Sumit Baudh’s recent piece seeks to invoke the writings of Dr BR Ambedkar to critique the focus on the right to self-identification of one’s gender, which is at the centre of current opposition to the 2026 amendment to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. However, the author seems to be unable to appreciate the significance of self-identification for the trans community, or its relationship to dignity, equality, and fraternity. 

What is troubling about the article is its complete failure to acknowledge the current political context in which the right to self-identification has been taken away by the 2026 amendment. The author does not acknowledge that the amendment, albeit for different reasons, also treats self-identification as a bridge too far, and hence specifically repeals Section 4(2), which had recognised that a person “recognised as transgender under sub-section (1) shall have a right to self-perceived gender identity.”

Self-identification as a dignity interest 

As the Yogyakarta principles note, “Gender identity is understood to refer to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms.”

It is this deeply felt experience of gender that lies at the heart of........

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