How colonialism took hijras from spiritual leaders to the outskirts of Indian society

In his 2024 directorial debut, Monkey Man, Dev Patel engineers a delightfully unexpected “the more you know” moment in the action-revenge movie in which his anonymous hero ingratiates himself with a community of hijra: transgender, intersex, and eunuch people, who live by the guru-chela system and, at least according to the film, will come to the aid of their allies with blades, brass knuckles, and dynamite, when occasion requires.

Monkey Man, jointly produced by Universal Pictures and Monkeypaw Productions, may be the first American studio film to give hijras meaningful representation for a moviegoing body unversed in the umbrella term. It isn’t, however, the first film to feature hijra characters, period. Among others, Deepa Mehta’s Water (2005), Anil Kapoor’s Nayak (2001), and Mani Ratnam’s Bombay (1995) all predate Patel’s contribution to the hijra cinematic canon by decades, and are similarly predated themselves by films like Amarlal Chabria’s Kunwara Baap (1974), a riff on Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 classic The Kid in which real-life hijras appear in a song and dance number, welcoming a newborn baby into their midst.

If Kunwara Baap’s depiction leans into caricature—the hijras’ only clear trait is their boisterousness—the actual service they provide is closer to the genuine article. To the average American’s likely surprise, hijras are officially classified as a third gender in India; for this reason, the word is synonymous with neither “non-binary” nor “transgender,” as hijras hold a place in regional customs that predate what we contemporarily think of when we talk about trans identity. “They have special ritual roles,” says Layne Little, a professor in the University of California Davis’s departments of religious studies and art history. “They have powers of blessing and cursing, especially associated with childbirth, and so they have special rights. This is where people respect their power.” Hijras visit newborns in their communities, to sing and to dance, as in Kunwara Baap, to confer boons on them, and to perform one more pivotal function: determining gender.

“Part of their role is to inspect the genitals of the child, and to designate what their gender is,” Little adds. “If there is anything different about their bits and pieces—if they are hermaphrodites, or any variation, (the hijras) are obligated to adopt that child into their community.” Little describes hijras’ gender nonconforming circles as matrifocal, with a guru, the “head hijra,” as he puts it, who provides a surrogate maternal figure to the rest of their people. It is also understood by outsiders that hijra in these communities wield supernatural abilities.

This belief, combined with the protection that a community can afford marginalized people, as well as the third gender recognition, seems like reasonable insulation for hijras against transphobic violence. Adding to this perception is the Hindu pantheon, which includes gods with either gender fluid or dual-gender identities: Vishnu adopts his female form, Mohini, to hoodwink demons, and also to wed, bed, and ritualistically sacrifice the character Aravan in the Hindu epic, the Mahābhārata; Ardhanarishvara is a composite form of Shiva and his consort Parvati; and the hijra patroness, Bahuchara Mata, who according to myth, discarded her femininity to repel a thief, whom she cursed with impotency that can only be cured through performance of femininity.

One would assume, perhaps, that the presence of these figures in Indian culture would foster broad social acceptance of hijras; one would be mistaken. “There’s been a rise of sexual violence directed toward hijras,” Little says. “They’re often raped, and the police don’t take action.” It may be that law enforcement is following their government’s lead: While the Supreme Court of India’s landmark 2014 ruling acknowledged hijras as the nation’s third official gender, 20 years after the government initially recognized hijras as a third sex, the decision neglected to establish safeguards against violence and hate speech at the same time. (The distinction between gender and sex is often overlooked, but crucial.) “They become a safe object of desire for men, but that doesn't mean it's safe for them at all,” Little adds.

“Within Hinduism, there's this idea that the male aspect of deities is nothing other than consciousness itself, and it's entirely passive, and that the materializing agency that gives expression into form is the female aspect of the deity—so, all matter in all of our bodies.”

On paper, that widespread discrimination gives whiplash: a South Asian country that bears mythological as well as theological markers expressing gender malleability is not a place where it would seem possible for transphobia to take root. “Within Hinduism, there's this idea that the male aspect of deities is nothing other than consciousness itself, and it's entirely passive,” Little explains, “and that the materializing agency that gives expression into form is the female aspect of the deity—so, all matter in all of our bodies.” It’s a wonderful concept. Naturally, Victorian-era colonialism couldn’t abide it.

“Things go downhill for divergent communities during the colonial period,” Little points out. He mentions the devadasi system, in which young girls are “married” to the worship of a god or service of a temple for life, as an example of British colonialism’s meteoric impact on India’s traditions. Practitioners go by different names in different regions, like the jogatis in Karnataka. “Devadasi” may be thought of as an umbrella term. (The word “practitioner” should be used loosely, too, given the system’s association with sexual exploitation.) “The British were obsessed with taking stock of their control. They wanted to create taxonomies of every caste, community, people,” Little says. “Everyone must be studied and put in their place.”

Ultimately, the place the British chose for the devadasis was Biblical in context. “All they could think back to was Old Testament descriptions of priestesses in Babylon, who were temple prostitutes,” Little says. Victorian census reports categorized the devadasis as such, stirring a backlash in Hindu society and stripping the devadasis of their status.

If hijra experience is separate from devadasi experience, the influence of colonial rule over Indian society likewise affected their communities. They were characterized as deviant by British mores, and expelled from positions and spaces where they previously were accepted. “Traditionally they had great court jobs, partly because many of them were eunuchs,” Little says. “They would be guards in the women's quarters, and they were nannies for wealthy, prolific families.” In 1871, that abruptly changed with the stroke of a pen and the passing of the Criminal Tribes Act, corralling hijras to society’s fringes, where they remain today, sustaining themselves by begging, by exchanging blessings for donations, and through sex work.

Smothering as the effects of British colonial marginalization on these communities have been—with episodes in recent world history, like the COVID-19 pandemic, making their circumstances considerably worse—hijras nonetheless strive to take back that bygone prestige. Little mentions the Koothandavar Thiruvizha, a festival held over 18 days in Koovagam, a village in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, in which hijras are called “alis” (meaning “high” or “exalted”), during the Tamil month of Chithirai, from mid April to mid May; it is held in celebration of Aravan, revolving around hijras and wider transgender communities.

In the Mahābhārata, Mohini and Aravan have a Gandharva marriage—marriage through sex. “There are different classes of marriage, but this is the one of the gods,” Little says. “This is how gods get married: they do it.” So, the Koothandavar Thiruvizha commences with gathered hijras performing a sort of pantomime. “They go in front of the image of Aravan, and they reenact their marriage ceremony to him,” Little continues. “They're validating their transgendered status through this. It's a celebration of how they are wanted.”

Decades ago, Little notes, people originally came to attend the festival from North India, perhaps Nepal. That’s changed over time. “Nowadays, transgendered people pilgrimage  from all over Southeast Asia, and occasionally even East Asia, to come to this event,” he says. “So it's become a pretty huge thing.” International participation isn’t the same milestone as would be, for instance, the major legislative changes necessary to shield hijras, and all transgendered and intersex Indians besides, from persecution; nonetheless, the Koothandavar Thiruvizha’s magnetic pull perhaps suggests a new groundswell of kinship and solidarity. In lieu of cultural and judicial tolerance, that may need to suffice.