Commentary | Muhammad Nawfal Saleemi, Decolonizing the Transgender Debate — A View From South Asia
Over the past few years, the “trans question” has become more central to the cultural politics of right-wing movements around the world. These convergences are emblematic of a globalized right-wing which discursively manufactures moral panics around this issue. These reactionary tendencies rely upon similar tropes and strategies to roll-back legal recognition and hard-fought gains for the trans community. Progressive forces have been unable to come to terms with this rapid onslaught directed against the umbrella “transgender” category. Against these tendencies, there is an urgent need to mobilize a decolonial perspective grounded in indigenous genderqueer identities based on regional and cultural specificities. The inherent ambiguity of these terms and identities potentially offers a degree of protection from the sweeping discourses and strategies to which the single umbrella category is increasingly subjected to.
“...there is an urgent need to mobilize a decolonial perspective grounded in indigenous genderqueer identities based on regional and cultural specificities.”
The denigration of “transgender” rights was a key plank of the second Trump presidential campaign. At his inauguration, Trump said that “it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” A few days later, he signed an executive order which recognized only two sexes – declaring that they cannot be changed. The White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, went to the extent of saying that the “gender ideology insanity is over.. Across the Atlantic, the UK Supreme Court judgement in the case For Women Scotland versus the Scottish Ministers was celebrated by right-wing forces around the world. According to the decision, “the meaning of the terms ‘sex,’ ‘man,’ and ‘woman’...is biological and not certificated sex”. Furthermore, the judgement said that the meaning of the term “woman” is limited to “biological women and does not include trans women”. In South Asia, a similar roll back has taken place.
Prior to colonialism in South Asia, there was no one particular term for the “third” gender community but a series of local terms, each with their own valences. While the position of groups falling outside of the normative binary categories depended on their relational positions vis-a-vis hierarchical structures of society, they were nevertheless a visible social presence. With the onset of British colonialism in South Asia, there was a profound negative change in their social status. As part of extending their control over the social lifeworlds, a series of laws were put in place to manage groups which defied their restructuring attempts. The “third” gender category was identified as one of these deviant groups which had to be extirpated through criminalization as part of the notorious Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Despite these efforts, the “third” gender category continued to endure, defying colonial attempts to police, surveil and eliminate. Nevertheless, there was a noticeable decline in their social acceptability as reforming nationalists internalized these colonial outlooks and dispositions, leading to sustained discrimination, marginalization and violence directed towards those outside of the normative gender binaries.
By the turn of the 21st century, activists had managed to create a degree of sympathy around the plight of members of this community. This created the context in which Pakistan and India briefly represented a global leadership in legal recognition of transgender rights. In 2009, Pakistan became one of the first countries in the world to start issuing national identity cards with the third gender option of “X” following the Aslam Khaki versus SSP Operations Supreme Court judgement. In 2014, the Supreme Court of India issued a judgement in the case National Legal Services Authority versus the Union of India whereby it recognized the third gender and the right of all persons to self-identify. Following these judgements, specific legislation needed to be enacted in both these countries. In Pakistan, activists mobilized and campaigned for a transgender focused legislation which would guarantee their equality of citizenship and put an end to their discrimination. As a result, the parliament passed a relatively progressive piece of legislation in the form of the Transgender Protection Act in 2018. A similarly progressive legislation was passed in India in 2019. Both of these laws used a broad umbrella category of transgender and they featured self-identification clauses based on self-perceived gender identity.
These legislative interventions were part of a broader wave of legal recognition of transgender rights. In the South Asian case, despite the historic legacy and cultural presence of a multitude of terms for the non-binary and genderqueer, the term transgender was used as a broad umbrella category which simultaneously tried to lay claim to indigenous identities as well as more liberal framings around self-identification. More specifically, in the process of being formally defined, the ambiguities and non-normativities inherent in indigenous terms were left exposed, leaving them vulnerable to reactionary tendencies which are increasingly borrowing discourses in digital global circuits.
The emergence of globalized digital circuits have had consolidating effects on movements across the political spectrum. On the one hand, it has allowed for a global progressivism to emerge which centers a critique of capitalism, imperialism, militarism, and ecological catastrophe — the global intifada of our times. On the other hand, a reactionary set of tendencies has also emerged focusing on ostracizing and denigrating particular groups and staging vicious attacks driven by moral panics in ubiquitous cultural wars. The interface of the global and the local in these discursive formations is increasingly determining political contestations.
In Pakistan, the The Transgender Protection Act was challenged in the Federal Shariat Court on the grounds that it was contrary to religious law. After three years of proceedings, the court declared several parts of the Act invalid, effectively rolling back earlier advances by restricting the inclusiveness of the term “transgender” and re-framing it in a more medicalized form. Across the border in India with its more robust democratic tradition, a slightly different trajectory ensued, albeit with similar effects. Recently, an amendment was introduced to this legislation which scaled back the broader inclusivity of the term transgender by similarly framing it in a medicalized form. Despite some recognition of socio-cultural identities which refer to the third gender, the rollback is significant. These convergences are not accidental but a direct outcome of shared colonial legacies as well as the broader global convergence of reactionary forces.
The case file of the Federal Shariat Court proceedings is a veritable archive of this moral panic, combining the religio-cultural with more global borrowings from the reactionary playbook (Note: the author was able to get access to this case file which consisted of dozens of submissions of various parties to the case. This case file consisted of thousands of pages of documents which included written statements, publications. These excerpts are drawn from physical perusal of these documents in summer 2025 before my presentation on this issue at an AAS-in Asia conference in Kathmandu). Considering the centrality of religion in the Islamic Republic, especially in court proceedings at the Federal Shariat Court, it is not surprising that much of the archive consists of attempts to theologically base the idea that Islam recognizes only two biologically based sexes. Petitioners did not have issue with the terms Khusra (intersex) and Hijra (eunuch), both of which are medically based.
However, the manner in which moral panic was deployed in this case file is a more revealing aspect of this archive. The first aspect of this moral panic related to the idea that somehow this Act provided cover to homosexuality. One petitioner, a senator from an Islamist political party asserted that thousands of people had changed their official gender since this law came into effect. Relying on data entry issues in the official national registry, he argued that this was “linked to encourage homosexuality, to promote obscenity, and to destroy the fabric of our Muslim society.” The lead petitioner in this case, Hammad Hussain, after whose name the case was officially referred to as Hammad Hussain versus Federation of Pakistan, asserted that this was part of the “International Satanic Agenda of lesbians and gays.” The second aspect of this moral panic is based on pathologizing “transness” as a disease, perversion, and criminality. One prominent right-wing lawyer representing another Islamist political party cited four cases, all from Britain to suggest that the potential danger of sexual assault, even rape, by transgender women. This pathologizing of “transness” has had widespread potency in global reactionary circuits, for instance after the mass shooting at a Catholic Church in Minneapolis as well as Charlie Kirk’s assassination a month later. The effect of this panic is evident in the recent US Counterterrorism Strategy document which beyond the usual cliches includes mention of “anti-American, radically pro-transgender” groups for identification and neutralization.
This wave of transphobia has been frustrating and demoralizing for activists, at least in the South Asian context, it does not mark a complete roll-back of rights and recognition. Nevertheless, it does demand a more indigenously-grounded decolonial perspective. This perspective requires a refusal to consolidate the numerous terms, categories, and identities within one umbrella term of “transgender,” which is considered to be Western. Indigenous terms and practices have always had multiple valences which allow for productive ambiguity. The refusal to consolidate, the refusal to aggregate and the refusal to translate are powerful ways in which the indigenous can be safeguarded from global homogenizing tendencies. While this piece has mainly focused on South Asia, it potentially offers a way in which other indigenous forms of knowledge and practices can be deployed to resist and chart alternative ways of being.
Muhammad Nawfal Saleemi is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is a Fulbrighter from Pakistan who was previously a teaching fellow at the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at mnsaleemi@vols.utk.edu.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Muhammad Nawfal Saleemi, “Decolonizing the Transgender Debate — A View From South Asia,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, May 26, 2026; https://doi.org/10.52698/GPLF6034.