April 14 marks both the birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar and the 11th anniversary of the Supreme Court of India’s landmark verdict recognising transgender identity, commemorated as National Transgender Day.
These coinciding anniversaries offer a unique opportunity to reflect on the interconnected struggles for social justice. Ambedkar’s critique of caste and advocacy for social justice puts forth a critical framework to understand and support the struggles of Dalit transgender people.
Although the transgender community is frequently understood as a homogenous identity, caste hegemonies have been continually reproduced and preserved within the trans movement.
For trans people from Dalit communities, their gender diversity and caste background often becomes the basis for oppression. They are pushed to the fringes of the margin for not conforming to mainstream gender norms and also for their caste identity.
Ambedkar believed in socio-political transformations that could overhaul an exclusionary and oppressive social structure. For him, a just society ensures equal opportunities, social justice and dignity for everyone, irrespective of caste, gender and ethnicity.
In Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis, and Development, Ambedkar discusses the concept of surplus men and women. He explains that a surplus woman may arise when a husband dies before his wife, while a surplus man occurs when a husband survives his wife. According to Ambedkar, these surplus bodies are a threat to caste purity (through intercaste marriage) with the “potential to transgress” socially and ritually enforced boundaries.
The most concerning aspect, however, was the violent practice of “disposing” these bodies through widow burning, enforced widowhood and celibacy, among others, to maintain the caste structure and reinforce rigid gender roles.
Ambedkar’s analysis on the disposing of surplus bodies can be extended beyond the context of caste to transgender and non-binary individuals, who also challenge gender and reproduction norms. In particular, Dalit transgender individuals are labelled as “abject bodies” and are routinely coerced into silence and invisibility through systemic injustice.
Ambedkar provides an essential lens to understand the systematic exclusion and violence – both physical and symbolic – faced by transgender individuals, especially of those at the bottom of the caste hierarchy.
Ambedkar questions the graded inequality of the caste system that ranks individuals based on their birth. This inequality and hierarchy extends to the seemingly homogenous transgender community as well.
The absence of a clear understanding and framework for oppressed communities, particularly Dalit transgender individuals, creates a conceptual gap. Addressing this gap is essential to highlight the issues they face and facilitate better policy and social reform.
The dual burden of caste and gender is not always evident in mainstream queer rights discourse, which often reflects the concerns of upper-caste, urban, English-speaking individuals. Dalit trans individuals, especially those facing economic precarity, continue to struggle with unequal access to resources and the freedom to live without fear.
Despite the challenges, a new generation of Dalit trans activism is emerging, calling for affirmative action that takes caste and gender into account. For transgender individuals from oppressed castes, embracing Ambedkarite philosophy is about asserting their right to live with dignity. This emerging Dalit trans activism is speaking out on the violence against Dalit trans individuals that does not merely oppress but also erase.
Trans Ambedkarite politics emphasises community-led leadership, critiques tokenism in elite queer circles, and demands structural change in the form of caste-based reservations, inheritance and reproductive rights, access to education, and healthcare reforms. This activism does not merely seek inclusion within existing systems but aims to transform those systems altogether.
A shared struggle, a shared future
A truly Ambedkarite approach to trans liberation must go beyond the politics of identity to a politics of transformation. This involves collective empowerment and coalition forming with other minority rights movements such as indigenous rights, disability rights and the sex-workers’ struggle.
This approach will not only strengthen minority movements but also show that identity and norms are neither innate nor fixed but dynamic, shaped by social-cultural and majoritarian trends.
The dominant perception of transgender communities as homogeneous and casteless affects how the state’s response and welfare programmes can often erase the concerns of Dalit transgender individuals.
Rethinking academic, legal, and activist engagements concerning Dalit trans activism from an Ambedkarite perspective could help with policy reforms. Implementing horizontal reservation – where benefits cut across vertical reservations – could be a transformative step for Dalit trans individuals. This means that a Dalit trans person could receive benefits from the Scheduled Caste category (vertical reservation) and as a transgender individual (horizontal reservation).
Additionally, reforming educational curricula to include Dalit and trans narratives, as well as promoting Dalit trans leadership within the broader queer activism movement, could lead to increased representation over time.
Interventions in the form of policies and guidelines must reckon with the layered historical injustice and marginalisation of Dalit trans people in caste society. This conversation deserves greater visibility in mainstream discourse.
Ambedkar’s critique of caste was a critique of structural systemic injustice conceded as tradition. His insights, though rooted in caste, can be extended to the oppression of transgender individuals.
Trans rights and anti-caste movements are not separate struggles. They are parallel fights against systems that control who we are allowed to be.
Swarupa Deb is a human rights lawyer, academic and trans-ally. Their email address is swarupa@isec.ac.in
Aniket Nandan is an assistant professor of sociology and co-director of the Centre for Study of Social Inclusion at NLSIU Bengaluru. His email address is aniket.nandan@nls.ac.in.
