Asia
India activists use Independence Day to reiterate call for equality
Government, private institutions continue to exclude transgender people
India on Aug. 15 celebrated 76 years of independence.
This year’s Independence Day was very different. The Indian flag was everywhere; on cars, taxis, trucks, homes and government buildings. The country celebrated its true identity — Bharat, the Sanskrit name of India.
Sanskrit, the world’s oldest language, is part of India’s cultural identity. But the country’s LGBTQ and intersex community is still searching for true inclusion in different government and private institutions.
The Indian Supreme Court in 2018 struck down the colonial-era law that criminalized homosexuality. Four years later, on Aug. 15, Prime Minister Narenda Modi addressed the national from the Red Fort in Delhi, and talked about his vision for the country by 2047, but he did not specifically address the LGBTQ and intersex community.
The Indian government and private institutions do not allow people to choose gender-neutral or genderfluid identity markers. The use of appropriate pronouns for the LGBTQ and intersex community in public or private institutions is not very common either.
The Washington Blade sought comment from the Indian Post, the world’s most heavily used mail system, for comment on the issue, but it did not reply.
The Indian Post offers a variety of mail, insurance and banking services to its customers. While analyzing the saving account opening form, the Blade found that there are only three gender options: Male, female and other.
The Supreme Court in 2014 recognized transgender people as the third gender in a landmark ruling and ordered the government to provide welfare programs to the community.
“It is the right of every human being to choose their gender,” said the Supreme Court.
The available gender options force one to identify either with male, female, or other as trans even if they are not any of these. The Madras High Court in 2021 laid out an agenda of inclusion for the LGBTQ and intersex community, but the majority of government and private institutions are still far from following these rulings.
The Blade also contacted public sector banks as well as private ones like HDFC Bank; Central Board of Secondary Education; a national level education board; Axis Bank and the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, but received no response.
The Blade reached out to the Bank of Baroda, one of the country’s public sector banks.
A person with the bank’s HR team hung up the phone when asked to comment. The bank has a branch in New York, but it did not respond to a request for comment.
Not everything, however, is as bad as it seems.
Kerala, a state in southern India, in January 2021 decided to include “transgender” as the option in all government forms for a more inclusive approach. Following the Supreme Court judgment, the state established a district board for the trans community that can respond to trans-specific ID cards.
Government and private institutions are failing to achieve complete gender inclusivity — including the use of proper pronouns — in spite of efforts to enact progressive policies for India’s trans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and intersex communities.
Tamil Nadu, another state in southern India, on Aug. 20 published a document from its Social Welfare and Women Empowerment Department.
The document included a glossary of terms to be used to address the LGBTQ and intersex community, and it came from the Madras High Court. The Tamil Nadu government mandates the use of terms from the glossary in all institutions, including the media, to address community members. It includes “thirunangai” (trans women,) “thirunambi” (trans men,) “pal puthumaiyar” (queer) and “oodupal” (intersex.)
Many high school students with whom the Blade spoke said the use of these terms would be a positive step towards inclusivity, but private schools and other institutions do not provide many options for those who want to select their gender.
The Blade in December 2021 reported the National Council of Educational Research and Training published a manual to make teachers and students more sensitive to LGBTQ and intersex issues. It was meant to create a more inclusive environment for trans students, but the organization withdrew the manual after conservative activists protested.
To make sense of how gender identity and sensitization about gender can affect students in schools, one must look back at February of this year, when a student of Delhi Public School, a premier private school, died by suicide by jumping off his residential building. His mother in a complaint she filed with the police alleged her teenaged son faced extreme harassment at school over his sexuality.
Changes in colleges and universities are also coming, but the pace is slow.
The Blade in April reported that the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research became India’s first gender-neutral university. With this new policy, the university also included the gender-neutral prefix Mx.
The Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, a premier institution in India, and other central government-funded institutions have accepted and are supporting LGBTQ and intersex inclusion by allowing the formation of an LGBTQ and intersex club at the campus. But gender options other than male, female and other, are still not available on the institute’s entrance exam or during the admission process.
“We agree that despite various rulings and judgments passed by the Supreme Court, there is still a long way to go for having better inclusion in government institutions. Though from having ‘male’ and ‘female’ as the only two default options to choose from, there has been increasing inclusion of ‘genderfluid’, ‘others’, ‘prefer not to say,’ etc., as categories of identity in many, if not all, places,” said Khushi, a representative of Saathi, an LGBTQ and intersex support group and a club at the Indian Institute of Technology. “Yet to make this phenomenon or this change a habit or routine, there is a lot that needs to happen. Given the way Indian society is structured, this entire idea many a time falls on deaf ears.”
Saathi throughout the year organizes workshops, movie screenings and informal meetings for everyone, including straight people who want to understand the community.
“To bring about a change, the government bodies have to consistently use inclusive language across its portals. Being inclusive in the school/college admission process as well as a further commitment to a gender inclusive and friendly environment can go a long way,” said Khushi. “Apart from that government can support already existing academic level and independent organizations that uphold the LGBTQIA+ cause. Anti-harassment policies can be gender neutral. In case of universities there can be courses that run-in sex and gender identity. There can be compulsory nonbinary gender orientations. There are many other things that can be done but the point is that though slowly but surely some change is coming through.”
Instagram in 2021 announced the inclusion of the LGBTQ and intersex community by providing the option to add pronouns. But Meta’s picture-sharing app is still far from providing the Indian LGBTQ and intersex community with this feature.
The Blade reached out to Meta for a comment on the issue, but the company, which faces accusations of failing to prevent the incitement of violence in neighboring Myanmar, did not respond to multiple requests.
While talking with the Blade, Kumaresh Ramesh, a former Saathi coordinator, said that even though the courts have decriminalized same-sex relationships and advanced the rights of people in the trans community, there is a lot of work left to be done to mainstream acceptance in the society.
Ramesh graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology last year and is no longer part of Saathi. While expressing his opinion, he suggested some measures which can help normalization of other gender and pronoun use.
“While one can litigate in court for enforcing these changes, we should also work on organically making it commonplace. For instance, if we make it a point to state our preferred pronouns and encourage others to do so, the government will eventually have to follow suit. I would like to request professors and teachers across disciplines to also state their preferred pronouns while they introduce themselves. This could be a small but powerful step towards fostering acceptance,” said Ramesh.
“Although IIT Bombay is centrally-funded and the current central government has not come out in support of the LGBTQ community, the administration has been largely supportive of Saathi, especially in the more recent years as awareness about the community has gone up. Talking about the government, intent is the key. If the government wishes to further the acceptance of the community, the importance of diversity and inclusion should be taught to school students. Greater representation of the community in school curriculum will increase acceptance not just in the young generation but also their parents and grandparents.”
Neysara, the founder of Transgender India, an online portal that supports the trans community and creates awareness, said that preferred gender-neutral pronouns are important for the Indian trans community. She also said that to make preferred/gender-neutral pronouns one of the centerpieces of Indian trans discourse would be a prime example of blindly copy-pasting western trans discourse to India without any understanding of the cultural context.
“Forget the pronouns printed in a form, most trans people in the country are not even allowed to enter SBI (one of India’s largest public sector bank) or a post office,” said Neysara. “How will they even see this form? Such tokenistic moves of printing a word on a form is super easy, what’s more difficult is inclusion, reform and sensitization. That’s what we need in any office.”
Ankush Kumar is a freelance reporter who has covered many stories for Washington and Los Angeles Blades from Iran, India and Singapore. He recently reported for the Daily Beast. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is on Twitter at @mohitkopinion.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan government withdraws support for LGBTQ tourism initiative
Prominent religious leaders criticized campaign
The Sri Lankan government has withdrawn its support for an initiative that encourages LGBTQ tourists to visit the country.
The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority last September partnered with Equal Ground, an LGBTQ rights group, on the initiative.
The Daily Mirror, a Sri Lankan newspaper, reported Sri Lanka Development Authority Chair Buddhika Hewawasam in a letter to Equal Ground Executive Director Rosanna Flamer-Caldera said his agency recognizes “the potential of this project to diversify our tourism markets and position Sri Lanka as a safe, inclusive, and welcoming destination for all travelers.”
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, along other prominent Christian and Buddhist leaders criticized the initiative. Attorney General Parinda Ranasinghe on Feb. 10 indicated the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority had rescinded its support for the campaign.
Flamer-Caldera on April 10 acknowledged the criticism over the initiative but added “the fact that the letter has been rescinded doesn’t make any difference.”
“We’re still doing work with the tourism industry who have basically opened up to us and are willing participants in the project,” said Flamer-Caldera. “They realize the potential of the boost to our tourism industry as well as boosting our economy.”
Sections 365 and 365A of Sri Lanka’s colonial-era penal code criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in 2022 ruled the criminalization law violated Flamer-Caldera’s rights. The Sri Lankan Supreme Court in 2023 said a bill that would decriminalize homosexuality is constitutional.
Transgender people in Sri Lanka since 2016 have been able to request a Gender Recognition Certificate that allows them to legally change their name and gender on ID cards. Flamer-Caldera noted to the Blade that LGBTQ rights opponents have challenged the Gender Recognition Certificate in the Supreme Court.
India
Amendments to India’s transgender rights law criticized
Lawmakers approved changes that narrow definition of trans person
India has enacted the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, that will reshape the country’s legal approach to gender identity.
Both houses of parliament approved the legislation last month, and it received presidential approval on March 28.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, narrows the definition of a trans person, removes the provision for self-perceived gender identity, and requires medical certification for legal recognition. These changes mark a shift from the framework established under a 2019 law.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, replaces the earlier definition of a trans person — previously framed as someone whose gender does not align with the gender assigned at birth — with a set of specified categories. It further provides that the term does not include, and is deemed never to have included, people defined solely by their sexual orientation or by self-perceived gender identity.
The bill retains certain categories within its definition, including people with socio-cultural identities such as kinner, hijra, aravani, or jogta. It also includes people with variations in sex characteristics at birth, such as differences in primary sexual characteristics, external genitalia, chromosomes or hormones from the normative standards of male or female bodies.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, removes certain categories from the definition, including a trans man or trans woman, irrespective of whether such a person has undergone sex reassignment surgery, hormone therapy, laser procedures, or other forms of medical intervention. It also excludes genderqueer people — a category that had been recognized under the earlier framework. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, however, includes eunuchs, as well as people compelled to assume a trans identity through mutilation, emasculation, castration, or other surgical, chemical or hormonal interventions.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, also revises the process for legal recognition, requiring a trans person to apply to a district magistrate for a certificate of identity, which can now be issued only after the recommendation of a designated medical board. The law specifies that the board will be headed by a senior medical officer and may include other experts. It further provides that individuals issued such a certificate will be entitled to change their first name in official documents, including birth records and other government-issued identification.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, also introduces stricter penalties for certain offences, including cases in which a person is forced to assume a trans identity through kidnapping, coercion or physical harm. Such offenses may attract imprisonment ranging from 10 years to life in prison, along with fines, depending on the severity and whether the victim is an adult or a child. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, further requires medical institutions to report gender-affirming surgeries to the district magistrate, and mandates that individuals obtain a revised certificate of identity following such procedures.
India’s 2011 Census recorded 487,803 trans persons, yet only 5.6 percent had applied for a trans identity card, according to the Washington Blade’s previous reporting. These identity cards, required to access government welfare programs, have remained difficult to obtain, with delays and administrative barriers limiting uptake.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, revised the certification process, which introduces additional requirements for legal recognition. This change is against this backdrop of uneven access to identity documentation.
India’s Election Commission in 2009 directed states to modify voter registration forms to include an “other” category, allowing individuals who did not identify as male or female to register accordingly. The Supreme Court in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India in 2014 recognized trans persons as a “third gender” and affirmed their right to self-identification.
Justice Kalavamkodath Sivasankara Radhakrishna Panicker said that “recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue, but a human rights issue.” Parliament in 2019 approved the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019.
An advisory committee the Supreme Court created that former Delhi High Court Justice Asha Menon has urged the government to withdraw the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026. The panel said the proposal to deny self-identification of gender is inconsistent with theNational Legal Services Authority v. Union of India ruling.
Menon on March 25 wrote to Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar conveying the panel’s resolution. According to the Hindu newspaper, the committee described the amendment as a “great shock” and a “tremendous setback” to efforts to mainstream trans communities.
The Queer Hindu Alliance, an advocacy group that seeks to uphold the dignity of LGBTQ people within India’s cultural and constitutional framework, expressed concern over the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026.
“We write not in the spirit of opposition, but in the spirit of samvad — dialogue — and with a sincere call for community consultation before this legislation proceeds further,” the group said in a statement. “The Supreme Court of India recognized the concerns of the transgender community in 2014. The National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India judgment affirmed that a person knows who they are. This bill seeks to reverse that. The Queer Hindu Alliance finds this troubling as a question of basic human dignity.”
The Queer Hindu Alliance added that India “is not a young civilization fumbling for answers on how to understand human identity.”
“This culture has contemplated the nature of the self more deeply, and for longer, than any legal system that has existed. This is not a foreign conversation imported from the West. It is a conversation Bharat (India) has always been capable of having, on its own terms,” the Queer Hindu Alliance said.
Harish Iyer, an LGBTQ rights activist who was among those who fought for marriage equality in the Supreme Court, told the Blade that the amendment is “not just a rollback, but a blatant, arrogant insult” to the Supreme Court.
“The NALSA judgment gave us the fundamental dignity of self-determination — the right to look in the mirror and say, ‘This is who I am.’ This amendment drags us right back into the dark ages, handing over our bodily autonomy to a bunch of sarkari babus (government officers) and medical boards,” said Iyer. “But here is the most absurd part: you simply cannot define if someone is trans through any physical test. How exactly are you going to diagnose a human mind? Are they only going to regard those who have had gender affirmation surgery as trans? Because that is fundamentally not the definition of being transgender; transition is a choice and a privilege, not a prerequisite for identity. Or are they going to look at someone born with ambiguous genitalia and label them trans? Because that is intersex, which is a completely different reality.”
“Forcing a trans person to undergo degrading physical scrutiny based on the government’s spectacular ignorance of basic gender science isn’t a legal process; it’s state-sponsored trauma,” he added. “We fought too hard for our dignity to let a bureaucratic tribunal demand that we strip down to prove our humanity.”
Iyer said the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, goes beyond protection and instead imposes control.
“You don’t ‘protect’ a community by criminalizing the chosen families and allies who offer safe haven to trans youth fleeing abusive homes,” he said, referring to provisions in the law. “This bill is about regulation, policing and control. By gatekeeping who gets to be trans and punishing those who support us, the government isn’t acting as a guardian — it’s acting as a warden. It is a calculated attack on our existence.”
Iyer said the revised definition could exclude individuals who do not fall within the listed categories.
“It effectively writes them out of existence,” he said.
Iyer added the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, could create an administrative “black hole” for gender-fluid individuals and nonbinary people who do not fit into the government’s rigid categories.
“If you are legally invisible, you don’t get access to gender-affirming healthcare, you don’t get legal protection, and you are entirely cut off from participating in society,” said Iyer. “They are trying to legislate us into non-existence because they are too lazy to understand us.”
Japan
Japanese Supreme Court to consider marriage equality
Japan only G7 country that does not legally recognize same-sex couples
The Japanese Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will consider six marriage equality lawsuits.
NHK, the country’s public broadcaster, noted all 15 of the court’s justices will consider the case.
Japan is the only G7 country that does not legally recognize same-sex couples, despite several court rulings in recent years that found the denial of marriage benefits to gays and lesbians unconstitutional.
Tokyo High Court Judge Ayumi Higashi last November upheld Japan’s legal definition of a family as a man and a woman and their children.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who became the country’s first female head of government last October, opposes marriage rights for same-sex couples. She has also reiterated the constitution’s assertion that the family is an institution based around “the equal rights of husband and wife.”
Same-sex couples can legally marry in Taiwan, Nepal, and Thailand.
NHK reported the Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in early 2027.
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