India’s Transgender Community

Note: Although the Hijras are the dominant transgender community of India, there are many other smaller transgender communities that have not been introduced in this article.

The Indian transgender community is one that, in my opinion, is the most different compared to any other in the world. This summer, I learned a lot about this community – things that I felt people who didn’t live in India would find quite contrasting compared to other countries.

What brought my attention to this topic was a conversation I overheard between my relatives. I know, astonishing. They were discussing how much money they would have to give the “hijras” when the new baby was to arrive.

The hijras are a group of people who choose not to associate with a certain caste or a specific gender. However, most commonly, they are men who adapt to women-like behavior and way of dressing. Only a few years ago, they officially gained a place in the Indian law in terms of official documents and recognition of this social group. All identity-related official documents now have a third gender category option labeled ‘other’. However, in their general social lives as part of the Indian community, they do not have the same options other people would but they are given a very different kind of respect – one that I appreciated but left me slightly confused.

See, regular businesses prefer not to hire hijras – this is not entirely due to their gender, it’s also because the education they receive is very limited. The education that hijras receive is entirely based on their guru who is basically the mother of a small group of hijras in a certain area of the city. When their families refuse to accept them because of their chosen gender and identity,  gurus take full responsibility for their health, work etc.

So, how do they manage to earn and live a normal life? Well, in earlier days, and sometimes till this day, they show up to people’s houses if there has been a marriage, the birth of a newborn, or something equally as auspicious. They come here to give their blessings to a newly married couple or a new baby. For them to do this, the family must give the hijras a certain amount of money. They dance and bring happiness to the house. This is the kind of respect regular Indian families have for them. Indian traditional families truly believe that the blessings given by hijras (transgenders) are unlike any other. They are considered very auspicious and usually, the money presented to the hijras is consensually given.

Now, what happens if a family refuses to give them this money? Because, when I first heard of this method of earning money, I truly felt that it was quite literally forceful payments, so I asked. What I understood from my inquiries is that most of the time, this does not happen for two particular reasons – one, Indian families respect hijras’ blessings. However, there is also a certain fear. See, what people have seen happening in the past is that hijras strip down to almost nothing and bad mouth the family in a way that is frankly, probably, scary for people to watch – only if the family behaves badly and/or refuses to give them any money.

I wasn’t entirely able to understand this process until I saw it for myself. After my cousin’s wedding, when we returned back to our family house, the hijras met us at 1 pm that afternoon. The hijra I met was very friendly, she spoke with me about my life in China, gave me her blessings, and later I was told that she was the same hijra that arrived at our family house when I was born. So, just imagine seventeen years of knowing the same family, and arriving at their house for every special event. Though we rarely ever see them, we find that they have a different, positive aura about them. They light up the place in a different kind of way. To be honest, I was unsure of how to act when I first met them, but they calm you down and make you realize that they are like any other person.

Just because they don’t have the same life as most people their age, doesn’t mean that they are not happy within their own families. The family that they adapt to turns strangers into sisters, and gives all of them a mother who dearly cares for them. To me, that sounds like any other family you would encounter across the street.