Hijras of Assam: undocumented ‘citizens’ in the National Register of Citizens

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the case of hijras of Assam who are undocumented in the National Register of Citizens because of their fractured identity and adopted gender and face the risk of being declared illegal immigrants despite being citizens. The paper focuses on how transgender individuals are excluded from different aspects of citizenship as a consequence of document-focused procedures created and enforced by the state. The primary argument is that document-focused procedures of the modern state, rooted in heteronormative underpinnings, are exclusionary for transgender individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Assam
• National Register of Citizens
• hijras
• citizenship
• immigration
• exclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this work, I use the term ‘transgender,’ acknowledging that it is a western term that does not adequately describe all gender-diverse identities in South Asia. I acknowledge that the term ‘transgender’ may obscure the complexity and diversity of various subgroups of gender-variant people. I included the term ‘transgender’ in this article since the Supreme Court used it in the NALSA decision, Parliament used it in the Transgender Persons Act, and the All Assam Transgender Association used it in the nomenclature. For pragmatic reasons, I use it as a temporary placeholder and as a functional term. With references to significant scholars, I have discussed the conflation of various groups under homogeneous categories.

2 For the first time, three codes – male, female, and other – were offered for enumeration in the 2011 Census of India, indicating the possibility that under category ‘other,’ there is anyone who wishes to report sex as the other. It's also possible that some transgender individuals recorded themselves as male or female, based on their choice. According to the census, Assam has 11,374 transgender people, although community leaders claim that the number is closer to 20,000.

3 The founder and leader of AATA is Swati Bidhan Baruah, with whom I had my first discussion in 2018. She has also filed a PIL relating to the Ayushman Bharat scheme to include sex change surgery and another PIL for public utility services for third gender, in addition to the NRC petition. She is also the Associate Vice Chairperson of the Transgender Social Welfare Board, which was established in 2020, and has challenged the constitutional validity of the Transgender Act 2019.

4 The term ‘eunuch’ refers to castrated men, and is a derogatory term for hijras.

5 They live in colonies near railway tracks and sewer lines in Guwahati's Gandhi Basti and Kamakya Junction areas. Prejudice and relative disadvantage in compared to other members of society only added to the misery. They relied on AATA for their quest to get registered in the NRC, as they lived in such deplorable conditions with no social or economic security

6 A 113-page writ petition was filed by advocate Anitha Shenoy on behalf of AATA in the Supreme Court on 22 July 2018.

7 Document dependent exercise largely remained oblivious of the concerns of Transgenders. For instance Aadhaar card has a possibility of identifying a person as Transgender, but till 2019 PAN card would only reflect the gender assigned at birth that was either male or female. The two could not be linked as a result of the mismatch. Finally, on 10 April 2019, income tax rules were amended to recognise transgender people as a separate category for acquiring a Permanent Account Number (PAN).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chetna Sharma

Dr. Chetna Sharma is Associate Professor at Delhi University's Kamala Nehru College. She is coeditor of Comparative Government and Politics (Sage 2019). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Delhi. Her research interests include minority rights, multiculturalism, and citizenship.