Transgender not a separate caste: Indian Supreme Court verdict
Justice Khanna dismissed the petition, explaining that classifying all transgender people as one caste disregards the intersection of caste and gender.
India’s Supreme Court has decided not to entertain a petition objecting to the classification of the ‘transgender’ community under the caste list in Bihar’s caste-based survey. The proceedings were for a plea submitted by trans-activist Reshma Prasad. The plea contested the state’s action to categorize the non-binary gender identities such as ‘hijra’, ‘kinnar’, ‘kothi’, and ‘transgender‘.
Details of Reshma Prasad’s Plea
Prasad’s plea was against the decision of the Bihar government to give a separate caste code to these gender identities and include them in the list of 214 named castes for the survey. Prasad argued this action was unconstitutional, overtly random, and against the spirit of the Supreme Court’s earlier judgments, prominently the 2014 Nalsa judgment acknowledging the fundamental right of gender self-identification.
Prasad’s plea addressed a decision from the Patna High Court that refrained from intervening in the survey process, despite agreeing that the inclusion of transgender identities within the caste category was erroneous. The High Court had declined to delete the offensive item from the list as, by that point, the survey had been completed.
Supreme Court’s Stand for Transgender
The Supreme Court, while hearing Prasad’s special leave petition, shared the High Court’s reservations. Justice Sanjiv Khanna stated:
“‘Transgender’ is not a caste identity and every individual, including those not conforming to the male or female gender classification, should be permitted self-determination… The state of Bihar has filed a counter affidavit in which it has been categorically stated that there is a clarification…the contention regarding distinct identities of caste and gender and the apprehension of self-determination being effaced is thus mitigated.”
Justice Khanna, while dismissing the petition, highlighted that treating all transgender individuals as identifying with a single homogenous caste would not work in the interest of intersectionality of caste and gender identities. Khanna reasoned that the state has now allotted a separate column for the transgender gender identity, thus making gender information available.
This controversy arises from the Bihar Government’s choice to conduct a caste-based survey for digital data compilation on each family from the Panchayat to the district level. The first of its kind since a comprehensive caste-based census was last led by the then-British colonial government in 1931.
The Supreme Court is now hearing challenges against the Patna High Court’s verdict upholding the caste-based survey. The final judgment still remains to be announced.
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