India recognises trans people as third gender
By Sam Rigby
India’s Supreme Court has officially recognised transgender people as a third gender.
The ruling means that the transgender community will no longer have to identify as male or female in the public sphere, BBC News reports.
“It is the right of every human being to choose their gender,” the ruling stated.
“Recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue,” said Justice KS Radhakrishnan, who headed the two-judge Supreme Court bench.
The court said that India’s transgender community must be “provided equal opportunity to grow”.
The judges have reportedly instructed the government to make sure transgender people “have access to medical care and other facilities like separate wards in hospitals and separate toilets”.
Prominent transgender activist, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, said of the ruling: “Today, for the first time I feel very proud to be an Indian.”
The ruling comes just months after gay sex was criminalised in the country, following the reversal of a 2009 Delhi High Court order which had decriminalised homosexual acts.
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