of the same sex. Sometimes lesbian is the preferred term for women.

Bisexual: A person who can form enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attractions to those of the same gender or more than one gender.

Transgender: An umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from what is typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. People under the transgender umbrella may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms- including transgender or nonbinary. Some transgender people are prescribed hormones by their doctors to align their bodies with their gender identity. Some undergo surgery as well. But not all transgender people can or will take those steps, and a transgender identity is not dependent upon physical appearance or medical procedures.

Queer: An adjective used by some people whose sexual orientation is not exclusively heterosexual or straight. This umbrella term includes people who have nonbinary, gender-fluid, or gender-nonconforming identities. Once considered a pejorative term, queer has been reclaimed by some LGBTQIA+ people to describe themselves; however, it is not a universally accepted term even within the LGBTQIA+ community.

Intersex: An adjective used to describe a person with one or more innate sex characteristics, including genitals, internal reproductive organs, and chromosomes, that fall outside of traditional conceptions of male or female bodies. Intersex people are assigned a sex at birth as either male or female and that decision by medical providers and parents may not match the gender identity of the child. Not all intersex people identify as being part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Asexual: The adjective describes a person who does not experience sexual attraction. Sometimes shortened to “ace,” it is an umbrella term that can also include people who are demisexual, meaning they do experience some sexual attraction; graysexual, meaning those who may not fit the strictest definition of the word asexual; and aromantic, meaning they experience little to no romantic attraction and/or has little to no desire to form romantic relationships.

+ Plus: The ‘plus’ is used to signify all of the gender identities and sexual orientations that letters and words cannot yet fully describe.

History LGBTQIA+ community in India

The foundation of ancient Indian culture was the acceptance and celebration of all forms of love, as well as a de facto acceptance of the idea of homosexuality.

The Khajuraho Temple in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is one specific example of the existence of sexual fluidity among homosexuals.

The British thought that sexual behavior was “outside the order of nature” and as a result, there is a clause in the Indian Penal Code that makes it unlawful to act in any gay manner which was added in the 1800s.

Shakuntala Devi published “The World of Homosexuals” in 1977, which is regarded as the country’s first in-depth analysis of homosexuality.

In 1994, they gained legal recognition as a third sex and were given the ability to vote.

In 1999, Kolkata hosted India’s first Gay Pride Parade. The parade, with only 15 attendees, was named Calcutta Rainbow Pride.

In 2014, the Supreme Court of India issued its ruling declaring that transgender people should be treated as a third category of gender.

The LGBTQIA+ community in this country was granted the right to express their sexual orientation in safety by the Supreme Court in 2017. The sexual orientation of an individual was protected by the right to privacy .

On September 6, 2018, the Supreme Court overturned the portion of Section 377 that made consenting to homosexuality illegal.

In order to protect transgender people’s rights, their welfare, and other connected issues, Parliament passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act in 2019.

Discrimination faced by the LGBTQIA+ community

LGBTQI+ people are discriminated against in the labor market, in schools, and in hospitals, and mistreated and disowned by their own families. They are singled out for physical attack – beaten, sexually assaulted, tortured, and killed.

In some 77 countries, discriminatory laws criminalize private, consensual same-sex relationships – exposing individuals to the risk of arrest, prosecution, imprisonment, and even, in at least five countries, the death penalty.

• Due to the marginalization the LGBTQIA+ group experiences, access to necessary services is frequently denied. These resources include access to healthcare, legal and judicial assistance, and educational opportunities.
• Many LGBTQIA+ youngsters and teenagers avoided talking about their feelings with their parents because they were afraid of their reactions. If they do not have the support of their families in a society that is constrained by a restrictive set of social and cultural standards, LGBTQIA+ people can suffer serious harm to both their mental and physical health.
• Due to a lack of exposure, comfort, and internet availability in their area, LGBTQIA+ people who live in rural locations may repress their feelings. This is due to the possibility that physical violence will rise if you choose not to get married.
• The majority of LGBTQIA+ children have either run away from violent conditions or relationships or been expelled from their homes because they are queer. In their most formative years, they are robbed of formal education and the required social support.
• Due to terminology issues, LGBTQIA+ persons frequently receive disparaging labels and are made fun of, which stops them from accomplishing their goal of receiving recognition and causes them to feel socially isolated.
• School uniforms, dress codes, and travel entry points (such as ticket purchase forms, security screening, and restrooms) are frequently biased toward one gender. People who identify as LGBTQIA+ are frequently obliged to discuss their gender identity in front of an audience when taking public transportation.
• When it is difficult to obtain the proper documentation relating to one’s gender identity, especially school records, employment chances are significantly harmed.

Way forward

In recent years, many States have made a determined effort to strengthen human rights protection for LGBTQIA+ people. An array of new laws has been adopted, including laws banning discrimination, penalizing homophobic and transphobic hate crimes, granting recognition of same-sex relationships, and making it easier for transgender individuals to obtain official documents that reflect their preferred gender.

Alterations in the general public’s attitude toward LGBTQIA+ individuals are one most crucial steps to be taken. This can be achieved by more policies and laws in support of their rights. Also, the media can play an important role in making the voices of LGBTQIA+ heard for better awareness among common people.

The same should start from home itself, each child should be given a safe space to express their identity freely. If they accept the child as a member of that community, they will transform society into one that values diversity and respects the individuality of every person.

India still lacks a basic law that recognizes the protection of the rights of people belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community or criminalizes any harassment or discrimination against them.

The next step should be to make the society LGBTQIA+ community friendly and deter any form of discrimination or cruelty against them. This can be achieved by incorporating various practices like introducing sex education in schools.

The LGBTQIA+ community deserves to receive equal treatment in all walks of life.

Related article: Same-Sex Marriage;  Intersex Rights

­ -Article written by Swathi Satish

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• world affairs

A Modi Win Will Only Mean More Trouble for Indian Muslims

M ore than two years have passed since a picture of me, picked up from my personal social media handles, was put up with a price tag for auction on the internet. It was part of a website called Bulli Bai , a religious slur used for Muslim women in India. 

Why was I targeted? Likely because of my reporting. The perpetrators wanted to shame and humiliate a journalist who was determined to expose the failures of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s gender, caste, and religion-based violence. But more importantly, they wanted to shut up a Muslim woman who had dared to be vocal in Modi’s India.

When the photo was posted, I wondered how the main perpetrator , a 21-year-old student from Assam, who created Bulli Bai could be so consumed by his hatred that he felt compelled to auction Muslim women online for their outspoken criticism of the BJP—journalists, social workers, actors, and politicians. A recent meeting with my lawyer about my case against the Bulli Bai creators, who are still being investigated by the Delhi police, was a painful reminder of the targeted harassment faced by outspoken Muslim voices critical of the ruling BJP. 

As the ongoing election in India is set to finish on June 1, it has once again offered deeper insight into how political dialogue is fueling this culture of hate. 

Particularly, the political campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP has leaned into anti-Muslim sentiment, progressively making Islamophobia one of the defining features of this election.

It was most prominently on display when Modi, in a thinly veiled reference to Muslims, referred to the 200 million Indian Muslim population as “infiltrators” at a BJP campaign rally while addressing voters in the Western state of Rajasthan on April 21. The Prime Minister also accused the opposition Congress party of planning to distribute the country’s wealth to Muslims.

Modi, in his speech, asked, “Earlier, when his [ former Prime Minister and Congress Party member Manmohan Singh’s] government was in power , he had said that Muslims have the first right on the country’s property, which means who they will collect this property and distribute it to—those who have more children, will distribute it to the infiltrators. Will the money of your hard work be given to the infiltrators? Do you approve of this?”

Read More: How India’s Hindu Nationalists Are Weaponizing History Against Muslims

This 2006 statement by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emphasizing that minorities, particularly Muslims , should have the first claim on resources to help uplift their socio-economic status, has been often quoted out of context in political rhetoric, distorting its original intent to uplift marginalized communities.

The reemergence of conspiracy theories like “Love Jihad,” alleging a covert agenda by Muslim men to ensnare and convert Hindu women, by Modi, has surged back into public attention, prominently surfacing at an election rally on May 28, days before the seventh and last phase of the ongoing elections, in the Eastern state of Jharkhand . 

The alarming rhetoric about Muslim population growth too have dominated the election discourse, fueled by the BJP's top leader, Modi, who has been criticized for his Islamophobic remarks, evoking memories of Gujarat's 2002 riots. While he later denied singling out Muslims in an interview with an Indian news channel, his history of linking them to population growth fuels a Hindu-majoritarian conspiracy theory.

Following the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat during his tenure as chief minister, Modi faced scrutiny regarding his administration's lack of assistance to relief camps, predominantly established by non-profit organizations and Muslim communities. During a campaign rally, Modi then insinuated that these camps might transform into "baby factories," implying that Muslims could potentially have families as large as 25 children.

In his Jharkhand rally in May of this year, Modi spoke of "unseen enemies" working to divide society and claimed that the opposition parties were playing into the hands of “infiltrators”. He warned against "Zalim (cruel) love," alluding to Love Jihad. 

As the elections progressed, Modi’s speeches transformed slowly from issues such as “development” to anti-Muslim rhetoric. Unlike previous elections, Modi's campaign strategy this time has shifted towards overt Hindu-Muslim politics, drawing attention to his past record and raising concerns among Indian Muslims, as evidenced by the Election Commission's intervention in a campaign video by the BJP inciting hatred against Muslims. 

The video, shared by BJP Karnataka wing with a cautionary message in Kannada, depicted a cartoon version of Congress’s Rahul Gandhi placing an egg marked "Muslims" into a nest alongside smaller eggs labeled with categories such as "Scheduled Castes," "Scheduled Tribes," and "Other Backward Castes.” The narrative unfolds as the "Muslim" hatchling is shown being nourished with financial resources, eventually growing larger and displacing the other hatchlings from the nest—implying that a Congress government will give away all resources to Muslims. 

This came days after another animated video shared by the BJP’s official Instagram handle was removed on May 1 after a large number of users of the platform reported the video for “false information” and “hate speech.” The video repeats the BJP’s rhetoric on the Congress party, who they allege are“empowering people who belong to the very same community [of] invaders, terrorists, robbers and thieves [who] used to loot all our treasures” while the voice-over says, “If Congress comes to power, it will snatch all the money and wealth from non-Muslims and distribute them among Muslims, their favorite community.” 

Despite its controversial content, the video amassed over 100 thousand likes before being removed.

Both videos come after claims by Modi during his campaign speeches that Congress was planning to “steal” reservations in educational institutes and government jobs among other benefits from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Castes and redistribute them to Muslims.

Modi may be the foremost leader, but he's not alone in setting the tone; other top-tier BJP leaders are also walking in his footsteps. Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah's remarks linking voting for the Congress party to "jihad" in the South Indian state of Telangana have also stirred controversy.

Read More: The Modi-fication of India Is Almost Complete

The India Hate Lab, a Washington D.C.-based group that documents hate speech against India’s religious minorities, in its report of 2023 paints a grim picture of rising hate speech incidents against Muslims, totaling 668 documented cases. 

These incidents, often featuring calls for violence and spreading divisive theories, were predominantly concentrated in regions governed by the BJP, particularly during key election periods like in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh. Additionally, the report highlighted stark differences in hate speech content between BJP and non-BJP-governed areas, with BJP leaders more frequently involved in non-BJP territories as they strive to expand political footholds.

When leaders resort to fear-mongering, it legitimizes the dehumanization of minorities, creating a fertile ground for extremists. This often isn’t just about one app or incident. It’s about the pervasive atmosphere of intolerance that such rhetoric by the BJP leaders breeds. And those who oppose this type of hate speech want to ensure that no one—regardless of their faith, gender, or caste—has to live in fear of being targeted for who they are. 

Modi’s statement received widespread criticism from the opposition, the intelligentsia community including authors, writers, scholars, academics, and the minority Muslim population of India. The Congress party even filed a complaint with the Election Commission, alleging that Modi's remarks violate electoral laws that prohibit appeals to religious sentiments. Despite public outcry and demands from activists and citizens for action, the Election Commission has so far taken no appropriate action. 

Modi's Islamophobic statements, which have fueled fears over and over again among India's Muslim population, must be viewed within the broader context of his party's strategies—which often invoke religious and communal sentiments to galvanize their voter base. And this time, the aim is to break all previous records by securing 400 plus seats in the 543 seat parliament.

If the BJP is able to secure such a huge majority in the parliament, Hindu majoritarianism will remain unchecked. The hostility towards the minorities could escalate even more, and opposition parties may bear the brunt of state agencies and crackdowns if they ask questions. 

During Modi’s previous terms, Muslims have seen an increased marginalization and discrimination fueled by Hindu nationalist agendas—ranging from difficulty in securing a rented accommodation in urban cities, erasure of Muslim names from roads, cities and railway stations, to the underrepresentation in government jobs and discrimination and vandalism of shops of small Muslim vendors. 

Today, India, a country which once took pride in its ganga-jamuni tehzeeb —a term used to refer to the fusion of Hindu-Muslim cultures—has become a global epicenter of divisive politics. While elections will come and go, the impact of the irresponsible words of Modi and the BJP will stay with the 200 million plus Muslims in the country.

These words have real and dangerous implications for the safety and security of India's Muslim population. Muslims in India currently face increased social ostracism, economic boycotts, and even physical violence. And another victory with an overwhelming majority will only mean more trouble.

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