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Trending: Call for Papers Volume 5 | Issue 3: International Journal of Advanced Legal Research [ISSN: 2582-7340]

TRANSGENDER RIGHTS – Bhavya Gaba

ABSTRACT

“Sexual and gender minorities in contemporary in India are formed in the interstices between the neoliberal, Hindutva state, transnational discourses of liberal democracy and sexual ‘rights’, as well as cosmopolitan culture and global LGBT movements. As is evident in recent court judgments and legislation, particularly since 2014, postcolonial Hindu nationalism has created cultural conditions where forms of queer gender are permissible while queer sexuality is generally unacceptable. In recent years, significant developments have focused on transgender communities, complicating activism surrounding sexual and gender identities.  By positing some identities as state-sanctioned acceptable citizens and others as not, certain ‘transgender’ individuals are conceptualized as bearers of rights while finding other facets of their identities discriminated against and maintained as illegal. The 2014 Supreme Court “NALSA v. Union of India” judgment and The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016 passed by the Lok Sabha, alongside further judgments and legislation affecting wider LGBT communities, have kept discourses fixed on sexual and gender identities and their relationship to Indian citizenship at the forefront of discussions of gender justices and injustices in India today. Focusing on recent judicial and legislative developments, this paper examines how transgender rights are being granted in the context of the neoliberal, Hindutva state and considers which forms of transgender identity are currently being conceptualized as legitimate and authentic in such discourses, which can serve to bolster larger right-wing visions and ideologies of the nation and its citizens. It contemplates the ways in which gender ‘justices’, framed in relation to both transnational LGBT rights discourses and right-wing agendas, are conceptualized and played out on the bodies of sexual and gender minorities.”

KEYWORDS: “LGBT, transgender, citizenship, gender, neoliberal India, Hindutva”.

INTRODUCTION

“There isn’t a trans moment… it’s just a presence where there was an absence. We deserve so much more”.

The transgender persons (protection of rights) bill, 2019 was introduced in Lok Sabha on July 19, 2019 by the minster for social justice and empowerment.[1]

“The bill defines a transgender person as one whose gender does not match the gender assigned at birth. It includes trans-men and trans- women, persons with intersex variations, gender-queers, and person with socio-cultural identities, such 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.

“People who defy gender norms have existed in every cultural throughout time. However, the term “transgender” is relatively new; dating to the mid-1990s”.It is useful to think of the word “transgender” as an umbrella as an umbrella term that encompasses a number of people who live  sustainable  portions of their lives expressing an innate sense of gender other than their sex assigned at birth. This includes transsexuals, cross-dressers and people who feel like their biological sex falls to reflect their true gender. “People who do not identify as transgender can be called “cisgender”, meaning that they identify with the sex assigned at birth”.

2  “MR.Thawar Chand Gehlot”