Dear Signers,
An awareness of intersectionality is essential in ensuring the upliftment of India’s transgender people. Horizontal reservation would help a trans person who is disadvantaged, not just because of their gender identity, but also because they belong to a marginalised caste.
Click here to share this petition over WhatsApp. Help us get to 20,000 signatures, so that the authorities realise horizontal reservation is essential for the upliftment of transgender people. Click here to share this petition on Twitter.
As we promoted this online petition, one person wrote on Twitter that reservation for transgender people in educational institutions was an absurd idea, and that they didn’t want any more categories for reservation. They seemed to have missed the whole point about ‘horizontal’ reservation, whereby, there are no new categories created for reservation. Instead, a certain percentage of seats are reserved within the existing categories – namely General, Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) – for transgender people who would also belong to any one of these existing brackets.
This Sunday, we held a meeting at the Delhi office of Naz Foundation to discuss our wider strategy for campaigning for horizontal reservation for trans people. We discussed how the historic 2014 NALSA judgement, that affirmed the fundamental rights of the third gender, had recommended that trans people be treated as ‘Socially and Educationally Backward Classes’, which could mean that we’d be considered OBC. That wouldn’t help our cause, as it wouldn’t take into account the oppression that trans people suffer because of their gender identity.
To press for our demand, we’re planning a protest on Ambedkar Jayanti, i.e. 14th April, which would also be on the eve of the 9 year anniversary of the NALSA judgement, which is on 15th April. The protest will be completely peaceful and non-violent, and will aim to highlight a range of diverse voices on the subject.
In the meantime, please help me keep up the momentum for this campaign by sharing it with your friends and relatives.
Thank you.