How the world's largest democracy continues to govern queer lives through
the logic of empire.
This piece challenges the pervasive national lie that queer and
gender-variant identities are foreign concepts imported from the West. For
centuries, India’s history was rich with public acceptance, visible in the
tenth-century carvings of the Khajuraho temples and the honored role of the hijra
community, which blessed generations of Hindu families. The true foreign
import was the law that criminalized it: Section 377 of the Indian Penal
Code, instituted in 1861 by the British colonialist Thomas Macaulay to
impose alien morality. While Independent India shed its colonizers in 1947,
it chose to retain Macaulay’s homophobia for another seven decades, a
deliberate political choice that told an entire society that these citizens
were criminals by nature.
This colonial law was a daily weapon used for extortion, dismissal, and
disownment, systematically stripping dignity from millions and leading to
devastating health and employment outcomes for communities like trans persons.
Though the Supreme Court finally struck down Section 377 in 2018 after years
of dedicated struggle by activists, the moment of hope was followed by a
comprehensive failure of the state to build anything in its place, denying
marriage equality, anti-discrimination laws, and adoption rights. This
historical pattern of oppression has now culminated in the Transgender Persons Amendment Bill, 2026, a legislative act of war passed in twelve days that dismantles the
foundational right to self-perceived gender identity and forces trans
individuals to seek approval from a medical board, proving that the state’s
ongoing crime against queer dignity continues today.
The Lie You Were Told
Khajuraho Temples depicting same-sex relationships
You were told that homosexuality is against Indian culture. You were told
that gender variance is a Western import. You were told that queer people
are a problem to be managed, a fringe to be ignored, a nuisance to be
legislated into silence.
Every single word of that is a lie. And the lie was imported.
The Khajuraho temples, carved in the tenth century by Indian hands on
Indian stone, depicted same sex intimacy as part of the full, unshameful
breadth of human life. The hijra community blessed Hindu weddings and births
for centuries. Queerness is not foreign to this land. What is foreign is the
law that criminalised it.
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was written in 1861 by Thomas
Macaulay, a British colonialist, who believed brown people needed to be taught morality by their white
superiors. Independent India threw out the British in 1947. It kept
Macaulay's homophobia for another seventy one years. That was not an
oversight. That was a choice. Made again, and again, and again, by every
government that could have changed it and did not.
What the Law Did to Real People
Section 377 was not just a law on paper. It was a weapon, and it was used
daily. A gay couple did not need to be convicted under Section 377. The law
existing was enough. Police used it for extortion. Employers used it for
dismissal. Families used it to justify disowning their children. The law
told an entire society: these people are criminals by nature. Society
listened.
And then look at what that belief produced. As per the National Human
Rights Commission, 96% of transgender persons in India face discrimination in employment. Nearly 27% are denied medical care
because of who they are. HIV prevalence in the community is 3.8%, twenty times the national average, because a community systematically denied healthcare, housing, education,
and dignity is a community destroyed by preventable disease.
Such figures are far more than mere data points; they represent the human toll of institutional cruelty. This is the inevitable outcome when a government makes a calculated,
century-long decision to strip an entire community of its fundamental right
to live with honor.
The Fighters. The Betrayals. The Ongoing Crime.
In 1991, AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan published Less Than Gay, the first organised demand to repeal Section 377, in the middle of
a plague the government refused to acknowledge.
In 2001, Naz Foundation
filed a PIL. They waited eight years. In 2009, the Delhi High Court struck
down Section 377. Four years later, the Supreme Court put it right back,
with Rajnath Singh applauding from the sidelines and calling homosexuality
"unnatural”. The Samajwadi Party called it "against Indian culture."
Congress said it was "immoral." Every major party, united in contempt for
their own citizens.
In 2016, five people put their names to a Supreme Court petition and said:
this law has harmed us personally. A dancer, a journalist, a chef, a
hotelier, a businesswoman. They were brave enough to be named in a country
that punishes naming yourself.
The 6 September 2018
ruling saw the Supreme Court finally dismantle Section 377 in a unanimous
strike against colonial morality. In the streets, the air was thick with the
tears of a community honoring those who perished under the weight of a law
they did not outlive.
Yet, in the aftermath, the Indian state resorted to its characteristic
posture toward the marginalized: a total, calculated vacuum of further
action.
No marriage equality. No anti discrimination law. No adoption rights. No
funded shelters. No healthcare reform. The government that had spent decades
defending Section 377 now took credit for its removal while building nothing
in its place.
In October 2023, the Supreme Court refused to legalise same sex marriage, calling it a
matter for Parliament. Parliament has no intention of acting. In January 2025, review petitions were dismissed. The door was shut. The community was
told: go away.
2026: The Government Sprints Backward
If 2023 was a betrayal of hope, 2026 is an act of war.
The Transgender Persons Amendment Bill, 2026
emerged on 13 March and was steamrolled through both houses by 25 March.
Twelve days. The very state that proved itself incapable of establishing
even one trans shelter over seven years managed to dismantle fundamental
rights in less than a fortnight. This velocity is not a hallmark of
efficiency; it is the panicked haste of an administration fully aware that
its legislation would perish under the light of genuine scrutiny.
What did it do? It removed the right to self perceived gender identity, the foundational legal principle that a trans person has the right to
define their own gender without asking a doctor's permission. In its place:
a medical board headed by a Chief Medical Officer. A trans woman who has
lived as a woman her entire life must now appear before a government
appointed panel to be told whether she is who she knows she is.
The bill narrowed the definition of "transgender" to only hijra, kinner,
and intersex individuals, erasing trans men, non binary persons, and
everyone who does not fit a state approved cultural category. It also, in a
display of legal incoherence that reveals pure contempt, included within the
definition people who were forced
into a transgender identity against their will, while excluding those who
freely claim one. As Advocate Tripti Tandon of Lawyers Collective said:
"Those who want to identify as transgender are being denied, and those
compelled are being considered transgender."
Rituparna Neog and Kalki Subramaniam, members of the statutory National Council for Transgender Persons, the
government's own appointees, resigned in protest. When the people you
appointed to represent a community resign rather than associate their names
with your legislation, you have lost any claim to good faith.
Trans activist Akkai Padmashali
said it plainly: "This new bill criminalises us and disrespects our right to
exist."
Why They Do This
They do not accept the cultural argument. It is not cultural. It is
political.
Queer people are a useful out-group because they are too small to threaten
an electoral coalition and visible enough to perform outrage around. The
2026 Amendment was not drafted for the benefit of the trans community. It
was drafted as a signal to a political base. Trans lives paid the price of
that signal.
What You Owe Them
You, reading this, in your home, with your family who knows your name and
loves you in it.
You owe them your honesty about this history. You owe them your vote. You
owe them the willingness to correct the chakka joke at the next family
dinner and absorb the uncomfortable silence that follows. You owe them the
basic human acknowledgment that their love is as real as yours, their pain
is as real as yours, and their right to exist with dignity is exactly as
non-negotiable as yours.
The 2026 Amendment will be challenged in court. The constitutional
arguments are strong: it directly contradicts NALSA, Navtej Singh Johar, and
the Puttaswamy privacy judgment. That fight will be long. It needs lawyers,
money, and public pressure.Beyond legal maneuvers, the movement demands a collective refusal from the
cisgender majority to view this systemic erasure as an isolated
struggle.These are your fellow citizens, and this is the nation you share. Every act
of institutional violence is being perpetrated in your name.
Break the silence and act.
