Who Has the Right to Define Us?: Self-Identification, State Control, and the Pedagogy of Transgender Amendment Bill 2026 Protest in India

The protests and mobilisations unfolding in 2026 around transgender rights in India cannot be understood merely as a response to a legislative amendment. They are part of a deeper political struggle over who has the authority to define identity, culture, and citizenship in India. At the centre of this debate lies the Transgender Amendment Bill (2026), introduced in the Lok Sabha in March 2026 by Dr. Virendra Kumar, Hon’ble Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment. The Bill proposes to remove the earlier recognition of self-perceived gender identity and introduce medical verification through state-appointed boards. In doing so, it fundamentally shifts the basis of recognition from individual autonomy to bureaucratic certification. For transgender movements across the country this is not simply a legal change. It is an attempt by the state to redefine the boundaries of identity itself.

To understand why this moment has generated such intense mobilisation, one must recall the constitutional and political legacy that shaped transgender rights in India. The landmark judgment (commonly known as the NALSA judgment) recognised the right of individuals to determine their own gender identity as a fundamental right under the Constitution. The National Legal Services Authority judgment transformed the legal conversation by affirming that dignity and autonomy cannot be subject to state approval. The existing Protection of Transgender Persons Act 2019, despite its limitations, attempted to incorporate this principle by allowing transgender persons to obtain a certificate of identity based on self-identification rather than medical verification. The proposed amendment attempts to dismantle this framework by requiring a medical board to verify transgender identity before a certificate is issued by the “authority” (District Magistrates), effectively transferring the power of recognition from individuals to the state.

Activists have argued that the removal of the principle of self identification represents a profound shift from a rights-based approach to a regulatory one. Several reports around the bill indicate that it omits the clause recognising “self-perceived gender identity” and narrows the definition of who transgender persons are. The revised proposed framework also suggests that people identifying outside state-recognised categories could face exclusion from legal recognition. Such language fundamentally reshapes the legal understanding of gender diversity in India. Instead of recognising transgender identity as an umbrella that includes a wide range of lived experiences, the law attempts to restrict recognition to a narrowly defined category that the state considers legitimate.

This narrowing of identity has profound consequences for India’s diverse cultural gender traditions. Trans communities in South Asia have historically existed through multiple regional and cultural formations that cannot be reduced to a single legal category. In Tamil Nadu, many trans women identify as thirunangai, a term that reflects both cultural belonging and political assertion. In parts of Pakistan and Punjab in north-western India, the term khwajasira carries historical roots within Islamic and courtly traditions. In Manipur, gender diverse feminine individuals have historically identified themselves as nupi manbi. These identities are not merely labels but complex social worlds that include ritual practices, kinship structures, and forms of community support. When the law attempts to define transgender identity through medical or biological criteria, it risks erasing these cultural formations from the sphere of legal recognition.

The politics of this erasure must also be understood through the lens of caste, class, regions and power. Feminist scholars argued that dominant narratives of Indian culture are shaped by Brahminical knowledge systems. Sharmila Rege emphasised that the experiences of Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi and other marginalised communities and their epistemic contributions are often erased when culture is defined through upper-caste frameworks of knowledge production and policy making. Her work on Dalit feminist standpoint theory insisted that knowledge must emerge from the lived experiences of the oppressed rather than from the vantage point of dominant groups. This insight is crucial when examining contemporary debates around transgender rights. The attempt to define legitimate gender identities through narrow legal categories reflects a broader ideological project that seeks to produce a culturally homogeneous nation.

Many scholars have described this project as the imagination of a Brahminical cultural nation. Within such a framework, socio-cultural diversity is tolerated only when it fits within the boundaries of dominant cultural narratives and world-makings. Gender diversity, however, has historically existed outside those boundaries. Communities such as Hijra, Jogappa, Kinnar, Aravani, Shivshakti, Thirunangai-Thirunambi, Khwajasira, Nupi Manbi-Nupa Manba, Kothi-Dhurani and adivasi communities have developed their own praxis and social systems precisely because mainstream society excluded them. These communities created alternative kinship networks, ritual roles, and livelihoods that allowed them to survive in hostile environments. The contemporary legal attempt to standardise transgender identity to biological markers risks misrecognising and dissolving the plural history into a bureaucratic definition.

To fully understand the stakes of this moment, one must also look at the role of colonialism in shaping the regulation of gender in South Asia. During British rule, gender-diverse communities were systematically criminalised under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871. Under this law, so-called “eunuchs” were placed under surveillance, denied civil rights, and treated as inherently suspicious populations. Colonial administrators classified gender-nonconforming people as threats to public morality and social order. This colonial framework institutionalised the idea that non-normative gender identities required monitoring, documentation, and control by the state. Although the Criminal Tribes Act 1871 was repealed after independence, the logic of surveillance it introduced has continued to shape governance structures in subtle and not so subtle ways.

The proposed amendment to the transgender rights law echoes aspects of this colonial legacy. By requiring medical boards and administrative certification to determine gender identity, the state once again places transgender lives under systems of verification and scrutiny. Identity becomes something that must be proven before it can be recognised. In effect, the state positions itself as the ultimate authority capable of validating or rejecting the nuanced, intersectional lived realities of individuals.

“Identity becomes something that must be proven before it can be recognised. In effect, the state positions itself as the ultimate authority capable of validating or rejecting the nuanced, intersectional lived realities of individuals.”

This is why the protests unfolding across the country can also be understood through a pedagogy of protest. Protest is not merely an act of dissent. It is a form of collective learning through which communities articulate their histories, rights, social, economic and political aspirations. Through rallies and marches, public meetings, and mass delegations, transgender activists and their allies are educating society about the meaning of autonomy, dignity, and democratic citizenship. Each protest becomes a classroom where people learn how structures of power operate and how they can be challenged.

The pedagogy of protest also emphasises the importance of collectivisation. Marginalised communities rarely achieve justice through isolated struggles. Collective organisation allows individuals to transform personal experiences of injustice into shared political demands. Student organisations, queer collectives, labour unions, gharanas and community groups all play crucial roles in building this collective power. When people gather in protest spaces, they do not merely oppose a law. They create networks of solidarity and sustenance that strengthen democratic movements.

Dr. Ambedkar’s critique of Brahminism provides an important framework to understand this process through a distinction between Brahmins as a community and Brahminism as an ideology that sustains graded inequality. According to Dr. Ambedkar, Brahminism functions by establishing rigid hierarchies that determine whose knowledge, culture, and identity are considered legitimate. When the state attempts to define gender identity through streamlining dominant sub-cultures as norms and medical certification, it participates in creating a similar logic of hierarchy within the transgender community. Some identities closer to dominant narratives like Hijra, Kinnar, Aravani, Jogti become recognisable and legitimate, while other non-brahminical identities like Thirunangai, Khawajashira, Nupi Manbi are rendered invisible or illegitimate. The proposed bill completely removes trans men, gender non binary and non conforming identities from the ambit of its recognition.

The proposed amendment bill also reflects a broader trend in governance where identity is increasingly subject to surveillance and verification. The requirement that transgender persons obtain certification through a medical board attempts to institutionalize a process in which personal identity must be validated by experts who have a pool of misunderstandings about transgender bodies before it can be recognised by the state. This process transforms identity into an administrative category rather than a lived reality. For communities that have historically been subjected to medical scrutiny and social policing, such mechanisms evoke memories of colonial and postcolonial regimes that treated gender diverse people as suspicious populations.

Transgender activists in India have long emphasised that gender identity cannot be reduced to biological or medical criteria. Many community leaders argue that the demand for self identification is fundamentally a demand for bodily autonomy. It asserts that individuals possess the right to define their own identities without being subjected to invasive examinations or bureaucratic judgement. This principle resonates with broader philosophical debates about justice and recognition. Political theorists like Nancy Fraser argue that social justice requires redistribution of resources, political representation and recognition of marginalized cultural identities. When recognition is denied or distorted, communities experience what Fraser calls status subordination. The attempt to regulate gender identity through restrictive legal definitions represents precisely such a distortion of recognition.

The current mobilisation against the amendment therefore represents more than a policy disagreement. It is a confrontation between two visions of citizenship. One vision treats citizens as autonomous individuals capable of defining their own identities and participating in democratic life. The other treats identity as something that must be certified and regulated by state institutions. For transgender communities and their allies, the protests of 2026 represent an attempt to defend the former vision.

Therefore, the politics of these protests cannot be understood without attending to the deeply intersectional realities shaping transgender lives in India. Many transgender individuals, including students, formal and informal workers who come from Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi, minority religious, linguistic and socio-cultural communities, face marginalisation that is not singular but layered. In university and work spaces, this often translates into compounded exclusions—ranging from lack of access to safe housing, healthcare, and legal documentation to everyday experiences of caste-based and gendered discrimination. When the state moves to further regulate or restrict gender recognition, it does not operate on a level playing field; instead, it intensifies vulnerabilities for those who are already positioned at multiple margins.

So it becomes critical to recognise that struggles for justice must be anchored in the multiplicities of these lived experiences and the embodied knowledge of those most affected. In the context of transgender rights, this means that legal and policy frameworks cannot be imposed in abstraction—they must emerge from, and remain accountable to, the realities of the communities they claim to serve. Any approach that fails to do so risks reproducing, rather than dismantling, existing structures of inequality.

The mobilisation of students, activists, artists, workers and community based organisations across India today demonstrates that the question of gender self identification has become a broader democratic issue. It forces society to confront a fundamental question about the nature of citizenship in India. Is citizenship defined by conformity to state-sanctioned norms, or does it include the freedom to exist outside those norms? The answer to that question will shape the future of Indian democracy. If the state succeeds in narrowing the definition of legitimate identities, it will establish a precedent that could extend far beyond transgender rights. But if citizens insist on defending the principle of self identification, they will reaffirm the democratic promise that every person has the right to define themselves.

In this sense the evolving and ongoing protests are not merely about a single law. They are part of a larger struggle over the meaning of justice, recognition, autonomy, and belonging in India. They essentially challenge the idea that culture can be defined through a single ideological lens and insist instead on recognising the plurality of identities and experiences that have always existed within the subcontinent. Hence by defending the right to self-identification, transgender rights movements are defending the democratic imagination itself.