Published Online:March 2025
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES010325
DOI:10.71329/IUPJES/2025.20.1.5-19
Author Name:Lisa Thomas
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:5-19
This paper interrogates the normative frameworks of citizenship by approaching the concept through the lens of embodied experience, focusing particularly on transgender and Dalit lives. It critiques the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, revealing how it reinforces the hegemonic norms of gender and caste. Drawing from feminist theory, poststructuralist thought, and transgender studies, the paper highlights how the body with its materiality, its cultural inscriptions, and its lived realities serves as a critical site for political struggle and recognition. Through an intersectional analysis, the paper argues that dominant citizenship frameworks fail to acknowledge the multiplicity of identities and the structural violence faced by marginalized groups. Instead, it proposes a model of situated and inclusive citizenship rooted in solidarity, difference, and subjugated knowledge. By foregrounding subjugated knowledges from transgender and Dalit communities, it challenges Western universalisms and calls for a solidarity-based inclusive political framework of citizenship that addresses the complex realities of identity, oppression, and autonomy in contemporary India.
When tracing the history of citizenship in twentieth and twenty-first century India, one can identify the shifts in the relationship between a citizen and the state.