Perverse Policy

The fundamental rights of transgender and intersex persons received a severe blow early this year, with the passage of The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026. The amendments effectively nullified the right to self-determination and self-identification of gender, and severely restrict other fundamental rights of trans persons, guaranteed by a 2014 judgement of the Supreme Court in NALSA vs The Union of India. The Narendra Modi government proposed the amendments on 13 March and rammed them through both houses of parliament within three days. They received President Draupadi Murmu’s assent on 30 March. Throughout the process, the union ministry of social justice and empowerment swept aside consultations with trans and intersex persons, as well as widespread objection to the proposed law by both these communities and other gender minorities.

Indian law now imposes the mandatory examination of individuals by a medical board—which will “verify” their gender—and the invasive scrutiny of their private medical records by public officials as prerequisites for the legal recognition of transgender persons. On the other hand, the vague wording of the law risks criminalising individuals and organisations that provide material support, logistical aid and shelter, or medical help to trans persons. Crucially, the amended legal definition of a transgender person includes only “a person having such socio-cultural identities as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta, or eunuch” or “a person with intersex variations specified” by the new law, or “a person who, at birth, has a congenital variation.” In addition to unscientifically conflating transgender identity with intersex genetic variations, this extremely narrow definition excludes persons who identify with or express transmasculine, non-binary and genderqueer identities, as well as socioculturally recognised gender minorities, such as nupi-manbi and -manba, thirunangai–thirunambi, khwajasira, kothi and others, who had legal recognition under the 2019 act. The new law not only pushes the transgender and intersex communities’ advocacy for rights and protections many steps backwards but also entrenches an unscientific, prejudiced and thoroughly outdated biological framework to understand gender.

The amendments have triggered a public-health emergency, according to Dr Sanjay Sharma, the founder of the Association for Transgender Health in India. Despite the Modi government’s rush in parliament, it has yet to issue the amended rules or any further guidelines to be followed by institutions meant to serve individuals who have or are seeking to transition medically, through gender-affirming medical procedures, and legally, by securing documentation that accurately records their gender and chosen name. Many intracommunity groups, both online and offline, are seeing messages seeking clarity on existing procedures for medical and legal transitions, or help in navigating new procedures, and are witnessing charged discussions about what the stripping of legal protections for a large section of trans persons portends. “It feels like a nightmare,” Koyel Ghosh, the managing trustee of Sappho For Equality, a Kolkata-based non-governmental organisation supporting queer women and transmasculine persons, told me. Calls to SFE’s crisis helpline have increased since the legal amendments, Ghosh added. “There’s a mental-health epidemic where people are feeling extremely suicidal.”

“We also need to understand that we are talking about a group of people who have been marginalised and ostracised by the society,” Sharma told me. Given that science, law and society continue to invisibilise gender variance and transgender identity, most people in the community have, in Sharma’s words, “very poor health-seeking behaviour.” Many of the individuals I spoke to barely discussed their visits to doctors—even for general health check-ups—since every encounter comes with scrutiny, adverse judgement and the invasion of privacy. “There is a lot of hesitation we feel just approaching hospitals and doctors in general,” John, a trans man in his twenties who is based in Kolkata, told me. “Any trans person needs to worry if a doctor is being enabled to ask for more documentation, or if any doctor is being enabled by their medical directors or by medical review boards to make things more complicated,” he added. “Because things are already complicated. Things are already inaccessible.”