On March 13, 2026, the Amendment to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 was tabled for discussion in the Lok Sabha. A mere few days later, it was passed in the Rajya Sabha, received presidential assent, and became our new reality. The Act, published in The Gazette of India on March 30, proceeds to define a transgender person \u2013 restricting the understanding to socio-cultural identities and linking it to physical and physiological characteristics \u2013 and to clearly state who is not one, saying, \u201cProvided that it shall not include, nor shall ever have been so included, persons with different sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, of course \u2013 one is tempted to say \u2013 gender and sexuality are separate things. And yet, it is also an uncanny reminder of the comment made back in the days of the Marriage Equality PIL hearings in 2023, when Tushar Mehta, Solicitor General, stated, \u201cIn LGBTQIA+, it isn\u2019t explained what \u2018+\u2019 means. There are at least 72 shades and categories of people in \u2018+\u2019. If this court were to give recognition to undefined categories, then the judgment would affect 160 laws. How will we regulate all this?\u201d (India Today<\/a>). We all scrambled to figure out, back then as well, where the very specific number came from, and how the L or the B or the G or the A ended up in the collective bucket titled gender, causing such panic about how it will be regulated. It is puzzling and amusing, perhaps, at some level, but it also sounds an alarm bell and draws attention to something more. Gender and sexuality \u2013 read \u2018non-cis-gender gender\u2019 and \u2018non-heteronormative sexuality\u2019 \u2013 are much too frequently conflated into the category of the \u2018other\u2019 and the \u2018odd\u2019 to be carefully classified, categorised, enumerated, verified, approved, scrutinised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is something common to processes like the one undertaken in the Parliament, and soon the Government in the making of the new Rules for the implementation of the Trans Act (2026); in the ones in the Supreme Court in 2023; and even now in beginning to address the petitions filed against the Trans Act (2026). They set up mechanisms of scrutiny. Through these, they frame and institutionalise a simultaneous process of subjection and subjectivation. It feels pertinent now to consider the contextual specificities of these interrelated processes, usually understood as working to form the subjectivity of a person or make one\u2019s self (subjectivation) while at the same time this self-in-the-making is subjected to systemic power, scrutiny and controls (subjection) which it integrates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is nothing new in these two interrelated strands, but they seem nevertheless worth looking at now once again, to see what narratives anchor and hold them together. What they do is to bring what they imagine is a permissible subject under the purview of the mechanism that forms it. And in the process, they form this subject, through which what are re-constructed are \u2018legitimate\u2019 ways of living. What plays out at each stage of this mechanism is the (limited) understanding and imagination of what is possible, constructed upon assumptions and vested interests that become instituted\/taken for granted and yet unnamed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is, perhaps, the time then to ask once again, who and what is being scrutinised, by whom and how? What might be the anchoring logic of such scrutiny? What does it reveal of the implicit (and unnamed) assumptions at work there? And beyond the obvious administrative impact such scrutiny is likely to have, what are these processes doing in the construction not only of the subject, but also of the self \u2013 our self, in its dailiness, in its imagining of relationality, solidarity, collectivity? The subject (of law and of governmentality) is the singular entity that fits\/is made to fit\/makes itself fit into a legible category. Not in the abstract, but materially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Scrutiny of the \u2018Other\u2019 Body<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What stands out starkly in the redefinition of \u2018transgender\u2019 in the 2026 Amendment is the obsessive, collective, gaze on the body. The framing of this obsession into a mechanism of scrutiny reveals precisely the lack of understanding of gender and its locus, and the moral panic associated with it. Two connected (and contradictory) things happen: a medical board is required to certify that the body is a transgender body, by complying with the requirements that make it an \u2018other\u2019 \u2013 in the process also conflating the categories transgender and intersex into each other; and the transgender body is the body that by birth or by \u2018allurement\u2019 or \u2018coercion\u2019 has been made \u2018other\u2019 or \u2018improper.\u2019 The Act helpfully says, in the second part of its definition, \u201cany person or child who has been, by force, allurement, inducement, deceit or undue influence, either with or without consent, compelled to assume, adopt, or outwardly present a transgender identity, by mutilation, emasculation, castration, amputation, or any surgical, chemical, or hormonal procedure or otherwise.\u201d (Trans Act, 2026<\/a>, 2.(iv).k.(ii))<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like the collector of old, categorising \u2018chimeras\u2019 and \u2018oddities\u2019, an array of doctors, and an appointed board need to be satisfied, by the scrutiny of the body understood as restricted to its sexual characteristics, that the subject is transgender \u2013 that the body expresses and confirms the gender asserted by the person. Subjection and subjectivation take place if the body bears witness in a language that is familiar to those who scrutinise it. If those who scrutinise it are unable to understand the language that the body of the \u2018other\u2019 speaks, then subjectivation and subjection may not be conferred to it. Ironically, the trans self is required to know they are trans, and to live in this conviction, and undertake medical intervention, before they may be read as a trans subject of the law, and of any other administrative system. What the Trans Act (2026) had in mind specifically is the transfeminine body, the same one that legislators would have encountered more visibly; the same that district magistrates and shelter homes often expect as well when approached by a trans person trying to access legal transition or safety from violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their stated concern, moreover, is with this body as a labouring body, exploited to earn money through begging and sex work. It frames this as, \u201cwhoever kidnaps or abducts any adult person and causes \u2014 (i) grievous hurt to such person, whether by mutilation, emasculation, castration, amputation, or any surgical, chemical, or hormonal procedure; or (ii) permanent or severe injury to the body or bodily functions of such person, with the intent of, or in the course of, compelling such person to assume, adopt, or outwardly present a transgender identity against the will or consent of such person, whether by force, allurement, deceit, undue influence or otherwise.\u201d (Trans Act<\/a>, 2026, 18.(e)) In this feared exploitation, what is framed as the labouring body is once again connected to its sexual characteristics. What does this obsession with genitals, hormones, chromosomes and medical intervention prevent us from seeing? It obfuscates and refuses to acknowledge that the body is never divided from the social subject and the social self \u2013 that there is no such thing as a \u2018clean\u2019 body, where everything falls perfectly into place; while at the same time making it clear that the (same) materiality of the body, when it is violated, thrown out of natal homes, marital homes, beaten up, starved, abused, is not deserving of the same kind of attention. It is not deserving of the gaze of scrutiny to turn to the social and cultural practices that are responsible for committing this violence \u2013 otherwise, how would one explain the continuing differential punishments for crimes against trans persons, even in the face of protests and demands from the community? Whoever \u201charms or injures or endangers the life, safety, health or well-being, whether mental or physical, of a transgender person or tends to do acts including causing physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse and economic abuse, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months but which may extend to two years and with fine.\u201d (Trans Act, 2026<\/a>, 18.(d))<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trans Act (2026) wishes to take the individual, strip them naked, externally take away the layers of their presentation, and internally take away their selfhood, agency and knowledge-making. It refuses to acknowledge that in the making of the self, it is the self who reflexively lives and knows their gender, and it is the composite self who decides whether and what medical intervention is required for them. It does so by juggling the balance of everything from material and health concerns to the existence of support structures, the myriad other ways in which the self-same body has been and is being subjected and subjectivated. This is not about intersectionality as a buzzword. It is about the very basic, very many ways in which each of us can be multiply, simultaneously or asynchronously interpellated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The aim is to identify in all this who is the \u2018real\u2019 transgender \u2013 again, their body will whisper, and will be measured, noted and enumerated, in the manner of colonial records and on-going lists of known \u2018troublemakers\u2019 that the police keep. Sadly, the discourse of the \u2018real\u2019 and \u2018not real\u2019 transgender person does not rest only with the medical profession and the state. It exists among the trans community as well, suspicious of our differences, suspicious precisely of the way in which the body and the material are deeply embedded into socio-cultural practices that are varied and sometimes difficult to understand. Ultimately, this comes from precarity. From the feeling that there is a limited set of resources in which everyone has to share, to which there seem to be too many claims, and so inviting scrutiny and determining the grounds of scrutiny which are \u2018like\u2019 oneself, which fall into a narrative that is comprehensible appears to be the only way. Within communities that are pulled together under the same legal and administrative subject category, the time to consider how this subjection\/subjectivation allows for the self to be imagined and lived is scarce. And it is made more scarce by needing to stay on track with the changes in the mechanisms that govern the category. The pattern here is unsurprisingly reminiscent of the argument Anand Teltumbde reminds us of, in The Caste Con-Census (Teltumbde, 2025) about the firming up of identities in the attempt to access limited resources. The difference here, though, lies in the fact that the scrutiny promises nothing of access to resources, and at best offers to legitimise one\u2019s gender identity which in itself poses a higher risk of violence and of precarity, from which one is hardly protected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Scrutiny of the \u2018Other\u2019 Relationality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Side by side with the scrutiny of the body above, what the Trans Act (2026) brings is additional scrutiny of relationality. In all the breadth of trans lives, from those who are part of socio-cultural communities, to trans persons reaching out to each other via social media, collectives and groups, one thread is common \u2013 the extent to which networks of support, solidarity and care, not just among friends but also among complete strangers, help tide people over, make survival sometimes a little bit easier, when the other structures in place do not hold. When individuals run away from abusive and violent natal homes, from communities that think they can dictate how individuals can live, it is not just familial ties that are left behind, but also the safety nets around basic necessities, around access to education and healthcare, and around employment networks. And so, when the scrutiny extends from the body of the subject to the structures of support they may form with friends, collectives, networks of people, this fits into a coherent narrative. The scrutiny extends from the material body that is of the \u2018other\u2019, unrecognisable, to be restricted and defined clearly; to the relationality of this body in the world, not just as body but as an evolving self meeting its many possibilities within structures that are the \u2018other\u2019 of the mechanisms of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This scrutiny, just like the scrutiny of the body, seeks to perform into existence the limits of possibility. The gaze that in its scrutiny violates the body it purports to see, generates fear. And so does the gaze that asserts the power to identify as \u2018coercion\u2019, or \u2018allurement\u2019 the nature of the relationship between the subject and anyone who relates to them or supports them. It generates fear in the individual and in everyone around them. It isolates and establishes a range of movement and relationality within which the body may continue to be scrutinised reliably by subjects whose bodies and relationalities are not \u2018other\u2019, who fit in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This language, too, is not new. It is the language to which we have by now grown accustomed from the more and more intense regulation of the twin of gender, sexuality. The scrutiny of relationality seeks to identify transgressors in intimacies, those who cut across caste and religious lines, restricting sexuality to its role in reproduction for the endogamous community. Here, at one level, the scrutiny of relationality is an offshoot of the scrutiny of the reproductive body. At another level, though, it is a scrutiny that extends to economic transactions, the organisation and functioning of private and public space, fundamentally the operations of the self across all arenas of life. Here, the scrutiny operates at the level of acting out in the world, legitimising practices which reinforce the power of the scrutinising gaze. This was made amply clear in the reasoning we have heard in the Supreme Court, during the Marriage Equality hearings. There, we were told that \u2018marriage\u2019 for instance, with all the bundle of rights associated with it, is not a \u2018fundamental right\u2019, it is a \u2018personal preference\u2019. It is the self, then, upon whom is placed the responsibility to choose whether it wishes to be subjected (and subjectivated) within the legitimate forms of relationality; and if it does not do so, is the implication, its claims to the bundle of rights tied to it cannot be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is the same language that comes to us also with each reiteration of the Uniform Civil Code in various states, and in the anti-conversion legislation. The scrutiny here \u2013 of the sexual relationship \u2013 just like the scrutiny of the body above, has been placed into the hands of strangers. The attempt is to turn all willing self-appointed vigilantes into the eye (and the I\/self) that ensures the limits of the process of subjection and subjectivation. To keep the subject within its legitimate caste\/class\/religious boundaries, render it (re)productive for the mechanisms of its subjection and subjectivation, entangle it such that it cannot participate in and generate the challenge of any other forms of self-definition and existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While this is a restriction of desire \u2013 the desire of the self for another, and the desire of the self to construct itself in a specific way \u2013 read together, these acts of scrutiny are also something else. Even with the scrutiny of relationships that are \u2018not permissible\u2019, through the eyes of the neighbours, landlords and varied interested strangers, what is being scrutinised goes beyond the voyeurism directed at body and intimacy and aims to foreclose the possibilities of establishing friendships, comradeships, solidarities, affinities within which the self can reimagine itself. An argument sometimes made, from this standpoint, is that all selves and relationalities which refuse to fit in are by default a little radical, a little political, a little revolutionary. But while their very existence may, for a change, cause panic in the structure of scrutiny, for their refusal to fall neatly into existing categories, it is not until the self pauses to think, alone and in its various forms of relationality, of all the intricacies of the nature of its subjection and subjectivation, that the assumptions into which we are still enmeshed can be revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cover image by lucas mendes<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who and what is being scrutinised, by whom and how?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":29394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5351,8],"tags":[5399,317,51,5401,3717,3913,5407,3062,5402,5400,1225],"class_list":{"0":"post-29393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-self-and-sexuality","8":"category-voices","9":"tag-gender-and-sexuality","10":"tag-gender-identity","11":"tag-global-south","12":"tag-lgbtqia-india","13":"tag-queer-communities","14":"tag-queer-politics","15":"tag-relationality","16":"tag-selfhood","17":"tag-surveillance-and-law","18":"tag-trans-act-2026","19":"tag-transgender-rights"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29393"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29454,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29393\/revisions\/29454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}