Mumbai's Queer Community Gather At Azad Maidan To Protest Against The Transgender People Bill
· Free Press Journal
Mumbai's queer community gathered in huge numbers at the historic Azad Maidan on Wednesday to protest against the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill 2026. The community has accused the bill of being exclusionary towards the majority of the community and it takes away their right to self-identify themselves as other cisgender people.
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Massive Turnout
Draped in light blue, pink and white striped transgender pride flags, the queer community from across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region gathered on Wednesday to demand the withdrawal of the bill, which was passed in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. With placards reading, ‘Reject Trans Bill’, ’c’ and ‘My Gender My Rules’, the gathering, which included noted transgender rights activists, threatened continuous widespread protests if the bill were passed as a law.
The queer community across the country has strongly opposed the bill, highlighting that the amendment introduces the provisions of physical examination by medical boards and bureaucratic gatekeeping that “threatens to strip transgender individuals of their fundamental right to bodily autonomy and self-determination.” The Mumbai Queer Pride, a collective of LGBTQIA+ individuals, launched ‘Kapde Nahi Utaareinge’ (won't remove our clothes) campaign on Wednesday to oppose the removal of self-identification, guaranteed under the 2014 NALSA judgement.
Activists Speak
Zainab Patel, a trans-rights activist and a petitioner in the 2014 NALSA judgement which guaranteed self-identification without any medical examination, said, that the new bill recognises only four transgender communities, including Kinner, Hijra, Aravani and Jogta communities, while skipping on others. “Even after 79 years of independence, a law is being proposed to empower someone else to identify us. They decided to fundamentally change our lives but did not care to consult us,” she said.
The core of the protest centers on the bill’s departure from the landmark 2014 NALSA judgment. The community collectively alleged that the amendment will lead to criminalising trans allies and chosen families due to vague terms like'coercion’. Activists argue that the legislation replaces the constitutional right to self-identification with mandatory physical scrutiny.
Intersex Voices
At the gathering, Pamela Mendonsa, an intersex person, said that she was also opposing the bill in solidarity with the transgender community. “One bill cannot erase the existence of the community because it has been there since the Vedic period. If the government wants the transgender community to support the bill, they should first give them education, uplift them from begging on signals and give them a place in the legislature.”
The gathering also highlighted that the Supreme Court-appointed panel asked the government to withdraw the bill because it removed the right to gender self-determination.
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“My body is not a state property. We will not allow a bunch of bureaucrats to play God with our identities or subject us to humiliating physical scrutiny. This bill is a violent intrusion into our most private spaces, and we are drawing a hard, non-negotiable line in the sand – our bodies, our rules, our autonomy," said transgender activist Harish Iyer.
Another trans woman activist, Jamini Bavishkar, claimed that the official process to transition from one gender to another is a tedious one and claimed that the new bill will make it more bureaucracy-dependent. “The bureaucrats or the government have no right to decide my gender. If cisgender people do not have to go to hospitals to identify their gender, how can it be acceptable for us? We won't be removing our clothes in front of any medical practitioners to assert our gender,” she said.
Mridul Dudeja, a trans man, expressed disappointment with the bill missing out on recognising trans-masculine as a gender. “The government is in a lot of a hurry to pass this bill. They claim it is to prevent the misuse of funds meant for the welfare of the transgender community, but in the last five years, they have used only 10% of the Rs 70 crore allocated for the cause. How will someone misuse funds that are not used at all?”
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