 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. The Indian government recently passed a bill called the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Bill. As the name suggests, it was expected that the bill is meant for protecting the rights of the transgender community in India, which faces marginalization and persecution. But since 2016, when the currently ruling Bhartiya Jnanda Party government made its intentions clear, there have been widespread protests against this bill. The transgender community has renamed the bill to Transgender Persons Violation of Rights Bill. Despite the community making their opposition and anger clear, the government has passed the bill and made it into law. Let's take a look at what the major issues with the bill are. After the bill was passed, members of the community responded by saying that the bill violates the right to self-identify. It violates constitutional rights. It encodes discrimination. It offers no affirmative action in jobs and education while criminalizing the transgender community's traditional livelihoods. Right from the get-go, the bill's definition of a transgender person has been a cause for concern. The bill conflates transgender and intersex persons by putting them under one definition of transgender. By doing this, it violates the right of intersex individuals to self-identify and also shows that the legislators are unable to distinguish between sex and gender. Activists in the community have demanded that the bill should be refined as a transgender person's intersex and gender non-conforming bill. The other major issue is that this bill takes away the right of transgender persons to self-identify. To be identified as trans, a transgender person will have to make an application to the district magistrate for issuing of a certificate. After this, if the person wishes to identify with the gender of their choice, the bill makes it mandatory for them to undergo sex reassignment surgery. Finally, if the district magistrate is satisfied with this process, a new certificate will be given. This introduces scope for abuse and violates the community's constitutional rights. It also misreads transgender identity to be a sexual identity and not a gender identity, and it forces trans persons to biologically fit into the gender binary. This entire bill is about giving power to everyone else. If you see the bill, it's giving power to the district magistrate, it's giving power to the chief medical officer, it's giving power to the court, all these people over us. But not to the very transgender persons whose rights this bill claims to protect. If we talk about the sex reassignment surgery that this bill is making mandatory, then according to the community, it is a risky and expensive medical procedure because of the stigma faced by the community access to medical care is already very difficult. This bill does not include any provisions for improving this. It also does not make any provision for making such surgeries accessible and affordable to all. Moreover, currently the surgery is classified as a cosmetic surgery, so it is also not covered under health insurance. All of this is also in violation of a ruling passed by the Indian Supreme Court in 2014 that laid the groundwork for the realization of the community's constitutional rights. The judgment declared that any kind of procedure for identification of trans persons which goes beyond self-identification and involves medical, biological or mental assessment violates the constitution. The judgment also provided for affirmative action for the community in education and employment. This was deemed necessary because of the discrimination and stigma faced by the community due to which there are denied equal opportunities in education and employment. However, the bill ignored this provision. Instead, it criminalized the ritualized occupations of the community which involve blessing people for money and sex work. The criminalization of this work without providing any alternatives will only leave the community more vulnerable and subject to increased state and police violence. Already transgender persons face harassment and arrests under the existing begging prohibition laws even when they are not begging and are merely present in public spaces. This bill does not even recognize the different kinds of transgender communities in India and the family structures in these communities. In most cases, biological families are the first place where transgender persons face discrimination and even violence. It is very common for them to then take shelter in one of the many traditional transgender communities in India that become families to such individuals. These include households of hijras, kinaurs, jogas, jogapas, etc. The bill says that in case a person is facing a problem with their natal family, the court will pass orders for them to be shifted to a rehabilitation center. This not only takes away the person's agency and freedom, but is also a direct attack on the traditional communities that have been the only protective space for trans, intersex and gender non-confirming people abandoned or disowned by their natal families. They are trying to ghettoize us. They are trying to put us back into our natal families, forgetting that natal families are one of the first people who perpetrate violence on us often and that we have other structures which may not confirm in your, say, heteronormative understanding of families, of natal families. They don't want that, you know, like they don't want us to go beyond binary, they don't want us to go beyond family and they don't certainly want us to decide our futures. The bill also openly and directly discriminates against transgender persons. For sexual violence against trans persons, perpetrators will face punishment for between six months and two years in comparison with the seven years of imprisonment for sexual violence against women. In fact, any kind of violence, including that which could endanger a trans person's life, is punished by a term of a maximum of two years. While the bill is supposed to be about protecting trans persons, rights, it doesn't even clearly define what constitutes discrimination against them. Neither does it lay out what the penalties of discriminating against a trans person would be. The bill constitutes a national council for transgender persons for dealing with issues relating to the community. But this council lacks any kind of independence to carry out functions. It is composed of at least 30 persons, but has a mere representation of five persons from the transgender community. I don't understand what consultation means because if they are going to consult us on a bill which affects us, they should be taking in our inputs. There was a whole parliamentary standing committee with MPs from both Rajasabha and Lok Sabha and there were transgender persons from across the country who deposed before that committee. It brought out a huge amount of recommendations based on an earlier version of this bill. But none of those recommendations, except improving the definition, made it to this bill. So this shows very clearly that they know what are the demands. It's just that they don't want to take in their amendments. The transgender community is saying that this bill violates their constitutional rights and that it should be completely overhauled. They have been organizing resistance since this legislation was first introduced and will continue to do so until their demands are met.