India

​ The Hindu religion is the world’s third largest religion, and approximately 80% of the population of India practices Hinduism.  The Mother Goddess, Parvati, features prominently in the Hindu religious practices among the Gujarat, a state in northern India where anthropologist Serena Nanda produced her ethnography, The Hijras of India: Neither Man nor Woman.  Another important goddess, Bahuchara, “is worshipped by a large part of the population…[and] she is particularly associated with male transvestitism and transgenderism.” As Nanda illustrates in Chapter 2, “The Hijra as Neither Man nor Woman,” in some devout sects of Hinduism, one must “transcend one’s own sex” in order to receive salvation, following that “Hinduism in general holds that all persons contain within themselves both male and female principles… [T]he Supreme Being is conceptualized as one complete sex containing male and female sexual organs.” And so “[t]he hijra role…is a magnet for individuals who have different motivations, gender identities, personality constellations, and cross-gender behavior,” and in Hindu India the combination of roles as both religious ascetics, often expressed through a process of emasculation in worship of Bahuchara “to secure her favor,” and as “neither man nor [women],” gives “the [hijra] role its institutionalized character.”

​ “The ability of the hijra role to succeed as a symbolic reference point giving significant meaning to the lives of the many different kinds of people who make up the hijra community, is undoubtedly related to the variety and significance of alternative gender roles and gender transformations in Indian mythology and traditional culture.” Indeed, the hijra of India, through the emasculation operation, are “transformed” from “an impotent (not sexually aroused by women) male into a potentially powerful person.” And even though this is only an ideal, and even most hijra do not undergo emasculation, and do not experience sexual desire and intimacy, “this ascetic model…is nevertheless the most powerful idea that legitimates their ritual functions in Indian society.”

​ Through intricate and economically independent communities, overseen by a guru, the “real” hijra serve several ritual roles in Indian society, including one at marriages for middle-class Indian families called the badhai, where “the typical performing group…consists of five to nine hijras; most of them dance, one plays the drums, and one plays the harmonium.” There, they “aggressively display female sexuality,” and while “dressed up in women’s clothing…bestow blessings in the name of the Mata, the Mother Goddess…as vehicles of the divine power of the Mother Goddess, [they transform] their impotence into the power of generativity.” This process is central to “the Hindu belief of Shakti – the potency of the dynamic female forces of creation that the hijras…represent.” At the birth of a baby, the hijra inspect its genitalia, “reinforcing the belief that hijras have a legitimate claim on [them].” The term badhai “refers to the traditional gifts of cash and goods” that the hijra receive for their blessings and performance.  And, as Nanda witnessed, it was a “final gesture, [when a hijra] passed her hands over the head of the infant…to bless him, giving to him what she herself does not possess: the power of creating new life, of having many sons, and of carrying on the continuity of his family line,” that commands the most reverence for the hijra in Indian society.

​The Hijra’s Lifeways

​It is in this way that the intersexed, transgendered, and similarly marginalized members of Indian society, and the emasculation process that is central to the hijra identity, are integrated into the society at large and endure a different type of stigma than similarly placed persons and “sex-change” operations integrated into Western societies.  In fact, there are hijra communities scattered across India, and gurus manage large bathhouses and provide room and board for the estimated 50,000 members of these communities. “Consisting of anywhere from 5 to 15 members…[t]he hijra household is organized as a commune.  The members contribute part or all their earnings to the household, and they may also help with household chores.” Apart from the guru at the head of each household is a naik, a chief, which is a leader of a region of houses.

Periodically, these regional leaders assemble to determine policy and other issues for the hijra community nationwide. And with the guru are her chelas, or disciples, altogether creating an egalitarian, hierarchical organization with its own rules, taboos, economics, and social structure. 

​ At the jamaat, the meeting of naiks, hijras can be sanctioned and even blacklisted, severely restricting a hijras ability to earn, and even make them homeless beggars, exiled until they pay a fine to rejoin the community. Nanda recounts the story of one hijra – a “true” hijra she calls Salima – who, after an encounter with a guru’s husband, was cast out of the community, and “taking only two or three of [her] own belongings…walked out of the house.”  “So now I am homeless, as you see me,” Salima laments.

​ Chelas in a hijra household earn money for the commune primarily through the badhai, and through prostitution.  With a high rate of hijras who are not “real” – that is, have not had the emasculation procedure – and badhai patrons expecting, even demanding, “real” hijras for the traditional ceremony, many hijra practice prostitution in “red light” districts nearby their communities spread throughout India. Still others work among the general working-class population, such as in construction or as factory workers.  The community and sense of ownership and upward mobility in the commune, combined with the economic resources that hijra earn to support their guru and fellow chelas, offer a “family and occupational structure” for the otherwise marginalized “third gender” in Indian society.  “[L]ike all individuals, [the hijras] draw on common cultural meanings and values to interpret their lives in ways that are consistent with their sense of self… [The hijra person, in the context of their community, is a] testimony to the strength of the human personality as it seeks not merely to adjust to a culture, but to actively interpret it and, to some extent, create it anew.”

​ As in Hindu tradition, the hijra life cycle is centered around learning, then procreation, then a withdrawal from society, and finally an asceticism in older age.  “The hijra hierarchy of guru and chela provides a useful structure in which the norms of the Hindu life stages can be at least partly realized.” For one hijra with whom Nanda interacted intimately, Sushila, her life as a chela and then a guru, with a husband, and even “children” through a form of adoption, represented for her the “fulfillment of the cultural ideal of a woman in India – no mean feat for someone born a man!”

​The Third Gender

​ As Nanda recounts, “true” hijra – the intersexed – are often identified at birth during the badhai ceremony, and their families often encourage these children to join the hijras sometime after the age of 10 years. But for most hijra, people who identify along the spectrum of non-traditional sexualities and gender roles, their behavior during their youth, playing with girls, girls clothes, and even pre-teen sex with men, indicate to families and the hijra themselves that a “feminine…gender identity coalesces in early adolescence, with increasing homosexual activity, and then becomes subject to still further transformations as individuals begin to interact with more hijras.” In one case, that of Salima, another hijra that detailed her life story for Nanda, this exhibition, at a young age, of sexual ambiguity “[elicited] responses from others,” including teasing and negative reaction from parents, “so that [she was] pushed into informal interactions with hijras, who seem to both approve of and encourage the behavior.” In all these ways, a third gender, neither man nor woman, is accommodated by, and enjoys meaningful lifeways, in Indian culture in the mythology and aesthetic function of the hijra.

​ Another anthropologist has witnessed and recorded similar parsing of gender roles in adolescents.  The Zhun/twasi of the Kalahari in Africa are a nomadic people at the time Marjorie Shostak interviewed them for her ethnography Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman.  Her primary consultant, the ‘Nisa’ from the title of her book, recounts that in her nomadic tribe children were often put together during the day, even building villages not unlike the ones where their parents lived.  As adolescents, they experienced sexual interactions with both same- and opposite-sex children.  Nisa explains, “At first, boys play that play with other boys – poking their genitals around one another’s behinds – and girls play that play with little girls.” And when threatened with too many advances the children would threaten to run to their mothers, saying “’I’m going to tell Mommy you said we should do that.’” As the Zhun/twasi women grow into young women, they find a man to marry and have children.  But Nisa notes, “[h]aving lovers…is an option most !Kung women feel is available to them, although not all choose it.  As for attracting a husband and marrying, that goal is achieved by all !Kung women without exception.” Zhun/twasi women gather up to 70% of the food for !Kung villages, and are the primary owners of water holes throughout the region of their nomadic movement.  !Kung women are the people in the tribes responsible for deciding whom their sons will marry.

In these ways, as children learning about sex, young adults marrying and also choosing lovers with whom they procreate, as decision-makers in marriage, and through the ownership of important resources in-use, region-wide, !Kung women are part of their own “family and occupational structure” that makes up a large portion of the lifeways of the Zhun/twasi.  Like the !Kung of Africa, the hijra of Indian, indeed women the world over, adapt and survive, sometimes under adverse conditions, to “create anew” meaning, in family, occupation, and even culture.

Bibliography

Nanda, Serena. Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. Belmont, California. Wadsworth Publishers. 1999.

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Shostak, Marjorie. Nisa: The Life and Words of a Kung Woman. Cambridge. First Harvard University Press. 2000.