What the 2019 Act promised The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019’s foundational principle was that a person’s gender identity belongs to them. It defined transgender persons broadly — as anyone whose gender does not match the sex assigned at birth. It included trans men, trans women, intersex persons, gender-queer people, and those belonging to socio-cultural communities such as hijras, kinners, aravanis, and jogtas. Crucially, it recognised the right to self-perceived gender identity under Section 4(2), following the Supreme Court’s landmark NALSA verdict of 2014, which had affirmed that gender identity is intrinsic to the individual and constitutionally protected. The Amendment Bill, 2026, introduced by Dr Virendra Kumar, minister of social justice and empowerment, dismantles much of this.
What the bill actually does? The amended definition of “transgender person” recognises only those with specific socio-cultural identities — kinner, hijra, aravani, jogta, eunuch. Those born with intersex variations are also categorised under this definition. It removes the right to self-identification. It introduces a medical board, headed by a chief medical officer or deputy chief medical officer, whose recommendation the district magistrate must examine before issuing a certificate of identity. If the district magistrate is not satisfied even after the board certifies a person as transgender, the individual can be subjected to further medical examination. The Bill also revises Section 18, which sets out a range of offences and penalties relating to trans persons, including provisions against forced or bonded labour, denial of access to public places, forced displacement, and physical, sexual or emotional abuse, punishable by imprisonment of six months to two years. The revised section also prescribes penalties of ten years to life imprisonment for kidnapping or abducting a person and causing grievous hurt or permanent injury with the intent of compelling them to assume a transgender identity against their will, and for compelling a person — through force, allurement, or deception — to present as a transgender person while engaging in begging or forced labour.
Are they erasing our histories?
For Grace Banu, writer and trans rights activist and a Dalit trans woman, the problem begins with language. “This Bill is completely erasing the transgender identity and recognising only a few cultural identities. In Tamil Nadu, we have official words — Thirunangai and Thirunambi. They are not using those. They are using ‘Aravani’, which comes from Hindu mythology. This shows the Hindutva ideology they are trying to impose on us,” says Grace, who has been fighting for trans rights for the past 18 years.
The shift is not merely semantic. It forces a Sanskrit-inflected, mythologically rooted vocabulary onto communities that have named themselves in Tamil, Kannada, Odia, and so on. Fred Rogers, mental health professional, trans rights activist, and a man of trans experience, reinforces this point. “The term ‘eunuch’ — people have literally stopped using that term since the 1980s. That derogatory term should never be used. That was the initial fight, just as the initial fight was not to use the term ‘Aravani’, and hence the term Thirunangai was coined by the late CM Kalaignar Karunanidhi. How did they come up with regulatory terms that did not even exist post-1980s? They are forcing their Hindu mythological ideology within trans groups.”
Grace also reads the Bill by what it omits. There are no provisions on education rights, employment rights, political participation, or reservation. There is nothing on protecting trans children from domestic violence within natal families.
How many times must someone prove who they are?
The Bill describes that it shall not include, nor shall ever have been so included, persons with different sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities. Fred describes his first response to the Bill as shock. “They have clearly removed trans men and other gender-diverse identities. They have erased assigned-female-at-birth trans and gender-diverse communities who identify as men, trans masculine, or gender queer. We are a heterogeneous group of people. We cannot be contained within those identities [listed in the amendment] alone.” What the Bill constructs in place of recognition is a room of repeated examination. “How many times should I go and prove that I am a transgender person to the authorities?” Fred asks. “Authorities themselves do not have an understanding of assigned-female-at-birth trans and gender-diverse community members. There are already a lot of abuses happening on the ground.” Dr L Ramakrishnan, public health researcher who works with SAATHII and a volunteer with the Orinam collective, has watched this dynamic from close quarters. He was part of the first expert committee appointed in 2013 by the Ministry of Social Justice to frame recommendations for trans welfare. “Even at that time, there were medical doctors from the Ministry of Health who were very upset at the notion of self-identification, and they said only they, as doctors, can determine if somebody is transgender or not, based on karyotypic analysis [an analysis of chromosomes]. So even doctors at the highest level did not understand that being intersex is different from being transgender.” That ignorance, he argues, is now being institutionalised. Shaw’s Textbook of Gynecology, a standard Indian textbook, described being transgender as a sexual abnormality in its 2023 edition. “You cannot tell a person is transgender by their body parts, hormone levels, or chromosomes. It is a misguided attempt to use biology to define gender identity. With this level of misinformation, giving medical panels the authority to certify identity will be a disaster,” shares Dr Ramakrishnan.
Does the Bill treat care as a crime?
While reading clause by clause, they have placed us in the category of people who convert children into transgender persons. It is almost like they have pictured us as child abusers and child kidnappers, comments Fred. He points to Gauri Sawant, who raised an orphaned child and appeared in a widely seen public advertisement, as one example of the care transgender communities have long extended to children abandoned by their families. The Bill’s framing inverts that history entirely. The hijra gharana system — a centuries-old structure in which a “guru” takes in community members, provides food, shelter, and sustenance — becomes legally precarious under the new provisions. According to NHRC data, 93 per cent of trans and gender-diverse community members are not formally educated. Many sustain themselves through the gharana structure. “If an adult trans woman has a conflict with her guru and uses this criminalisation clause, the guru will be sent to jail. The entire system will be criminalised. All of us will be seen as criminals,” shares Fred. Dr Ramakrishnan warns that the Bill’s language around coercion will also generate lawsuits that reach into routine medical care. “Even now, parents of adult trans people go to hospitals where the latter have had gender-affirming surgery, and file complaints, saying, ‘My child was normal, you [the hospital] converted my child into a transgender person’ With this Bill, those claims will increase. The government itself describes these surgeries as mutilation, so this bolsters such accusations.”
Global evidence, he points out, shows that gender-affirming hormone therapy and surgery reduce rates of suicidal ideation and improve mental health of individuals with gender dysphoria. Restricting formal care will not stop people from seeking it. It will only make it more dangerous. “Thirty to forty years back, surgeries happened — hot oil being poured, blades being used, people kept in basements,” Fred says. “This Bill is pushing communities back to those practices. Medical professionals who treat assigned-female-at-birth trans persons will also be treated as criminals. This causes fear. This causes panic. This causes anxiety.” What happens to people while the law is being debated? Since the Bill was tabled, listening circles have opened in Odisha, Delhi, and Bengaluru. Psychiatry students from NIMHANS have volunteered as listeners, informs Fred. He says that from the day the Bill was introduced, people across the country have not slept. At a press conference, a trans man asked him whether he should continue his medical transition. “This has put us in grave danger. Despite that danger, I told him we need to be hopeful and continue with what we are doing. If this bill receives presidential assent, communities are resilient and we will take this to the Supreme Court.”
Dr Ramakrishnan calls on individuals to write to the Ministry of Social Justice, engage with Members of Parliament, and join ongoing petitions. He asks professional medical bodies — psychiatrists, endocrinologists, surgeons, gynaecologists, urologists — to issue position statements. “This bill should be tossed out. No part of it is acceptable in any shape or form. We need to go back to the original Trans Act.” Grace is equally direct, “The government should withdraw this Bill immediately.” The right to self-identification, Fred said, is not negotiable. “It is a constitutional right. It is a matter of dignity. It is a matter of autonomy. It is a matter of privacy. It is I who should decide what my identity is.”