On a grey, monsoon-wet morning in Dhaka, a young trans activist folded one hand beside the base of the Shahid Minar and declared she would starve until the state heard her truth. That hand belonged to Sahara Chowdhury Rebil — and what she produced during that silent strike, a 178-page Bengali-language document titled the Bangladeshi Queer Manifesto, is sending seismic ripples through the world of Bangladeshi rights. In a nation where the words queer and baro mohila (transgender woman) often sit unspoken behind doors, the manifesto declares: we will no longer be invisible. It is, in many senses, the most radical piece of paper published in Bangladesh this year.
For decades the LGBTQ+ community in Bangladesh has operated within the shadows of law and stigma. The colonial-era Section 377 of the Penal Code 1860 criminalises “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”, with penalties up to life imprisonment, and serves as a looming threat, even if rarely enforced. At the same time, the government recognised hijras as a “third gender” on IDs as early as 2013 — a modest step, perhaps, but one that fell far short of full citizenship in every day life. The manifesto enters precisely at that juncture: between legal flicker and social invisibility.
Rebil’s hunger strike on October 10 marked both an act of despair and defiance. She said marriage rights were not cosmetic—they were “a vital link to society and the economy. A link that transgender people have no access to.” The manifesto, drafted over a year beginning July 2024, spares no one: it indicts families that eject trans children, schools that remain closed, health services that ignore and mock, and a state that remains complicit in exclusion. It argues that charity alone is not enough, writing: “amar-dhar nai” (I have no right) becomes “amar-adhikar chai” (I demand my right).
Culturally, Bangladesh is the land of adda (informal social chat), chhatri (umbrella), and the communal drumbeat of Pohela Boishakh (Bengali new year) — in other words, a nation steeped in tradition, family ties, and a public ethos of belonging. For many in the queer community, that belonging has been denied. The manifesto places that denial squarely in the ledger of the state, society and the home: it notes how an expelled trans student from Sylhet became Rebil’s story, how girls trapped as hijras were pushed into begging or worse, how the promise of shikkha (education) evaporated at the university gates.
What’s new here is not just the language, but the timing. Bangladesh is preparing for national elections early next year and the manifesto situates queer rights within that political moment: it demands that “paribartanshil neta” (transformative leader) promise legal marriage rights, anti-discrimination laws, and economic inclusion. At the same time, reports show that violence against LGBTQI+ people soared: in 2024 alone, 396 individuals suffered in 70 incidents, many with no recourse. The document’s boldness stands in direct contrast to an older era of invisibility — where the murdered activist Xulhaz Mannan, founder of Bangladesh’s first queer magazine, paid the ultimate price for public visibility.
Yet the manifesto also carries hope. It speaks to a younger generation of students, bloggers, hijras, gays and lesbians who refuse to hide behind silence. The language of the document uses Bengali colloquialisms — “ami aisi” (I have come), “ami bolbo” (I will speak) — grounding its demands in everyday speech. It reminds us that in Dhaka’s crowded chawls, in Sylhet’s quiet lanes, in the northeastern tea gardens, queer people exist and have names, families, histories. If the term queer still carries the electric charge of “un-Bangladeshi” in conservative circles, this manifesto reclaims it: declaring that love, identity and dignity are not imported ideals, but rooted in Bengali soil.
In the end, the Bangladeshi Queer Manifesto may prove less a finished treaty than a powerful opening line. It forces Bangladesh to confront the question: if a country of 172 million cannot guarantee that a citizen’s love, identity and dignity are respected, what are the structures protecting them? For Rebil and countless others, adhikar (rights) is no longer negotiable. The rain-soaked morning at the Shahid Minar may end, but the ripple of that act continues. And for once, Bangladesh’s queer community is writing its demands in permanent ink.
Bangladesh, land of rivers, poetry, fish curry, Rabindranath Tagore and a thousand songs of longing — and now, finally, a manifesto that dares to say what so many have whispered into pillows, bathroom mirrors, and late-night WhatsApp chats: We are here. We are yours. We will not go away.
Spicy Auntie stands today with the Bangladeshi queer family — pura poribar, darling — not in polite sympathy, but in fierce, unbreakable solidarity. Because when one of us stands up, hungry and exposed under monsoon sky, declaring her right to love and live, the entire sisterhood — and cousinhood and chosen family — must move with her.
Let’s be very clear: this manifesto is not a “request,” not a “petition,” not a polite knock on the door. It is a declaration of citizenship. Of flesh. Of history. Of Bengali hearts beating inside queer bodies.
And this auntie is so proud.
I know Bangladesh. I’ve danced in Dhaka basements, I’ve shared cigarettes on rooftops in Mohammadpur while talking heartbreak and poetry, I’ve held the trembling hands of young hijra sisters nervous to board their first bus alone. I’ve seen how love blooms in secret — oh, the tenderness! But I have also seen the fear, the threats, the way families choose “shame” over blood, the way law turns its back, the way society pretends it does not see what it has always known.
To the ones who wrote this manifesto: you have done something extraordinary. You have cracked open the national silence. You have carved space where none was given. You have taken “bhoy” (fear) and turned it into “shakti” (power).
To the aunties and uncles clutching prayer beads and muttering “culture, tradition, morality”— relax lah. Queer people are not foreign imports. They are not Netflix. They are not Western puppets. They have been in your villages, mosques, farms, and tea stalls since your great-great-great grandmother was still tying her first shankha bangles. You just refused to see them.
To the Bangladeshi queer family: you owe no one apology. No doctor, no cleric, no politician, no professor has the authority to define your dignity.
You are not the “other.” You are the center — of poetry, of courage, of this entire cultural moment. Spicy Auntie stands with you, shoulder to shoulder, lipstick sharp, heart open.
And to those who try to silence you — dekho, you cannot un-hear a voice once it has learned to speak.