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A Right to Exist: Eunuchs and the State in Nineteenth-Century India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Laurence W. Preston
Laurence W. Preston
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

A Common but curious sight of the Indian bazaar is the hijḍā, the ‘eunuch’ of Indian English. Obviously transvestites, the hijḍās beg from merchants who quickly, under threat of obscene abuse, respond to the silent demands of such detested individuals. On occasion, especially festival days, they press their claims with boisterous and ribald singing and dancing. Popular Indian opinion would label the hijḍās as nothing more than male prostitutes. Yet at the same time, and hinting at a more complex social function, they are expected if unwanted visitors at wedding parties and birth celebrations where they demand their share of the general largesse. Seen solely as one element in the fabric of contemporary society, the life of a hijḍā is surely ‘an alternative social role … which cater[s] not only for the temperamental misfits but also for disavowed yet persistent needs of the community as a whole’. However, such characterizations are made without much investigation of the ‘alternative social role’. The vast Indian underworld—the low caste and outcaste; the beggars, touts, petty criminals, and prostitutes; and also the hijḍā—has been much neglected as a subject of serious scholarship.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 371 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

Much of the research for this paper was conducted in Pune and Bombay in 1979–80 under the terms of a junior fellowship from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute.

1 Indian words are here transliterated from Marathi. Phonetically hijḍā is close to ‘hizra’, which is the orthography used in Hindi.

2 Recorded on ‘Lower Caste Religious Music from India,’ Lyrichord Stereo, LLST 7234. I owe this reference to A. Shuman.

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9 Bombay Archives (hereafter BA): Revenue Department (hereafter RD) 1863; 42/313, pp. 135–41, H. E. Goldsmid, Assistant Collector to Mills, R., Collector of Pune, 7 June 1836.Google Scholar

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12 Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, IX, 2, ‘Gujarat Population: Musalmans and Parsis’ (Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1899), pp. 21–2.Google Scholar Also for Gujarat see Davidson, D. C., ‘Amputation of the Penis,’ The Lancet (16 Feb. 1884), 293.Google Scholar For similar accounts from south India, see Shortt, John, ‘Kojahs of Southern India,’ Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 (1873), 403–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15 Ibid.

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21 For example, Sa(n)kvār (‘delicate’), Mainā (‘Myna bird’), Kondan (a jewel setting?); it seems that each group of hijḍās had certain common names that were inherited by new initiates. The British recorded names that, if I correctly interpret the rather eccentric transliterations, are also found in eighteenth-century Marathi documents. This feature, which causes many difficulties in identifying individuals, presumably reflects a succession of master and disciple.

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28 Such was the fate of Sir Richard Burton when his report on the homosexual brothels of Karachi reached Bombay, see Brodie, Fawn M., The Devil Drives, A Life of Sir Richard Burton (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967), p. 66.Google Scholar

29 Luard, to Mills, , 14 Nov. 1836.Google Scholar

30 Goldsmid, to Mills, , 7 June 1836.Google Scholar

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid. pp. 141–5.

33 PA: XIV; 8/94, fols 3–5, 10, R. Mills, Collector of Pune to Williamson, W., Revenue Commissioner, 1 Aug. 1836Google Scholar, Williamson, to Government, , 20 Aug. 1836.Google Scholar

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37 Ibid.

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45 PA: XIV; 8/94, fols 1–2, Petition of Rājubhāī and Bāpū to Government (Persian Department translation), 26 May 1853. It seems this sanad was issued by Śāhājirājā, last ruler of Satara 1839–48.

46 Molesworth, J. T., A Dictionary, Marāṭhi and English (1857; rpt Pune: Shubhada-Saraswat, 1975), pp. 646, 657.Google Scholar

47 Petition of 26 May 1853.

48 PA: XIV; 8/94, fol. 2, Ogilvy, V., Commissioner of Satara to Government, 28 July 1853Google Scholar

49 PA: XIV; 8/94, fol. 3, Resolution of 26 Aug. 1853.

50 PA: XIV; 9/132, fol. 1, Rose, J. N., Collector of Satara to Government, 28 Nov. 1854.Google Scholar

51 Wilson, H. H., A Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms … relating to the Administration of the Government of British India (London: Wm. H. Allen, 1855), p. 208Google Scholar

52 For correspondence see BA: RD 1844; 74/837.

53 PA: Śāhū daphtar no. 3126, re the succession of Rādhī hijḍā to Ānsī hijḍā. The Collector of Pune saw a copy of this document (a tākīdpatra, ‘letter of injunction’) sent to the hereditary district officers.

54 BA: RD 1844; 74/837, pp. 203–4Google Scholar, D. Blane, Revenue Commissioner Southern Division to Spooner, R., Collector of Pune, 13 May 1844.Google Scholar

55 BA: RD 1844; 74/837, p. 209, Revenue letter to Court of Directors (paras 101–5), 22 Mar. 1845.

56 BA: RD 1852; 117/1621, pp. 117–19, Petition of Sagunī hijḍā to Government (English petition), 18 Feb. 1852.

57 Ibid.

58 BA: RD 1852; 117/1621, pp. 122–3, Resolution, n.d. (1852?).

59 Act XI of 1852, B.II.2. For the Inam Commission see Alfred Thomas Etheridge, ‘Narrative of the Bombay Inam Commission and Supplementary Settlements,’ Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, 132 ns (Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1874).Google Scholar

60 Rose to Government, 28 Nov. 1854.

61 PA: XIV; 9/132, fols 4–6, Collector of Satara to Inam Commissioner, 4 Mar. 1857.

62 PA: XIV; 9/132, fol. 1, Manson, C. J., Inam Commissioner Northern Division to Rose, 20 Dec. 1854.Google Scholar

63 PA: XIII; 55/740, fol. 24, Rose to Cowper, T. A., Inam Commissioner, 15 Feb. 1855 (no. 107).Google Scholar

64 PA: XIV; 9/132, fols 16–17, Cowper, to Government, 21 Feb. 1855.Google Scholar

65 PA: XIV; 9/132, fol. 2, Rose to Manson, C. J., Commissioner of Satara, 15 Feb. 1855 (no. 125).Google Scholar

66 PA: XIV; 9/132, fols 11, 13, Manson to Government, 26 Nov. 1855; Resolution of Government, 22 Dec. 1855.

67 Luard, to Mills, , 14 Nov. 1836.Google Scholar