with respect to sex Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture Edited by Gilbert Herdt also in the series: No Place Like Home: Relationships and American Gay Family Life among Lesbians and Gay Men by Stephen O. Murray by Christopher Carrington Out in Force: Sexual Orientation and Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality the Military in Twentieth-Century Brazil edited by Gregory M. Herek, by James N. Green Jared B. Jobe, and Ralph M. Carney A Plague of Paradoxes: AIDS, Culture, Queer Forster and Demography in Northern Tanzania edited by Robert K. Martin and by Philip W. Setel George Piggford The Course of Gay and Lesbian Lives: The Cassowary’s Revenge: Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives The Life and Death of Masculinity by Bertram J. Cohler and in a New Guinea Society Robert M. Galatzer-Levy by Donald Tuzin Homosexualities Mema’s House, Mexico City: by Stephen O. Murray On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos by Annick Prieur The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade by Wendy Doniger Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic by Don Kulick Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men by M. V. Lee Badgett Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field The Night Is Young: Sexuality in Mexico by Gilbert Herdt in the Time of AIDS by He´ctorCarrillo Gay Men’s Friendships: Invincible Communities The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex by Peter M. Nardi Desire in Modern China by Tze-lan D. Sang Coyote Nation: Sexuality, Race, and Conquest in Modernizing New Mexico, 1880–1920 by Pablo Mitchell With Respect to Sex negotiating hijra identity in south india Gayatri Reddy The University of Chicago Press / Chicago and London Gayatri Reddy is assistant professor of anthropology and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London C 2005 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2005 Printed in the United States of America 14131211100908070605 12345 isbn: 0-226-70755-5 (cloth) isbn: 0-226-70756-3 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reddy, Gayatri. With respect to sex : negotiating hijra identity in South India / Gayatri Reddy. p. cm. — (Worlds of desire) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-226-70755-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 0-226-70756-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Transsexuals—India, South. 2. Transsexualism—Religious aspects—Islam. 3. Sex role—India, South. 4. Sex differences—India, South. 5. Sex role—Religious aspects—Islam. 6. Gender identity— India, South. 7. Islam and culture—India, South. 8. Transvestism—Religious aspects—Islam. 9. Prostitution—India, South. 10. Hyderabad (India)—Social life and customs. 11. Secunderabad (India)—Social life and customs. I. Title. II. Series. HQ77.95.I4R43 2005 305.3 0954—dc22 2004015754 ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992. in gratitude To the memory of my mother, who taught me to love books and encouraged my curiosity early in life contents Acknowledgments / ix Note on Transliteration / xiii 1 The Ethnographic Setting 1 2 Hijras, Individuality, and Izzat 17 3 Cartographies of Sex/Gender 44 4 Sacred Legitimization, Corporeal Practice: Hindu Iconography and Hijra Renunciation 78 5 “We Are All Musalmans Now”: Religious Practice, Positionality, and Hijra/Muslim Identification 99 6 (Per)Formative Selves: The Production of Gender 121 7 “Our People”: Kinship, Marriage, and the Family 142 8 Shifting Contexts, Fluid Identities 186 9 Crossing “Lines” of Subjectivity: Transnational Movements and Gay Identifications 211 10 Conclusion 223 Appendix / 233 References / 273 Notes / 235 Index / 299 Glossary / 265 acknowledgments My first and greatest debt is to my hijra and koti friends and acquaintances in Hyderabad for welcoming me so openly into their lives. If it weren’t for their hospitality, generosity, and warmth, not only would this book have been impossible to write, fieldwork would not have been the joy and plea- sure that it was. I would especially like to thank those hijras and kotis I have referred to in this book as Munira, Surekha, Saroja, Irfan nayak and Amir nayak, Frank, Shanti, Rajeshwari, Aliya, Srilakshmi, and Nagalakshmi (all pseudonyms) for their unstinting gifts of time, patience, energy, hospitality, and friendship. I remain forever in your debt. Research for this book was made possible by generous grants and fellow- ships from the National Science Foundation, the Association for Women in Science, the Mellon Foundation, and Emory University. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Sexuality Research Fellowship Program (SRFP) of the Social Science Research Foundation and its director, Diane di Mauro. Although research for this particular project was not funded by the SRFP, their subsequent support, both material and intellectual, in the form of a generous postdoctoral award and the fellowship of brilliant sexuality researchers, was crucial for my ability to clarify my analysis and crystallize my writing in the final stages of this project. As in the case of all collective enterprises, this book could not have been written without the support and encouragement of many individuals and institutions. At Columbia University, where I began my graduate work, I am extremely grateful and will remain forever indebted to Joan Vincent and Carole Vance for their support and generous encouragement, as well as their warmth and understanding in those early years of my career. At Emory University I would first like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, all of whom were incredibly supportive and instru- mental in creating the intellectual and social environment that allowed me x / Acknowledgments to complete this project. I am truly grateful and honored to have had the op- portunity to work with all of you. Don Donham initially encouraged me to remain in academia and, through his insightful comments and suggestions and generous validation of my work, was also largely responsible for my growth as an intellectual over these many years. Joyce Flueckiger offered invaluable suggestions and insights on South Asian anthropology, religion, and ethnography, and always gave unstintingly of her time and energy when I needed it. Throughout my graduate career, Peter Brown has been a stead- fast source of encouragement and hands-on training, as well as an example of how to be a wonderful teacher while retaining one’s grounded humanity. Finally, Bruce Knauft has been an incredibly generous, profoundly insight- ful, and truly outstanding advisor, and has also been instrumental in my staying the course and embarking on my current academic path. I only hope I can be half as generous, supportive, intellectually stimulating, and loyal to my own advisees and students as Bruce was to me. I would also like to thank three other faculty members at Emory: Charles Nuckolls and Carol Worthman for their patience, encouragement, and support during my first couple of years at Emory, and Deborah McFarland for her enthusiasm and support of my work during my later, brief sojourn through the School of Public Health. I owe an intellectual debt of gratitude to a number of individuals who have read this book or sections of it in manuscript form and provided me with invaluable suggestions. I am particularly grateful to Lawrence Cohen, Serena Nanda, Elena Gutierrez, Laurie Schaffner, Peg Strobel, Judy Gardiner, Biju Rao, Micaela di Leonardo, Vinay Swamy, Sylvia Vatuk, Jennifer Brier, William Wolf, Donna Murdock, and Emily Bloch, who gave generously of their time in reading, commenting on, and greatly improv- ing parts or the whole of this manuscript. I would also like to thank Corinne Louw for her meticulous and invaluable assistance in preparing the final draft of the manuscript for publication. To the participants in my dissertation-writing seminar from 1997 to 1999, especially Holly Wardlow, Daniel Smith, and Andrew Cousins (and Don Donham for doing such a superb job of facilitating this seminar)—I could not have finished with- out you. Thank you for your extremely valuable critiques and suggestions, your steady encouragement and validation, and your constant presence and support—over endless shared pitchers of beer and cigarettes—through all the ups and downs of agonizing over and writing the dissertation. I thank Wendy Doniger and Kira Hall for generously making available their un- published material. For their friendship, love, support, and encouragement over the years, I would also like to thank Edith Aubin, C. S. Balachandran, Acknowledgments / xi Tassi Crabb, Beatrice Greco, Russ Hanford, Aditya Kar, Alice Long, Keith McNeal, Gowri Meda, Fabien Richards, Elaine Salo, Sumati Surya, Shauna Swartz, Deepa and Rajesh Talpade, Mayuresh Tapale and all the other wonderful Trikone folk in Atlanta, my father, Vasunder Reddy, my aunt, Jyothi Rao, Saras and G. K. Reddy, and other supportive members of my family in Hyderabad, as well as Yamini Atmavilas, Lara Deeb, Jessica Gregg, Benjamin Junge, Anil Lal, Wynne Maggi, Mark Padilla, Rebecca Seligman, Malcolm Shelley, and Anu Srinivasan. At the University of Illinois, I would like to thank the faculty and staff of both my departments—Gender and Women’s Studies as well as Anthropology—for their support and encouragement of my work. I would especially like to thank my colleagues Elena Gutierrez, Peg Strobel, Judy Gardiner, Sylvia Vatuk, and Laurie Schaffner for their extremely valuable comments on drafts of this manuscript. In addition, I would like to thank Lynette Jackson, Krista Thompson, Mark Liechty, Yasmin Nair, Javier Villa- Flores, John D’Emilio, Jim Oleson, Sandy Bartky, Beth Richie, Jennifer Langdon-Teclaw, Helen Gary, Emily LaBarbera-Twarog, Corinne Louw, and Jill Gage for making this new academic space intellectually challenging and stimulating, as well as wonderfully collegial and supportive for me.