The backlash was immediate and visceral. Just hours after the amendment to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, was introduced in Parliament on Friday 13, Anish Gawande of the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar faction) and the first openly gay spokesperson for any national party, tweeted it was ‘misguided’ for proposing to do away with the “constitutionally protected and judicially upheld principle of the self-determination of gender identity”.

Gawande later told me he was speaking both as an individual and for the party. Within days, statements were being issued by the CPI(M) as well as leaders from the Congress, DMK and Trinamool Congress.

At street protests and public meetings in Bengaluru, Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad, Panjim, Chennai, even Varanasi, No Going Back is the rallying cry. At least two signature campaigns are underway, in addition to one asking for supporters to write to their members of Parliament to scrap the bill. Social media handles have propped up. Lawyers are being consulted on challenging its constitutionality in the courts. This will be a fight.

At its heart is a fundamental question of identity.

The 2019 law gives transgender people the right to identify as a man, woman or transgender, irrespective of sex assigned at birth, sex reassignment surgery or hormonal therapy. It substantially upholds the Supreme Court’s landmark 2014 National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) judgment. At the time when it was passed it aligned with a growing human rights realisation that gender went beyond binaries of female/male. Beyond anatomy, gender was a social construct distinct from biological status.

For sure, the 2019 law had its flaws. Although self-identification was the principle, a transgender person still had to convince a district magistrate in order to get a certificate. What if the DM was unconvinced? What was the recourse? There were........

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