India, March 25 -- The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill 2026 pushes us to return to the first principles of citizenship. What is gender? And, what is the value of a citizen's assertion in claiming their gender?

The State seems to have a clear idea of gender, as this bill suggests: It has defined transgender as a complex of four sociocultural identities and a set of congenital variations in chromosomes, which are scientifically called intersex variations and differences in sexual development, and imagined it in a post-operative, medically authorised framework. Unfortunately, it leaves out identities such as Thirunangai, Thirunambi from Tamil Nadu, Shivashaktis from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka, traditi...