India’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that official documents must allow transgender people to identify as a third gender and directed the federal and state governments to include transgender people, known as hijras, in welfare programs such as education, health care, and job programs.
“All documents will now have a third category marked ‘transgender,'” said Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a transgender activist who petitioned the court. “This verdict has come as a great relief for all of us. Today I am proud to be an Indian.”
The court also ordered the government to construct separate public bathrooms and special hospital wards to focus on transgender people’s medical needs, implement public awareness campaigns to reduce the social stigma faced by the estimated 3 million transgender Indians, and give transgender people the right to adopt children, among other changes.
The “recognition of transgender people as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue,” said Supreme Court Justice K. S. Radhakrishnan. “Transgenders are citizens of this country and are entitled to education and all other rights.”
While this is a victory for transgender rights, the Supreme Court of India took a step backward last December by reinstating a colonial-era law banning gay sex.
