Beyond Identity: NGOisation, Community, and the Politics of Gender Nonconformity in India

What does it mean to live as a gender non-conforming (GNC) person in a world structured through rigid binaries—man or woman, legitimate or illegitimate, respectable or deviant—and what occurs when such classificatory frameworks fail to correspond to lived realities? For many GNC people in India, everyday life entails navigating social worlds that demand different forms of visibility, legitimacy, and belonging.

My monograph examines these quotidian negotiations while posing a broader question: how do GNC persons navigate gender identity, forge communities, and construct habitable lifeworlds amid shifting social values, precarious labour conditions, and constrained legal recognition?

Beyond fixed identities

One of the key ideas from scholar Gayatri Reddy is that we cannot understand gender non-conforming lives in India simply by focusing on identity alone. Instead, we need to look at the social worlds people move through—kinship systems, caste and class relations, and forms of labour.

Seen this way, gender is not fixed. It changes across time and context, depending on what is possible, safe, or useful in a given situation.

Historically, many GNC people in India lived in hijra communities, often organised like families or kinship networks. These communities offered belonging and survival, even though they were pushed to the margins of society.

Change, NGOs, and new expectations

From the 1990s onwards, HIV interventions and NGO-led programmes brought major changes. New terms like “transgender,” “TG,” and “kothi” became widely used. They helped people gain visibility, access rights, and speak in a global language of recognition.

But this shift also brought new pressures. Alongside expanded rights came expectations about how individuals should behave, work, and present themselves within increasingly professionalised environments.

This is where things take an unexpected turn. NGOs are often seen either as empowering spaces or as institutions that dilute radical politics. My research suggests it is more useful to see them as something in between—spaces constrained by donors and the state, but also spaces where people find jobs, community, and new ways of speaking about rights.

For many participants, NGO work was one of the few stable forms of employment available. But this work rarely replaced older livelihoods completely. People often moved between formal NGO jobs and informal work, such as ritual performances at weddings and births (badhai), and sometimes sex work. These different forms of labour were not mutually exclusive but part of the same survival strategy.

Interestingly, hijra cultural practices, such as singing, dancing, drumming, and ritual performances, also continued within and alongside NGO spaces. They remained important sources of belonging and identity, even when institutions tried to frame this work in more “professional” terms.

Identity depends on context

A key finding of my research is that identity is not fixed or always consistent. People shift how they describe themselves depending on the situation they are in.

The scholar Aniruddha Dutta suggests that “transgender” should not be treated as a rigid category but as something flexible and context-dependent. My work builds on this idea by showing how people already do this in everyday life.

People may use “transgender” in hospitals, legal spaces, or NGO settings to access recognition and respect. In other contexts, they may draw on hijra identity or other local categories that feel more meaningful or pragmatic.

Identity here is not about choosing one label forever, but about navigating different social situations with different tools. 

Community, Law and Survival 

If identity is fluid and situational, then so too are the structures through which people seek belonging and survival. “Community” is often spoken about as if it is stable and unified. In reality, it is uneven and sometimes fragile.

Some people find support, care, and political strength in community networks. Others experience exclusion or tension within them. Factors like class, health status, occupation, and education can be just as important as gender identity in shaping who belongs and who does not.

The same complexity emerges in relation to law and rights. Legal reforms in India claim to expand recognition for gender non-conforming people, yet they often presume a singular, stable subject who fits neatly within policy categories. This is  evident in the different versions of the Transgender Bill and the subsequent Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.

In practice, people engage with law in very different ways. Some prioritise education or formal employment. Others focus on family, intimacy, or survival. Some reject ritual practices like badhai, while others depend on them for income and belonging.

Recognition, on its own, is not enough. Without attention to material inequalities, it can unintentionally create new forms of exclusion.

Why this matters

Discussions about gender diversity are often framed as a story of progress—greater visibility, more rights, better inclusion. While these changes matter, they do not affect everyone in the same way.

What my research shows is that gender non-conforming people inhabit precarity through constant movement between visibility and concealment, community and solitude, resistance and accommodation. If there is one takeaway, it is that justice cannot be secured through identity recognition alone. It also requires sustained attention to the social and economic conditions that determine how people live, move, and belong.