‘While many congratulated, my own family didn’t accept me’: First recipient of transgender birth certificate in Rajasthan

On July 19, Shekhawat became the first transgender person in Rajasthan to be issued a birth certificate in which the gender is recorded as transgender. In her old birth certificate, her gender was marked as male.

Shekhawat prefers to go by the pronouns she/her.

“One day ago, after I received my birth certificate, my aunt suggested that my family publish an advertisement in newspapers that they would hold my tiye ki baithak (rituals performed after death) because I am dead to them. I was sad that while many people were congratulating me, my own family didn’t accept me,” she says.

However, as she was being handed her new birth certificate by municipal and state government officials, she felt like she had been born again, she says, this time in her “true gender identity”.

Talking about the struggles she had to overcome, she says, “My family didn’t accept my gender identity as a transgender. I had to leave my house at a very young age and struggled for my sustenance. I also dropped out of college in the first year because of the constant ridicule and harassment I faced from other students.”

She says that it bothered her to see her gender marked as male in her class 10 and 12 marksheets “when I myself have embraced my gender identity as a transgender”.

Determined to officially change her gender identity, Shekhawat applied for the new birth certificate earlier this month.

Bhanwar Lal Bairwa, director and joint secretary at Rajasthan’s Directorate of Economics and Statistics, says there is a provision in birth certificates to mark gender as transgender.

“The birth certificate issued to Shekhawat is the first such birth certificate issued by us in Rajasthan where the gender is mentioned as transgender. After Shekhawat applied for the birth certificate at the Jaipur Municipal Corporation, officials from the corporation reached out to us for guidance and we completed the process in a short time. Shekhawat also furnished a medical certificate that said that her gender is transgender,” he says.

Shekhawat, who runs an NGO for the transgender community, says she now wants to get the gender changed in her class 10 and 12 marksheets as well.

She also plans to complete her graduation.

“It is ironic that while society worships kinnars and transgenders, we are also discriminated against and not accepted. There is very little representation of the transgender community in every sphere,” she says.

Director Bairwa says his department is encouraging other members of the transgender community to come forward following the example of Shekhawat.

Transgender rights activist Pushpa Mai, member of the Rajasthan Transgender Board and founder and chairperson of the Nai Bhor Sanstha organisation, says, “In the future, it would help the transgender community even more if such birth certificates can be issued when a child or adolescent first becomes aware of their gender identity.” She said this could help transgender people have their true gender identities declared right from the time of their class 10 and 12 exams.