Caste Concerns in Transgender Communities in India: Contesting Cohesiveness, Broadening Horizon(s)

Abstract

In this article, we recount the development of an anti-caste consciousness in queer and transgender rights movements in India. We begin by tracing the history of queer mobilisation in India, especially the political participation of Hijras and the movement for decriminalisation of consensual adult homosexuality. This movement was shaped by the context of economic liberalisation and a burgeoning public health crisis due to a rise in HIV infections among several sexually minoritised groups. The movement, however, was focused on the law, and issues of caste and marginality within the queer and trans communities were not addressed. This changed in the 2000s. We trace this phase of the movement in which questions of class and non-urban geographies were foregrounded and look at the way critical moments in the second decade of the twenty-first century precipitate the foregrounding of caste questions in contemporary queer and transgender movements in India.