In 2014, the Supreme Court of India ruled in favour of the transgender community in NALSA vs. Union of India, the landmark judgment which granted official recognition to all the citizens of the country who identified out of their assigned sex at birth, to lead dignified lives under the gender marker of their choice: transgender, female, or male. In retrospect, this was the most and only dignified recognition the community ever received in this country, because what followed later was no less than a nightmare.
Soon after, without consulting the transgender community, Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016 was introduced, which was met with nationwide protests. Then an amended version of the same Bill was presented and later passed as an Act in 2019. This, after further community interference, was followed by the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules in 2020. As the rules were drafted in consultation with the community, they preserved the SC granted right to self-identify, which, after a decade, has now come under attack by the so-called “protective” Amendment Bill of 2026.
The current set of amendments, while appearing “ambitious” to eradicate “unauthentic” or “fake transgenders,” is attempting to formalise categories that didn’t come into existence as a result of a systemic nomenclature. Rather, all these communities in their regions came into being as a result of the rejection of transgender individuals by their natal families and subsequent ostracisation from the rest of society.
On the surface, it may look like the transgender community, once segregated under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1817 under the British Raj, especially the Hijras, Kwajasiras, and Kinnars, is being promised a restoration of their “glorious past.” But in reality, this Amendment Bill betrays them in its criminalisation clauses.
The Bill, in vague language, penalises “coercion into sex change”, which, if found guilty, is to be met with life imprisonment and Rs 1.2 lakh fine. This clause can be easily misinterpreted and even weaponised — by natal family members who reject their wards’ gender identity and decision to transition or join a Hijra Gharana — against the very same members whom the Bill claims to protect. So even the Hijras are not guaranteed absolute immunity; rather, what awaits them would be life imprisonment in a country where corrective facilities still lack transgender cells.
This Bill limits access to the “Transgender” marker on official documents, and to associated policies and social benefits to members of North-Indian socio-ethnic transgender communities like the Hijras and Kinnars. Alongside the self-proclaimed protection of socio-ethnic trans groups, the Bill also forces intersex individuals into the “Transgender” category, even those who do not wish to be identified as transgender or prefer to be known as a male or female.
The inclusion of just two other regional communities, Aravanis and Jogta, is, at best, a performative failure. There is no provision for an exhaustive schedule for all the regional communities, such as Thirunangai, Thirunambi, Thirunar, etc., from Tamil Nadu, or the Nupi Maanbis of Manipur. There is also consideration for southern states like Keralam, where transgender individuals are at risk of a lexically induced social erasure as a result of this Bill, because identitarian labels are absent in their native language, Malayalam, making them rely on English equivalent labels to be seen as members of the society.
This Bill can lead to a translational and linguistic catastrophe, as it rests state validation on the backs of select community labels, largely founded in Hindi/Sanskrit-majoritarianism.
Moreover, for the transgender community in the Southern States of India, this is concerning on an additional note of the 2026 Delimitation, as it puts their stakes in state-gender representation nexus in the Rajya Sabha at a double-fold risk. So the power we have now to oppose the Bill might not be there after it is incorporated into the Act.
There is also a lesser-known community awareness that sometimes former members of the Gharana system, after experiencing power struggles and casteism, often escape the violent, unequal structure just as they escaped their natal family violence, and they all exist in our country as non-hijra transpeople, which this bill refuses to shelter. Then there are transmen and non-binary citizens who don’t have a historically recognised, socio-cultural representation, yet they survive the same natal violence, which is well documented in “Apnon ka Bohot Lagta Hai: Our Own Hurt Us the Most,” as testimonials from an open court hearing held in 2023.
The “think tanks” (if any were involved) could have deduced the amendment’s dangerous impact from the first 20 pages of this report. Furthermore, neither the members of the National Transgender Welfare Board nor their state-level committees were consulted before drafting the Bill, which is evident in its regressive stance. This Bill clearly directs towards a monopoly of religious, regional, and gender biases in legislative, policy-making, and political decisions — all of which are unconstitutional.
Considering these multitudes of historical contexts, the current Amendment Bill, if incorporated into an Act, will prove detrimental and disastrous to the quality of life, housing, healthcare, and employment of thousands of transgender people. Transgender is an umbrella term; let’s not break its spine, and let decades of hard work, care, and resilience wash down the drain.
Finally, following lazy American and British anti-trans scripts should be recognised, shamed, and retaliated against with awareness, pride, and freedom. In a country whose freedom was fought for, let the transgender people be free of colonial aftertaste, live as they choose to live, love, and be.
Anasuith is a Sahitya Akademi-published Scholar of Language and Gender, and works as an Associate Education Consultant in New Delhi. She graduated from Ashoka University with a PG Diploma in Liberal Studies and an MA in English, and writes on transgender experience, the partition, and translation.
Views expressed are the author’s own.