Regressive Transgender Bill takes India back by Decades

‘I may have the privilege to assert who I am, but this law will decide who gets to exist for generations to come,’ says Akassh K. Aggarwal.

Aggarwal, a gender-fluid jewellery designer based in New Delhi, is forced to mark "M" on legal documents. They have been an active part of the LGBTQ community for 20 years, educating people about rights and the multifaceted nature of gender identities. 

On March 30 this year, India passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act. The passage of the law was quick: in less than a week, it was passed in both houses of the parliament and signed into law by the President of India, Droupadi Murmu.

The speed itself was unusual in legislative terms. The residents and citizens of the country were quick to react. Advocates, feminists, and other rights groups publicly raised concerns, urging that the law be reconsidered, and many protested across the country, especially in the national capital, New Delhi.

Why is the law being criticised?

India’s 2019 transgender rights law, despite criticism, created a legal process through which individuals could seek recognition of their gender identity via certification by a District Magistrate. The law was shaped in part by the Supreme Court’s landmark 2014 NALSA judgment, which recognised gender identity as a matter of dignity, autonomy and self-determination.

The 2026 amendment, however, has moved in the opposite direction. It requires individuals to obtain certification from medical boards and government authorities at the district level. It limits the definition of a transgender person to certain historically recognised communities like Hijras, Jogtis, and Kinnars, socio-cultural groups in South Asia, who are often described as eunuch people practicing a kinship system known as the guru–chela structure, with longstanding cultural roles in society. They gained prominence from the Mughal Era where they were neither strictly male nor female and were often believed to hold the power to confer blessings, along with intersex people and those who have experienced forced mutilation or castration. The law risks denying legal recognition to people who are trans men, trans women, gender-fluid, non-binary, gender non-conforming, or queer, curbing access to full citizenship rights.

For queer rights activist Reena Rai, who has spent years working with transgender communities, the impact is already visible. ‘I feel that this amendment has degraded what was earlier created to uplift the community,’ she told FairPlanet. ‘I have seen the change. People had begun to gain confidence; they were studying, working, and building their own lives.’

Rai is the founder of MissTransQueen India, the first beauty pageant created for trans women in the country. That confidence, she suggests, came from the possibility of being recognised on one’s own terms. ‘Certification can only be of the body, not of the soul,’ she added. It is a simple distinction that cuts to the heart of the issue. People’s lived experience of gender identity does not always match what can be seen by doctors or confirmed by official documents. ‘Many people do not want to belong to any group,’ Rai pointed out.

For Aggarwal, the concern is less about where they personally stand and more about what lies ahead. ‘My whole life has been about resisting the idea that there are only two genders. India has always been diverse in language, culture and identity. But this feels like an attempt to standardise something that was never uniform to begin with,’ they told FairPlanet.

The law requires that one's legal identity match a medically verified body, adding yet another burden to a community already navigating structural exclusion.

Death of diversity in India

‘There is nothing else I expected from this government,’ Aggarwal says.

Despite being one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, Aggarwal says they are frustrated with the  government's decision in recent years.

‘India isn’t the most diverse country in the world anymore, it is the most phobic to diversity right now, whether it is religion, caste, language, culture… everything. We are becoming one nation, one language… a very majoritarian society. And when that happens, this is what it looks like.’

According to the 2011 Census, nearly half a million people were recorded under the “other” gender category, an already limited estimate widely believed to undercount India’s transgender population. No updated nationwide figures are currently available, as the country is preparing to conduct its first Census since 2011 in April this year. 

The concern is both institutional as well as social. As definitions tighten and verification becomes central, identity risks moving from a personal reality to something publicly contestable. Aggarwal says the power does not reside in the hands of doctors or medical experts anymore. ‘It will take just one incident, like a mob saying, ‘he is a boy, open his clothes and check.’ That’s where this is going.’

Fearing the increase in mental health issues

Beyond the legal and recognition issues, the amendment is also taking a toll on the mental health of queer communities that have long faced social hostility and have had to fight for their most basic rights. For many, the law has created a renewed sense of fear and insecurity about their well-being.

‘Anybody can say I am influencing people just because I exist as myself today, that word is very dangerous,’ Aggarwal fears. ‘It’s scarier for those who don’t yet have clarity. They will be the easiest to silence.’

In a 2025 research conducted in the southern city of Chennai, almost 70 per cent of respondents had one or more mental health symptoms like mood swings, sleep disturbances, bouts of sadness, loss of interest, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts in the past year. According to another study, four major themes were identified as sources of distress for the transgender community: healthcare barriers, predisposing factors to psychological distress, mental health issues, and coping strategies.

‘I think the fear is that I might get tired of fighting and then what will happen to the ones after me, if I stop saying let us live?’ says Aggarwal.

Questioning the world’s largest democracy

The law was passed despite objections from opposition lawmakers, a Supreme Court-appointed expert committee that urged its withdrawal, and protests across cities. Even an Indian court noted that "selfhood is not a matter of concession, it is a matter of right.”

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 retained elements of this principle by allowing for self-declaration within an administrative process.

‘Seen in its full constitutional context, the amendment is prima facie inconsistent with the NALSA judgment and fails the tests under Articles 14, 19, and 21,’ Jai Wadhwa, an advocate practicing in the Supreme Court of India, told FairPlanet.

‘Most significantly, it reintroduces state control over identity, something the top court had explicitly rejected. In effect, the law reverses the settled principle that gender identity must be self-determined, not state-regulated,’ Wadhwa adds. As a result, legal recognition of gender identity now relies on institutional verification rather than self-identification, raising concerns about the law’s alignment with prior constitutional interpretations.

When a law that reshapes the rights of a marginalised community moves forward in the face of such visible dissent, it forces a closer look at how democratic systems absorb or bypass disagreement.

As Rai puts it: ‘Aap ka gender bhi ab ek political decision ho gaya hai’- even one’s gender has now become a political decision.