Photograph by nevil zaveri via Flickr
On April 15, 2014, India’s Supreme Court recognised the country’s transgender community as individuals in their own right. It passed a law that declared the transgender community to be a third gender. The law was regarded as a significant step forward on the civil rights front, and became a talking point for those looking to introduce similar laws in some European countries who had not already done so.
The law came only four months after the Supreme Court re-criminalised homosexuality and bisexuality, which led to a considerable increase in police violence against transgender people across the country. This re-criminalisation is still in place, presenting a danger in the LGBTQ community: while transgender people do have legal recognition, it is still against the law for them to engage in gay sex.
Following the Supreme Court’s recognition of the transgender community, there have been issues around implementing the law, particularly with regards to the fundamental rights transgender people should, by the court’s ruling, enjoy. In an interview with DW, Jayshree Bajoria, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, called attention to abusive colonial-era laws still underlying some Indian states today that make transgender people vulnerable to police abuse.
Transgender people in India have often had to engage in begging and sex work due to the lack of opportunities available to them in working life, and these activities can increase their susceptibility to police abuse. In November 2014, the Indian police detained 167 transgender women in a beggars’ colony in Bangalore. The police claimed that the event was part of a ‘crackdown’ on public begging, but a report from Orinam claimed that many of the women detained were going about their daily chores; some were allegedly dragged out of their homes by the police. Orinam speculates that the ‘crackdown’ merely disguised the police’s real objective to target transgender women in general.
Newspaper reports on the Supreme Court’s recent decisions concerning transgender rights have been decidedly vague about the levels of police violence against the community in India. Most reports refer to a general increase in police abuse of transgender people, but give no specific details. Even Amnesty International’s annual report at the end of 2014 was unable to elaborate on the issue, claiming only that since the ruling in April 2014, ‘cases of harassment and violence against transgender people continued to be reported.’ It is notoriously difficult to find details about specific cases demonstrating the issue many transgender people face in India. This is perhaps a reflection of the conservative position news avenues continue to take when addressing the plight of LGBTQ people in India, no matter how liberal they may otherwise be.
Originally published on The Global Panorama.
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