At 24, Indian transgender student Ray has already had to fight many battles for recognition and now faces a new threat — losing her citizenship because of controversial new legislation.
The New Delhi-based law student — whose official documents identify her as male — is among tens of thousands of people protesting against the legislation and a mooted nationwide citizens’ register, worried that it would render transgender Indians such as herself stateless.
Her fears are not unfounded. In September last year, a petition was filed in the Indian Supreme Court after about 2,000 transgenders were left off a citizens’ register in the northeastern state of Assam, throwing their future into doubt.
Despite being legally recognized as a third gender in a historic 2014 Supreme Court ruling, they often live on the extreme fringes of Indian society, with many forced into prostitution, begging or menial jobs.
For a community that faces severe discrimination in conservative India — much of it from their own families — transgender people feel that they are at even greater risk from legislation, ostensibly aimed at tackling illegal immigration, pushed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist agenda.
“Many of us are thrown out of our homes. We run away from our homes facing abuse. We don’t have documents for ourselves. How do you then expect the transgender community to prove citizenship?” Ray said.
If Modi’s government goes ahead with its election pledge to draw up a citizens’ register, Ray and others would be forced “to go back to our families which are the first places of abuse most often for trans communities and individuals,” she said.
Transgender make-up artist Tulsi Chandra is among those who dread having to return to her family in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands to recover documents.
“The reason that I left home and came to New Delhi was because my own family looked at me like I was an embarrassment,” the 29-year-old said.
“After the death of my grandparents, I haven’t been in touch with anybody in my family, because nobody wants to accept me as their own,” Chandra said, as she described what happened to a transgender friend in similar straits.
“At first the family promised to give her the documents, but once she reached home, [they started]... forcing my friend, who identifies as a woman, to pretend to be a straight male and get married to a woman,” she said.
Official estimates for India’s transgender population, who are known locally as hijras, do not exist, but the community is thought to number several million.
“For trans people, it is difficult to even change your existing documents to the gender and name you identify with, from the one you are assigned at birth,” queer rights advocate Rituparna Borah told reporters on the sidelines of a protest against the law.
“We do not even have basic rights ... like the right to basic healthcare, right to livelihood, right to partnership,” she said. “So how do we claim those rights as citizens now that we have to prove again that we are citizens of this country?”
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