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With strict notes against tunes of “we have always existed” and “Drag Sastra”
The protests against the trans amendment act 2026 in India have ended. The act is not repealed, the pervasive threat of criminalization and complete dispossession from one’s own self has not ceased, the objects of the protest and resistance nowhere achieved. But the protests against the trans amendment act have ended. Every oppressive force that wished to pontificate has pontificated, plagiarised, and petitioned.
The Supreme Court of India has stayed all High Court proceedings on the trans amendment act as of 15 June, 2026. All petitions have been absorbed into the highest court of appeal and the intent – clear as day to those who pay attention – is to reopen the 2014 NALSA judgment. The only thread bare, yet real legal and constitutional protection for transgender persons in the country. It is unclear whether the interim reliefs obtained through the High Courts, such as continuing medical care, have been rendered void under this stay. And none of the self-appointed cis-savarna lawyers have bothered to seek clarification. We now wait for October.
As per the well-planned and coordinated attack by the State on transgender persons, the public interest and attention has waned, no real judicial reliefs are in sight, and everything has been left to the distant, opaque and now entirely disingenuous court proceedings. What is more, every attempt to set up a coordinated response from the affected community, i.e. the transgender community, is being systematically thwarted by the power brokers of the savarna queer community, who cannot resist the desire to establish their control over us rather than focusing on their own life and political demands.
Living under the genocidal Brahminical fascist state, individual transgender persons permanently outside structures of support are being forced into compliance or silence as we labour to stay alive, become at least partially documented, and succumb even further to the fractures within the community.
There are three phrases I have used in the title of this article: civil disobedience, ‘constitutional’ kritarchy, and culturo-legal artefaction. It is primarily through a simple explanation and expansion of these phrases that I seek to structure this article. It is my hope that in this manner the relationship between the three would become apparent.
‘Civil’ disobedience
As ideologically hollow, indeterminate, purely reactionary liberal exigencies, serving as outlets for rage, grow into ‘movements’ indifferent to systemic exclusions and consequences, the question of civil disobedience becomes very important for trans people.
There are many evocations of the philosophy and practice of civil disobedience that have run their course through time. The chief among those who are expressly associated with it are Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. – in such chronology of articulation as well as recorded sequence of inspiration.
On the other hand, and especially during active periods of unrest, rigid constitutionalists and Brahminical fascists alike refer to Ambedkar’s historic final speech[1] in the Constituent Assembly where he said:
“If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.” [Emphasis added].
Those who wish to criticize the singular interpretation of this quote immediately refer to the second provision, i.e. ‘when there was no way left for constitutional methods…’ We will come to this.
It is not my intention to get into each and every articulation of civil disobedience here. The matter is well understood as lying on a range – from a purely individual liberal, romantic disavowal of government to a very specific communal and collective rejection by the oppressed minority of unjust laws imposed by the ruling majority.
It is my intention to offer a different definition of ‘civil’ disobedience altogether. Drawing from what I tend to see as the contradictions in the aforementioned speech by Ambedkar and the transgender position. Now, in the very same speech Ambedkar referred to the many suffering masses under monopoly of power as not ‘only beasts of burden, but also beasts of prey’, and the glaring absence of social democracy and foundations of equality in India. The argument depending on the exception of ‘when there was no way left for constitutional methods’, proceeds as follows: that there are no constitutional methods remaining today – that is, in this moment in history, as a universal fact there are no constitutional methods remaining.
There are two parts here: one, at the time of speaking, Ambedkar suggested that constitutional methods were not available earlier but are now going to be available. In his list of unconstitutional methods he specifically underscores the methods popularized or associated with Gandhi, which must be understood as a continuation of his serious and well-founded rejection of Gandhi. Second, those who defend civil disobedience as a method today suggest that constitutional methods are no longer available. The necessary question becomes: what then are constitutional methods and, following from the issue of social democracy, have they ever been available to all at once? Further, from the reading of the constitution itself, the popular understanding of civil disobedience as a tool of dissent cannot entirely be disengaged from constitutional methods.
The constitution, and its methods, has always only been simultaneously present and absent across human geographies in India. And in the final analysis, we cannot but recognize Ambedkar’s decision to convert to Buddhism as a foundational act of ‘civil’ disobedience – at once a collective rejection of unjust Hindu laws, a constitutional right and method, and a challenge to the limits of constitutionalism directly arising from the Buddha’s Dhamma.
So then how do I propose to define ‘civil’ disobedience for my purpose here? I offer a simple two-fold definition: civil disobedience for the transgender cause is a sustained disobedience of civil society’s rules and a sustained refusal to participate in the orchestrations of civil society organizations.
The reasoning is as such. In defining and understanding ‘civil’ disobedience, among those who mark allegiance to the method, there is a foundational presumption of civility, and an allegiance to civility, civil society. In doing so, they mark themselves as superior to both the government – while predominantly being part of the ruling classes – and the so-called uncivilized. The term civil, in society, law and governance, is the opposite of criminal. That is, to be civil is to not be a ‘beast of burden or a beast of prey’. And in my understanding, it is this claim to civility and intrinsic superiority embedded in Gandhian civil disobedience that Ambedkar rejected when he rejected civil disobedience, and nowhere dissent itself. Calling on the civil society to first submit fully to the principle of equality in every walk of life.
The grammar-quibbler will rush to say, but ‘civil’ is an adjective, and thus such an interpretation will not hold. So be it – now put him in the pot of people like Sashi Tharoor who have trouble with pronouns, and I persist anyway. ‘Civil’ disobedience must be first and only the disobedience of rules of civility, civil society, and its organizations, which are the fount, framework and scaffold for every single unjust law surviving in this country, specifically pertaining to transgender persons.
The proof of this lies not only in modern history, but in contemporary history itself. Merely six years before the 2026 Trans Amendment Act was passed, the 2019 Trans Act was passed after at least three failed iterations prior. The most affected communities opposed the 2019 act thoroughly, in particular for the attempted medicalization through procedures for issuance of ID cards and the absence of clear substantive rights. All the constitutional methods, including protests, representations, dialogue, and litigation were initiated, with paltry gains. However, once the act and its rules came into force – simultaneously with COVID-19, instead of being able to strengthen and continue our collective defence of rights, the void was filled en masse by established cis-savarna led, urban, funded ‘community’ organizations, nefarious ‘service’ providers, and ill-intentioned community representatives. As the State executive apparatus meant for trans persons never fully came into being, they promised support in securing ID cards, translated the laws as being written in stone, pressed compliance, and thus completed the task of implementing the 2019 act.
As the State creates chaos, delays litigation, and imposes fear and uncertainty, there can be no doubt that we are headed in a similar direction for the 2026 act. I have no hesitation in saying these organizations banding together under the ‘lgbt’, ‘mental health’ and ‘ngo’ banners are waiting in the wings like the absolute vultures they are. To sap the blood and force of self-determination from trans lives is the only purpose of the ‘civil’ society, its organizations and many lackeys. The number of lives we have lost to it, there is no possible count.
Here I must take a necessary segue to argue against the refrain of ‘we have always existed’ that is current in the trans movement, especially rising in force against the trans act. (I have written about it elsewhere, but I also write with the accurate understanding that I am not read at all). It is impossible to avowedly stand on the fact of historical caste-patriarchal oppression and submit to a refrain of ‘we have always existed’. The question is always, how have we existed? And the only factual reply is we have always been hunted. This understanding is foundational to building the resistance and completing the disobedience against civil society that begins the minute we recognize ourselves.
‘Constitutional’ Kritarchy
Nowhere are we given a list of ‘constitutional methods’. It is always a label applied as a test upon the act of dissent, after the expression thereof and in relation to the State’s method of functioning. The current confusion of the ‘civil society’ in identifying constitutional methods, and attempts to ascertain whether they were available, have disappeared, eroded, or not available at all arises from the fundamental failure of political ‘pundits’ in explicating the type of system currently ‘operating’.
Two statements made about the Indian State are true at the same time: one, that we have always been a Brahminical fascist state; two, unlike ever before in the post-constitutional period the rot has captured every atom of the socio-political apparatus in full. However, it has not fallen. Indeed, the atoms keep splitting and reproducing with urgent ferocity suffocating all life force. The political scientist’s task is to explain the State under which we are living, (beyond generic identitarian labels or comparisons with visible policies of other fascist nations), such that the method of successfully resisting and overcoming it here can be enlightened.
I propose that the Brahminical fascist state is currently operating at the stage of ‘Constitutional’ Kritarchy, as a probable precursor to the fall of the Constitution as object itself. I borrow the phrase predominantly from Theoban Jerdan C Orosa’s work[2] that provides a singular case-law-centred interpretation of the ‘grave abuse clause’ and judicial excess in the context of Philippines’ Constitution and Supreme Court. But I do not explain it in that manner or context. Further, I must record that kritarchy and krytocracy are also terms used and popularised by the West’s far-right to criticize what they feel is judicial overreach. It is clarified that such framework is also not what is proposed here.
My use of the phrase ‘Constitutional’ Kritarchy is rooted in its broad historical origins and specifically in a brief but essential parallel between the ‘motherland’ (India) and the ‘fatherlands’ (Israel-US).
Kritarchy, shed of its religious (Biblical) origins and moral evaluations, is simply ‘the rule of judges’ – through extant law or religious codes, personal discretion, or any third made-up thing. ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy answers the central question of constitutional methods that have been – in their final analysis – reduced by ‘civil’ society to ‘approach the court’. ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy, in India, arises not from any singular ‘clause’ that grants the Constitutional Courts wide powers. Constitutional Courts here already and always have had wide powers arising from their stated role as final guardian of fundamental rights and final interpreter of the Constitution. ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy here is the insufferable rise of the singular rule of judges, as the two other arms of the government – legislature and executive – disappear into the active service of RSS. This ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy then proceeds by creating a perceived relationship of power struggle between the judiciary and the legislature-executive. One that doesn’t in fact exist and thus deludes the question of power to the people. The purpose of this ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy is to assist in the consistent amendment of the Constitution. One may say that such has always been the function of the Supreme Court run by the ruling castes, which wouldn’t be wrong at all. That brings us to the second element of this ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy – the pressure and perception of ‘speedy’ justice, with no regard to whether it is in fact justice at all. That is to say, the ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy here is not concerned with nor ever invoking the question of uses and abuses of law, but with how soon to deliver ‘justice’.
In less than five years, the ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy at Delhi has taken apart, questioned, poked holes, made incoherent for implementation, and reopened, established and essential definitions of caste atrocity, caste discrimination, women’s rights, industrial relations (and working class rights), citizenship, immigration, land and rehabilitation rights, criminal laws, right to life and gender identity. While simultaneously demanding presence in court of (and distributing to) individual claimants seeking indiscriminate reliefs by appealing to emotion, compassion, culture and anything but Constitutional law and fundamental rights.
Now, this ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy is not functioning merely in the space of the Constitutional courts. In the pursuit of ‘speedy’ justice these courts are consistently reformulating justice delivery by enhancing the number, type and powers of various lower courts, tribunals and ‘dispute-resolution’ mechanisms as well as their control over these mechanisms. At the same time, the reactionary ‘civil society’ that routinely cries over the death of democracy and suddenly feels powerless only due to their own celebrated ignorance, not only participates in but also mirrors this kritarchy through its own mechanisms.
This is seen immediately in the response to the Trans Act 2026. Till this time there has been no unequivocal acceptance of the failure of the cis-savarna led ‘lgbtqia’ civil society in precipitating this situation, nor an internal transfer of resources and representation to the affected communities. Rather the cis-queer men and women – whose political ideology is nothing but an alternating parade between slurping the remnants of ideologies of their cis-het counterparts and obsessing over trans people – decided to organize their own ‘public hearings’ (called Jan Sunwai), placing themselves as the interlocutors of our lives.
The first was during the peak of protests, March 22, 2026, at Delhi, orchestrated under Anish Gawande, cis gay NCP(SP) spokesperson, and online platforms such as ‘Yes, We Exist India’. The entire panel was overshadowed by cis political leaders who have no knowledge, understanding or contribution to the transgender cause. Transgender persons, in the audience, left watching a spectacle made out of our rights.
Another was organized on 25 July, 2026, at Vadodara, Gujarat, this time under the visible orchestration of Mario Da Penha – a cis gay man associated with the Congress Party, the NLSIU, and doing his doctorate on ‘Hijras during Maratha and early colonial rule in western India’. The Brahminical cis anthropologists continue unabated with their extraction of trans lives. The entire ‘public hearing’ saw a panel set up of (aging) cis men and women, such as Mary E John, who have historically ignored trans and anti-caste issues in their ‘feminist’ work, before whom seventeen trans persons – internal gender, caste, class representation unknown – submitted their ‘testimonies’. What will these testimonies be used for? A report [‘judgment’] to be authored by a panel that does not consist of transgender persons.
It may be noted that the civil society’s penchant for public hearings (and fact-findings) and confused, superficial, non-representative report-writing has been around for as long as, and has developed in parallel with the full-fledged emergence of ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy.
At the heart of this ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy – operating through self-appointed judges of the judiciary and civil society – is not judicial overreach or maintenance of ‘status-quo’, though elements of this may appear from time to time. It is the utilization of self-professed institutional ignorance (framed as ‘this is a serious question that needs careful study or review’) and the farce of ‘hearing the affected parties’ to excavate every minutiae – whether relevant or not – and reframe it within the narrowest, harshest, most technical, most intractable, confusing and un-implementable if not plainly harmful law and policy.
The ‘constitutional’ method of ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy relies on civil society working closely with the judiciary by offering up poorly drafted petitions [“reports”] by incompetent representatives, raising unnecessary questions, without thinking through the consequences of offering up certain questions, comparisons, and already oppressed communities to this overarching judicial process – producing foregone unconstitutional outcomes that have to be lived out by the ‘beasts of burden, beasts of prey.’ This ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy requires that the legislative-executive vacuum never be filled. So the judges can keep judging. The anthropologist and archaeologist can keep excavating. The priest can keep chanting and the genocide can keep deepening. The great error of the ‘pundits’ is to reduce the Court to a ‘mouth piece’ of the State – far from it, it has a mind and political object of its own that is of equal if not greater consequence than the mere breakdown of legislative-executive arms of State.
The parallel with ‘fatherlands’ of US and Israel is a brief one: Both Israel and US function as a kritarchies also maintaining a certain façade of the judiciary being in tussle with legislative-executives. All three countries are active genocidal nations that rely on false narratives and claims of indigeneity by the ruling colonizer castes-races. In Israel, it is the judiciary itself that drafted a ‘basic laws’ Constitution and in the US the Constitution was drafted entirely by the Whites, hence they are inherent kritarchies that flourish under and openly fund genocide. In India, such is not the case – the kritarchy is a ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy (unlike Orosa’s) insofar as the Constitution – of the people – is above the judiciary. Therefore, in order to enter a full-fledged kritarchy – i.e. to be an unbridled khap panchayat – the judiciary, as the final interpreter of the Constitution has to first reinterpret and demolish the Constitution by drawing the same people to court not with democratic representations, but with pleadings. For this the ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy must be consistently fed ‘civil conflict’ to adjudicate: the only job of the legislative-executive and the civil society. The logical end to this would be such that even the most ‘liberal’ judge cannot but consistently judge in favour of the genocidal State. Such that, the civil society may continue upholding and participating in unjust law (as exemplified in the case of SIR and mass voter roll deletions that should have been boycotted), alongside their academic machismo and paeans for abstract, reactionary ‘fights’ against injustice.
It is essential, before I proceed to the next section, to point out that unlike in the US the claims of ‘trans liberation’ in Israel have stood for far longer and used as an express tool for genocide. Rather than simply reacting that we cannot use ‘advances’ for a ‘community’ to pinkwash genocide, we must also show that there is indeed no advancement of trans rights in Israel beyond paper (as it is with all kritarchies) – because a genocidal nation cannot coexist with trans existence. A short and critical study of the so-called advancements in trans rights will lay bare that it has followed almost exactly the trajectory of India. At the core of it is the clear legal position of Rabbinical courts (religious courts) that “do not recognize the possibility of sex reclassification” subsisting with mish-mash ‘secular’ pronouncements on dignity, non-discrimination and meaningless whatnot. Suffice to undertake a critical reading of Ido Katri[3] in this regard, whose work I remain deeply critical of, but who has shed light on the falsehood of ‘trans rights’ in Israel[4]. But he falls woefully short of calling it what it is.
Culturo-legal ‘Artefaction’
Culturo-legal artefaction, I propose, is the basest and most trenchant structural form of the current oppression and subjugation of the transgender persons in India (and world at large). By now, you may recognize that I am an independent researcher entirely outside of institutions. I ‘borrow’ terms institutionalized by academia and use it for my ends. Artefaction, I borrow generally from the field of post-modern preoccupation with meaning-making and specifically from Gary Watt’s The Making Sense of Politics, Media, and Law (2023)[5].
The simple definition of artefaction is thing-making, i.e. to be rendered as an artefact – an object of ‘significance’ made and remade by ‘humans’. Gary Watt and others in their analysis take it a step further to underscore, quite apolitically, that the relationship is symbiotic – the ‘humans’ make artefacts, artefacts make and remake the ‘human’ world. They speak nothing of the artefaction of humans by other humans.
It can be said without a modicum of hesitation, that the trans person is not a human, not a person in India, and no Brahmin-colonial academic gimmickery can prove otherwise. The subjugation and control exercised over us has been entirely through the Caste anthropological-legal apparatus. There has been no possibility thus far to put up sustained counter-revolt — those who are alive keep getting absorbed or appropriated into cis-led exigencies that promise us scraps after their liberation. I have already, in my 2024 paper submitted to and ignored by Berkeley Center and Oxford Human Rights Hub[6], explained the Manusmriti’s specific definitions and rules applied on those considered transgender people. It cannot be stressed enough – straw is more valuable than a transgender life, according to Manu’s codes.
The culturo-legal artefaction, sustains itself in the very refrain that I have derided earlier – we have always existed. The ‘fact’ of ‘significant’ existence doesn’t illuminate nature of oppression nor pave the path to liberation. But that is not all, this state of artefaction must necessarily be seen as multiply degraded objectification without the slightest route of escape.
Allow me to explain with what may be considered a ‘neutral’ comparison in modern law: between child and transgender position. While recognizing that ‘the child’ has always been rendered as an ‘object’ to be protected from ‘the transgender’ such as me. There can be no doubt that the child is an object in law and culture, with very few rights of self-determination that can be exercised without mediation by adults, until an arbitrary point in time when they can become an adult and proceed to recognize, counter, and transform themselves out of the object position. A trans person, on the other hand, fixed artefact in law and culture, can under no circumstances, even the most arbitrary, counter and transform outside of the artefact position. Now, under our state of ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy, we may logically proceed to conduct similar comparisons across humans historically relegated to object position against the compulsory artefaction of transgender persons. I do not favour such method nor propose to engage it, but only to summarize this much in general: Humans made object, as beast of burden and beast of prey, can still find before them a historically hewn path to transform to subject, author and ultimately revolutionary. When you are an artefacted transgender beast of burden and beast of prey, under Indian ‘Constitutional’ kritarchy, such path does not exist. What remains is the making and remaking of the object position until you have collapsed into yourself – hollow, brittle, mouthing the oppressors’ language to believe that perhaps we are just ‘made-up’.
Artefaction is the final death blow to human self-determination everywhere. Speak to civil society’s deepest conscience (quite shallow as it is) and every person will finally accept that they believe a ‘transgender person’ is ‘made’ by intervention of psychic regulation, surgical procedures or made as a cultural body-bag to hold the excesses and ‘inexcusably base’ impulses of bounded cis-caste communities. In other words, they will tell you, a transgender person is made by psychiatrist, plastic surgeon, or by being ‘ornamented and attired’ in cultural practice already codified for a pre-determined purpose. That is, a transgender person is made by other humans or made for, made from ‘pre-exisiting’ cultural laws already made by other humans organizing society. The latter remains a limitation of legitimate attempts to reclaim ‘indigenous’ cultural positions of trans people as ‘healers’ etc. Thus, let it be clear, I do not use artefaction in abstract – artefaction refers to the false consciousness that a trans person is expressly made by other humans subsuming any and all claims of self-determination. And hence the transgender person is prevented from laying any claim to equality even under creationism, universal humanism, constitutionalism or any other equalizing ideological impetus. In this, we also run into a political impasse with the lgbqia+ position that can lay partial claim to ‘being created this way’. A claim that has never successfully propelled trans liberation.
There is no dearth of queer persons upholding such culturo-legal artefaction even in the current moment when we have been divested of all rights through blanket legislation. In 2026, Patruni Chidananda Sastry, a Brahmin drag artist and corporate professional, published and publicized Drag Sastra. I have not read the entire text, nor do I intend to. Living under the Brahminical state that seeks to topple the Constitution with the Manusmriti and other Hindu codes, it must be seen as defeatist if not abhorrent this attempt to ‘reclaim’ the Natya Sastra and other ‘classical’ texts to prove that ‘drag’ and ‘fluid gender performances’ have always existed. A simple enquiry would show that the Natya Sastra, self-professed ‘Fifth Veda’, exists entirely in service of the Caste system and has been criticized through popular media and academic work[7]. No transgender person must accept such attempts to force us within and in the service of the Caste system, even if it is done by persons claiming community.
It is not merely that history is being erased. For the transgender person, the history we could never write is being urgently and shamelessly rewritten.
Therefore, I return full circle: to the preliminary focus of ‘civil’ disobedience. The complete and total rejection of unjust laws and diktats of the judges and juries of ‘civil’ society and their stranglehold over the trans movement. The complete recognition of the source, nature and articulations of our subjugation — in their truest terms. The complete refusal to accept anything but self-determination everywhere, and for everyone. When we arrive at an agreement on this, we take our first step toward securing the preliminary tools to protecting ourselves, securing rights, and winning power.
[1] See Para 11.165.299-11.165.330 at https://www.constitutionofindia.net/debates/25-nov-1949/
[2] Citation: 49, Ateneo L.J. 565 (2004) OR Orosa, Theoban Jerdan C. (2004) “Constitutional Kritarchy under the Grave Abuse Clause”, Ateneo Law Journal, 565.
[3] Ido Katri (2021). The Protection of Trans Rights in Israel In Trans Rights and Wrongs. Note: Anyone who honestly compares the so-called development of trans rights in Israel and India will not fail to see the parallels.
[4] See also: https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article/13/2/203/410264/Fragments-from-the-Philosophy-of-May-hem
[5] See Open Access text at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/making-sense-of-politics-media-and-law/artefaction/C09A7524B0D84B444584CBD9B3F9D067
[6] See: https://transgenderdespatch.online/eviscerative-equality-and-the-need-for-positive-discrimination-laws/
[7] See, for example: Kumar, Manish (2022). Varna System and Nāṭyaśāstra: Caste-based Discriminationin the Art Explanation of Nāṭyaśāstra. Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts & Sciences, 7(1). Available at: https://www.bodhijournals.com/pdf/V7N1/Bodhi_V7N1_006.pdf