Just as sex work is often laden with stigma, kink is taboo and deemed to be a product of sexual deviancy. Both communities are thus severely underrepresented in the rights landscape due to the moral judgment endured by them.
On the weekend of September 13-15, 2024, Kinky Collective (a community-funded group raising awareness around kink in India) organised the second edition of Kink Con: A National Convention in Celebration of Kink, Consent, Queerness and Acceptance.
The first panel was a Report launch titled “Conversations on Kink and Sex Work: Consent, Desire, and Power.” The Report was a summary of an Institute (workshop) organised by Kinky Collective (KC), and VAMP (Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad, a collective of cis and trans women engaged in sex work in Maharashtra and North Karnataka) on 19th of October 2022 at Sangli, Maharashtra. The Institute facilitated a conversation around kink and sex work, and held space for questions, experiences and challenges faced by persons engaged in sex work. At the outset, the purpose of the Institute was to build alliances between the shared experiences of the two communities, and to debunk the idea that kink was an urban, western, capitalist phenomena since the sex workers predominantly experienced requests for kink from clients from villages and small towns.
At the report launch, two participants of the institute were present from SANGRAM, a collective of empowerment groups for sex workers, MSM and transgender individuals. They were Meena Seshu (founder of SANGRAM), and Aarthi Pai (director). Seshu and Pai served as the Marathi translators and intermediaries between members of KC, who predominantly spoke in a mix of English and Hindi. Members of KC shared that it was an interesting experience to find a shared vocabulary to articulate the experience of kink among the participants. The usual English vocabulary could not accurately capture the experiences, feelings and power dynamics of the participants. For example, ‘domination’ in the kink context translates plainly to Hindi as ‘havi,’ which bears a negative connotation of being oppressive or overbearing, thus, lacking the kink essentials of pleasure and consent. The word ‘satta’ ordinarily translates to ‘power,’ and was deemed to be a more suitable representation of the kink dynamic. In other instances, no attempt was made to create a word – instead, space was held to capture and translate the complexity of experience.
The workshop was an important space to build alliances between sexualities that are experienced outside ‘normalcy.’ Sex work is often categorised under the misnomer of ‘trafficking’ and ‘prostitution’ which has invited heavy-handed state surveillance, rescue, and rehabilitation.
Some of the slogans of the sex workers’ movement such as ‘Sex Work is Decent Work,’ ‘Rehabilitation is Redundant, Recognise Rights,’ and ‘Save us from Saviours,’ capture the battle of the community. These slogans were written on red umbrellas which were arranged on the backdrop of the report launch. The hetero-patriarchal Indian state also struggles to accept sex as a commercial service, an act that occurs outside the familial, procreational goal. Sex work is thus often laden with stigma.
Similarly, kink is taboo and deemed to be a product of sexual deviancy, and thus, remains far removed from any mainstream sexual rights activism.
It is notable that both these communities are severely underrepresented in the rights landscape due to the moral judgment endured by them. The report was thus wrapped in red and black ribbon to signify the coming together of the colours of sex work and kink respectively. Seshu and Pai argued for building more underground allied networks for sex workers and kinksters rather than waiting on the approval of the state, whose intentions are not to prioritize the needs and voices of these communities.
Another meeting point between sex work and kink is the clear negotiation of sexual acts, and therefore, the priority placed on consent as a central tenet to their relationalities. Seshu and Pai shared that their interaction with members of VAMP and SANGRAM revealed that they had very advanced approaches to consent, identity, and relationships due to their forthright and non-judgmental articulations with clients. Like the kink community, sex workers self-regulate around violations of consent, such as to end sessions when pain thresholds were crossed. When clients were aggressive, sex workers raised an alarm in their chambers, for example, some transgender participants shared the strategy of clapping loudly to call out for help. Similarly, in the kink space, munches (safe, social spaces) often serve as a space for raising concerns of consent violations in the community. It is important to note that due to their stigmatised nature, these communities don’t usually rely upon police support in fear of harassment and threat to their livelihoods and identities.
Seshu and Pai shared that one of the needs to have an Institute with KC arose due to the sense of intrigue and curiosity sex workers felt when clients would approach them with kinky desires and fetishes to offer larger than usual sums of money. They shared on behalf of the sex workers that because they were the primary act in the exchange, and penetrative sex was ancillary; for instance, one client only wished to oil, braid and smell the hair of a sex worker.
Members of KC shared that the affective atmosphere of the Institute was replete with laughter and teasing, and the reciprocity of sharing experiences without judgment, shame, but rather, curiosity and erotic fulfillment. This cheeky and arousing atmosphere among both communities foregrounded that their preoccupation with activism sidelined a discussion of their personal desires in daily dialogues. Seshu and Pai shared that while sex workers were completely non-judgmental about their clients’ kinky desires, most were not able to connect yet with kink due to their everyday experience of violence. KC shared that they would organise a joint workshop with SANGRAM in the future to create an avenue for sex workers to safely explore their own desires too. Some trans women sex workers shared that they had enjoyed spanking and hitting while engaging with kinky clients.
The kink terminology of ‘aftercare’ (acts of intimacy to wind down after the intensity experienced) also seemed relevant where kink and pleasure were aligned, especially when there were consent accidents/ incidents of excess; clients would offer cajoling, massages, and thereby support in the recovery.
Seshu and Pai also shared that the desires and pleasures of sex workers too, were ‘not mainstream,’ for instance, they would prioritise pleasure over physical appearance of clients. Similarly, in kink exchanges, identity and orientation often has very little to do with the exchange of kink, pleasure is the central endeavor. For instance, a gay male submissive and a lesbian female dominant both might engage in a play of spanking and flogging and both give and receive optimum pleasure in the act without being sexual
The convergences between kink and sex work thus reveals the importance of bringing together sexually marginalised groups to engage in productive and joyous camaraderie. As an audience member at Kink Con 2024, it was powerful to witness the importance of a safe space for members of the kink community to come together. Community provided by platforms like VAMP and SANGRAM have been critical for the empowerment of sex workers. The kink community urgently needs the strength of each other and that of allies to battle with silence and stigma that surrounds their desires. Kinky Collective’s efforts to create a platform like Kink Con provided an affirmative space around consent and negotiation, through the values of safety and communitarian care, in an atmosphere of joy, erotic energy and unabashed pride.
Katyayani Sinha is a PhD student at Melbourne Law School. Her project examines negotiation, informal contracts, and dispute resolution in the kink and polyamory communities in India.
An investigation through RTIs, first-hand narratives from various transgender welfare board members, trans/queer rights activists, and judicial observations, reveals compelling reasons for India to shift away from nominal representations, and demand transformative reforms.
These margins remind us of the “Lakshman Rekha” or circle of protection, and in turn of the predicament of Sita, in the Hindu mythological epic Ramayana. Sita was asked to trust the protection of men against the violence of other men. But for transgender persons in India, neither side of the margin seems to offer a dignified life.
On one hand, 19 states and Union Territories across India still don’t have a welfare body for transgender persons, as legally stipulated. Of these, four are UTs controlled by the Union government, and eight states have the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the party in power or as an alliance partner in the government. The 17 states and UTs that do have a welfare board for trans persons are mostly running rudderless without a policy framework, compliance mechanism, or any power.
These non-transparent, non-accountable and in some cases, non-existent bureaucratic bodies are turning into phantom forums that act as a countermeasure to diffuse people’s movements that rise to hold governments accountable to their legislative promises.
On the other hand, only 5.6% of transgender persons (as per the 2011 census) in the country have applied for a transgender identity card — revealing the inaccessible nature of identity card application and the futility of such a document for a marginalised transgender person when the state doesn’t actually provide rights or welfare measures that benefit them.
This investigation through RTIs, first-hand narratives from various transgender welfare board members, trans/queer rights activists, and judicial observations, reveals compelling reasons for India to shift away from its tendency to celebrate nominal representations, and demand transformative reforms to right the historical wrongs carried out against transgender and gender non-conforming persons.
Boards exist, but only on paper
Rule 10(1) of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2020 which states, “The appropriate Government shall constitute a welfare board for the transgender persons for the purpose of protecting their rights and interests of, and facilitating access to schemes and welfare measures framed by the Government.”.
Presently, 17 states and Union Territories have notified a Transgender Welfare/Justice/Development board under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 and rules 2020. This includes Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
We took a closer look at these notified boards, and this is what we found.
The majority of the states which have notified a transgender welfare board have held less than one meeting per year since their creation.
The functioning of welfare boards in Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Manipur and Tripura remains undisclosed till today.
Gujarat had notified a transgender welfare board in 2019 in collaboration with UNAIDS. According to its members, the board did not hold a single meeting until October 14 this year – five years after the board was formed.
Of the remaining 12 states and UTs, only four held meetings in 2023 – namely, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Chandigarh, and Maharashtra.
In Mizoram not a single meeting of the board has been convened since its creation.
In states like Manipur, since 2017, the welfare board remains practically defunct. Last year, the Governor of Manipur reconstituted the 17-member board with only one transgender woman and one transgender man represented in the body.
This year, Punjab and Haryana high court in a PIL filed by Yashika, a transgender student, observed that the Chandigarh Transgender Welfare Board has been acting as a cosmetic feature for the government and did not meet sufficiently to discharge its duties.
The Amicus Curiae (an impartial adviser to a court of law), appointed by the Kerala high court in Kabeer v. State of Kerala 2021, noted in their report that the Kerala State Transgender Justice Board had not convened a single meeting in the reported year.
The National Council for Transgender Persons constituted under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has just held two meetings in the last four years since its creation.
State/UT
Year of Board Formation
Total Number of Meetings
Meetings held in 2023
Average Meetings (per year)
Tamil Nadu
2008
28*
3
1.8*
Kerala
2015
6
1
0.7
West Bengal
2015
7*
0
0.8*
Bihar
2015
3
0
0.3
Rajasthan
2016
3
0
0.4
Manipur
2016
2*
0
0.3*
Chandigarh
2017
11
3
1.6
Gujarat
2019
1
0
0.2
Assam
2020
3
0
0.8
Maharashtra
2020
3
3
0.8
Uttar Pradesh
2021
2
0
0.7
Mizoram
2021
0
0
0
Telangana
2022
1
0
0.5
Meghalaya
2023
7
0
7
Centre
2020
2
0
0.5
Chattisgarh
2017
No Data
No Data
No Data
Tripura
2021
No Data
No Data
No Data
Jammu & Kashmir
2022
No Data
No Data
No Data
Source: RTI(s) and board members.
Note: Approximate numbers of meetings estimated from statements given by various welfare board members.
Only five states have developed a state-level transgender policy, namely, Kerala, Karnataka, Assam, Odisha, and Maharashtra. Assam is the only state in India which has extended quasi-judicial powers to its welfare board. It is a form of delegated authority to ensure compliance with its recommendations under various provisions of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019.
These boards are also not immune to political abandonment when there is a change of ruling party in the state. For instance, the Maharashtra transgender welfare board was a brainchild of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – an alliance of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav faction), NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) and Congress – and was allocated Rs 5 crore in the 2020 Maharashtra Budget. In 2022, when the MVA government was dislodged from power by the Mahayuti alliance of the BJP, Shiv Sena (Shinde faction), and NCP (Ajit Pawar faction), no subsequent budgetary allocations were made for the welfare of transgender communities in the following fiscal years.
The trips and traps of representation
In 2014, in the NALSA vs Union of India case, the Supreme Court of India accorded constitutional recognition to a transgender person’s right to self identity their gender, and judicial directives were given to appropriate governments (Union and state) to assist their lives.
In 2019, the parliament passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act (TG Act), which envisioned a two-pronged approach to reach out to transgender persons – an inclusive approach by formulating a transgender identity card to ‘quantify’ what transness means for the state; and a convergent approach by constituting a nodal body (the welfare board) as a forum comprising of transgender persons and bureaucrats from various in-line ministries/departments at the Union or state level. This nodal body has to protect the rights and interests of transgender persons and facilitate their access to schemes and welfare measures framed by the government.
Both these approaches are riddled with flaws.
Representation of transgender persons in the governance apparatus constructed around the TG Act has two issues – the trip and the trap.
First, the government of India, like British colonisers, lumped various indigenous and gender non-conforming identities under the single label of “transgender”. This oversimplifies the diversity of gender-nonconforming experiences and identities in India.
In states where boards do exist, it is trans women who have had gender affirmation surgeries who are represented most. Trans men, non-binary persons, and intersex persons barely get a seat.
Ani Dutta, a professor at the University of Iowa, in their research, notes the tendency of the Indian bureaucracy to create complicated regulatory rules around judiciary ordained recognitions. In the context of India’s stark socio-economic disparity, only those with resources, community networks, and relative social privilege can navigate these bureaucratic processes to get a transgender identity card.
There are intricate social divisions within the transgender communities. Trans women who have undergone gender affirmation surgeries enjoy a higher social status than trans women who have not undergone nirvana (ritualised castration) or gender affirmation surgeries. This understanding of gender “authenticity” is implicitly replicated in the TG Act Rules 2020. Section 6 and Section 7 create two class groups – Section 6 enables someone to self-identify as transgender but Section 7 adds a condition to the principle of self-identification that requires medical intervention to identify as a man or woman. This classification undermines the spectrum of gender fluidity endemic to India.
Trans women who can undergo nirvana or gender affirmation surgeries and identify as “female” are the most dominant, visible and debated narrative of India’s story on the principle of self-identification. The predicament of kothis (a term used for trans women who have not had gender affirmation surgeries, and for gay or bisexual men in some contexts), trans men, intersex persons and genderqueer persons, remain sidelined. It is why the possession of a government-issued transgender ID card under its current provisions is becoming a “representation (power) trip” for some on the margins of our society.
For instance, in 2023, when the Hyderabad North Zone police arrested 19 transgender women, “the community mobilisation to resist these illegal arrests was impeded by discussions on how ‘men dress up as a transgender persons’ to run begging rackets in the city and bring a bad name to the trans community,” a genderqueer activist (who prefers to be unnamed) privy to discussions on a trans-queer forum says. In the backdrop of this “authentic us versus imposter them” politics, 19 gender nonconforming persons were stripped naked by the police to examine their genitals.
There is also little diversity in who gets represented in welfare boards, where they are constituted. Kanmani Ray, a lawyer and a transgender woman, says, “Not all transgender persons live in gharanas/jamaats, not all transgender persons can separate from their natal families, forms of violence experienced by transgender persons are different. What we see in welfare boards is that intersex persons and trans men are sidelined in discussions. Like any other marginalised social group, we face intra-community violence and unequal power relations.” The bureaucracy of welfare boards ignores these realities.
The fact that these boards have transgender persons in them is a “representation trap” – they offer public visibility to marginalised persons but also make them appear politically complicit in the government’s apathy. While trans and gender non-conforming persons look up to the members of the welfare boards to effect change in their material conditions, the representatives themselves have little power to change policy – or even call meetings, as is evidenced by the number of sittings of these boards in most states and UTs.
In 2023, when a group of transgender members of the Telangana Transgender Welfare Board wrote to the Additional Director General of Telangana Police seeking action against a gang of men who were routinely robbing and assaulting trans persons across Hyderabad. The police department ignored these petitions, according to activists. The members of the welfare board could do little as the body has no quasi judicial powers to investigate the issue or take any action — unlike the national and state human rights commissions, women’s commissions, and child welfare bodies.
Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli, an RTI activist, says, “My nominated tenure to the transgender welfare board of my state started and ended without the nodal ministry or its officials outlining the policy framework and power of the board.”
The truth about trans ‘rights’
In the 10 years since the NALSA judgement, the needle of social equality hasn’t moved in the “rights” direction in India. This truth is most apparent in the returning figure of a trans person to the judicial corridors to plead for promised but undelivered rights.
Sangama and Nisha Gulur, on behalf of Jeeva – an organisation working for the upliftment of transgender persons – had to file a PIL with the Karnataka high court in 2020 for horizontal reservation for trans persons in public employment opportunities. In 2021, Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli and others in Telangana had to knock on the Telangana High Court’s doors for life-supporting amenities during COVID-19. Kantaro Kondagiri had to petition the Orissa high court in 2022 to seek a trans woman’s right to inherit the pension of a parent, which in law is made available to the unmarried daughters of any deceased pensioner. Zena Sagar, a Dalit transgender student of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute had to move to the Calcutta high court in 2023 after being denied hostel accommodation because of her gender identity.
Transgender persons struggling for livelihood and resources are still viewed as a public nuisance by the state. Earlier this year, the Pune police commissioner Amitesh Kumar imposed a begging ban against transgender persons in the city – with absolute disregard to the 2021 advisory circular issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs which said that obstructing a transgender person’s access to public space would be a violation of section 18 of the TG Act.
Contrary to PM Modi’s resounding claim that the government has given transgender persons an identity, the latest data from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment confirm only 5.6% of the enumerated transgender persons in 2011 have applied for a TG identity card. Why would trans and gender non-conforming persons enlist themselves on the state’s registers without the Indian government proactively working on various dimensions of citizenship like equal and dignified access to family, property, housing, healthcare, social security, education, and employment?
A cursory look at the Union government’s budget allocations and actual expenditure on trans welfare explains why transgender persons continue to exist on the margins in a welfare-centric polity like India. In 2021-22, the government allocated Rs 20 crore for the Comprehensive Rehabilitation for Welfare of Transgender Persons – however, only Rs 1.91 crore was spent. In 2022-23, the allocation increased to Rs 30 crore, but the actual amount spent was only 0.4% of this allocation – a paltry Rs 12 lakh.
Budget Head
Fiscal Year
Budget Estimates
Revised Budget
Actual Expenditure
Utilisation Rate
Comprehensive Rehabilitation for Welfare of Transgender Persons
FY 2021-22
20 Cr
20 Cr
1.91 Cr
9.55%
FY 2022-23
30 Cr
30 Cr
0.12 Cr
0.40%
FY 2023-24
52.91 Cr
22.82 Cr
TBD
TBD
Source: Union Budget 2024.
During the last interim budget presentation, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman claimed that providing more people access to existing government welfare schemes is the welfare story of PM Modi’s ten years of governance. However, the exclusion of transgender persons from the Gender Budget Statement and the systematic refusal to mainstream their access to government programmes and schemes beyond the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment shred these high claims.
Raghavi, a lawyer and trans rights activist from Delhi, says, “The insufficient investment in gender-inclusive infrastructure across public institutions and scattered sensitisation programmes for various in-line departments discredits the government’s much-touted saturation-approach.”
Reform or reimagine?
The reform sought by trans activists we spoke to has three urgent demands – power redistribution, inclusive representation and decentralisation.
Grace Banu, a Dalit trans rights activist from Tamil Nadu, points out a fundamental flaw in the design of transgender welfare boards: “The majority of decision-makers on the boards are cisgender men or women, the staff aiding the functioning of these boards are cisgender. Transgender persons are a nominated minority in the composition of a board constituted in their name.”
Vyjayanti adds, “The design of the transgender welfare board does not meaningfully redistribute power to transgender persons, who hold representation on these boards. The power to convene a meeting rests with a bureaucrat, the power to publish the deliberations of these meetings remains with the nodal ministry/department, and the implementation of actionable points remains dependent on the goodwill of various department officials.”
The nominal representation of trans persons on the board without any power makes them a rubber duck to face pushback from trans-queer communities on the government’s inaction. “We get a seat, not say,” remarks Vyjayanti.
Rituparna Neog, associate vice chairperson of the Assam Transgender Welfare Board, explains the material limitations of these boards. “The lack of annual allocation of funds for the functioning of the welfare board impairs the ability of its transgender members to intervene in any emergency situations related to the community.” The notion that social work is a self-financed undertaking restricts the participation of working-class and unemployed community organisers in these nominated roles. No welfare board in India offers its members a nominal salary to carry out the board’s work. Except for Tamil Nadu, various welfare boards in India do not even provide travel allowance to their transgender members to attend board meetings.
Grace, Vyjayanti, and Rituparna agree on the fact that most welfare boards do not have prescribed policy guidelines for their nominated members to push for an actionable agenda, nor are these bodies accorded quasi-judicial authority like various human or women’s rights commissions to enforce compliance. These boards need to be converted into statutory independent commissions with legal permits to oversee compliance with the government agenda, and take cognisance of human rights violations being committed against trans and gender non-conforming persons within their administrative jurisdiction.
Regarding inclusive representation, Arun Karthik (he/him), a member of the Tamil Nadu Transgender Welfare Board and a trans man, explains the structural inequality within these representative boards. “Currently in Tamil Nadu whenever a trans man wants to report an incident in the TG welfare board meetings, other members (bureaucrats and trans women) do not provide them equal space or attention,” he says.
He adds, “The schemes and benefits being provided by the Tamil Nadu government are disproportionately offered to trans women. Till 2023, the Government Orders (GO) released by the Social Welfare Department of Tamil Nadu (the nodal body for the Transgender Welfare Board) used to only mention the term Thirunangai (the Tamil word for transgender women) as beneficiaries. It was a term popularised by the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, the late K. Karunanidhi, for trans women in the state. The government officials repeatedly reject the applications of trans men under these schemes as these circulars do not mention the term ‘trans man’ or thirunambi (nambi denotes man).” It is a telling reality of the popular imagination that remains hinged on the idea that transgender means trans women.
Further, there is a need for decentralisation. Tashi Choedup, a trans-feminine Buddhist monastic and a nominated member of the Telangana Transgender Welfare Board, suggests, “The government needs to decentralise its work of actualising trans rights. Local transgender persons, with a more situated awareness of local politics and conditions, need to be involved and employed at a district level to enable the transfer of welfare schemes and opportunities to transgender constituents.”
Don Hasar, a trans/queer rights activist and community organiser from Himachal Pradesh says, “I live in a mountainous terrain, where even to beg the government to enact the provisions of the TG Act or access the TG ID card, is a time-consuming and expensive ordeal. One has to travel eight hours from the mountains to the valley to furnish a representation to the designated department and further wait for a bureaucrat to entertain our query. For a lot of unemployed and working-class trans persons, it is not feasible in terms of time, money and access.”
Disha Pinki Sheikh, the state spokesperson of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and a trans woman, says problems need to be seen within their context. “Transgender persons living in Mumbai have different issues from the ones in Pune or Vidarbha. Our capacity to collectivise as a bargaining group also differs. For a community which has been historically discriminated against, there is a greater need for local participation than nominal representation. The government needs to involve transgender persons in different regions of the state to make and implement a policy in a participatory sense,” she says.
“For instance, when the government announces an entrepreneurial or start-up scheme at a state level and does not notify its eligibility rules and application process to its various districts, a transgender person from a rural area in Nagpur would not have the capacity to follow up on the opportunity like a person who has the support of CBOs/NGOs concentrated in cities,” Disha explains, “In urban localities, there is greater collaboration between different civil society actors – human rights groups, lawyer networks, and media professionals. Hence, the work of holding the government accountable is shared. In less affluent regions, it is a lonely battle. The transgender applicant has to carry the burden of informing the local government offices of such a scheme, and then await its implementation at a district level. If it does not come through, they must again carry the burden of summoning the appropriate government to a court of law or give up opportunities in silence.”
There is a constitutional urgency to these demands. However, the entire framework of transgender welfare boards carries one caveat with no easy answers. The welfare boards – which presently act in an advisory capacity – have transgender persons as members who are appointed by the government, rather than elected through any democratic means or communitarian consensus. Thus, it becomes difficult to ascertain whether one privileges the government’s will which appoints them, or the community with which they share their identity.
Moreover, the consensus across the political aisle on restricting transgender and gender non-conforming persons’ direct access to the power of law-making and limiting it to welfare boards is symptomatic of India’s pervasive transphobia and the reluctance of various governments and political parties to invest in changing prevailing social attitudes among its population.
Vaivab Das is a PhD student at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California Berkeley. They research at intersections of gender, sexuality and law.
This story was produced as part of the InQlusive Newsrooms Media Fellowship 2023. InQlusive Newsrooms is a collaborative project by The News Minute and Queer Chennai Chronicles, supported by Google News Initiative, and is working on making the Indian media more LGBTQIA+ sensitive.
I want to talk about the experience of the law through a lens of queerness, as someone who has been a part of it, not just as a lawyer but also as an activist.
The following is an excerpt from Rohin Bhatt’s book The Urban Elite v. Union of India: The Unfulfilled Constitutional Promise of Marriage (In)Equality, published by Penguin.
It was a cold December night in 2017. As a nineteen-year-old, I was enthralled by the promise of Grindr, a gay dating app that I had just stumbled upon. Until I discovered Grindr, the world was a lonely place. I was a nerdy queer child who was bullied and would often look up the word ‘homosexual’ in the yellowed pages of my mother’s copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Eventually, I ended up going on one of the first dates with a young doctor. After warming ourselves with several cups of coffee on a chilly winter night in Ahmedabad, we were driving around the city. I do not remember what we were talking animatedly about, but one thing was certain – there was sexual tension, the kind that makes your heart beat so loud that the other person can almost hear it. I think they felt it too, for they leaned in and kissed me at a traffic signal. I blushed. Immediately, there was the sound of a police baton on the window.
*thud* *thud* *thud*
I froze.
‘The Urban Elite v. Union of India: The Unfulfilled Constitutional Promise of Marriage (In)Equality’, Rohin Bhatt, Penguin, 2024.
A policeman barked at us in Gujarati, ‘Bahar nikdo gaadi ma thi’ (Get out of the car.) He told us he would call our parents (although we were both adults) and that he was, amongst other things, arresting us under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. The reason? I was kissing another man.
Having gone through a fair bit of law school by then, I knew that homosexuality was a crime in India, and that I was an unconvicted felon. A conviction under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which criminalized homosexuality, carried a term of life imprisonment, or imprisonment upto ten years and also a fine. Not to mention the consequences of a criminal trial, and the social and moral censure that would undoubtedly follow. I had no idea what to do. I froze. In that moment, my mind raced. I was not out to my parents. To my friends. To the world at large. Hell, if I am being honest, I was not out to myself.
What was going to happen? Would I be thrown out of the house? Would the world accept me for who I am? My mind was racing, and my heart was beating at a gazillion beats per second. After much cajoling, and the person I was with paying a hefty bribe (he refused to let me chip in), the policeman let us go. As I write about that incident today, my hands quiver and my throat goes dry. What happened then was part of the reason I did not come out well until I knew that I had perhaps ‘made up’ to the world at large for my sexuality. Admission into a master’s degree at Harvard Medical School sure ought to compensate for my queerness, right? What I lacked in supposed normativity when it came to sexuality, I ‘fixed’ by checking another box. I did not have the guts to come out to anyone in person except for my sister and a friend. I mostly did it over text messages. Everyone else came to know about it through an Instagram post on 28 March 2021, a few weeks after I got into Harvard.
As a queer person who is a lawyer, this book is animated by lucid rage at having almost been arrested for merely loving, and an abiding disgruntlement with the Supreme Court for its judgment in Suresh Kumar Koushal and Another v. Naz Foundation & Ors (2013) which recriminalized homosexuality after the Delhi High Court, in Naz Foundation v. Govt of NCT of Delhi (2009), had decriminalized it, and now in Supriyo Chakraborty v. Union of India in October 2023, where the Supreme Court has held that there is no fundamental right to marry, and that the right to marry is a statutory right which queer persons do not have. For me, as it is for other queer persons, the meandering legal path that the queer movement takes, despite all of its internal fractures and divisions, is personal, and the personal is legal. This lattice of this book will mesh the personal with the legal. While it is primarily about the marriage equality litigation, it will intertwine with it my lived experiences of queer joy and euphoria, of homophobia, and of the way I have found myself in the midst of the queer rights movement in India.
You do not have to be queer or a lawyer to read this book. But it is about queerness and the law. I want to talk about the experience of the law through a lens of queerness, as someone who has been a part of it, not just as a lawyer but also as an activist. This book also maps my short journey as a lawyer. Usually, one does not write such a book until one is either bald and wrinkled, or dying. Well, perhaps this is what it means to be queer. You break norms. You do not adhere to the rules and boundaries which are set for you. Deviants. That is what we were called for the longest of times. Perhaps it is time to reclaim the word.
The book is not a legal commentary, nor is it a hyper-technical book on the law. It is not going to be too legalistic but is aimed at breaking down complex court-speak in a way that is accessible to the people who may have not studied the law.
A lot of people were following the marriage equality case which came to be called Supriyo Chakraborty v. Union of India (after the lead petition), along with connected matters where nearly fifty non-heterosexual couples were asking for the right to marry. Since this was one of the first cases that had garnered wide public interest and was being live-streamed, I was asked a number of questions: Was approaching the Supreme Court when the cases were pending before the high court the right move? Why were we seeking a declaration?
What is a declaration? What does a mandamus mean? What is constitutional comity? What is the difference between reading down and reading up a provision? But perhaps, the most persistent question was: Will we win? Fascinatingly, whenever the last question was asked, ‘we’ was used not just by queer people but also by allies. Since the live-streaming had taken the case into living rooms, a lot of people, gay or straight, felt as if they had a personal stake in it.
Rohin Bhatt is a Supreme Court advocate and has a Master of Bioethics from the Harvard Medical School. He is a member of the Lawyer’s Collective and co-founder of the Indian Bioethics Project.
The law that received royal assent this week also granted same-sex couples adoption rights.
New Delhi: Thailand on Tuesday (September 24) legalised same-sex marriage, making it the third in South Asia and the first in Southeast Asia to recognise marriage equality.
Nepal and Taiwan are the only two other South Asian countries who allow same-sex couples to marry.
Thailand’s king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, gave royal assent to the law that was passed by the parliament in June. According to reports, it will take 120 days for the law to come into effect, implying that the first weddings would take place in early 2025.
While Thailand is known for being one of the most LGBTQ-friendly countries in Asia, the Buddhist-majority state still holds traditional and conservative values with people from the community still facing some barriers and discrimination.
However, opinion polls reported in Thai media have shown overwhelming public support for equal marriage.
More than 30 countries around the world have recognised marriage equality since the Netherlands became the first to do so in 2001.
More than 30 countries around the world have legalised marriage for all since the Netherlands became the first to celebrate same-sex unions in 2001.
A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud had deferred the matter to the parliament last year, saying that it was for the legislature to create a framework for queer couples.
First and foremost, we want fair trial and stringent punishment of those who committed the crime and exemplary punishment for those who tried to cover it up.
The ‘Reclaim the Night’ movement, that started in Kolkata, was primarily triggered by a comment casually made by the former principal of the R.G.Kar Medical College and Hospital at Kolkata. After the heinous rape and murder of a doctor and PG student of the same medical college, he indicated that it was ‘irresponsible’ of the victim ‘to have been alone at night’.
On August 14, after 11 at night, under the banner of ‘Rat dakhol karo’ or ‘Reclaim the Night,’ we found women gig workers walking hand in hand with nurses, teachers with homemakers, ASHA workers were walking with doctors, transwomen with cis women. The convenors of the movement gave a second call for a Women-Trans-Queer March. Four to five thousand women, trans and queer people participated on August 17. People defied the police and RAF, who were reluctant to let them carry on the rally, and made it to R.G.Kar.
This proves that the spirit is still high and people are prepared to take part in a continuous gender justice movement that carries no party banner and is not designed or led by male leadership.
Having said that, the talking point now should be whether the movement aims at reacting to one singular incident ofgender injustice through marches, rallies and sit-in protests alone, or if it has greater vision?
Alapan Bandyopadhyay, the chief secretary of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in his statement dated August 17 expressed the government’s desire to ensure ‘women’s safety’ through 17 measures. A government order regarding the same was issued on the very next day.
It has skipped no one’s attention that the chief opposition party in West Bengal is Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP’s movement has a one-point agenda: the resignation of the CM. Their slogan is: Ek dafa, dabi ek/ Mukhomantri’r padotyag (‘There is only one demand, the CM should resign’).
The ‘Reclaim the Night’ platform staunchly believes that the BJP is ideologically more patriarchal and Manuvadi than any other party and therefore can never be an ally to any gender movement. The gender collectives of West Bengal firmly disown the BJP’s endeavour to encash onthis movement for their own benefit. The BJP’s leaders have a history of perpetrating or being mute bystanders to rapes at Gujarat, Kathua, Unnao and Hathras. Theyhave championed rape as a weapon to proclaim their win over the Muslim and Dalit communities. They have set the rapists of Bilkis Bano free. So we must do whatever we can to resist BJP from taking any advantage of the situation.
As of the present Trinamool Congress government in Bengal, we consider them accountable for the lack of safety that women-tran-queer people feel in general. We must address this government and all the governments to come and hold them accountable, as all of them, i.e all the parties, are equally negligent about gender-related issues.
As we are talking of accountability of the state government, we must assess the 17-point measures that the state government has proposed about ‘women safety’. First, the government proposed a mobile app named ‘Rater Sathi’, which is aimed at catering to various needs of women at work. To our great dismay, we find that there is no measure to ensure the safety of trans and queer people, who have been there in this movement along with the women of West Bengal.
The rhetoric of directives emphasises more on ‘protection of women’ via CCTV, police personnel and security guards, which seem to us to have been sprung more out of a saviour complex and less out of a thorough understanding of gender politics. We admit the need of the police to ensure the safety of citizens. But we will resist any kind of state surveillance on the workplace and educational campuses in the guise of security measures. Whether too much police employment in hospitals and campuses will harm the spontaneous doctor-patient, student-teacher, inter-student relationships is also debatable. They are stressing on helplines, but we had helplines before.
By ‘safe room’, the state government has meant a room with CCTV, where women will take rest. Is it possible to install CCTV in a women’s personal space, where she will sleep at night or take rest? There were CCTVs in R.G. Kar as well. We were informed via the media that in spite of CCTV being there, footage was not clear. Whom do we hold responsible for that?
Above all, in one of the government’s directives, the hospital authorities are requested to minimise night duties for female doctors. This is just the opposite of what the Reclaim the Night Movement demanded. We demanded safety even at night. What would happen to a female patient who may need a female doctor? What would happen to the nurses? The government has mentioned that female and male security personnels will be employed in equal numbers. What about those female security guards? What about ASHA workers who have to rush at night if a pregnant woman is suffering from labour pain? It reminds one of similar incidents, such as how women’s evening schools have been shut down in UP. We are against such patriarchal practices.
Moreover, what will happen to IT workers, call centre workers and all other women who work at night? Even a woman who is out at night not for work but for a visit to restaurants, theatres and libraries should be safe.
The 17-point directive, therefore, seems incomplete and insincere. So what do we demand?
First and foremost, we want fair trial and stringent punishment of those who committed the crime and exemplary punishment for those who tried to cover it up.
Next, we want 24×7 government-run public transport so that women can travel safely. Our demand charter includes the need for 24×7 toilets for women and trans/queer people. We are asking for public crèches for the babies of working women who do not earn much and can not hire nannies.
Apart from that, we suggest that the government build up teams who will look into the requirements of women working in various sectors.
But, the most important demand from our end to the government is that it should arrange for a gender audit as soon as possible, as during this movement we are getting reports that the Vishakha Guidelines, that was set to ensure the safety of working women against sexual violence, is hardly implemented. Forget about Local Complaint Committees, even there is no Internal Complaint Committees in various sectors.
We are all ears for suggestions from sisters across India. Let the gender movement that has started rolling not fizzle out but live long.
Satabdi Das is an author, gender rights activist, and one of the convenors of the ‘Reclaim the Night, Reclaim the Rights’ movement.
The Union Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment has announced a slew of ‘interim measures’ for queer couples almost a year after the Supreme Court recommended a committee to look into the rights and entitlements of LGBTQIA+ couples.
New Delhi: The Centre has announced several measures for LGBTQI+ couples for the purpose of making policies more inclusive. The measures include the directive for treating partners in a LGBTQI+ relationship as a part of the same household for the purposes of ration card, no restrictions on opening a joint bank account and nominating a partner to receive the balance in the account in the event of death of the account holder.
Another important measure announced by the Centre as a part of “interim action” is making a provision to claim the dead body when a relative or next of kin is not available.
The directives come almost a year after the Supreme Court in its 5-judge bench judgement in October 2023 held unanimously that there was no fundamental right to marry but laid down a set of directions for union and state governments, recognising violence and discrimination faced by the LGBTQI+ community. This included the formation of a high-level committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary to lay down rights and entitlements for the queer community.
In its statement on Sunday (September 1), the Union Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment invited inputs from stakeholders and wider public consultation and also stated that several measures have already been taken in the form of interim action following the stakeholder discussions by the committee.
Among these measures, the Department of Food and Public Distribution (D/oF&PD) has issued an advisory to all the states and union territories that partners in a queer relationship are to be treated as a part of the same household for the purposes of ration card and that there is no discrimination in the issuance of ration cards.
The Department of Financial Services (DFS) has issued an advisory that there are no restrictions for persons of the queer community to open a joint bank account and also to nominate a person in queer relationship as a nominee to receive the balance in the account, in the event of death of the account holder.
Both these suggestions were a part of the recommendations for the committee laid down in the apex court’s judgement.
Also following the Supreme Court’s recommendation, the statement said that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued letters to states and union territories to provide training at various levels of staff and making of provision to claim the dead body when a near relative/next of kin/family is not available.
In addition, the health ministry has also written to states to ensure access to healthcare for the LGBTQI+ community including planning awareness activities, prohibition of conversion therapy, availability of sex reassignment surgery, and reducing discrimination.
“The ministry has also framed guidelines in respect of medical intervention required in infants/children with disorders of sexual differentiation (intersex) to have medically normal life without complications. The Ministry is working on guidelines to address the issues pertaining to mental health/well-being of queer community,” the statement said.
Following the Supreme Court verdict, the committee headed by the Cabinet Secretary was formed in April 2024. The committee includes Cabinet Secretary as the Chairperson and secretaries of Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Legislative Department and Secretary, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment.
The committee subsequently also set up a sub-committee to finalise the issues pertaining to ration cards, bank accounts, jail visitation requests, law and order measures.
Apart from the recommendations on ration cards and joint bank accounts including addition of a partner as nominee, the Supreme Court in its verdict had also said that the committee should also look into queer partners being considered as “family” when a medical practitioner is consulting the “family” of a terminally ill patient under the Euthanasia guidelines and permitting succession rights, maintenance, financial benefits, family pension, and insurance for the queer partners.
As Imane Khelif readies for her Paris bout, the debate over her Olympic eligibility in the women’s category has escalated, spurred by online hate speech and gendered disinformation.
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif made headlines following her victory in the welterweight (66 kg) boxing category against Italy’s Angela Carini on August 1. Khelif was declared the winner by the referee following Carini’s decision to quit after just 46 seconds.
But many of the headlines were far from celebratory. With Khelif’s victory came a wave of disinformation and heated discussion about the athlete’s gender.
On social media, influential posters ranging from politicians like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and former US President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, to athletes like the American swimmer Riley Gaines and well-known public figures like bestselling “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling shared accusations that Khelif was competing in a women’s category despite being a man, and that Thursday’s bout had been an unfair matchup.
So che non mollerai, Angela, e so che un giorno guadagnerai con sforzo e sudore quello che meriti. In una competizione finalmente equa. pic.twitter.com/bJ2GfAUTzq
[Translation: I know you won’t give up, Angela, and I know that one day you will earn with effort and sweat what you deserve. In a finally fair competition.]
Several media outlets like the UK’s Daily Mail Online or India’s Times Algebra also shared posts with the claim that Khelif was either transgender or a biological man.
Despite there being no proof that Khelif is a transgender boxer, heated debates on social media are still ongoing. A look at the numbers and search terms on Google Trends regarding Imane Khelif reveals that the top search terms still include “disorders of sex development,” “XY chromosome” and “Imane Khelif gender test.”
Looking at the comments left by users under posts by media outlets about Khelif’s upcoming matches also reveal the extent of hate speech and disinformation being spread about the boxer.
Disinformation, support for Khelif go viral
The hashtag #IStandWithAngelaCarini has mainly been used to push the narrative that the Italian boxer was at a disadvantage because she had allegedly been forced to fight a man. But it hasn’t just been those attacking Khelif who have been active on social media, with her supporters using the hashtag #IStandWithImaneKhelif.
“My child is a girl. She was raised as a girl,” said her father Omar Khelif in a short video clip posted to YouTube by Sky News. “She’s a strong girl. I raised her to be hard-working and brave. She has a strong will to work and to train.”
What have sports officials said?
Officials from various sporting bodies have also come to Khelif’s defense, sharing information in an attempt to clear the doubts about her gender.
The Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee was among the first to strongly condemn the allegations. In a statement issued on the day of her first fight, the committee said, “Such attacks are entirely unethical and baseless, especially as she prepares for the pinnacle event of her athletic career — the Olympic Games.”
In a post on Facebook, it added that it had filed an official complaint with the International Olympic Committee to address the online harassment of Khelif.
At a press conference on August 3, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said the “hate speech” directed at boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, a Taiwanese boxer facing similar allegations, at the Paris Olympics was “totally unacceptable.”
“How can somebody being born, raised, competed and having a passport not be considered a woman?” he said. “We will not take part in a politically motivated cultural war.”
OFF TO THE FINAL !
🇩🇿 Imane Khelif with a resounding victory to continue her march towards the gold medal
But even these official statements have not ended the debate surrounding Khelif’s gender, with many pointing to the fact that Khelif was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) in 2023. In a press conference on August 5, the IBA specified that both Khelif and Lin had been ruled ineligible after a sex chromosome test.
At the time, IBA President Umar Kremlev told Russian state news agency TASS that DNA test results showed that several athletes had XY chromosomes. Traditionally, XX chromosomes stand for female and XY chromosomes for male, but science has shown it’s not as simple as that.
The IOC has stated that the gender tests conducted by the IBA were illegitimate and lacked credibility. On August 1, the Olympics governing body said it stands by the athletes and their eligibility to compete. The committee has long criticized the IBA and banned the Russian-run organization in 2019.
While Khelif has not commented on her gender or any test results, the boxer has spoken out about the mental toll this viral debate and hate speech has on athletes. In an interview with SNTV on August 5, Khelif urged the people to “uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects.
“It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people,” she added.
Khelif’s next fight on Tuesday is against Janjaem Suwannapheng of Thailand. The winner of the match will compete for a gold medal on Friday.
This article first appeared on DW. Imane Khelif beat Janjaem Suwannapheng and will play for the gold on Friday, August 9 2024.
Three interviewees highlight how mental health practitioners lack understanding of how both caste and queerness individually impact lives and are often entirely unaware of the complex intersectionalities.
“For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die.” when Oscar Wilde said this in one of his poems, he was probably referring to the dual lives homosexual individuals lived in the 19th century. Unfortunately, not much has changed in two hundred years.
In India, it’s possible for an individual to lead multiple lives, simultaneously navigating diverse identities and experiences, such as their queer or LGBTQ+ identity, DBA (Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi) identity, psychosocial disability or disabilities, and various intersections of these, effectively living multiple lives that intersect and overlap in complex ways.
This author interviewed three individuals who live these multiple identities.
One of them belongs to a Dalit community and was assigned male at birth (AMAB) – a genderqueer person in their early thirties. They were diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, also known as chronic anxiety, four years ago and are currently undergoing therapy. Their voice seemed to hold the depths of the ocean, so let’s call them Coral.
Another also belongs to a Dalit community and was assigned female at birth (AFAB) – a non-binary person in their mid-twenties, who has struggled with various mental health diagnoses like persistent depression, major depression, anxiety and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) for the past 10 years. They have tried therapy but haven’t found the right therapist for them yet. Their hair had a certain curl, so let’s call them Twine.
This author also spoke to a bi-romantic woman in her late-thirties who was diagnosed with chronic physical illness since her late teen-early twenties. She too belongs to a Dalit community. She has also been diagnosed with persistent depression and major depression, but has sought therapy only occasionally as SOS. Let’s call her Leaf, as the lines on her face were as pretty as the venation on a leaf viewed against the sun.
With these individuals, this author tried to explore what intersectionality means to their lives and in the mental health space. The interactions started with small talk, then moved on to deeper conversations, beginning with discussions about caste. All the three interviewees spoke about how as children, and even young adults, they were told not to tell anything that happened in their house to the outside world, and especially not to disclose their caste identity.
The caste question
While Coral said they hadn’t faced direct caste hostility and violence because of certain financial and social position their government-employed father held, the picture was not the same for their father. Coral mentioned they had grown up in an extremely casteist part of North India and their father had faced direct caste discrimination and hostility.
While they describe their father as a violent man, Coral notes that their father’s ‘madness’ is due to the caste discrimination he has faced all his life. Though Coral had said in the beginning that they hadn’t faced any caste-related hostility and violence, they did talk about certain micro-aggressions like, “you don’t look Dalit” (referring to Coral not having a darker shade of skin) or a romantic partner saying, “you have Dalit armpits” (referring to a stereotype that Dalits have distinct and strong body odour).
“A lot of our childhood lessons (were) on protection from the outside world, to not borrow anything from any schoolmate, to not go to any friend’s house, I later understood were caste-coded,” said Coral.
Leaf chimed in, she said her parents were overprotective, and discouraged her from making friends. Especially with respect to male friends, her parents would say crude things like, “Do you wish to become a prostitute?” Leaf was later told that while Dalit men cleaned the gutters, Dalit women were devadasis and sex-workers, and hence her parents’ constant fear of her upper-caste male acquaintances.
The interviewees underlined that they found these ‘protective mechanisms’ highly isolating. Leaf revealed she has “lost friends and love” on sharing her caste identity, highlighting the isolation a Dalit woman may face, regardless of whether she chooses to conceal or reveal her identity.
The isolation, both Carol and Leaf agree, also causes tremendous negative impact on their mental health. Twine also says that their caste identity makes social situations for them uncomfortable, it lowers their confidence, “makes me feel so small”. They say this impacts their sense of self and identity and hence affects their mental health.
Apart from the experience of violence and isolation, caste was experienced in another way in both Coral’s and Leaf’s households.
They both had at least one parent who was caste-phobic themselves. The said parent was discriminatory towards persons even lower in the caste hierarchy than themselves and always tried to look like an upper-caste individual themselves. This may indicate that there was certain internalised caste-phobia or shame, and presenting as upper-caste was seen as the only way to gain acceptance in both their households.
The dual identities
Both Coral and Twine had an interesting perspective on how their two identities, caste identity and queerness, are viewed in the Indian context.
They underlined that with caste at least there’s some structure in the Indian society that accepts the existence of that part of their identity, however, queerness is something that is completely invalidated as not existing at all.
Coral shared how they felt unsafe to express their queerness, as threats and violence are common. “I struggle to express my gender queerness visually, mostly because I feel unsafe. It’s not uncommon for feminine men to get beaten up.”They recalled having lost friends on sharing their queer identity. As they struggle to find empathy, they experience further isolation.
“In school I realised that this is something that is not normal. And then of course, there was a lot of lying to myself and suppressing a lot, trying to get rid of these feelings, and of course, always being vigilant to hide that part of yourself. So, I had to hide my Queer identity. But now that I’m all grown, I see my employer, though superficially, talking about queerness and acceptance, whereas, casteism is a hidden venom in the veins of the organisation,” says Leaf, and Twine seconds that thought.
Both Twine and Leaf showed some discomfort accepting their psychosocial health status as they mentioned how an individual is blamed for their own disability. Often in the conversation Twine used euphemisms like, “other challenges”, “same thing” etc. to refer to their mental health condition.
What does intersectionality have to do with mental health? Twine recalls, “Once I got diagnosed, I shared with a very old friend that I have been diagnosed with ADHD. And she said that, oh, you have only very, very few boxes left to tick,” implying that everything that can be wrong with a person may be wrong with Twine — them coming from an oppressed caste background, talking about not feeling like the sex they were assigned at birth, and then finally coming out with an ADHD diagnosis. That all this may be too much for a friend to understand.
This instance shows the complex role of intersectionality in mental health, how having one oppressed identity may cause barriers in finding understanding and acceptance of the other oppressed identity. Further, intersecting identities may aggravate the painful experience of hiding, coming out and facing rejection and frustration for each oppressed identity, leading to a further blow to the individual’s mental health.
“How much can you hide of yourself and really truly be yourself in the world and not go crazy,” Leaf says adding, “because if I’m hiding so much of my identity, I’m shunning so much of my identity if I wish, all of that did not exist in me. My body now hardly exists. It fights with me every day for me to let it go.” She was referring to her chronic physical illness and depression.
Coral reiterates that the isolation created from protective measures against caste discrimination led them to not having social support, which worsened their anxiety, which now hinders their ability to interact with people, and the vicious cycle of isolation goes on.
“The difficult part of this conversation was I think talking about my childhood, talking about my family. One thing that is in my mind more often is that I was really, really, we were really, really asked not to talk about family outside. Sharing much about my identity, myself, my insecurities and my life, I really struggle there quite a lot. In making connections, finding empathy. Making friends is very hard. My disability, that is the anxiety, also actually holds me back from healingfrom all these other things that I have been carrying,” Coral says.
Similarly, Leaf notes, “I often ask God to have given me one or two less of these oppressed social identities, why did I have to be a woman, Dalit, Queer, and then probably because of that go through both physical and mental disability.”
Mental health support
All the three interviewees shared a common desire that mental health professionals receive training and sensitisation on caste, Queerness, and intersectionality.
“My therapist said caste is not important in therapy,” mentions Twine, her voice laced with disappointment.
“I didn’t even know I could talk about my caste in therapy,” says Leaf, “I would want to see more of our people becoming therapists, I want to be able to find a Dalit therapist.”
Twine recalled a horrid experience they had experienced with a mental health practitioner the first time they opened up about their Queerness. “When my parents took me to a psychiatrist as a thirteen-year-old with panic attacks, and I shared about my queerness, my grown man (AMAB) psychiatrist asked me if I wouldn’t feel anything if he were to touch me.”
The interviewees highlight that mental health practitioners lack understanding of how both caste and Queerness individually impact mental health, and furthermore, are often entirely unaware of the complex intersectionality between these identities, which compounds the issue.
“I think intersectionality is a framework that works as much in mental health as it actually does anywhere else. Intersectionality was something I was missing from the mental health service providers – therapists and psychiatrists – that I encountered on my journey earlier. A lot of them were not, or did not, could not really connect the three distinct things together, the caste, the gender, the sexuality, and then of course, also the disability there,” said Coral.
Sadly, when encouraged to envision an ideal society, at first all three of them hesitated to imagine any future for themselves.
“I really didn’t think I would live this long when I was young,” says Coral. Yet, they did agree that an ideal society would be one where individuals can stop fighting for respect, for survival, where there’s no violence based on someone’s identity, background, caste, ability, etc. They proposed the way to achieve it is institutionally, wherein the leadership of the country takes this up seriously, it has to be a top-down approach.
“Can a country be run based on love and not hate? We’d like to see that,” adds Leaf.
After discussing their challenges, this author finally explored what motivates them to keep going, a question that was initially met with despair and hopelessness.
“What keeps me going? Well, I really don’t know. Every day I ask myself, every day, for the past 30 years or more, I’ve been asking myself, what do I need to wake up for, another day? Since the body goes on, I go on and, I don’t know if, if the body should stop going on tomorrow, I don’t know if I would want it to keep going on,” laments Leaf.
She, however, adds, “Ifind motivation in knowing that my contributions may have a positive impact on some lives. And that my existence makes a difference to at least a few individuals, like my sibling, my parents, a friend or two, who would be negatively affected if I were no longer present.”
Both Coral and Twine chime in and agree that a vision for the betterment and happiness of their family and community is something that keeps them going. On a more personal level, a sense of visible improvement, personal achievement, and art keeps them going.
Coral says that it’s their therapist who acts as a support system and helps them see both the improvements that have taken place over time, and a future which is still possible.
Coral shares with a slight smile forming on their face, “I really like my therapist. I think she’s more of a wise lady of the tribe. When I talk to her, I feel that there is a future, I feel like there is at least some conversation happening about it. She is a support system basically. She’s a support system and she helps me see the future.”
They add that another thing that keeps them goingis “ambition, or let’s say aspiration”. “There is a vision where I’m happy, where my sister is happy and I hope my mother is happy. And there is art. There’s a lot of art that has put in a lot of energy within me. And what fuels that vision is that I can feel changes because, therapy, again, thanks to therapy, I can observe the little changes that happen in my relationships. So I know that things are getting better.”
On a positive note, Twine reflects, “My grandfather used to say that we started with nothing, we are here.”
There is also a strong belief among the interviewees that mental health challenges are not isolated experiences, those are a result of societal oppression due to intersecting marginalised identities, and they all feel that social support, including institutional support, finding meaningful community engagements, loving family and friends, and even therapy, can lead to their recovery.
“I do see this as a psychosocial disability and I’m just beginning to find social support that has been missing throughout these years of discrimination and isolation. I’m hoping for a better future for my body and mind,” concludes Coral.
Meenal Solanki is a counselling psychologist practising in Delhi and is the co-founder of the mental health organisation Mann Conversations. She can be reached on Instagram @mann_conversations.
The marginalised community, which long relied on singing and dancing at wedding ceremonies, and matchmaking for survival, has largely been out of work.
Three years ago, Khushi, a 21-year-old trans woman, was sitting by the Dal Lake in Srinagar with her friend when an elderly man approached with an offer: “Rs 5,000 for sex?”
In a rage, Khushi said she slapped him, and a tussle broke out. “People were laughing and shooting videos, but none of them supported us,” she recalled. Though the lack of support still haunts her, she has made peace with the vile stigmatisation that the trans community faces in Kashmiri society.
As an amateur make-up artist, Khushi was financially independent before the restrictions in the August 2019 clampdown threw her appointments out of the window. Then the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic hit. For a year after August 2019, Khushi lived off of her savings and small loans and worked as a daily-wage labourer in Srinagar. “I bought flour on debt. We had only tea and roti thrice a day to beat the hunger,” she said. “But soon we had nothing to eat.”
By the summer of 2020, she was out of job options. Helpless, Khushi then ventured into the capital’s Sanatnagar area one evening with Noor*, her friend and a sex worker by profession, looking for her first client.
The transgender community’s source of livelihood has already shrunk, and now the situation has worsened, according to community members. The marginalised community, which long relied on singing and dancing at wedding ceremonies, and matchmaking for survival, has largely been out of work. At the same time, due to societal stigma, community members have a difficult time finding work elsewhere. Some have even forgotten the sound of their voices or the feeling of dancing to the tune of the tumbakhne’ar, a traditional percussion instrument. Persistent harassment at workplaces and on the streets since time immemorial has pushed transgender persons in Kashmir to the brink of survival, compelling them to resort to sex work, they said.
Aijaz Bund, a Srinagar-based LGBTQIA+ activist, said, “We saw an increase in sex work after the first COVID lockdown. If there were 30 trans persons doing sex work earlier, there are 150 of them now.”
“I had no other choice then,” Khushi recalled. “My parents were unwell, and I needed money.”
Sex work for survival
When Noor was 13 years old, they started trying on their sister’s clothes. Upon seeing this behaviour, Noor’s relatives would call her laanch — a derogatory term used to identify transgender people in Kashmir.
“To avoid everyday quarrels, my father told me to leave, and I did,” they said.
Noor, now a sex worker, grew up on the streets of Srinagar after they were abandoned by their family like many other transgender persons in Kashmir, loitering around the banks of Dal Lake.
Back then, Noor recalled, an elderly man cat-called them. “He asked me to sleep with him,” they said. Thinking it over, Noor asked him if he would give them money. “I was homeless and didn’t have the means to earn a livelihood, so I gave in.” He offered her Rs 500; for Noor, it was enough to feed herself for a few days.
Humiliated by their family, and despised by society, Noor said they were forced to opt for sex work — like many transgender women in Kashmir. Their struggle for acceptance has metamorphosed into a perpetual battle for survival.
Based on a study conducted in 2018 by research scholar Yasir Ashraf, titled ‘Transgender Community in Jammu & Kashmir: A Sociological Study of Kashmir Province,’ it was found that according to the 2011 census of India, there are 4,137 transgender individuals in Jammu and Kashmir, of whom 207 belong to the SC category and 385 to the ST category. The literacy rate among transgender individuals in J-K is 49.2%.
Noor had initially gotten in touch with the transgender community in Srinagar and lived with them till they started earning. “I took some time to settle down and started singing and dancing at wedding ceremonies,” said Noor, now 29, who lives in a rented accommodation in the capital city.
Weddings didn’t earn Noor more than Rs 1,000 per performance. Noor even landed a gig as a salesperson at a readymade garment shop, but it didn’t go well. “They [colleagues and customers] started teasing me and bullying me, so I left,” they said. Then they found work at a salon before they were fired again. So they could never stop sex work. But it came with a ton of issues.
One evening in September 2019, Noor was paid to visit a client who waited for them in a car that was parked on a deserted road. The middle-aged man inside the car forced himself on them. It was their 12th year of sex work. “I told him it was hurting because he was being harsh,” Noor said. “He said I had taken money for it, and I did not get to say anything till I satisfied him.”
With time, Noor gathered a fixed clientele list. “I have so many contacts now…of men from different age groups, from the 20s to the 50s. I now share the contacts with others too.”
‘Ever since the first lockdown in August 2019, the transgender community has struggled a lot to sustain their livelihood.’ Photo: Umer Asif
Rejection and stigmatisation
Bund said that ever since the first lockdown in August 2019, the transgender community has struggled a lot to sustain their livelihood. This has directly resulted in the steep rise in sex work, the members of the community and activists said.
In 2019, the government said that the abrogation of Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status would benefit gender and sexual minorities only to sway urban voters attracted to Modi’s economic promises but concerned about social conservatism. This aimed to present the BJP as liberal but didn’t benefit marginalised groups. Instead, LGBTQ+ rights were exploited to justify autocratic actions.
“It was pinkwashing to justify the decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status,” said Bund. “It did not benefit the LGBTQIA+ community at all. There is still no department that works for the welfare of the community.”
Khushi said that the community has not made any improvements despite the “big” promises made by the government. “They used the excuse of giving us rights to justify the abrogation, but nothing has changed in reality,” she said. “I keep in touch with nearly everyone in our community, and things are only getting worse.”
She claimed that the community continues to endure harassment from authorities, doctors, and others. “They still mock us. No one has offered assistance,” said Khushi. “Even sex workers among us don’t prioritise protection because they’re desperate for money to survive. Our lives are ruined regardless.”
Over the past few years, transgender individuals have been using dating and social media apps to find clients. “We find it safe on apps. Nobody leaks your photos here,” said Meher, a 19-year-old trans person.
It started with Facebook Messenger, but, as Meher said, people would leak their photos. “That is when dating apps helped. Grindr is the safest,” they said.
A few months ago, Meher found amulets, a charm usually used for protection or magic, in her house. “My family wanted to fix me but there was nothing wrong with me,” they said. “They thought the charm would help to take me out of the influence of my trans neighbour. But it wasn’t them, it was how I felt about myself.”
Soon, Meher left their family and started living with one of their community members. “I had no source of income and no choice but to use the app,” they said. “My clients are sometimes metres away.”
‘The community has suffered not only due to the conflict in Kashmir but also because of societal oppression.’ Photo: Umer Asif
Matchmaking opportunities dwindling
On the banks of the river Jhelum in Srinagar’s Basant Bagh lives Shabnam, wearing a shalwar kameez and a skull cap. Unable to pursue education beyond the tenth grade, they used to enjoy photography and modelling, but those days are now confined to dusty photo albums. “I used to wear such colourful clothes, but then I stopped,” she said, pointing at one of the photographs where they are posing as the famous Hindi movie character Anarkali. “I realised it was not allowed in my religion. I am a believer, and I then started dressing like this,” she said, pointing to her attire.
Like many transgender women in Kashmir, 48-year-old Shabnam’s source of income was performing at weddings and matchmaking. In Kashmiri culture, trans women matchmakers are known as “menzimyeors“. “I continued doing matchmaking, and it gained me a lot of respect,” she said. “But I don’t have much work at the moment.”
Kashmiri transgender individuals often avoid flamboyant attire and makeup when venturing outside, mostly to avoid teasing and harassment. But at weddings, they find the freedom to dress as they please while performing.
Furthermore, community members have gained social acceptance as matchmakers. The tradition of them being matchmakers has been around for ages, likely because there weren’t many other jobs available.
At weddings, they’re esteemed figures, receiving warmth and admiration for their pivotal role in arranging marriages, from matchmaking to the culmination of ceremonies. “I never attempted to alter my profession,” Shabnam said. “Though, there ought to have been a place for us in government departments… But where do we turn? Who do we ask?”
Gulshan Majeed, a historian, highlighted the historical role of the transgender “community in Kashmir, saying that they have been involved in matchmaking since Mughal times. ‘They facilitated conversations between families, he said, “They receive a lot of love and respect at weddings.”
Majeed underscored the discrimination faced by the community in Kashmir, noting instances of bullying and neglect. ‘Transgender individuals have encountered sexual abuse in other occupations,” he said, “they’re vulnerable to exploitation.”
The historian emphasised the government’s neglect of the transgender community in Kashmir and advocated for policies to support their welfare. ‘They deserve financial assistance,” he asserted. “It’s imperative for both the government and society to take action, including implementing awareness programs and offering employment opportunities in various government sectors.”
‘Kashmiri transgender individuals often avoid flamboyant attire and makeup when venturing outside, mostly to avoid teasing and harassment. But at weddings, they find the freedom to dress as they please while performing.’ Photo: Umer Asif
Shabnam expressed her willingness to even work as a sweeper in government offices if given the opportunity. “The government never does anything for us,” she said. “If they had, we wouldn’t be in the current situation.”
At first, Shabnam mentioned that the community experienced a 50% reduction in work, and now they’ve lost it entirely. “We somehow manage, but I worry about transgender individuals who rely on rented accommodations,” said Shabnam, “How do they make ends meet?”
Bund said that the people of Kashmir are not ready to accept transgender people in other professions and that “they are not empowered enough to break their status quo”. The activist said that transgender persons have tried to explore other jobs but faced a lot of harassment – verbal and sexual.
Majeed, the historian, said that the community has suffered not only due to the conflict in Kashmir but also because of societal oppression. “They have very limited employment opportunities now. Both society and the government have marginalised and bullied them to such an extent that transgender individuals are compelled to turn to sex work.”
Bharti Dey, a core committee member of the All India Network of Sex Workers (AINSW) and head of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, highlighted the common rejection transgender individuals face from their families across the subcontinent. “They’re constantly in survival mode,” she said. “Their traditional jobs don’t pay enough, so many turn to sex work for better earnings.”
Dey added that transgender individuals encounter exploitation across various job sectors. “If they weren’t discriminated against and marginalised, if they had job opportunities and equal rights, they wouldn’t resort to sex work.”
She said the government should play its role in providing employment and ensuring equal rights for transgender individuals. “They deserve equal rights to live in society,” Dey said.
Years ago, in Srinagar’s park, Noor and Khushi sat in silence. They talked about their lives and sobbed. “We didn’t realize it was morning already,” Khushi said. “I then knew I wasn’t ready to do it. I couldn’t.”
In the morning, she received a call that “saved her”. “My friends called me and told me that they could help me with food and medicine,” she said. “If I hadn’t gotten any support, I would have gotten into sex work too. It’s not easy to live the life of a transgender person.”
Gafira Qadir is a freelance journalist who mostly covers human rights, gender issues, education, and culture. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Rest of World, The Daily Beast, Maktoob, The Kashmir Walla, and others. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Center Grant.
This story was produced as part of the InQlusive Newsrooms Media Fellowship 2023. InQlusive Newsrooms is a collaborative project by The News Minute and Queer Chennai Chronicles, supported by Google News Initiative, that’s working on making the Indian media more LGBTQIA+ sensitive.
This story has been edited by Ragamalika Karthikeyan.
While the numbers indicate some progress in voter turnout from the community, several challenges remain.
A crucial aspect of activism within the LGBTQ+ community is the political engagement and representation of transgender people in elections. The 2024 Lok Sabha election highlighted both the progress and challenges faced by transgender voters in the world’s largest democracy. Since the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in NALSA vs. Union of India, which recognised transgender individuals as the third gender in 2014, significant steps have been taken to ensure the community’s political rights.
One of these was the Election Commission (EC) introducing the “other” gender category in voter registration forms. However, transgender individuals still encounter bureaucratic hurdles and societal discrimination. Despite legal recognition, societal acceptance and administrative ease remain crucial for true inclusivity. This article explores the current status of transgender voters, the obstacles they face and the strides made towards inclusivity in India’s electoral process.
Voter turnout in 2024 Lok Sabha elections
According to the EC, the transgender voter turnout for the 2024 Lok Sabha election across states and Union Territories was a mere 27.08%, indicating a significantly low participation rate. The turnout varied significantly across different states: Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh saw a high turnout of 77.14%, whereas Delhi recorded a mere 28.01%. Other states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, and Bihar, had turnouts of 12.22%, 18.81%, 18.20%, and 6.40%, respectively.
Source: EC
Despite more than 48,000 transgender individuals registering by March 2024 – up from 39,683 in 2019 – it is a small fraction of India’s actual transgender population, estimated to be around 4,88,000 according to the now outdated 2011 Census.
2019 vs 2024 voter turnout
The overall voter turnout for transgender voters stood at a modest 14.58% in 2019. Puducherry emerged as an exception, with the highest turnout of transgender voters at 73.9%, indicating a relatively more inclusive political environment and possibly better awareness or mobilisation efforts targeted towards this group. This was followed by Chandigarh that recorded a turnout of 71.7%, reflecting a similar trend of active political participation among transgender individuals. In stark contrast, Bihar reported the lowest turnout at a mere 2.45%. This figure suggests considerable barriers to political engagement for transgender persons in Bihar, potentially including higher levels of social stigma, inadequate outreach efforts, or systemic challenges in voter registration and mobilisation.
Source: EC
In the 2024 election, turnout in Bihar increased but remained relatively low compared to other states. Maharashtra saw a noticeable increase in 2024 compared to 2019. Madhya Pradesh too showed an increase in transgender voter turnout this year in comparison to 2019.
Source: EC
The 2024 Lok Sabha election saw a general increase in transgender voter turnout compared to 2019, indicating a positive shift towards greater political engagement. States like Puducherry, Chandigarh, and Chhattisgarh set high benchmarks for participation, while Bihar, despite some improvement, still lagged behind.
This raises critical questions about the efficacy of government efforts and NGO advocacy since the 2014 NALSA judgment and the 2019 Transgender Rights Act. With 75% of transgender individuals not voting, systemic failures and complexities in identity verification persist, as many still vote under their biological identities. Political parties’ manifestos often overlook transgender issues. Despite low engagement, three transgender candidates ran in the 2024 election: Sunaina Kinnar from Dhanbad, Rajan Singh from South Delhi, and Durga Mausi from Damoh. While this shows that some progress has been made, the need for greater inclusion and representation persists.
Struggles beyond numbers
Political representation of the transgender community has seen gradual improvements, in terms of voter turnout, over time. However, the extent of representation remains insufficient. The personal narratives of transgender individuals underscore the enduring challenges they face in the electoral process.
Riya*,a 27-year-old transgender woman from Delhi, who has to rely on sex work and begging to make ends meet, said,“The system is very slow. If we say anything, those in authority think it is nonsense. My voter card has not been made despite applying long ago. Inquiries are dismissed with excuses like the BLO being on leave. This process is disheartening and does not affect my life significantly. Regardless of the election outcomes, I still earn my living through sex work, and this is unlikely to change.”
Another transgender woman, Priya*, who runs an art gallery, shared her struggle in being able to vote despite having a voter ID card. “I did not go to vote because I work in Dwarka and have to return home to vote. There is no travel allowance from the government, and I have no steady source of income. I previously engaged in sex work and begging, which I disliked. I now run a painting business but lack funding. The government’s failure to support us adequately forces us back into sex work and begging, making us a laughing stock,” the 29-year-old said.
“The police do not accept our identity cards, demanding Aadhaar cards instead. Explaining our situation is exhausting. The policies are complex, and accessing them is a battle in itself,” said 31-year-old Aisha* who works in an NGO.
These testimonials show that everyday hurdles, lack of sensitisation and distrust in the government contribute to low voter turnout. Central to these issues is the challenge of identity recognition, as articulated by American philosopher Nancy Fraser’s concept of the “Three Rs”: Redistribution, Recognition, and Representation. The struggle for identity recognition is paramount for the transgender community, impacting their ability to participate fully in the democratic process.
Fraser’s theory underscores the importance of social justice encompassing both economic redistribution and cultural recognition. For Transgender individuals, achieving identity recognition is fundamental, as it influences their access to rights and resources. The lack of proper identification documents, and the complex procedures to obtain them, exemplify that challenge. Without recognition, redistribution and representation efforts remain inadequate. While numbers indicate some progress in voter turnout, the persistent struggle for identity recognition and everyday barriers underscore the need for systemic change to ensure genuine inclusivity for transgender voters.
The 2014 NALSA judgment and subsequent legal recognitions have increased visibility and rights for the transgender community. Higher voter registration and turnout in states like Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh indicate a positive shift towards greater political engagement. However, addressing administrative barriers, enhancing societal awareness, and fostering inclusive political discourse are essential for genuine inclusion. The progress seen today offers hope for a more inclusive democracy where every citizen, regardless of gender identity, has a voice and place.
*Names changed to maintain confidentiality.
Neelima Paswan is a research scholar at KR Narayanan Center for Dalit and Minorities Studies (CDMS), Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
