The Transgender Persons Amendment Bill Is Turning Back the Centuries
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, has been passed by both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. The rush to push through this Amendment Bill is curious enough – why this issue? Why now? But what is perhaps even more curious is the case of a Hindutva zeitgeist attempting to “amend” centuries of Hindu mythology and religion.
Two of the three primary Gods of the Hindu pantheon – Shiva and Vishnu – are well known as the gods who not only bless transgender people, but who are also themselves, at various points, transgender. Shiva’s form as Ardhanarishvara produces the combination of male and female in the form of a single being – ardha is half, nari is woman, and ishvara is a male god. This avatar of Shiva has a widespread iconographic presence in India, with everything from song and dance to films and poems and images being produced in its name. Almost universally, temples devoted to Shiva both in India and South-East Asia contain images of Ardhanarishvara in them.
As I have already pointed out in my book, Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India, Shiva’s trans-gendered life often involves Vishnu as well, and we see this most explicitly in the legend of Shiva and Vishnu-as-Mohini as it has been narrated in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Bhagavada Purana, the Padma Purana, and the Brahmanda Purana.
One version of this legend tells us that the demon Bhasmasura (the ashes demon) performed severe austerities in order to please Shiva, who in turn granted him a boon, telling the demon to ask for whatever he wished. In a reversal of the Midas touch in which the king asks for everything he touches to be turned into gold, Bhasmasura asks for the ability to turn into ashes anything that he touches. Shiva grants him this strange wish, at which point Bhasmasura immediately starts chasing Shiva to reduce the god to a pile of ashes and take over his power. Shiva hides himself in a tree and begs Vishnu for help. For reasons unbeknownst to mere mortals, Vishnu decides to take on the form of Mohini, the enchantress, and seduce Bhasmasura into submission. The demon is so taken with Mohini’s beauty that he gets side-tracked from his mission to murder Shiva and starts courting the enchantress instead. As part of their courtship routine, Mohini asks Bhasmasura to put his hand on his head and swear fidelity. The moment that the love-struck Bhasmasura does so, he is reduced to ashes.
Vishnu goes to tell Shiva of his success against the demon, and Shiva asks if he too can see Vishnu as Mohini. When Vishnu obliges, Shiva is so flooded with passion that he insists on an intimate union with Mohini.
A less lurid version of the tale focuses more on necessity than desire. The female demon Mahishi is determined to take revenge for the murder of her brother, Mahishasura, at the hands of the goddess Durga (Mahishasura had been granted a boon saying he could not be killed by any man, which is why the gods sent a goddess to perform the deed). After undergoing a formidable set of penances, Mahishi is granted a boon by the creator Brahma. When she asks for invulnerability, Brahma has enough good sense to turn her down. But then she makes a second supplication, asking for invulnerability to everyone except the son of Shiva and Vishnu. Once she is granted this boon, she starts ravaging the world with impunity, secure in the knowledge that no one can vanquish her. The gods beseech Vishnu, the preserver, to attend to the situation. Vishnu decides to reprise an avatar he had taken on earlier. On that previous occasion, he had become Mohini in order to rescue the divine nectar from the demons who were refusing to share it with the gods. In this avatar, Vishnu had seduced the demons into giving up their hold over the nectar so the gods could gain immortality by drinking it. In the reprisal of this role, Shiva and Mohini come together and give birth to Dharmashasta, of whom Ayyappan is an avatar. Ayyappan then goes on to kill the demon Mahishi.
Cognisant of these histories of desire in the Indian subcontinent, the Supreme Court in its NALSA judgment of 2014 defined transgender people as anybody who did not identify with the sex assigned to them at birth. This judgment put into writing what has been startlingly modern and unique for centuries about the Indian subcontinent. In a world of homo- and trans-phobia, the Court stood up for what we have always known to be true – that gender is fluid rather than fixed, and that we have been able to explore that fluidity in our lived lives as well as in our religions and philosophies and cultures.
So what would Shiva and Vishnu do today as The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026 stands on the cusp of becoming law? Would they have to submit to a medical board in order to get state-sanctioned approval of their transgender status? Would they be accused of being “infiltrators” in the system of government benefits? Would Parvati and Lakshmi be arrested for aiding and abetting their partners? Why would we squander our civilisational riches in order to join a world filled with transphobia?
Madhavi Menon studies histories of desire and sexuality around the world.
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