The Hijras of India: Review of Neither Man Nor Woman
LGBTI News
This book makes important contributions to the study of gender variance, sexuality, and South Asian cultures. It was awarded the Ruth Benedict Prize, given by the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists, and contains a forward written by the sexologist John Money. Nanda’s focus is the hijras, effeminate or androgynous males who do not fulfill a standard man’s role. She bases her book on several years of fieldwork in an unnamed city in southern India, where she studied a hijra community of about two hundred persons. She also worked in Bombay, which is a center of hijra culture.
Nanda defines hijras as occupying an alternative gender role, distinct from either men or women. She draws comparisons with the American Indian berdache, the xanith of Oman, and the mahu in Tahiti. In contrast, she points out, the transsexual role in Western culture is not accepted as a fully recognized gender. This non-acceptance, she argues, is due to a lack of religious sanction and an “unyielding Western commitment to a dichotomous gender system” (p. 137), which expects all “normal” persons to conform to one of only two gender roles. Western ideology, uncomfortable with ambiguity, strives to resolve in-between categories.
Hindu ideology not only accomodates the reality of ambiguity anddiversity among different personality types, but also conceptionalizes androgynous persons as special sacred beings. Hindu mythology makes frequent reference to combined man/woman beings. The cognition of hijras as religious figures, as neither men nor women, provides them with social respect and an institutional character. They are seen as representatives of the Hindu goddess Bahuchara Mata, which gives them ritual power. Not just tolerating contradiction, but actively embracing it, Hindus believe that hijras have powers to bless heterosexual marriages so that they will be fertile, and infant males so that they will grow up to become masculine men.
Nanda, a professor at John Jay College, corrects many inaccuracies that anthropologists have written about hijras. First, she points out, they are not morphological hermaphrodites, but were androgynous in character from early childhood and voluntarily joined a hijra community during their adolescence. Second, they are not forced to undergo a surgical operation to remove their penis and testicles, though many of them do this by their own wish. Third, most hijras are sexually active with men, being the insertee in anal intercourse.
Some gain their livelihood through prostituting themselves to masculine males, while others marry a man and live together as husband and wife. Indian society traditionally did not see such pairings as “homosexual,” since hijras were not considered to be the same gender as their masculine partners. Hijras are not defined as “men,” because they have no desire to engage in masculine labor and activities, they do not wish to have sex with women, and they do not want to father children. Conversely, hijras are not seen as “women,” because even though they may engage in women’s occupations, they do not menstruate and cannot give birth. The book’s striking photographs show hijras dressed in women’s clothing, and wearing feminine hairstyles and jewelry. Yet, at the same time, Indian people recognize that hijras are not actually women. They are not-men/not-women.
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