Skip to content
Menu
  • Home
  • ABOUT
  • BLOG
    • Books
      • Saints Or Sinners – Ruskin Bond Treats Every Character Equally
      • Ever Raised Any Eyebrows, as You liked Reading While Walking? Milkman by Anna Burns
      • Samaresh Basu
      • Ayn Rand & Me
      • United We Revolt
      • Swapan Kumar and his Sleuth — The Cornerstone of Bangla Pulp Fiction
      • Subhas Mukhopadhyay: Portrait of a People’s Poet
      • A Legend Passes Away. A Legacy Remains. Forever.
      • Manto – Man With Unprocessed Raw Words
    • Art
      • Evolution of the Indian Art – Is it going to reach every corner soon?
      • Woodstock
      • I got the Blues
      • The World Learns to Rock – Part I
      • The World Learns to Rock – Part II
      • The World Learns to Rock – Part III
      • Kalamkari – Reviving the Ancient Art of Storytelling
      • Madhubani – A Celebration of Mithila Art
      • Women & Art
      • Hiran Mitra’s Japan Diary
      • LGBT & Art
    • movies
      • Dogman – An Exciting Thriller for Dog Lovers
      • The Adorable Teachers and Professors in Movies
      • Evolution of The Indian Film Industry : From Black & White to OTT
      • Evolution of Bengali Cinema— the Cultural Nuances, Portrayal of the Society and the Transformation in Popular Culture – Part 1
      • When the Characters on Screen Can Hear It Too — Diegetic Sounds in Indian Cinema
      • An Abstract Hunt for the Meaning of life – The Top Layer Philosophy of “The Banshees of Inisherin”
      • Cut, Chop, Cook, Clean, Repeat – The Great Indian Kitchen
      • Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan
      • Rituparno Ghosh: Actor and Rebel
      • The Making of Tamas
      • Ritwik Ghatak’s Partition Trilogy
      • 127 Hours
      • Naseem
      • Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda
      • Qissa
      • Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan
      • Perfect Days – Finding Joy In Every Moment – Philosophy
      • Movies That Came Ahead of Their Time
    • Culture
      • Queer Languages – The Secret Code for Survival
      • The Revolutionary Dancers – Bringing Changes with Movements in Space
      • Skydiving In the Land of Multicolor Ashes – Banaras
      • Omar Khayyam’s Potions of Wisdom for Writers, Poets, and Rebels
    • Thoughts
      • Where are the Happy Coincidences of Hrishikesh Mukherjee & PG Wodehouse?
      • The Story of Love
      • Rationality of being Agnostic
      • Marilyn Monroe – Max Factor
      • You often penetrate my Mind
      • Poets of Passion – Rumi & Tagore
      • Once Upon a Time…in Advertising
      • Love Letter To Gulzar Saab
      • Books, Movies and Some Random Philosophy
      • Love and ‘Other Factor’
      • If you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it!
      • ‘Re-framing Stigma’ ⁠— LGBTQ and HIV
      • Unpacking the Transgenders (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019
    • History
      • A Brief History of Bengal’s Sweat Meat & The Portuguese Influence
      • The Zenana System : History, Education & the Cosmopolitan Set-up
      • Kanpur as the centre of Revolutionary Activities
      • Shekhawati — Havelis Reiterating The Tales of Glorious Days
      • Mata Hari – The Weeping Mother Who Turned Into A Dancer & Spy.
      • Partition Literature — Was The Partition of India a matter of ego satisfaction?
      • Did the Muslims of India opt for the Partition of India?
      • The Partitions of Bengal I
      • Partitions of Bengal (II)
      • Qissa
      • The Woman Who Loved – Orchha, Madhya Pradesh
    • philosophy
      • Rabindranath Tagore and Buddhism: The Philosophy of Peace & Compassion
      • Loneliness & solitude – The Pain & Paradox
      • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath – Virtual Tour Inside A Depressed Mind
      • Fakir Lalon Shah – Voice of the Poor
      • Nietzschean Bad Conscience in Koreeda’s Shoplifters
      • Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis
  • INCEPTION
  • CONTACT
  • Beauty
Menu

Unpacking the Transgenders (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019

Posted on February 21, 2020April 8, 2020 by artpickles

by Mansi Singh 

Although implicitly protected by the Constitution, transgender persons continue to face daily struggles in achieving socio-economic parity with the rest of the society. I explore the many failings of the Bill in this series of blog posts. Its attempt to provide legal protection is poor, and one that potentially destroys the traditional and historic ideas of Indian trans lives. In today’s blog, I explore the importance of the social organization of the community and economic adaptations based on their marginalization using Serena Nanda’s ethnographic work on hijra identity (1999). The negation of these identities in the Bill reflects a poor understanding of the indigenous constructs of transness, while simultaneously propagating a liberal outlook based on the individualization of the trans identity.

Picture Taken in Front of a Pink Toilet in Noida as Part of a Workshop Held By SAATHII.

Chapter 1, Clause 2(c) of the Bill defines ‘family’ as ‘a group of people related by blood or marriage or by adoption made in accordance with law’. This is in stark contrast to Hijra households which offer different ideas of kinship, although they resemble traditional family relations. Every new recruit must have a sponsor, who becomes her Guru (teacher) while the student becomes the Chela. The former trains the Chela in the ways of Hijra life and skills important for earning a living. Economic ties between the guru and chela can be exploitative for some. However, Nanda believes that this relationship, which foregrounds care obligations and respect for Guru, is not different from traditional Indian families. Some Hijras take on a ‘husband’, who supports them emotionally and financially. Moreover, the members of the household provide each other with social support that is not forthcoming from the outside world .

These values and organizational principles are paramount to the hijra identity. For hijras, being independent of the group means ‘social suicide’ (Nanda, 2019, p. 48). Traditional modes of livelihood like badhai (or mangti) are founded on such groups. Larger numbers shield them from harassment and increase their bargaining power. Such protection is valuable as Hijras are often harassed for money and/or sex work by the police and sometimes pimps (Patel, 2010). Conditions are more dire for hijras who are involved in sex work and/or without the group support. Since there appears to be a demand for sex with hijra, they have adapted to it in order to earn a living (Nanda, 2019, p. 53). However, they cannot dictate working conditions, hours or place, and thus can face abuse and harassment by state and non-state actors. They have limited decision-making in use of condoms, and thus are highly vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS.

Thus, the importance of a Hijra family cannot be overstated. They provide not only social support and economic security but also cultural meaning and link to the larger world. By not including these networks in the definition of family, the Bill fails to provide acknowledgement or protection to them. By focusing solely on preventing discrimination at a formal workplace, the state hierarchizes different kinds of labor and places the formal market over the informal one. I explore these issues in the next blog.

Note: I use the word hijra here to refer to the Indian transgender persons for the sake of brevity. In reality, there are numerous trans-identities that find basis on physical, socio-economic and sometimes, religious grounds. 

Contact: mansisin@gmail.com

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

“If I could have him like this in my dreams every night of my life, I'd stake my entire life on dreams and be done with the rest.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

May 2025
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Oct    
© 2025 | Powered by Superbs Personal Blog theme