Hijra

I grew up in India where the binary was visibly not the whole story.

Hijras have been on the subcontinent for centuries.

Most of them are people who were assigned male at birth and live as neither men nor women.

Some have undergone ritual castration and many have not, and the category has never really sat neatly on top of the Western words that keep being pressed onto it, transgender, intersex, eunuch, none of which were built with this in mind.

A hijra turned away without payment can take the blessing back, turning instead to curse anyone who refuses them.

The blessing has force because the curse does too.

Hijras have been part of Indian culture for centuries, occupying a specific social and economic position that has no clean equivalent in Western frameworks.

Serena Nanda, whose work with hijra communities became the standing ethnography on them, tells us they operate in a structure with its own rules, its own succession, its own means of support.

This week on the show, we're sharing my recent chat with organizer Anjali Rimi.

Anjali is the co-founder of Parivar Bay Area, America's first and only Kinnar Hijra-led organization centering Global South immigrants.

In this episode, we talk about Anjali's work with Hijra Kinnar immigrants and asylum seekers, and about the distinctions between the US and India with regards to anti-trans laws and attitudes.

She also explains how, like many of us, her name started out as a goofy little joke.

I had this drag name that was very much controversial, which was Ivan Rimjab.

Uh, so can we start with you just telling us the origin story of how it was founded and what your role was? And then we can get more into it from there.

Absolutely.

Parivar Bay Area is America's only trans, gender, Hijra-led centering organization.

That you will show this to the people of this country, you will show this to your people, no educated person, no sharp-minded person will go to them and say that these people will be saved.

Guru Nanak was worshipped as Khusra, Hijra, Gandu etc.

Ranveer only liked that thing, so why should we talk about it? So the Kharqoos and the Marxists who have grown up in Khusra, should somehow weaken the West and make their children Khusra.

They won't be able to grow up like this.

So for example, while the term missionary position coming from sexual rules imposed by Christian missionaries is likely urban legend, it is true that Christian missionaries attempted to control sexual activities in colonial spaces.

And in some places, those ideas about gender, sex, and sexuality stuck, which brings us back to the Hijra.

There's evidence in temple drawings, Hindu texts, and written records that this part of the world has long been home to fluid concepts of sexuality and gender, including homosexuality and the Hijra community.

But British officials feared their soldiers would absorb these norms, so they sought to control what they didn't understand.

And this is something really important about colonialism.

So in the 19th century, colonial authorities created a law that criminalized intercourse against the order of nature.

In other words, anything that went against Christian ideas about gender, sex, and sexuality.

The law made both Hijras and homosexuality illegal across the British colonies.