Abstract 2011 Cora Gäbel

Cora Gäbel, University of Tübingen

Email: cora_gaebel@yahoo.de 

Homosexuals, Prostitutes or Transgender? The Hijras in South Asia

While some Hijṛās are born as hermaphrodites, most of them are biologically male. Some time between puberty and adulthood they become Hijṛās. That is, they start to dress, speak and behave like women, or rather, they exaggerate women’s natural behavior. Some Hijṛās are castrated – actual sex-change is not the issue – and many are forced to become sex workers.

Hijṛās do not form a homogenous group. They do not fit into established categories of gender, which is why the term third gender has established itself in the academic world. Describing Hijṛās as either men or women would ignore the fact that they view themselves as neither. Other terms used are transgender or gender-queer, but never words like transsexual or homosexual, let alone prostitute. While these designations may apply to some Hijṛās, they are not characteristic of Hijṛās as such.

South Asian society has an ambivalent attitude towards Hijṛās: on the one hand, they are asked to bless male infants and married couples after their wedding, in order to ensure male heirs, but on the other hand people – particularly men – fear them. Their presence at festivals and marriages can be auspicious, but Hijṛās are also said to have the power to curse people, particularly to cause impotence in men.

Even though the concept of transgender is not exclusively South Asian (c.f. the Two-Spirit People among Native Americans, or the Kathoey in Thailand), Hijṛās seem to have by far the greatest presence in public life. Though a well-known phenomenon, few studies have been made about Hijṛās. Lately they have become more accessible through documentaries and popular articles. It remains to be hoped that recent verdicts favoring the legal standing of Hijṛās in Pakistan will lead to more research.

Yet, neither the many prejudices against Hijṛās, nor the cultural value of Hijṛās, nor their physical appearance will be the subject of this presentation. The focus will rather be on the everyday life of Hijṛās, what they do and how they feel about their life. This will be demonstrated through several video clips. Besides this, I will discuss the distinction between gender and sex, as well as the improved legal situation of Hijṛās, to give a deeper insight into the lives of South Asian Hijṛās.

Abstract 2011 Manju Ludwig

Manju Ludwig, University of Heidelberg

Email: mludwig@sai.uni-heidelberg.de 

The inconsistencies of discourse: The colonial archive on sexuality, sodomy and 'unnatural' behavior in 19th century North India

This presentation traces the construction of sexual morals, ideas of public propriety and negatively connoted, specific sexual identities in North India in the colonial period and seeks to connect it to the wider discourses about modernity and civilization. The colonial intervention constitutes a radical break in this respect inasmuch as this epoch introduced a hetero-normative reproductive framework as a singular way to understand sexual relations between Indians. Juxtaposed with precolonial articulations of sexuality one could even argue that the colonial period was crucial in creating the need for a clear-cut sexual categorization.

A historical analysis focusing on the role of dissident sexual identities such as ‘homosexuality’ in the colonial framework allows us to question the commonly held assumption of modernity’s emancipatory influence on societal relations among the colonised. In stark contrast, my talk aims to highlight the regulation, restriction and stigmatisation of hitherto relatively flexible and ambiguous sexual identities like the ‘homosexual’ one and the underlying ambivalences.

This presentation’s main argument is that the official colonial discourse in 19th North India on sexually deviant identities presents many ruptures, ambivalences and inconsistencies. This will be exemplified by the case of the criminalisation of eunuchs in the 1880s by analysing diverging official perspectives in the colonial archive.

The general charge of immorality was instrumentalised by the colonial regime to describe and defame the 'other' within the framework of a colonialist rhetoric of civilisational progress. For example, same-sex orientation was used as an indicator for moral and cultural difference. The ascription of a degenerate sexuality was thus one element in the legitimisation-rhetoric of foreign rule.

With regard to the question of agency, I shall underscore that the formation of negatively connoted dissident sexual identities was not the sole product of colonialist actors but represented a collusion between colonial masters, on the one hand, and Indian social and moral reformists; on the other, which constituted an interplay between the 'metropole' and the colony as 'periphery'. Colonial discourses of propriety and sexuality, in general, and ‘homosexuality’, in particular, in colonial North India were constructed in an interwoven transcultural process, in which native agents played an important role. The latters’ yardstick, nevertheless, remained mostly European conceptions of 'civilisation' and 'modernity', whose persistence can still be observed in the 'naturalisation' of discrimination vis-à-vis homosexual identities in contemporary India.