When one attempts to examine the lives lived on the peripheries of society, the perspective largely oscillates between investigating the stigma and evoking sympathy. In Hijras, Lovers, Brothers: Surviving Sex and Poverty in Rural India (published by Fordham University Press) in 2021, Vaibhav Saria strives to do the opposite. Through an extensive and insightful description of the ‘fullness of hijra lives’ (p.1) in India, the author makes self and social sustenance the central theme of the book. Hijras are portrayed as enablers of the social order, who support and sustain it while being disjunct from its usual expectations. For the uninitiated, Hijra refers to the socio-cultural group of transgender women and intersex persons that inhabit the Indian landscape. This book extracts its contents from two years of fieldwork conducted in the economically deprived towns of Bhadrak and Kalahandi in rural Odisha. With the help of detailed conversations and participant observation, the author dives into the ways and practices of the hijras, threading a host of scenes that situate the respondents at the intersection of poverty and sexuality.
In this third book-length ethnographic work of its kind, Saria divides the account into five chapters. What sets the stage for analytical inquiries is the interlacing of ‘antisocial’ and ‘asocial’ aspects of hijra lives, corresponding to their sexuality and asceticism respectively. The narrative starts with the sexual pedagogy imparted by hijras in the marketplace through the construction of a jovial atmosphere. This is followed by a portrait of their relations with their natal clans and a short interlude. In the next three chapters, the positioning of hijras in economic and political spheres, their linkages with love and men, and the impact of HIV on their lives are explored. Across the chapters, the contribution of hijras to the continuance of social structure emerges as a major theme, while they attempt to survive and thrive in their peculiar settings, distanced from the mainstream.
The first chapter opens by introducing ‘laughter, flirtation, and seduction’ (p. 26) as devices used by hijras to legitimize their amorous desires towards men. On one hand, laughter relaxes the protocols of the moral and the social world, inviting young men to engage in bodily pleasures; hijras also ensure that the social remains unfractured through a certain ‘calibration’ (p. 31) of the relationship. Here, Saria factors in the multiple accounts of ‘Dead Babies’ (p. 33) of hijras, that become symbols of true love and of impossible desires at the same time. Drawing myriad parallels between a hijra’s love, Malinowski’s story of the incest performed by siblings, and the Khwaja’s love for God, Saria depicts the unattainable from the eyes of what is attainable.
In the next chapter, the author presents the relationship of hijras with their kin. Their familial ties are understood in terms of being shaped and negotiated by their financial capacities. Harsh or congenial, as these associations might be, they are never complete. Despite this, hijras act as providers, caretakers, and breadwinners, taking central roles in situations where sexuality stands in conflict with kinship. Renunciation from reproductive futurity might seem like an opposition to family but hijras help in maintaining the family. Sustenance and preservation emanate from the transactions undertaken by hijras in the sexual space and the household. The first allows the man some break from the cumbersome social and the second consolidates the socially upheld idea of the family through ‘subversive passivity’ (p. 95) of the hijras.
Chapter 3 takes us through the economic pursuits of hijras, assessing specifically the act of begging. This activity is studied through the metaphors of ‘Dana, Dakshina and Dalali’ (p. 109), where the concept of “haq” (p. 110) or the hijras’ rights over the money of others crops up, as contrasted with the threat and violence that they encapsulate. Through the exercise and reception of ‘haq’ in Hijra’s job as a tax collector, the shared sociality becomes prominent against the signifiers of separation. Similarly, the hijra politician is capable of steering clear from the corrupt and personally motivated manoeuvres by being out of the reproductive circles.
With the help of references, images, and allegories, the author paints a picture of Hijra that highlights the attributes towards some kind of social functionality. The succeeding chapter speaks of the quest for true and unconditional love, which is a quintessential trait of hijra lives. It describes how properties and material favours underpin the economy of love. While love and money may represent two extremes of bolstering relationships, for hijras, both share ‘a common function of valuation’ (p. 169). Further, the concluding chapter brings forth the scenario of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the nonchalance of hijras in dealing with it. Saria neatly outlines how the burgeoning burdens of everyday life and miseries ushered by poverty push HIV to take a backseat. In this way, hijras ‘march towards death diagonally’ (p. 195), much like they do to other aspects of social life.
Sex and poverty weave through the narratives of the book. Saria’s discourse appears to focus on sexual transactions. The flickering images of men as brothers and sexual partners twist the physical, emotional, and economic values of sex stemming out of poverty. It shows how sex performed under conditions of poverty takes a toll on the health conditions of hijras, Thus, it is poverty that gives hijras their ‘historically marginalized positions- the beggar, the prostitute and the diseased.’ (p. 22)
Though Saria’s study touches on a range of factors, literacy and education appear to be neglected. Secondly, the ritualistic powers and positions of Hijras that are embedded in and echo through culture could have been explored too. Situated on the lowest rungs of society, hijras engage in upholding its prosperity in both worldly and symbolic ways. What remains to be the most striking feature of this ethnographic study is the positionality of the authors themselves, whose sexuality and clothing not only forged greater access and relatability amongst the interlocutors but also eased the question of ‘otherness’.
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Ankur is currently pursuing a Master’s in Sociology at South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi. His research interests revolve around gender, sexuality and the sociology of everyday life.