When a street interviewer asked an Indian youth “Do you support LGBTQ?” his response was “No, I am science enthusiast.” The response was meant to sound authoritative, clinical even, but launched into a tirade of X and Y chromosomes and an erroneous invocation of “biology” which would collapse under the slightest scrutiny. In the socio-political domain today, the statement lingers not as an intellectually rigorous stand, but as representative of something far more pervasive, a growing tendency of avoiding engagement by masking it as “science”. What presents itself as neutrality is in effect a refusal to think, to question, and to confront the social and political stakes of identity. It is here in this quiet disavowal that politics of indifference takes root.
The Question of the Indian Youth
What Halberstam expressed as a sincere hope in his interview with Judith Butler in 2024, has manifested in a disconsolate response by the Indian populace. Discussing Butler’s then new book Who’s Afraid of Gender, Jack Halberstam posed that much of the war upon Gender identity and Gender politics is imposed by Octogenarian political leaders in an attempt to indoctrinate the younger generation into their twisted idea of colonization by the gender ideology. It was expressed as a sincere hope that the presence of a larger younger population would challenge these parochial notions and bring forward a modern discourse characterised by open dialogue about the fears and apprehensions. This project—as characterised even by Butler—was an essentially intellectual one, it is only the intellectual that hold the capabilities of addressing dogma in a manner that is conducive to formation of narratives that not only uphold but also respect the identities of people while eliminating insecurities around social discourse.
While that hope remains a large part of the scholarly academic discourse opposing propaganda against gender and queer theory, in certain aspects it rings hollow for the Indian youth.
There is a dearth of pre-existing literature that systematically examines the attitudes of Indian youth towards the queer community. However, the meagre studies that do exist within the arena do not offer promising results. In 2016, a study was conducted evaluating the attitude of Indian Youth towards homosexuality, using the Implicit Association Test. The study found that 60% of the participants depicted a negative attitude towards gay people, indicating a general trend that Indian people tend to have negative implicit attitudes towards homosexuals. A notable 2018 study—conducted the same year as the decriminalisation of the archaic Section 377 and 4 years post the NALSA judgement—found similar results when comparing the attitudes of the Indian and American youth towards transsexuality. It found that Indians had a moderately negative attitude towards trans persons compared to the moderately positive attitude of the Americans. Interestingly, despite its long history of recognising third-gender (hijras), the Indian youth showed a clear preference for a gender binary. An empirical 2025 study found that ideological beliefs like Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Religious Fundamentalism played a crucial role in development of negative attitudes towards queer people in India.
These studies seek to highlight various reasons for such attitudes, be them religious or environmental conditions, social stigmas, rejection of pluralism as an “un-asian” sentiment, or in certain cases even implications to toxic masculinity—which serves as a reference for disparities in attitudes of female participants to male participants—in the end, the entire discussion can be boiled down to the idea of a penalised discourse.
When Law Meets Social Indifference
The passing of The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, presents to us what has been termed as a huge setback by the Human Rights Watch. The Bill was passed with no consultation with the members of the trans community, it was hurried through parliamentary procedure, and in spite of widespread protests across the country, it received the president’s assent. The bill goes against the grain of what the honourable Supreme Court decided in the case of NALSA v. Union of India (2014)[1] and steps back on the progress achieved by The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. It takes away from gender-nonconforming persons their right to self-identification, reducing transgender identity to biological essentialism. The government passed the bill to modify the definition of transgender and streamline the process of protection by according it to “those in actual need of it.” What it did as a consequence was erase the long history of trans-movement by reviving the law set by the English courts in Corbett v. Corbett (1970)[2]; that only the genitalia of a person determine their gender identity.
The government’s recent actions and the Indian youth’s compliance towards them indicate that Halberstam’s hope somewhat collapses when one considers the Indian socio-political scenario. This is not to present a nihilistic account of the Indian conditions, rather it is indicative of the lethargic outlook of the Indian mind to social discourse. A conservative ideology only sustains itself so long as it is not challenged. The moment holes are poked into the tapestry of the ideology; it often succumbs to its own self-contradictory nature. With regards to gender, Butler, in their ‘Who’s Afraid of Gender’, effectively illustrates this idea as a toxic phantasm. They contend that “gender ideology” as an enemy created by the anti-gender moment is simultaneously framed as a totalitarian, leftist doctrine and a hyper-capitalist, neoliberal force. Without getting too lost in abstract details, Butler’s central idea of toxic phantasm can be explained as a hotpot of accusations against the discourse on gender identity and self-identification, where on one end it is contended that individual choice of gender transforms it into a marketplace of pronouns, and on the other end, it is seen as a totalitarian structure imposed from above which forces people to adopt certain languages or beliefs by suppressing dissent, forming an ideological regime. Butler points out that the phantasmic “gender-ideology” disguises a psychosocial anxiety about shifting social norms, authoritarian decline, and waning patriarchal power. They urge that this phantasm can only be dismantled by using a coalition of progressive forces that unite against this manufactured panic. They talk about the idea of social freedoms that should be accorded to everyone so long as no real harm is done. The only way to do that as per Butler is to expose the fearmongering that recasts individual identity into “harm” and make this freedom the object of desire. This is achieved in a complex society through open and collective discourse. Discourse that transforms phantasms into tangible, contestable ideas grounded in reality.
The convoluted Trans Bill and the recent challenges by the government to the constitutional morality behind Navtej Singh Johar (2018)[3] judgement, seek not to protect minorities by streamlining the process of protection or to challenge a misinterpretation of jurisprudence by the learned courts. It is to disenfranchise queer identity and freedom. The present trajectory of legislation and the governmental outlook sound the alarm for a regime that seeks to oppress minorities that are often the loudest form of dissent. The hurried passing of the bill in the parliament and presidential assent amid protests mandates a power structure that aims to change not just the situation of the oppressed but also indoctrinate within them an idea of helplessness before the increasingly authoritarian structure. Insight of Paulo Freire here seems relevant, where borrowing from ideas of Beauvoir he contends that the interests of oppressors lie in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, and not the situation that oppressed them; for the more oppressed can be led to adapt to their situation, the more easily can they be dominated. This attempt at transformation of consciousness is not an isolated phenomenon, it is symptomatic of a larger institutional project to reorganise the very structures of power through which identity is recognised, regulated, and governed. The Trans Bill does not simply exclude certain groups; it creates a Foucauldian biopolitical nightmare which embeds queer existence within a framework of surveillance and conditional recognition. This further leads to a dehumanization of queer individuals, by reducing them to subjects of arbitrary and un-consulted legislation, once they become “ungreivable” i.e. unworthy of social discourse due to a socially stigmatised and “legally-regulated” mandate, it creates the space for the state to create a hierarchy of whose rights matter as the state gains the power to define that some lives don’t fully count in the same manner as others. This hierarchy is not just unstable, it is arbitrary. It makes rights no longer inherent as fundamental but conditional, anyone can be excluded and the collapse spreads beyond the initial minority.
What makes this trajectory even more insidious within the Indian context is the sheer apathy of the Indian youth towards this issue. This apathy is not incidental; it is what sustains the legal-administrative frameworks of oppression. The Trans Bill and the submissions in the Sabarimala Case[4] are a form of “administrative violence” as conceptualised by Dean Spade. The law here seeks to define a “normal” through bureaucratic systems—Are you trans? Where is your certificate?—which under the guise of neutrality and in some cases even “common-good” function as a blueprint of domination. The “science-enthusiasts” who distance themselves from queer discourse under the framework of this pseudo-normal-propaganda are not external to these systems of powers, they are implicated within them.
Conclusion
The erosion of queer rights then cannot just be understood as a vacuous legislative regression. It is the visible edge of a broader institutional project that relies as much on control as it does on indifference of the purported change-makers. If the category of deserving subject cannot be narrowed down without resistance, if the idea of ‘right to rights’ can be dismantled with hurried procedures, if the tyranny of majority can be allowed to overrun the interests of minorities, and if dissent can be suppressed and controlled, then the architecture of exclusion has already succeeded. What begins with a queer body does not end there, it merely establishes the terms upon which governance, discipline, and erasure are generalised across minorities. And when the circle of exclusion inevitably widens, the question remains, who will still be able to claim neutrality?
[1] National Legal Services Authority v Union of India and Ors 2014 INSC 275.
[2] Corbett v Corbett [1970] 2 All ER 33.
[3] Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India and Ors AIR 218 SC 4321.
[4] Indian Young Lawyers Association v State of Kerala, Writ Petition (Civil) No 373 of 2006.
Vishu Mittal is a student of Integrated Law Course (ILC), Faculty of Law, University of Delhi.
