Introduction
The harsh nature of punishment for homosexuality in Muslim societies has strengthened the view that Muslims criminalize all desires that fall outside the heteronormative. Such views contribute to mainstream Western queer perceptionsFootnote 1 that focus on the discrimination suffered by those individuals who self-identify as homosexual in Muslim-majority contexts. While there is truth to these assertions, I also want to point to other individuals who do not fit easily into either lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) categories and who live openly in some Muslim societies, albeit on the margins. At the same time, I do not mean to suggest that those individuals whose desires fell outside of the heteronormative have always enjoyed status equal to other subjects/citizens in historical Muslim empires or contemporary Muslim-majority societies.
Scholars have examined the lives of transgendered individuals as well as the unfolding of their sexuality in a variety of Muslim contexts.Footnote 2 This article, however, limits the investigation to pre-colonial and colonial India as well as contemporary Pakistan and examines the struggle for citizenship rights by individuals frequently referred by a myriad of names including khwaja sara and hijra. Largely challenging the male–female binary, they have a range of physiological male bodies. Some of these individuals are castrated, others do not demonstrate typical ‘male characteristics’ during puberty, and a very few are born as intersex individuals.Footnote 3 They may also be biologically female and choose to live as males, or they may be ambiguous categories that have no parallel in Western labelling of sexual difference.Footnote 4 Some scholarsFootnote 5 use the term ‘transgender and/or transsexual’ to refer to khwaja sara and hijra. Neither men nor women, such folk have been considered members of a third sex in South Asia for the last 3,000 years.Footnote 6 Further, they do not always see individual expressions of desire as the sole defining features of their lives. Instead, their histories move us towards an understanding of how sexuality is implicated in religion, community networks, and class location.
Finding it difficult to find a label or fixed identity for khwaja sara, hijra, or transgender, in this discussion, I will use these terms interchangeablyFootnote 7 along with the more contemporary term trans*.Footnote 8 In order to understand the changing dynamic of their lives, however, I argue that we need to implicate British colonialism in South Asia and its lingering influence in post-colonial Pakistan. It is with this history that I begin my conversation.
Khwaja sara and Hijra
Known by a myriad of names, including khwaja sara, khusras, zananas, hijra, jhankas, and khusas, these communities trace a presence in Hindu mythology and Muslim societies.Footnote 9 Particularly relevant for Pakistan, a Muslim-majority context is the fact that sacred societies of trans* individuals continue to serve as guards to holy places of Islam, including the Prophet Mohammad's tomb in Medina and at the Kaaba in Mecca.Footnote 10 Their presence at holy sites in Arabia coincided with esteemed status for many in Muslim courts in South Asia. Ruth VanitaFootnote 11 notes that khwaja sara were frequently powerful and wealthy noblemen who identified, dressed as, and were addressed as men. They lived as individuals with biological or adopted family members and worked as statesmen, landowners, and advisers to monarchs.
Before the solidification of British colonialism in India, many khwaja sara received revenue from land granted to them by indigenous rulers—land that was passed on to their disciples. Their fortunes declined, ChatterjeeFootnote 12 notes, with the consolidation of British rule in India in the nineteenth century. Europeans who were more familiar with the plantation model of slavery based on race and a strict segregation of the role of the master and slave objected to the roles and power of the eunuchs, as the colonial administrators referred to them.
Under British rulers, lives of khwaja sara began to be increasingly structured through the modernist views of sexuality that Europeans brought with them to India. By the eighteenth century, these views, as FoucaultFootnote 13 has noted elsewhere, had begun to regulate the more fluid forms of sexuality in Europe into a more rigid binary heterosexual (normal) and homosexual (deviant and criminal). Certainly, the ambiguous sexuality of the khwaja sara and their position in Indian society challenged such views of the new rulers.
While the khwaja sara largely dressed as males and lived as men, some of whom had important positions in the courtly culture of pre-colonial India, other groups including the hijra or zananas, as they were called in some places, dressed and referred to themselves as females, living in communities under the direction of a guru. Members of these groups did not enjoy the same prestige and power that some khwaja sara did. Vanita'sFootnote 14 examination of eighteenth-century poetic cultures of Lucknow and Delhi indicates that, although the literature and poetry exalt same-sex desire among men as well as women, hijra were spoken of in contemptuous terms, including by the khwaja sara. Despite having lower status than khwaja sara, hijra had also been awarded sanads (land deeds) and cash stipends by the various states in which they lived.Footnote 15 Moreover, they had a codified right to beg, which was interpreted as money extortion by the British and disallowed by the colonial state.
Another role for hijra has been that of badhai dance performers at celebrations marking the birth of a male child. Officials of the East India Company, and after 1857, the British colonial government in India, could not reconcile such ‘barbarous’ practices with acceptable European codes of morality and attempted to curtail them in the name of what they considered public decency. The colonial state declared ‘obscene acts and songs’ a crimeFootnote 16 and, in 1860, they inserted section 377 into the new Indian Penal Code, which criminalized sodomy and punished those who have carnal intercourse that the state considered against ‘the order of nature’. Further, in 1871, laws to regulate these folk were included in the Criminal Tribes Act by the British Governor General of India. Through this act, ‘persons of the male sex who admit themselves, or on medical inspection clearly appear to be impotent’Footnote 17 were subjected to mandatory registration, surveillance, and control. Changes in inheritance laws meant that khwaja sara and hijra could not pass on sanads and hereditary stipends to their disciples. The British hoped to diminish their chances of survival by curtailing the various policies that ensured the economic viability of these individuals from being passed on to the next generation.
Archival recordsFootnote 18 suggest that the new regulations were difficult to enforce, however, as these communities existed in the tens of thousands all over South Asia and, when attempts were made to regulate them in the rural areas, they moved to the cities, where they joined the underclass of beggars and sex workers. There appear to be no records, however, of the ways in which khwaja sara and hijra critiqued or disobeyed colonial laws. The very fact that these communities exist today is proof that the laws did not succeed in eliminating their way of life. They did, however, succeed in impoverishing and marginalizing them.
The colonial state was not alone in a rejection of the various forms of in-between masculinities that these groups embraced. British victory over Indian rebels in 1857, VanitaFootnote 19 notes, consolidated the former's belief that their culture was superior to that of the latter and encouraged Indians into adopting the same view. Many Indians, particularly those educated through British education, re-imagined an Indian culture drawn from a remote pure past—one that was also influenced by their understandings of Victorian England. Indian elites, Vanita and KidwaiFootnote 20 suggest, frequently accepted British understandings of normative gender and sexuality, as did members of reform and nationalist movements.
Saleem KidwaiFootnote 21 found no evidence of discrimination among the Muslim empires of pre-colonial India and he notes that same-sex relations were often publicly celebrated. Yet comments made by other writers, including Sir Syed Ahmed Khan,Footnote 22 the influential Muslim reformer Shah Waliullah,Footnote 23 Aziz Ahmad,Footnote 24 and Muhammad Faiz Buksh,Footnote 25 identify attitudes also circulating about these individuals in Indian literature from the thirteenth century onwards that assign an ambiguous position to individuals who did not embrace heteronormativity. Indeed, Shah Waliullah was sharply critical of those men he termed effeminate and advocated that those with uncertain sexuality be brought into line with a more binary masculinity and femininity.Footnote 26 These examples suggest that indigenous and colonial prejudice colluded in determining the fate of those who did not embrace more binary forms of gender and sexuality in the nineteenth century. Despite the ambiguous position of khwaja sara and hijra in certain periods in Indian history, laws to regulate them did not appear until the British rule of India.
Colonial penal codes regulating trans* communities were largely accepted by the post-colonial states of India and Pakistan. While they have been challenged in India, where khwaja sara and hijra have successfully contested provincial elections, changes in Pakistan are much more recent. As I begin to examine recent struggles for rights by khwaja sara and hijra lives in Pakistan, I need to identify an important aspect of their lives: a blurring of boundaries between hijra and khwaja sara. While, in the past, khwaja sara and hijra communities may have been distinct, such distinctions appear to have collapsed in post-colonial Pakistan. Khwaja sara do not exist, since the courtly way of life that they were a part of no longer exists, whereas, in reduced circumstances, hijra continue their way of life because their patrons were ordinary people, not kings and aristocrats. Although historians cannot accept that they are one and the same, many members of these communities today, perhaps to enhance their status, identify themselves as khwaja sara and are referred to as such in Pakistani media. How the collapse of these two distinct groups of people happened is beyond the scope of this article and remains an important area for future investigation. For the purpose of this article, I will now refer to members of the trans* communities in Pakistan as khwaja sara out of respect for the ways in which they self-identify, unless the literature that I am using specifically refers to them as hijra.
Complicating the boundaries in Pakistan
While the colonial rulers have left, the prejudice their policies contributed to continues in post-colonial South Asia, including in Pakistan. Despite their marginalized status, my conversations with respondents suggest that khwaja sara continue to trouble dominant modes of understanding gender, sexuality, religion, family, and community. Although a few khwaja sara are born intersex, the vast majority who join khwaja sara communities do so as biological males who choose dress as females or who are in various stages of transition from male to female. Many use burlesque enactments of femininity particularly when they serve as performers at birth celebrations and at weddings. Dressed in female attire, they confer blessings to the male child during badhai celebrations in return for gifts and monetary rewards, in the process openly flaunting the conventions of ‘respectable’ femininity. Employing shock and scandal in public performances, khwaja sara skirt the limits of gender and sexual binaries identifying subversive possibilities that can help unsettle mainstream determinations of masculine/feminine while inviting patriarchal men to negotiate with them during such performances in a sexually charged atmosphere. Moreover, khwaja sara frequently chose to emphasize their difference through forms of dress and sexualized innuendos. Their use of sexualized gesture and coarse language presents a caricature of female mannerisms and attire in ways that challenge the decorum and modesty of middle-class womanhood. Many middle-class people are intimidated by khwaja sara use of language and gesture, and fear engaging with them in public.
Khwaja sara not only challenge established gender binaries; they also blur communal boundaries that social scientists and historiansFootnote 27 maintain are a legacy of the British divide and rule policy in colonial India. Further khwaja sara refuse to be contained within their own ethnic and religious enclaves. Instead, they borrow from the ‘cumulative social backgrounds of those who join the community’Footnote 28 and deploy a composite form of religion in their daily lives. While following rules of comportment ‘specified by the shari'a (Islamic law) for both men and women, they also practice a form of religion wherein they identify and practice (for the most part) as Muslims but simultaneously derive their power and social legitimacy from a Hindu goddess’.Footnote 29
Further, they no longer train as dancers or singers, as many did in earlier years; instead, they often choose to draw upon the sexually suggestive forms of dancing commonly found in contemporary Pakistani and Indian films. The availability of young female dancers has also impacted khwaja sara age-old badhai dance celebrations except among the lower middle classes, who do not have the means to reward them handsomely for their performances.Footnote 30 In recent years, the celebrations at sufi shrines where they performed have also been restricted by the state, which fears the crowds will invite violence. As khwaja sara find it difficult to find employment, many have turned to begging at road signals, where they ask for money from passengers in cars who are waiting for the light to change. Lack of opportunities to make a living has also turned khwaja sara to sex work, making them vulnerable to HIV AIDS. Moreover, researchFootnote 31 suggests that their multiple syringe usage for drug injection and lack of condom use contribute to the growing infection rates among this population. Further, they are also vulnerable to extortion, as well as physical and sexual violence, including forms of custodial violence and rape and violence from religious groups situating them among the most marginalized groups in society. Yet, they are more than victims needing rescue. In order to avoid situating them as such, I turn to Partha Chatterjee'sFootnote 32 notion of political society to situate interviews with khwaja sara conducted between January and April 2014 in Lahore and Karachi to appreciate their struggle for rights in Pakistan.
Struggle for citizenship and sexual rights
Chatterjee speaks of a political society in areas of the global south, including South Asia, which consists of rural peasants and the urban poor outside of the hegemonic civil society institutions controlled by the bourgeoisie. Within Chatterjee's logic, the state allows its institutions to become forums where members of political society demand resources as a way to avoid them from becoming dangerous classes. His notion of political society would move us away from the modern/traditional binary into an area of dynamic fluid social struggle. It is within political society that Chatterjee locates traditional culture. However, traditional culture, he notes, is not static or essentialist; instead, it finds ways to mediate the modern/traditional dichotomy in a political society—a space of subaltern politics and actions not fully embraced by civil society.
We see the subaltern politics at play in what appears to be a parallel culture of the khwaja sara. They refuse to be contained by not only gender binaries, but also modern and traditional binaries. Instead, they frequently disregard the rules of modern civil society and skirt the limits of the law and acceptable morality and behaviour. Chatterjee notes that civil society cannot ignore such groups so they treat them as populations where welfare programmes are to be administered. Chatterjee's comments help us locate the bulk of research on this community in Pakistan, which has largely focused on gathering data connected to health and AIDS prevention, positioning them as sick bodies that need to be cured.Footnote 33
ChatterjeeFootnote 34 argues that access to state institutions of modernity under colonial rule and later in post-colonial South Asia largely remains restricted to those who have the benefit of expensive European-style education. The elites in colonial India were able to access such education and drew upon the rhetoric of universal rights to critique and challenge British rule. The colonizers have gone and been replaced by indigenous elites, yet the processes through which the bulk of the inhabitants of a country were denied full participation as citizens in former colonized states of South Asia remain in effect. Post-colonial civil society is founded on granting equal rights to citizens, yet full participation in such a society is chiefly restricted to a limited number of people. Western-style education continues to act as a major determinant of who has access to resources and power. Individuals who are able to secure such education are considered the modern citizens of the nation within a civil society that Chatterjee notesFootnote 35 is the sphere of capitalist hegemony. Large sections of rural populations and urban poor with the status of citizens, however, he claims, are excluded from such a society. Such processes ensure that large numbers of individuals within the nation state have only a fragile connection to civil society and its institutions.
These comments are certainly valid for many khwaja sara in Pakistan in that their class position and personal circumstances frequently prevent them from accessing much education, and certainly not expensive Western-style education, adding another layer to the factors that leave them vulnerable to exploitation and marginalization. Their limited education is connected to a common thread in their lives. Most of my respondents claimed that they had left their homes at a very young age due to family pressures. They were being regulated into a form of normative masculinity in direct opposition to forms of dress and behaviour that they desired and that was labelled as feminine and not suitable for them as biological males. As such, they were subjected to censure and violence at home and at school. Many dropped out of school and ran away from home to find a more welcoming environment under the direction by a guru who encouraged them to sing, dance, and express forms of desire forbidden at home. Gurus do not encourage or sponsor education for their chelas (disciples), however, and these young people find that they have to learn the skills of dancing, singing, begging, badhai, and sex work early in life in order to earn a living. A part of the proceeds of such activities is given to their guru. In effect, we have a guru/chela welfare system in which the chela finds acceptance in a community and helps support her guru who in turn provides support and protection to the chela. There is little emphasis on furthering the chela's education in ways that allow her to enter modern civil society. In essence, most khwaja sara do not have much of an education and even fewer have education in English, the language of power in post-colonial Pakistan.
Chatterjee's comments that individuals ‘in political society make their claims on government, and in turn are governed, not within the framework of stable constitutionally defined rights and laws, but rather through temporary, contextual and unstable arrangements arrived at through direct political negotiations’Footnote 36 help us understand recent changes in khwaja sara status in Pakistan. A court case filed by Mohammad Aslam Khaki in 2009 provided an opportunity to an esteemed and powerful institution in Pakistan, the Supreme Court (SC), to prove its relevancy as the upholder of justice and human rights for more vulnerable citizens of the state. Khaki, an advocate specializing in Islamic law, was seeking justice for the sexual and physical violation of khwaja sara performers by the police in Taxila on 23 January 2009.Footnote 37 The case resulted in the following statement from Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who identified khwaja sara as eunuchs, claiming that they ‘are also the citizens of Pakistan and should be given fundamental rights guaranteed in the constitution. They are human beings and no one has the right to hate them’.Footnote 38 These remarks may sound mundane but, given that khwaja sara have been marginalized, discriminated against, and faced substantial violence in the last 150 years, Chaudhry's comments made in August of 2009 are indeed remarkable. They draw upon a rights discourse and suggest that members of the Supreme Court have finally accepted that state institutions have an obligation to look after the needs of a group that does not fit into the common-sense understandings of a modern citizen. Khwaja sara, whose relationship with the state's laws and its constitution had until then been largely non-existent, found that a 2009 Supreme Court ruling strengthened their status when it ruled that the category ‘Eunuch’ was to be offered as an option on the identity card that is mandatory for all Pakistanis. This ruling had profound implications for khwaja sara, as such a card is a requirement for Pakistanis in all facets of their interaction with the state and its institutions, including opening a bank account, registering in a school, accessing health care, and obtaining a passport and a driving license.
Yet state recognition of eunuchs is not without its own problems. Qasim IqbalFootnote 39 of NAZ Male Health Alliance, a Lahore-based non-governmental organization, claims that the term ‘Eunuch’, although it identifies a statistically insignificant intersex minority among khwaja sara, allows the state to politically recognize members of this community without challenging its own section 377, which renders sodomy illegal, or the Hadood Ordinance, which only gives legal validity to conjugal heterosexual sex through which a man's penis penetrates a woman's vagina. Moreover, castration or the process of Nirban is illegal, thus the term ‘Eunuch’, which refers to very rare individuals, can be safely used without challenging any existing laws. In extending political citizenship to eunuchs or those individuals whom the state considers asexual, the state denied the sexuality of these communities. Most khwaja sara, however, are not eunuchs: they are men who either dress as women or have been castrated. Nevertheless, Supreme Court documents consider them asexual and identify them as diseased bodies that have ‘been neglected merely on account of [a] gender disorder’.Footnote 40
The Supreme Court recommended that the National Data Base and Registration Authority (NADRA) make arrangements for individuals to undertake hormonal testing in order to determine whether those seeking such categorization were indeed eunuchs. This ruling was challenged in 2011 when khwaja sara in Karachi began the registration process and were asked to undergo medical tests to verify that they were indeed eunuchs and suffering ‘a gender disorder’. Bindiya Rana, President of the Gender Interactive Alliance (GIA), led protests outside the Karachi Press Club, which challenged the hormone testing and its use in the verification process for eunuchs. She noted that ‘no such testing was being asked for males and females, instead their word was enough. Why is our word not enough?’.Footnote 41 The activism in Karachi led to the Supreme Court's diffusing what could possibly be a volatile matter, as subsequent Supreme Court directives do not mention the hormonal-testing requirement. Instead, they congratulate officials who, under the direction of the National Data Base and Registration Authority, have made significant progress in resolving the issue of sex determination of the applicant so that her status in society as a eunuch is recognized. Although the Supreme Court's directives specifically targeted eunuchs, khwaja sara who are largely not eunuchs challenged the state through street protests and slipped through the cracks between the Supreme Court directives and its inability/unwillingness to implement them. As such, they gained political recognition for their communities as asexual citizens without submitting to invasive medical tests that might prove them to be otherwise. Nevertheless, each trans* individual that I spoke to thanked Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the chief justice of the Supreme Court at the time, for granting them political rights in Pakistan and prayed that Allah would answer all his prayers.
The court's decision to accept the legal and civil presence of khwaja sara, according to an unpublished report by the lawyer Atar Minnuah,Footnote 42 draws strongly on Islamic codes. Their right to inherit has been reinstated. Further, the Supreme Court has also ordered various government and welfare agencies to speak to representatives of the khwaja sara communities about helping them access education, health, and employment programmes. Copies of all cases registered against members of these communities are to be forwarded to the Supreme Court registrar, social welfare departments, and the inspector general of police. This is to stop the practice of fake cases being registered against them—a common police practice.
Although they served as a milestone in the life of the khwaja sara communities in Pakistan, the Supreme Court's decisions did not happen in a vacuum. While Khaki was not acting in concert with members of the khwaja sara communities, his appeals to the Supreme Court had been preceded by activism and demands for greater rights by individual khwaja sara groups. In 2008, with almost no funds, RanaFootnote 43 and a group of khwaja sara in Karachi set up free medical camps for the impoverished communities in rural Sindh. They worked alongside medical doctors who were also working pro bono and who helped locate medicines for those in need. During the course of this work, Rana found women, who had birthed six or seven children, working in the fields. Suffering malnutrition, they would come home to cook and then sexually service their husbands at night. Many did not even know they were pregnant once again. Working in rural communities made Rana and the other khwaja sara realize that they were more empowered than the women they were working with. The social work in Sindh strengthened Rana's resolve to put through the paperwork and set up the Gender Interactive Alliance as a non-governmental organization in Karachi. The 2009 Supreme Court decision came through before the paperwork was approved by the Sindh government in 2010.
While Rana and her friends were active in Karachi, Almas Boby was challenging the system over 1,000 kilometres away in Rawalpindi. Boby claimed that, before the 2009 decision, the situation for khwaja sara was quite bleak, as they did not exist in civil society. BobyFootnote 44 noted that Pakistan Television, the only station at the time, was not allowed to use the term ‘khwaja sara’ on air. Moreover, she claimed that:
People were throwing garbage on us, throwing water and tearing our clothes as we walked by. When we would return from functions the police would stop us and taunt us and steal the money we had collected at the function. We were grateful if the police only took our money and did beat us or lock us up in the thanas (police station). We could not say anything. There was no one to hear us. This was happening to members of my community but did not happen to me personally. This is because I was bold. This happened in (Rawal) Pindi, Taxila, Gujar Khan, Hasan Abdal, Sargoda, Jehlam, Lahore, everywhere. Then when we reached home the local badmash (thugs) would come and take what money the police did not take [from us]. They would burn us with cigarettes, cut our hair and rape us. It was like a jungle for us.Footnote 45
Boby states that money was not an issue for her community at the time, as they got paid at functions. ‘The issue was police and the badmash. We could not even complain to the police as they would not register cases for issues we identified.’ Around 1997, Boby realized the unfairness of this behaviour towards her community and she, along with ‘Mamma Neelo, Mai Sadiko and Apa Shamim decided we need to do something. The three were gurus and I was Mamma Neelo's chela’.Footnote 46 To see whether she could make a difference, Boby stood for local elections in 1997. Her application to register as a candidate was rejected, however, and she was declared ineligible to stand for elections. At that time, she noted ‘my community did not support me they did not believe that I could enter politics’. Unable to stand for election, Boby turned her attention to mobilizing her community and protesting police violence and brutality. The first protest gathered 20 khwaja sara. They were afraid of the police and were not convinced that their protest would result in anything. By 2004, this number had grown to 150 when a group, led by Boby, walked up to a police station and retrieved Rs 50,000 that the police had stolen from khwaja sara at a function. The protest against the Taxila incident drew 500 khwaja sara on 26 January 2009, when Boby and the protesters attacked a thana and retrieved the Rs 260,000, which the police had stolen from them. At this moment, Aslam Khaki entered the scene, initiating a case against the police three weeks after the Taxila incident. However, he did not work in concert with the community. Boby claims: ‘While we appreciate Khaki and what he has done he did not consult any member of the khwaja sara community before filing the petition.’Footnote 47 Boby faults him for this.
Khaki, on the other hand, notes that there was no concerted movement for rights among the khwaja sara and they were struggling ‘in individual pockets’.Footnote 48 He acknowledges that he did not seek input from various khwaja sara gurus. Instead, Khaki locates his support for their rights in his own unease with the open abuse that khwaja sara had been experiencing in Pakistan. Deciding to take action when he heard about the Taxila incident, he made a full constitutional petition to the Supreme Court, asking for their human rights to be upheld.
Not only did the 2009 decision occur in a context of some activism by individual khwaja sara groups; it also occurred in a political context in Pakistan when the Supreme Court, and in particular Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, was challenging the status quo and taking a leading role in supporting the rule of law and protecting human rights of Pakistanis.Footnote 49 It was also a time when there were regional challenges to long-standing colonial legislation against those who desire same-sex relationships. The Pakistan decision to identify eunuchs as members of Pakistani society was followed by the Indian High Court's decision that criminalization of consensual homosexual sex between adults is against the Indian constitution.Footnote 50
The deregulation of media in Pakistan also offered the increasingly politicized trans* folk opportunities to demand the state make good on its universalist claims of equality for all its citizens, including the khwaja sara, before a much wider audience. Per chance, their appearance on television does not stem from a desire of broadcasters and programme directors to advance khwaja sara rights. Perhaps the media are looking for sensational stories to generate audience interest and they invite khwaja sara to participate. Referring to media offerings featuring the trans* communities, Rana notes:
The news spread in the media as a new event to sensationalize-a new spectacle. The media people would begin to go homes of TGsFootnote 51 and ask them to sing and dance for the camera. They would show this in press media and people would like it as it took mind away from bombings.Footnote 52
No matter what the reason, Pamment notes that, since 2010, khwaja sara have begun to appear in Pakistan's political satire television, talk shows with members of the Islamic clergy, and emerging art films.Footnote 53 Their roles have also included performances in plays, as well as singers and dancers.
In addition to dance performances and interviews, the media also feature khwaja sara demanding rights. An exchange in 2010 between Almas Boby, who is identified by some in the media as the President of the Pakistan Shemale Association, and the then Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah on the television political show FrontLine Footnote 54 suggests that khwaja sara are no longer satisfied by political platitudes. Instead, they want substantive change. Boby refuses to be sensationalized. Instead, she uses the forum offered by television to seek legal protection from the harassment khwaja sara suffer in society, much of which, she claims, stems from police brutality. Demanding a state response to the violence, she produces a file documenting incidents in which the police are implicated or are complicit bystanders. She further points to the state's unwillingness to catch and punish the perpetrators. Speaking in Urdu with a smattering of English, Boby refuses to be silenced by Sanaullah's comments that the ‘state is looking into these incidents’ with the rejoinder that his remarks do nothing to stop the brutality of violence perpetrated on the bodies of khwaja sara. She elaborates with the following:
I am sorry. Today you will tell us the position of the law about our community. Whenever there is an incident you make this statement on the [television] screen that we have taken notice of this incident and in the future such incidents will not happen again. I have a file with me. It is not a file of my modeling pictures. Look I have documented police brutality towards our community. Here is brutality in Bani; here is Taxila thana [police station] brutality; here is New Town a brutality. This file is full of brutality at various thanas. The police are not responsible. I say-you are responsible for this brutality. You are the Law Minister. You are responsible. Shabaz Sharif is the Chief Minister. He is responsible. Why don't you talk to the police or there will [continue to] be such incidents each month. Instead you appear on the [television] screen and repeat the same tired phrases ‘We will look into this. We will set up a commission. We will do an inquiry’. This brutality is awful [and I say] you will do nothing.Footnote 55
Sanaullah does not respond to Boby; instead, he chides FrontLine host Kamran Shahid for not following programme etiquette, to which Boby replies: ‘Our community is being violated and you are speaking of etiquette.’ Sanaullah again ignores Boby and reproaches Shahid for turning the programme into an arena of combatants. Clearly, he has only platitudes to offer Boby. Sanaullah's comments suggest that he believes in the viability of civil institutions, while Boby reminds us that state's claims to provide universal protection do not always extend to khwaja sara communities.
Politicization of khwaja sara and demands for rights attest to the fact that they refuse to be contained within the rigid parameters of an essentialist and static location. Instead, we see evidence of Boby, who has the ability to mobilize her chelas, drawing attention to specific grievances through the media and seek justice from the state. Her activism identifies fluid and dynamic processes of political society at work and her encounter with Sanaullah suggests that she has taken the space provided to her by the media to put forward her own agenda—a demand for rights. Boby wants civil society to live up to the liberatory promise of freedom from violence for all its citizens.
Boby's comments remind us that changes in laws do not always translate into changes at the grassroots level. Indeed, recent activism in Pakistan suggests that the state has also not acted on recent promises made by the Supreme Court. Recall that the Gender Interactive Alliance was founded by Bindiya Rana and her community of activists in Karachi in 2008. On its internet website, the Gender Interactive Alliance identifies itself as a non-governmental organization that is actively involved in providing services, lobbying, and demanding rights for transgender communities (a term they use interchangeably with khwaja sara). Their website posts the following statement and suggests that they want to hold the state to account for promises not kept: ‘Gender Interactive Alliance works for the rights of and social justice for the trans-gender peoples community in Pakistan. Among our foremost projects is lobbying with the government to recognize trans-gender people as equal citizens of Pakistan’.Footnote 56
A video posted on the website shows Rana taking her demands to the doors of the National Data Base and Registration Authority, where she asks that officials comply with Supreme Court rulings and provide identity cards that recognize members of her community as khwaja sara (Rana, 2010). If they do not issue such cards, she claims that ‘they are in contempt of SC rulings and we will challenge NADRA and our community will come and protest outside NADRA’. Rana insists that the state should implement its own regulations and be subject to its own penalties. Should it fail to do so, it will face street protest by her community.
By 2011, the National Data Base and Registration Authority and the Supreme Court had consulted with members of the khwaja sara communities and identified five gender categories on the ID form: male, female, male khwaja sara, female khwaja sara, and khunsi mushkil (intersex). The various categories identify interesting facets of khwaja sara struggle. First, the state has moved its position and accepted that there are other khwaja sara beside the asexual eunuch. As such, we have a tacit acknowledgement by the state of khwaja sara sexuality. Second, many khwaja sara have taken the male khwaja sara option. Members of these communities frequently desire to go for haj in Mecca—as female khwaja sara, they will be subject to the same rules as females and will require a mahram.Footnote 57 Further, khwaja sara are aware that inheritance claims by male khwaja sara and female khwaja sara parallel male and female inheritance rights under sharia law in Pakistan. Given this gender disparity in inheritance laws whereby a female inherits half of what her brother does, many khwaja sara are choosing the male khwaja sara option and, in so doing, staking their claim for a greater share of inheritance than those accorded to female khwaja sara. These processes identify contradictions in their lives. On the one hand, they challenge the gender binary; on the other, they take up advantages that patriarchy offers them by identifying as male khwaja sara.
Inheritance continues to pose problems for members of these communities. Recall that the British colonial government had taken away their inheritance rights. Under the changed regulations, they can only inherit from their biological family, not from their gurus who many have adopted as de facto parents. Such rulings deny the reality that many khwaja sara are estranged from their families and do not have the resources to legally demand that they be given their share of inheritance, while their gurus, whom they look to as adoptive parents, are not permitted to will their estate to chelas and find that only their own biological families can inherit their estate. Many of my respondents were critical of such laws and noted that they had a right to inherit from their guru's estate, as they have given a part of their income to her for the bulk of their lives.
Access to ID cards has also allowed khwaja sara to enter political space as activists and as candidates in recent elections. In the 2013 Pakistani national elections, at least eight khwaja sara stood for election from various places in Pakistan. None was elected, but their participation as candidates in the electoral process has opened the door for their future political involvement. Interviews posted on the internet provide examples of a passionate defence by khwaja sara of issues dear to the heart of the working poor with whom they identify, including the increasing cost of foodstuff, lack of jobs and affordable housing, erratic access to electricity, and insufficient security from violence.
Refusing to be contained within static traditional space, khwaja sara articulate political society in ways that both challenge civil society and embrace it at the same time. On the one hand, they offer a sexuality that is non-procreative and not regulated by the bonds of marriage—one that does always display the subdued mannerisms that accompany notions of middle-class morality. On the other hand, in recent interviews, they present a subdued version of the more overt forms of sexualities that they are normally associated with. Instead, we see them drift further towards middle-class behaviour normally associated with ‘respectable’ Pakistani females. This shift is visible in some of the khwaja sara performances on television highlighted below, where they also draw upon a rights discourse to demand space as a third sex within the nation.
To examine the shift, I turn again to Chatterjee,Footnote 58 who notes that political society has powerful and frequently affective organizations, while people who provide leadership in these organizations are potential political leaders for their community. Khwaja sara gurus who stood for election at the federal level provide an example in the show Hum Log,Footnote 59 produced by Sama TV, which features several gurus who are standing for the upcoming national elections in May 2013. The gurus include middle-aged Haji Saeed Nergis, a candidate for the National Assembly from Multan. Nergis asks for political support and claims that:
. . . khwaja sara are not for sale. Allah has helped us become eligible to stand for election and we salute the Chief Justice who allowed us to become eligible as politicians. He has saved the country. Pakistanis are tired of dealing with shortages of electricity, gas and basic food stuff. People need to vote for a person who says her prayers five times a day, who is honest. We have seen our current politicians. What have they done for us? It is our prayer that Allah will grant our wish and make us successful in our political efforts.
Nergis identifies herself as a khwaja sara and as a haji (one who has performed the pilgrimage in Mecca). As such, she claims space for herself as a practising Muslim and as a khwaja sara, while she promises integrity and political honesty should she be elected. Nergis has mobilized the electoral process to open up a space where khwaja sara can make demands sustaining trans* folk in the informal economy of begging, badhai, and performance at functions. She has learned to negotiate government processes to acquire a better share of benefits for her community, and she claims for other impoverished Pakistanis as well. Her quest for political status reminds us that the electoral process promises an opportunity to claim a share of state resources.
Moreover Nergis's status as haji, her simple white shalwar kamiz,Footnote 60 complete with a white dupatta draped over head, and her consistent invoking of pious language disrupt normative understandings of khwaja sara as solely reduced to sexualized bodies. Instead, her demeanour and comments suggest that non-normative gender, sexuality, and piety can exist in the same body. At the same time, Nergis uses political rhetoric and quotations from the Qur'an to remind viewers that khwaja sara fulfil important functions at the Kaaba in Mecca and the Prophet's mosque in Medina. Inviting other politicians to come and debate issues with her, Nergis beats her chest on air as she claims relevance in the electoral process. Her seemingly contradictory positionalities have been legitimized through the electoral process and under the terms of the recent status accorded the khwaja sara by the Supreme Court and she has been declared qualified to run for elections. The persona she projects muddles the seamless understandings of piety, morality, sexuality, and citizenship, and is quite distinct from the commonly held assumptions about sexualization of khwaja sara. On the same show, religious scholar Mufti Abdul Qavi endorses Nergis's ability to run for elections when he draws upon a verse in the Qur'anFootnote 61 and states that ‘Allah has made men and women and he has made in between people, the khwaja sara. As long as they qualify they should be allowed to run’.
Would the election of khwaja sara in Pakistan necessarily usher in a political culture free of corruption and one which focuses on the needs of ordinary people? Moreover, would they take issues of other oppressed folk into account and enter into coalition politics with them? Perhaps the Indian example can provide some answers. Reddy (2003) argues that Indian hijras who have stood for election have at times defeated candidates from national political parties, including the Bharitya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress. Because trans* folk embrace a composite culture of many ethnic, regional, and religious communities, their newly found political status could have brought about a unique dimension to the struggle for communal and sexual rights of marginalized communities. But it appears not to have done so. Although many identify as Muslim, they appear wary of forming alliances with other marginalized groups, including with other Muslims. Reddy's comments suggest that discourses of hijra activism often reinforce aspects of mainstream discourses and gendered expectations.
Media also provide a glimpse into khwaja sara attempts to regain class respectability denied with the onset of colonial rule. Journalist Sohail Waraich'sFootnote 62 interview with Almas Boby on Aik Din GEO Kay Sath (One Day with GEO) for the influential television station GEO directs us to the terms under which Pakistani khwaja sara may find acceptance in the political society of Pakistan. Although, in the past, Boby has performed more suggestive dances, this interview and others in recent years show her explaining her life in terms appropriate to middle-class values, mannerisms, and language of a respected begum (lady). As Boby tells Warraich, she is looking to adopt a child—she attempts to fulfil a role demanded of a complete woman: that of a mother. Yet neither Warraich nor Boby allows themselves to be contained by state regulations, as the following exchange shows:
Warraich: Have you ever been attracted to a man?
Boby: Who should I be attracted to?
W: You never liked anyone?
B: No, not really. Although I have had a lot of offers, many people approached me with offers of love but I always said no.
Warraich asks Boby whether she had ever had a special someone in her life—a lover. However, the ways in which sharia is formulated and applied in Pakistan mean that sexual relations between unmarried heterosexual couples is a crime against the state under the Zina OrdinanceFootnote 63 and section 377 renders sodomy illegal. Should Boby have answered with an affirmation to Warraich's questions, technically she could have been arrested and charged with zina and/or sodomy. Yet people are generally aware that khwaja sara (who for the most part are biological males) beg, dance, and do sex work to sustain themselves, and Warraich openly questions Boby about her life and her relationships (or lack thereof) with men in an interview on mainstream television. Interestingly, Warriach would not ask questions regarding relationships to members of the lesbian and gay communities. While the law restricts sexual behaviour outside of marriage for all, interestingly, khwaja sara are able to articulate their desire in public forums in ways that lesbian and gay groups are not. Perhaps because lesbian and gay activism is a modern phenomenon with roots in the West, same-sex relationships on the other hand have historically existed in South Asia.Footnote 64 Those who identify themselves as lesbian or gay in Pakistan continue to be limited by the label ‘Westernized’ and unable to articulate their choices without inviting criminal charges.
Boby and Nergis's performances on television highlight a tension between popular understanding of khwaja sara as irreverent towards the rules of respectability and a shift towards middle-class values. We see Boby in activist mode reject the rules of television etiquette in her encounter with the law minister, while Nergis embraces piety and decorum as she beats her chest. At the same time, Boby complicates her location and embraces notions of middle-class woman complete with a desire to have a child in the second interview, suggesting that some individuals can shift their position according to the situation. The mapping of this very interesting shift in Pakistani political space is beyond the scope of this article but would prove to be a fascinating topic in a future discussion.
The presence of such interviews in popular mainstream media reveals contradictory and complicated images of khwaja sara demanding citizenship rights. Through such appearances, khwaja sara challenge attempts to marginalize them and refuse to be contained within traditional society. Instead, they articulate their desire for the promised equality within a political space, where they negotiate with the modernity of civil society. Their issues are an emerging presence in the non-governmental organization movement—a process that has assisted khwaja sara in their quest for respectability and dignity.
NAZ Male Health Alliance (NAZ) provides an example. Established in 2011 as an non-governmental organization, NAZ has been providing technical, financial, and institutional support for improving the sexual health, welfare, and human rights of males who have sex with males and, more recently, those they refer to as transgender communities in Pakistan. Headquartered in Lahore, NAZ has local offices in Karachi, Rawalpindi, Hyderabad, and Larkhana. Funded largely by grants from national and international organizations who are seeking to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, NAZ is able to use its space to develop programmes for males who have sex with males and transgenders (TGs), including literacy, counselling, and information about safe sex practices. The Khwaja Sara Society (KSS) is affiliated with NAZ and run by transgenders. In April 2014, they moved into their own space. Qasim Iqbal,Footnote 65 the Executive Director of NAZ, identified some problems that the Khwaja Sara Society faces. While many transgenders want to work for the Khwaja Sara Society, frequently they do not have the necessary education to fill out the forms in English required by the funding agencies. He identified several activists who are very good at the work they do but are illiterate. Moreover, Iqbal noted that it is not easy to get transgenders to attend literacy classes or other programmes, as their daily life does not appear to be very regulated. Their participation in the programmes offered depends on their availability and inclination. Despite these problems, Khwaja Sara Society marks an important moment in the struggle for rights of khwaja sara and identifies the contribution of HIV/AIDS work to the emergence of an non-governmental organization dedicated to khwaja sara issues. Such process also identify an important arena where gay Pakistanis, who have no political visibility, and khwaja sara, who do, combine forces in their struggle for rights. Where this collaboration might lead and what kind of rights it might secure for both communities will be determined as events play out in the future.
There is another issue that I would like to raise. One assumes that khwaja sara, as sexual minorities, would have been likely allies of feminist activists. This does not appear to be true in Pakistan. Comments made by respondents suggest that feminist organizations on the whole appear uninterested in fostering meaningful alliances with khwaja sara groups. Sara Gill,Footnote 66 an activist in Karachi, notes that, while she is asked to sit on the boards of various feminist organizations, no one is really interested in her opinion. Gill's comments were echoed by others whom I spoke with. A few respondents, however, identified Aurat Foundation and Panah as two organizations that appeared interested in forming alliances with khwaja sara.
Conclusion
Historical accounts challenge the orientalist ahistorical assumptions about trans* sexuality in Muslim empires. Frequently, they had power and prestige, yet at other times their position was ambiguous. Despite the ridicule trans* folk faced from some quarters in pre-colonial India, their lifestyle was not illegal. The more fluid forms of sexuality of trans* folk were accepted in courts, sufi shrines, and Hindu temples. By criminalizing their sexuality, confiscating lands and stipends, and overturning inheritance rights, European colonialisms brought significant changes to trans* lives. There was a shift from accommodation within the Muslim courts of India to a loss of status and wealth for the khwaja sara, and a narrowing of performance and begging spaces for the hijra. In recent years, sexual minorities have struggled against laws imposed by the British but which continue to remain on the books in both India and Pakistan. In this article, I have located Pakistani trans* struggle for rights within the political society that Chatterjee speaks of. I argue that, as part of the urban poor, trans* communities have mobilized and demanded resources from the state.
In recent years, khwaja sara have become increasingly politicized, as they take their activism into civil society, the space of bourgeoisie power. Such activism suggests the power of a political society, the dynamics of which point to a cultural model that has the potential to further destabilize contemporary understandings of gender, sexuality, as well as modes of respectability and irreverence. Further, such processes challenge the view that Pakistani society is always oppressive to those whose desires fall outside the heteronormative. Instead, they identify the complex nature of sexual and class politics in a context in which the state both brutalizes khwaja sara and is sympathetic to their plight through laws that guarantee their rights as members of Pakistani society.
Despite the political recognition that khwaja sara have achieved, they also face many challenges. One such challenge stems from the fact that much of the activism is individual activism. Because of the fractious nature of various khwaja sara communities and the continuous infighting, there do not appear to be large organizations that fight for rights and that have substantial membership. Instead, there are individual gurus with regional influence. One of the most influential in Rawalpindi is Almas Boby, but she has little or no influence in Lahore and Karachi, where power is much more diffuse. Another challenge concerns the priorities that they present through their activism. The issues they prioritize appear influenced by the funding processes connected to non-governmental organizations that are beginning to offer khwaja sara jobs. As this article goes into print, such funding mainly concerns itself with HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. There are little or no programmes that deal with other issues that members of this community face, including lack of employment and affordable housing, police violence, and income opportunities for older khwaja sara. As Saima, a khwaja sara from Lahore, notes, ‘many organizations are getting funding for TGs in the health care sector and we have no choice but to work for them as no one else offers us jobs’.Footnote 67 Such a concentration in the AIDS/HIV-prevention sector further reinforces the belief that khwaja sara, gays, and others who indulge in anal sex are the main victims of the disease.
Comments made by various members of this community suggest that recent changes appear to have made limited difference in their ability to obtain gainful employment. Here, the khwaja sara are on common terrain with many vulnerable communities in Pakistan and remain susceptible to the vagaries of a market-driven economy, where gross domestic profit growth and deficit reduction at the expense of job creation is the focus of government laws and policies. To ensure that the citizenship rights granted by the state are implemented, I believe, will be part of the struggle for the future. Such processes, however, reveal the struggles of a dynamic political society at work where khwaja sara labour as organic intellectuals as they help set their own rights agenda and, despite their struggles to meet daily expenses, are forging their own path for the future. Their lives and activism provide evidence of a political society at work and present a complicated relationship among sexuality, gender, and modernity in contemporary Pakistan.
Using sexualized as well as increasingly middle-class personas, khwaja sara appear to reconcile the contradictions they inhabit. As such, they are expanding the political space in which they love and struggle. But they will have to continue to pressure civil society so that Supreme Court rulings for their welfare are implemented. Moreover, they will have to dialogue with the state about the asexual term ‘Eunuch’ and its applicability to their communities who embrace the more non-normative and expressive forms of sexuality. The changing status of khwaja sara, however, challenges the mainstream perception of Islamic societies as static, always and uniformly oppressive of sexual minorities.
Trans* individuals continue to refuse to submit to the hetro-homosexual binary and be contained within a static traditional space. Yet the patriarchal practices of the Pakistani state entice them towards a more male persona. My discussion of khwaja sara lives raises questions the answers to which I believe will only enfold in the future. Will khwaja sara become more susceptible to the allure of mainstream civil society and sacrifice their more fluid gender and sexuality to a mainstream bifurcated one? Or will their activism expand the substance of civil society in Pakistan to give political and social recognition to those who outrage middle-class sensibility and openly express their sexuality? To what extent might the political energies of khwaja sara lead to mobilization not only of their community, but also of lesbian and gay communities in their demand for rights and acceptability? I also have questions about the political involvement of khwaja sara in the future. In Pakistan's lower house of parliament, 60 seats are allotted to women and ten to religious minorities on a party ticket based on proportional representation. Can khwaja sara demand similar allocation on the argument that they are the third sex and a minority? The answers to these questions, I believe, will help us to understand the complexity of struggle for sexual minorities as well as the future and dynamism of political society in Pakistan.
