Three new bills passed in India in March 2026 potentially make life-altering interventions inside the home, the bedroom, the institution of biological/natal family, and the body itself. On March 17-18, 2026, the Maharashtra Assembly passed the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill, 2026. The same month saw the passing of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026. On March 25, 2026, the Gujarat Assembly passed the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Bill, which proposes a common legal framework to govern marriage, divorce, succession, and live-in relationships, irrespective of religion. Meanwhile, amendments have been proposed to the Gujarat Registration of Marriages Act, 2006, introducing a stricter, multi-stage verification process. BJP governments—whether in States or at the Centre—are behind all three bills.

The passage of these bills in rapid succession demonstrates the growing trend of the state prioritising conservatism and patriarchy over individual freedoms. These bills may seem unconnected, but are deeply intertwined and part of a troubling machinery. They place love and marriage under state-approved regimes, put religious conversion under criminal suspicion, and subject an individual’s chosen gender identity to medical gatekeeping. And so they drag modernity a few steps back by encouraging the very cultures it is meant to subvert—family policing, moral panic, and public stigma.

The Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill, 2026, criminalises unlawful conversion by making parental approval mandatory for inter-faith marriages and empowering third parties (including relatives and the police) to lodge cases. Arbitrary and sweeping new categories have been introduced: for instance, “brainwashing through education” might be considered as a conversion-related activity. The bill emboldens vigilante groups by allowing the police to take action against an accused without any formal complaint.

Gujarat has proposed draconian changes to the Gujarat Registration of Marriages Act (2006) and passed the Uniform Civil Code Bill, 2026. These two legislations govern marriage, divorce, succession, adoption, guardianship, and live-in relationships. According to the Minority Coordination Committee of Gujarat, the UCC Bill “undermines the principle of decision-making by consenting adults, erodes religious identity, and brings changes to inheritance and adoption practices of Muslim and Christian communities”. The UCC Bill stipulates seven years of jail if marriages are conducted through force, coercion, or fraud, and also prohibits bigamy/polygamy. It makes registrations mandatory for marriages and live-in relationships.

The amendments to the Gujarat Registration of Marriages Act, 2006, require couples seeking to register their marriage to submit the identity documents of their parents and to declare that parents have been informed about the marriage. After an application is accepted, parents would be officially notified within 10 working days. Registration would take place after at least 30 days, once the registrar is satisfied that all requirements have been met.

Finally, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, narrows down the recognition criteria of transpersons and subsequently their rights while adding new official approval requirements for identity. The bill removes transmen, trans-women, and gender-queer persons from categories recognised under the law while putting identity certification under a medical board-approved process and requiring medical institutions to inform district magistrates about surgery for gender change.

Taken together, these changes do not amount to reform. Rather, they speak of a political project geared towards regulating identity and intimacy.

Prohibiting the self

From asking for parental sanction and approval to the doctor’s certificate, all the new bills, while being seemingly unrelated, have a common factor—they prohibit a person’s self-identification and personal associations. By relying on the narrow-mindedness and exclusionary practices of older generations and packaging them as protective and feminist policies, these bills seek to institutionalise familial restrictions.

The Transgender Persons Amendment Bill makes it clear that medical and bureaucratic sanctions are required for deciding the gender of choice for a person. In principle, this is not very different from how the anti-conversion laws mandate an affidavit and the declaration of faith to undergo the scrutiny of a district magistrate, for periods as long as as up to 90 days, before a person’s religious conversion gets approved. Belief and practice, or the lack of both, are a deeply personal and individual decision that cannot be policed by the whims of the state.

Similarly, the decision of two consenting adults to enter into a romantic relationship amounts to an exercise of personal autonomy. The UCC Bill in Gujarat, like the Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code (UCC) Act, 2024, is creating a template for infantilising adults and perpetuating surveillance, control, and criminalisation of adult relationships.

All these bills also put the onus of proof on individuals, who have to prove the validity of their identities, beliefs, and private relationships. They throw open questions of selfhood and autonomy to violence by families or vigilantes (or often, by both). Media reports have already highlighted the ways in which anti-conversion and UCC laws in other States have paved the way for vigilante violence and arbitrary home demolitions.

The umbrella of state control over different registers of identity expands the reach and remit of the law with greater penal measures. The Transgender Persons Amendment Bill actively seeks to criminalise those who “influence” a person’s decision regarding their gender identity. This is not very different from how the anti-conversion laws have been playing out, with entire Muslim families or Christian/Jesuit-run institutions being criminalised for supposedly running “conversion rackets”. By casting the shadow of suspicion on any kinship- or community-forming activity, these bills make criminals out of the support groups that help people.

To sum up, while these bills are presented as being well-intentioned and aimed at “safeguarding” the interests of women and transpeople, they are, in fact, exactly the opposite. Rather than supporting these groups, they undermine their interests, criminalise them, and strip them of the ability to define their own identities and relationships. They change self-determination (of faith, gender identity, and private relationships across religions) into state-determination by subjecting people’s lives to bureaucratic classification and examination.

Nidah Kaiser is a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College, London, and Sabah Gurmat is an independent journalist and writer based in New Delhi.

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