Religiosity and Trans/ Regionalisms in South Asia

Keywords: transgender, South Asia, borders, cross-border, biopolitics, COVID-19
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 74

Abstract

In this past decade, majority of the South Asian countries have seen legal recognition of diverse gender identities. The deliberations over the constitutional rights of diverse gender identities remain entangled with religious texts and mythologies. The arrival of the transgender subject of rights is predicated upon their religious status. Such entanglement between religiosities and positive legal changes remain unexplored in transgender studies. Further, the shifting legal landscape is being produced after years of cross border movement building among transgender rights activists. Geopolitical conflicts in the region stifle cross border movement along India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh borders, newer forms of geographies are being ushered through South Asian LGBTQI activists gathering in Nepal and building cross border solidarities. Activists are taking their individual nation-states as targets for legal changes while forging alliances with supra-state institutions. These alliances take on a territorial as well as deterritorializing potentials. Cross border collaboration with diverse international agencies forges a trans/border geography of rights, while sovereign power in the form of individual nation-states still remain important in enacting legislations that usher positive recognition and support for transgender communities. This paper explores how such geopolitics of South Asia transect and transact with the biopolitics of COVID-19 pandemic, religiosity and movements for transgender rights.