Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India The Hijra, c.1850-1900 by Jessica Hinchy

Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India
In 1865, the British rulers of north India resolved to bring about the
gradual ‘extinction’ of transgender Hijras. This book, the first in depth
history of the Hijra community, illuminates the colonial and postcolo
nial governance of gender and sexuality and the production of colonial
knowledge. From the 1850s, colonial officials and middle class Indians
increasingly expressed moral outrage at Hijras’ feminine gender expres
sion, sexuality, bodies and public performances. To the British, Hijras
were an ungovernable population that posed a danger to colonial rule.
In 1871, the colonial government passed a law that criminalised Hijras,
with the explicit aim of causing Hijras’ ‘extermination’. But Hijras
evaded police, kept on the move, broke the law and kept their cultural
traditions alive. Jessica Hinchy argues that Hijras were criminalised not
simply because of imported British norms, but due to a complex set of
local factors, including elite Indian attitudes.
Jessica Hinchy is Assistant Professor in History at Nanyang

Technological University in Singapore.
Governing Gender and
Sexuality in Colonial India
The Hijra, c.1850–1900
Jessica Hinchy
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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Names: Hinchy, Jessica, author.
Title: Governing gender and sexuality in colonial India : the Hijra, c.1850 1900 /
Jessica Hinchy.
Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018052498 | ISBN 9781108492553
Subjects: LCSH: Transgender people India History 19th century. |
Transgender people Legal status, laws, etc. India. | India. Criminal Tribes
Act of 1871. | India Politics and government 1857 1919. | India Social
conditions 19th century.
Classification: LCC HQ77.965.I5 H56 2019 | DDC 306.76/80954 dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052498
ISBN 978 1 108 49255 3 Hardback
ISBN 978 1 108 71699 8 Paperback
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and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

Jessica Hinchy

www.cambridge.org
DOI: 10.1017/9781108592208
Jessica Hinchy.
ISBN 978 1 108 49255 3 Hardback

Jessica Hinchy

www.cambridge.org
DOI: 10.1017/9781108592208
Jessica Hinchy.
ISBN 978 1 108 49255 3 Hardback
For my hilarious, caring and enormously smart mother Tracey,
upon whose advice I depend,
my loving and supportive father Russell, a secret history
obsessive,
my dazzling, intelligent and gutsy sister Stefie, without whom
I would not be me,
and Hugh, my best friend and very funny husband, who makes
every day a whole lot better.
Contents
List of Illustrations page ix

Glossary x
List of Abbreviations xii
Introduction 1
Part 1 Solving the ‘Eunuch Problem’ 25

1 The Hijra Panic 27
2 An Ungovernable Population 44
3 Hijras and Indian Middle-Class Morality 80
4 The ‘Gradual Extirpation’ of the Hijra 93
Part 2 Multiple Narratives of Hijra-hood 115

5 The Hijra Archive 117
6 Hijra Life Histories 139
Part 3 Surviving Criminalisation and Elimination 165

7 Classifying Illegible Bodies, Contesting Colonial
Categories 167
8 Policing, Evading, Surviving 194
vii
viii Contents
9 Saving Children to Eliminate Hijras 226

Conclusion 250
Postscript: Hijras and the State in Postcolonial South Asia 255
Bibliography 272
Index 297
Illustrations
1 Balthazar Solvyns, ‘Hidjera’, from Les Hindoos, vol. 2 (Paris:

Chez l’auteur; Chez H. Nicolle, 1808–12), plate IV. British
Library, London, UK ©British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved, Bridgeman Images. page xiv
2 Anon. (Indian artist), ‘Eunuchs Dancing’, c.1820, Hastings
Albums, BL/IOR/Add/Or/5014. British Library, London, UK
©British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, Bridgeman
Images. xv
3 Anon. (British photographer), ‘Group of Hijra Dancers and
Musicians, Delhi’, c.1860, BL/IOR/Photo/460(60). British
Library, London, UK ©British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved, Bridgeman Images. xvi
4 Anon. (British photographer?), ‘Gurmah, Khunsa, or Hijra,
reputed hermaphrodite, Eastern Bengal’, c.1860s, BL/IOR/
Photo/124(38). British Library, London, UK ©British Library
Board. All Rights Reserved, Bridgeman Images. xvii
5 Abbas Ali, ‘Meah Sahub, Eunuch’, from Lucknow Album, vol. 1,
BL/IOR/Photo/269/1(86). British Library, London, UK
©British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, Bridgeman
Images. xviii
ix
Glossary
ashraf People of aristocratic or eminent families.

ayurveda The Sanskritic medical tradition.
badhai A ‘congratulatory gift’, the payment made to
Hijras performing at weddings and following births.
Banjara A nomadic community of transporters.
Bhagatiya A community of performers and entertainers; a male
dancer or dancing boy.
bhand Also bhandela, a comic performer, usually itinerant.
Brahman The Hindu priestly caste.
Chamar An ‘untouchable’ community typically engaged in cul-
tivation and/or leatherwork.
chaukidar A village or neighborhood watchman.
chela A disciple in a monastic or Hijra community (also
a common term for a slave).
dai A midwife or a Hijra who performs the castration
(nirvan) operation.
dholak A small, two-sided drum.
fakir A religious ascetic, particularly a Muslim ascetic.
gorait A watchman (especially in the Benares region).
guru A spiritual teacher or guide; a senior Hijra in super-
ordinate position to a chela.
Hijra A member of the Hijra community, usually a male-
born person with a feminine gender identity; often
a performer and collector of badhai at births, weddings
and other occasions.
inam A rent-free land grant, often hereditary.
jati A caste group.
Khoja A term for ‘eunuch’.
Khwajasarai A eunuch-slave (literally ‘lord superintendent of the
house’); often household servants, administrators,
military commanders, intelligencers and diplomats.
lambardar A village headman.
x
Glossary xi
majira Also manjira, a pair of small cymbals.

mela A fair or religious festival.
mukhannas A derogatory term, roughly meaning ‘passive
sodomite’.
mukhtar A lawyer, especially a district court ‘pleader’.
munshi A writer, clerk, bureaucrat or language teacher.
nirvan ‘Spiritual rebirth’; the Hijra term for the castration
operation.
pargana A subdivision of a district.
pir A spiritual teacher, especially in the Sufi tradition.
rais A patron or magnate, frequently government
informants.
Sakhi Also termed Rasik, a ‘female companion’ of the
Ramanandi monastic order; a male devotee who per-
forms femininity in a ritual context.
sakhi-bhav Religious devotion in which the devotee becomes a
female companion of Sita.
sati Widow-burning.
taluqdar A landowner who leases his land to tenant farmers (in
Oudh).
tawa’if Skilled courtesan performers.
thagi Or ‘thuggee’, crime by deception or a colonial category
of highway crime.
thana A police station.
unani The South Asian Greco-Islamic medical tradition.
zamindar A landowner who leases his land to tenant farmers.
Zankha Also pronounced Jankha, an ‘effeminate’ or ‘impo-
tent’ man or a dancing boy; appears to have been
used interchangeably with Zanana.
zanana The female quarters of a house.
Zanana A man whose gender expression is effeminate or fem-
inine, often a performer.
Abbreviations
BL/IOR British Library, India Office Records (London)

CGGI Council of the Governor-General of India
CDA Contagious Diseases Act
CTA Criminal Tribes Act
DC Divisional Commissioner
DM District Magistrate
DNA Decisions of the Nizamat Adalat
DSIP District Superintendent of Police
GGI Governor-General of India
GI Secretary Secretary to the Governor-General, Government
of India
GI Government of India
IPC Indian Penal Code
NAI National Archives of India (New Delhi)
NWP DIGP Deputy Inspector-General of Police, North-
Western Provinces
NWP IGP Inspector-General of Police, North-Western
Provinces
NWP MLC Member of the Legislative Council of India for
the North-Western Provinces
NWP NA Nizamat Adalat, North-Western Provinces
NWP Secretary Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor, North-
Western Provinces
NWP&O DIGP Deputy Inspector-General of Police, North-
Western Provinces and Oudh
NWP&O IGP Inspector-General of Police, North-Western
Provinces and Oudh
NWP&O Secretary Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor, North-
Western Provinces and Oudh
OJ Officiating Judge
PA Personal Assistant
xii
List of Abbreviations xiii
SJ Sessions Judge
SVN Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers
UP United Provinces
UPSA/A Uttar Pradesh State Archives (Allahabad Branch)
UPSA/L Uttar Pradesh State Archives (Lucknow Branch)
xiv Figure
Figure 1 In his 1808 etching of a ‘Hidjera’, Anglophone Flemish artist

Balthazar Solvyns depicted the Hijra in a picturesque mode. However,
his accompanying written account lambasted Hijras as immoral people.
Figure xv
Figure 2 ‘Eunuchs Dancing’, by an anonymous Indian artist from Patna

(c.1820). This gouache painting of three Hijras was collected by
Governor General Francis Rawdon Hastings and his wife.
xvi Figure
Figure 3 As these Hijras danced in 1860, the colonial government in

north India was discussing how to suppress the Hijra community,
eventually leading to their criminalisation under Part II of the 1871
Criminal Tribes Act. This photograph of a ‘Group of Hijra Dancers
and Musicians, Delhi’ was probably taken by a British photographer of
the Shepherd and Robertson commercial photography firm.
Figure xvii
Figure 4 ‘Gurmah, Khunsa, or Hijra, reputed hermaphrodite, Eastern

Bengal’, c.1860s. This photograph is part of a collection of racial and
caste ‘types’ from modern day Bangladesh and Assam and was probably
taken by a British commercial photographer.
xviii Figure
Figure 5 Khwajasarais were eunuch slaves who were employed in elite

households and Indian states. They had a masculine gender identity, in
contrast to feminine identifying Hijras. Although the colonial
government did not apply Part II of the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act to
Khwajasarais, they were sometimes caught up in the policing of
Hijras. This young Khwajasarai named Meah Sahub was
photographed by Abbas Ali, an Indian photographer from Lucknow,
in the 1870s.
Introduction
On the 17th of August 1852, a Hijra named Bhoorah was found dead with
her ‘head nearly severed’ in the north Indian district of Mainpuri.1 In the
aftermath of Bhoorah’s violent death, the British rulers of north India
resolved that the Hijra community should be rendered extinct. Hijras like
Bhoorah performed and asked for badhai (a ‘congratulatory gift’) follow-
ing the births of children, at marriages and in public spaces. They embo-
died a feminine gender identity, for instance through women’s clothing,
and described themselves to colonial officials as having been either
castrated or ‘born that way’.2 Hijras were initiated into discipleship
lineages that linked generations of gurus (teachers) and
chelas (disciples). Bhoorah had attained guru status and had two disciples,
Dullah and Mathee, with whom she lived. For two years, Bhoorah had
also lived with her male lover, Ali Buksh, but shortly before she was
murdered, Bhoorah had left him for another man. On the 17th
of August, Ali Buksh forced Bhoorah to return to him. Neighbours saw
the couple arguing in the street before entering their house. Later,
Bhoorah’s disciple Dullah ran out into the street, shouting that Ali
Buksh had murdered Bhoorah. In the subsequent murder trial, there
were two suspects, Ali Buksh and Dullah, but the British judges were
convinced that Ali Buksh had killed Bhoorah due to the ‘severance’ of
their ‘infamous connexion’. Although a Hijra was the victim of the crime
under trial, the judges criminalised Hijras as cross-dressers, ‘beggars’ and
‘unnatural prostitutes’. One judge called Hijras an ‘opprobrium’ upon
colonial rule, while another claimed that the continued existence of the
Hijra community was a ‘reproach’ to the British government.3 Bhoorah’s
death sparked an anxious discussion in the official circles of the province
in which she lived, the North-Western Provinces (NWP). British admin-
istrators claimed that Hijras – or ‘eunuchs’ in colonial parlance – were
1
Government v. Ali Buksh, DNA NWP 2 (1852): 1314 6.
2
‘Emasculated’ and ‘eunuch by birth’ were the main terms used in English language
colonial records that reported Hijras’ statements.
3
Government v. Ali Buksh.
1
2 Introduction
‘habitual sodomites’, beggars, an obscene presence in public space and

the kidnappers and castrators of children. In 1865, the NWP declared
that its aim was to ‘reduce’ the number of ‘eunuchs’ and thus ‘gradually
lead to their extinction’.4 The province launched an anti-‘eunuch’ cam-
paign that had the explicit goal of ‘extirpating’ or ‘exterminating’ the Hijra
community.5
This project of elimination was formalised under the Criminal Tribes
Act (CTA) of 1871. While the much-studied Part I of the CTA targeted
the ‘criminal tribes’ – groups that were apparently hereditary criminals by
caste occupation – the under-examined second part of the law targeted
so-called ‘eunuchs’. Under the CTA, Hijras would find their gender
embodiment, domestic arrangements and livelihoods scrutinised and
policed in new ways. The anti-Hijra campaign was a provincial project,
since Part II of the CTA was enforced specifically in the NWP.6 The CTA
required police to draw up registers of the personal details of ‘eunuchs’.
Specifically, police had to register ‘eunuchs’ who were ‘reasonably sus-
pected’ of sodomy, kidnapping and castration, thus legally defining
a eunuch as a criminal and sexually deviant person. The 1871 law pro-
vided police with increased surveillance powers; prohibited registered
people from wearing female clothing and ‘adornments’ or performing in
public; provided for the removal of children in registered people’s house-
holds; and included provisions that interfered with Hijra discipleship and
succession patterns.7 The short-term aims of the law included the cultural
elimination of Hijras through the erasure of their public presence.
The explicit long-term ambition was ‘limiting and thus finally extinguish-
ing the number of Eunuchs’.8 Fortunately, the Hijra community survived
these colonial attempts to cause their ‘extinction’ and is evident today in
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Given the present-day social margin-
alisation and police abuse of Hijras, the history of Hijras’ interactions with
the state is a pressing issue.9
4
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to all NWP DC, 9 June 1865.
5
BL/IOR/P/840: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 3 April 1877; BL/IOR/P/438/62: Robertson
to NWP Secretary, 27 June 1866.
6
From 1877, Part II of the CTA was also enforced in Oudh, which was amalgamated into
the NWP. The new province was called the North Western Provinces and Oudh. To avoid
confusion, I refer to the province as the NWP throughout, except in citations. Part II of the
CTA also applied to Punjab, but the Punjab authorities never enforced it. BL/IOR/L/PJ/5/
82: Barron to Delhi DC, 22 August 1910.
7
BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act No. XXVII of 1871.
8
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to all NWP DC, 9 June 1865.
9
People’s Union for Civil Liberties (Karnataka), ‘Human Rights Violations Against the
Transgender Community: A Study of Kothi and Hijra Sex Workers in Bangalore, India
September 2003’, http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/PUCL/PUCL%20Report
.html (accessed 24 August 2012).
Introduction 3
For many colonial officials, Hijras were not only a danger to ‘public
morals’, but also a threat to colonial political authority.10 The colonial
government thus viewed the policing of Hijras as an ‘important branch’ of
the ‘duties’ of ‘district officers’ and a priority in local policing.11
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Part II of the CTA received
a greater level of attention at the upper echelons of government than
did section 377 of the 1860 Indian Penal Code (IPC), which prohibited
forms of non-reproductive sex defined as ‘unnatural’ intercourse until
2018.12 To many high-ranking colonial officials, the small Hijra commu-
nity endangered the imperial enterprise and colonial authority. If we are
to understand colonial sexual regimes in India – indeed, colonial govern-
ance in general – it is important to explore why this was so. The colonial
Hijra archive also gives unusually detailed insights into the impacts of
colonial law on colonised peoples who were marginalised because of their
gender expression, sexual practices and intimate lives.
To some historians who have stumbled across the sizeable volume of
documents about ‘eunuchs’ in colonial archives, this project has appeared
a ‘strange’ preoccupation, to quote Christopher Bayly.13 Rather than
dismiss the ‘eunuch problem’ as an odd colonial concern, this book
takes seriously, and seeks to explain, the intense official concern with
Hijras. Issues of gender and sexuality were not just a moralising mask for
more ‘rational’ and pragmatic matters of colonial administration.14
The anti-Hijra campaign illustrates that gender expression, sexual beha-
viours, domestic arrangements and intimate relationships were central to
colonial governance. In fact, these matters were so germane to colonial
rule that British officials demanded that the ‘immoral’ Hijra community
be rendered extinct.
Yet the colonial policing of Hijras has been almost entirely absent from
the historiography of late nineteenth-century India, despite a growing
body of scholarship on gender and colonialism.15 This is the first book-
10
BL/IOR/P/235/33: Couper to NWP MLC, 12 February 1861.
11
BL/IOR/P/1467: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 12 July 1880.
12
As of September 2018, section 377 no longer applies to consensual adult sex.
The historical pattern of the local enforcement of section 377 is unclear, but the imple
mentation of Part II of the CTA was much more closely monitored by the Government of
India and the NWP in the late 1800s.
13
C. A. Bayly, ‘Knowing the Country: Empire and Information in India’, Modern Asian
Studies 27, no. 1 (1993): 39.
14
Stoler makes a similar point: Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Affective States’, in A Companion to the
Anthropology of Politics, eds. David Nugent and Joan Vincent, 5 6 (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2007).
15
For overviews: Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, ‘Introduction: The Politics of
Intimacy in an Age of Empire’, in Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an
Age of Global Empire, eds. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, 1 28 (Chicago:
4 Introduction
length history of the Hijra community. Moreover, the small existing

historical literature on Hijras does not examine their criminalisation
under the CTA, the most concerted nineteenth-century project to reg-
ulate the community. Laurence Preston has explored Hijras’ interactions
with the state in the Bombay Presidency between the 1830s and 1850s,
while Anjali Arondekar has examined a section 377 case involving
a Hijra.16 Thus, the experiences of Hijras under the CTA have primarily
received attention in studies of contemporary Hijras. The last two dec-
ades have seen the publication of several anthropological, linguistic and
theatre studies works on the Hijra community in South Asia, for
instance, by Gayatri Reddy, Kira Hall, Adnan Hossain and Claire
Pamment.17 Aside from some brief mentions of colonial law and knowl-
edge, this otherwise rich literature has not analysed the history of the
community in depth.18 Meanwhile, the colonial policing of ‘unnatural
sex’ has been the subject of considerable discussion in India in the
context of the long legal battle over section 377 between 1991 and
2018. Activists, queer studies scholars and legal scholars have frequently
mentioned the policing of Hijras under the 1871 CTA as another
University of Illinois Press, 2009); Michele Mitchell, Naoko Shibusawa and Stephan
F. Miescher, ‘Introduction: Gender, Imperialism and Global Exchanges’, Gender and
History 26, no. 3 (2014): 393 413.
16
Laurence Preston, ‘A Right to Exist: Eunuchs and the State in Nineteenth Century
India’, Modern Asian Studies 21, no. 2 (1987): 371 87; chapter 2 in Anjali Arondekar,
For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India (New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan, 2009), 67 96. An unpublished thesis by Shane Patrick Gannon includes
a chapter on the CTA, though the focus is on the colonial discourse of the Hijra:
Shane Patrick Gannon, ‘Translating the Hijra: The Symbolic Reconstruction of the
British Empire in India’ (PhD dissertation, University of Alberta, 2009).
17
Gayatri Reddy, With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South Asia (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 2005); Gayatri Reddy, ‘“Men” Who Would Be Kings:
Celibacy, Emasculation, and the Re Production of Hijras in Contemporary Indian
Politics’, Social Research 70, no. 1 (2003): 163 200; Lawrence Cohen, ‘The Pleasures
of Castration: The Postoperative Status of Hijras, Jankhas, and Academics’, in Sexual
Nature, Sexual Culture, ed. Paul R. Abramson, 276 305 (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1995); Serena Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont:
Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1989); Kira Hall and Veronica O’Donovan, ‘Shifting
Gender Positions among Hindi Speaking Hijras’, in Rethinking Language and Gender
Research: Theory and Practice, eds. Victoria Lee Bergvall et al., 228 66 (London:
Longman, 1996); Adnan Hossain, ‘Beyond Emasculation: Being Muslim and
Becoming Hijra in South Asia’, Asian Studies Review 36, no. 4 (2012): 495 513;
Claire Pamment, ‘Hijraism: Jostling for a Third Space in Pakistani Politics’, TDR:
The Drama Review 54, no. 2 (2010): 29 50; Shahnaz Khan, ‘What is in a Name?
Khwaja Sara, Hijra and Eunuchs in Pakistan’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 23, no. 2
(2016): 218 42; Vaibhav Saria, ‘To Be Some Other Name: The Naming Games that
Hijras Play’, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal 12 (2005): http://samaj
.revues.org/3992.
18
Reddy, With Respect to Sex, 25 30.
Introduction 5
example of the colonial regulation of sexuality.19 Yet these writers have not
examined the actual implementation of the 1871 law or Hijras’ experiences
of criminalisation.20 Moreover, the connections and divergences between
the metropolitan and colonial policing of non-normative sexuality are
unclear in both the literature on section 377 in India and the large literature
on the policing of ‘sodomy’ in Britain.21 Hence, this book explores the ways
that the anti-Hijra campaign intersected with and departed from the con-
temporary metropolitan regulation of sexuality.
The colonial policing of the Hijra community throws into sharp relief
the gendered character of colonial criminal law. The large body of
research on the regulation of the ‘criminal tribes’ under the CTA is one
place we might expect to find analysis of the colonial criminalisation of the
Hijra. Yet historians of the CTA have not considered why ‘eunuchs’ and
‘criminal tribes’ were policed under the same law. When they have men-
tioned Part II of the CTA, they have generally relegated it to the
footnotes.22 While there is fascinating gender analysis in the work of
19
Arvind Narrain, Queer: ‘Despised Sexuality’, Law and Social Change (Bangalore: Books for
Change, 2004); Arvind Narrain, ‘“That Despicable Specimen of Humanity”: Policing of
Homosexuality in India’, in Challenging the Rule(s) of Law: Colonialism, Criminology and
Human Rights in India, eds. Kalpana Kannabiran and Ranbir Singh, 48 77 (New Delhi:
Sage India, 2008); Suparna Bhaskaran, ‘The Politics of Penetration: Section 377 of the
Indian Penal Code’, in Queering India: Same Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and
Society, ed. Ruth Vanita, 15 29 (New York: Routledge, 2002); Alok Gupta, ‘Section 377
and the Dignity of Indian Homosexuals’, Economic and Political Weekly (November 18
2006): 4815 23; Gautam Bhan, ‘Challenging the Limits of Law: Queer Politics and
Legal Reform in India’, in Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India, eds.
Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan, 40 8 (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005);
Ratna Kapur, ‘Unruly Desires, Gay Governance and the Makeover of Sexuality in
Postcolonial India’, in Global Justice and Desire: Queering Economy, eds. Nikita Dhawan
et al., 115 6 (New York: Routledge, 2015).
20
This is the case even in more extended analyses: Narrain, Queer, 57 60.
21
E.g., H. G. Cocks, Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the 19th Century (London: I. B.
Tauris Publishers, 2003); Charles Upchurch, Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s
Age of Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Alan Sinfield, The Wilde
Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Movement (London: Cassell, 1994);
Matt Cook, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885 1914 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003).
22
E.g., Mark Brown, ‘Ethnology and Colonial Administration in Nineteenth Century
British India: The Question of Native Crime and Criminality’, The British Journal for
the History of Science 36, no. 2 (2003): 211. See also: Rachel J. Tolen, ‘Colonizing and
Transforming the Criminal Tribesman: The Salvation Army in British India’, American
Ethnologist 18, no. 1 (1991): 106 125; Meena Radhakrishna, Dishonoured by History:
‘Criminal Tribes’ and British Colonial Policy (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001); Sandria
B. Freitag, ‘Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India’, Modern Asian Studies 25,
no. 2 (1991): 227 61; Stewart N. Gordon, ‘Bhils and the Idea of a Criminal Tribe in
Nineteenth Century India’, in Crime and Criminality in British India, ed. Anand A. Yang,
128 39 (Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press, 1985); Sanjay Nigam, ‘Disciplining
and Policing the “Criminals by Birth”, Part 2: The Development of a Disciplinary
System, 1871 1900’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 27, no. 3 (1990):
6 Introduction
Padma Anagol, Satadru Sen and Clare Anderson, among others, such
historians of criminal law and penal systems have largely explored gender
issues in two specific contexts: first, the construction of female criminality
in the policing of infanticide; and second, the gendered organisation of
penal colonies and Indian jails.23 In fact, few historians have considered
the role that gender played in the policing of the ‘criminal tribes’.24 There
is still much we don’t know about the broader gender structures of
colonial criminal law in India.
This book sheds new light on the colonial governance of gender
and sexuality by examining a provincial project. The focus in the
broader literature has been on forms of sexual regulation that were
implemented across multiple colonies, particularly the policing of
prostitution and venereal disease under the Contagious Diseases
Acts (CDAs) that was enacted from the 1850s.25 Though such trans-
257 87; Anand A. Yang, ‘Dangerous Castes and Tribes: The Criminal Tribes Act and
the Magahiya Doms of Northeast India’, in Crime and Criminality in British India, ed.
Anand A. Yang, 108 27 (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1985); Andrew
J. Major, ‘State and Criminal Tribes in Colonial Punjab: Surveillance, Control and the
Reclamation of the “Dangerous Classes”’, Modern Asian Studies 33, no. 3 (1999):
657 88; Henry Schwarz, Constructing the Criminal Tribe in India: Acting like a Thief
(Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2010); Mark Brown, Penal Power and Colonial Rule
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2014); Anastasia Piliavsky, ‘The Moghia Menace, or the Watch
over Watchmen in British India’, Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 3 (2013): 751 79.
23
Satadru Sen, ‘The Savage Family: Colonialism and Female Infanticide in Nineteenth
Century India’, Journal of Women’s History 14, no. 3 (2002): 53 79; Padma Anagol,
‘The Emergence of the Female Criminal in India: Infanticide and Survival Under the
Raj’, History Workshop Journal 53, no. 1 (2002): 73 93; Aparna Vaidik, ‘Settling the
Convict: Matrimony and Domesticity in the Andamans’, Studies in History 22, no. 2
(2006): 221 51; Satadru Sen, ‘Rationing Sex: Female Convicts in the Andamans’, South
Asia 21, no. 2 (1998): 29 59; Satadru Sen, ‘The Female Jails of Colonial India’, Indian
Economic and Social History Review 39, no. 4 (2002): 417 38; Clare Anderson, ‘Writing
Indigenous Women’s Lives in the Bay of Bengal: Cultures of Empire in the Andaman
Islands, 1789 1906’, Journal of Social History 45, no. 2 (2011): 480 96; Clare Anderson,
Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 7 8,
20 1, 36 9, 63 5, 71 6, 80 6, 105 6, 114 9, 121 6. For a rare, brief mention of the
policing of ‘eunuchs’: Radhika Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify: Identification Practices
in Colonial India’, Studies in History 16, no. 2 (2000): 154 5.
24
There is scattered gender analysis in: Radhakrishna, Dishonoured by History; Tolen,
‘Colonizing and Transforming’.
25
E.g., Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British
Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003); Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the
Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their Critics, 1793 1905 (London: Wiedenfield and
Nicolson, 1980); Ashwini Tambe, Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late
Colonial Bombay (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2009); Judy Whitehead, ‘Bodies Clean and
Unclean: Prostitution, Sanitary Legislation, and Respectable Femininity in Colonial
North India’, Gender and History 7, no. 1 (April 1995): 41 63; Philip Howell, ‘Race,
Space and the Regulation of Prostitution in Colonial Hong Kong’, Urban History 31, no.
2 (2004): 229 48; Richard Phillips, Sex, Politics and Empire: A Postcolonial Geography
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006).
Introduction 7
imperial projects are historically significant, this focus risks ignoring

localised experiments in regulating sexual acts and norms, which can
deepen our knowledge of the relationship between imperialism and
sexuality.26 Regional and local histories like the anti-Hijra campaign
help to answer the question of why colonial administrators viewed
sexual ‘immorality’ as a problem in some contexts, but not in others.
Provincial schemes show the variety of agendas that could intersect
with the policing of morality. Moreover, local projects demonstrate
that the techniques and knowledge that underpinned colonial gender
and sexual regulation shifted between different contexts. Even as
ideas of sexual deviance and criminality circulated in imperial net-
works, experiments in shaping gender and sexual norms emerged
from the margins of the Empire.
Solving the ‘Eunuch Problem’

Between the 1850s and the 1870s, a panic about Hijras materialised
within the coterie of British officials in north India, amplifying earlier
moralising and stigmatising European accounts of Hijras. Panicked stor-
ies about people called ‘Hijras’ or ‘eunuchs’ circulated within official
networks in the NWP, against the backdrop of a prevailing sense of
colonial vulnerability. As Chapter 1 explores, the spark of this panic was
a handful of criminal cases involving Hijras, either as the victim, as in
Bhoorah’s 1852 murder trial, or as the accused, as in a few kidnapping
and castration cases. From each of these individual instances of alleged
crime, colonial officials extrapolated an account of Hijras as a criminal
and sexually immoral collective. British officers repeatedly (re)discovered
the Hijra community, resulting in repetitive, performative denunciations
of Hijras that reiterated a vision of the state as a bulwark against
immorality.27 The management of gender, sexuality and domesticity
was one of the ways that the colonial government in India articulated
the idea of the state or the ‘state effect’.28
26
Phillips makes a similar point: Richard Phillips, ‘Heterogeneous Imperialism and the
Regulation of Sexuality in British West Africa’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 14, no. 3
(2005): 291 315.
27
On the performative aspects of colonial rule: Kathleen Wilson, ‘Rethinking the Colonial
State: Family, Gender, and Governmentality in Eighteenth Century British Frontiers’,
American Historical Review 116, no. 5 (2011): 1295. On the postcolonial state: Jyoti Puri,
Sexual States: Governance and the Struggle over the Antisodomy Law in India (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2016), 5.
28
Timothy Mitchell, ‘Society, Economy, and the State Effect’, in State/Culture: State
Formation After the Cultural Turn, ed. George Steinmetz, 76 97 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1999).
8 Introduction
The preoccupation with Hijras in the NWP reflected several

broader characteristics of ‘colonial panics’ which Christopher Bayly,
Kim Wagner, Robert Peckham and others have highlighted.29 Yet the
Hijra panic especially highlights the tendency of localised networks of
colonial administrators to experience intensified anxiety about per-
ceived threats to colonial rule. Hijras were not a significant concern
of the non-official European population. Though there was deep
anxiety about Hijras in the NWP government, British officials in
other provinces did not view Hijras as a major problem of govern-
ance, even if they denounced Hijras as immoral. The Hijra panic was
shaped by the administrative culture of the NWP and by the provin-
cially fractured nature of British India. This sort of provincial panic
represents a significant characteristic of colonial governance: the role
of localised anxieties, visions, agendas and social conditions in shap-
ing colonial rule.30
British officials in north India considered the Hijra community
a problem population because they viewed Hijras as ungovernable in
a multitude of ways. British commentators frequently portrayed the
Hijra community through images of filth, disease, contagion and contam-
ination. In Chapter 2, I argue that these metaphors of dirt and impurity
suggested that Hijras were out of place in the colonial order and more-
over, that they were a manifold threat to that order. These colonial
representations of Hijras highlight that gender and sexual disorder were
interlaced with, and in fact signalled, political disorder to India’s colonial
rulers. The British saw Hijras as ‘habitual sodomites’, a term which
disregarded Hijras’ feminine gender identities and portrayed them as
‘men’ who were ‘addicted’ to sex with men. Hijras’ ostensible sexual
practices were a threat to the colonial social order, which was premised
on a pattern of succession based on reproductive sexuality, patrilineal
29
Kim A. Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”: The “Mutiny” Motif and Colonial Anxieties
in British India’, Past and Present, no. 218 (2013): 159 97; Harald Fischer Tiné and
Christine Whyte, ‘Introduction: Empires and Emotions’, in Anxieties, Fear and Panic in
Colonial Settings: Empires on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, ed. Harald Fischer Tiné,
1 24 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Robert Peckham, ‘Introduction:
Panic: Reading the Signs’, in Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties, ed.
Robert Peckham, 1 22 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015);
D. K. Lahiri Choudhury, ‘Sinews of Panic and the Nerves of Empire: The Imagined
State’s Entanglement with Information Panic, India c. 1880 1912’, Modern Asian Studies
38, no. 4 (2004): 965 1002; C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering
and Social Communication in India, 1780 1870 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 165 79.
30
Adele Perry, ‘The State of Empire: Reproducing Colonialism in British Columbia,
1849 1871’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 2, no. 2 (2001): https://doi.org/10
.1353/cch.2001.0028.
Introduction 9
descent and heterosexual conjugality.31 The Hijra community appeared

to the British to be beyond the binary gender categories of male and
female, an unclassifiable in-between that challenged colonial attempts
to make the Indian population legible by means of classification.32
Moreover, in the eyes of the colonisers, Hijras’ feminine dress, ‘begging’,
songs and dances, joking, erotic language and ‘obscene’ actions under-
mined the order of public space, and even its ‘cleanliness’. The ‘eunuch
problem’ was spatial in another respect too: Hijras’ periodic travels for
alms-collection, though usually of short distance, undermined colonial
concepts of centralised political authority by destabilising political bor-
ders and were seen as evidence of Hijra criminality. This aspect of the
Hijra stereotype was related to long-standing associations between peri-
patetic peoples and criminality in colonial discourse and law.33 Mobile
Hijras were especially accused of kidnapping Indian boys in order to
forcibly castrate them. The British in India viewed ‘kidnapping’ as
a problem of illicit commerce, as well as ‘immoral’ sexuality. Colonial
officials further claimed that Hijras prostituted kidnapped boys to Indian
men, resulting in their sexual corruption and the further ‘spread’ of
‘sodomy’. In the context of the marginalisation of various kinds of dis-
cipleship lineage under colonial Indian law, Hijra discipleship practices
were characterised as coercive and criminal.
In sum, for the British in north India, Hijras were an ungovernable
people that needed to be regulated in order to produce an orderly and
knowable population. The colonial concern with Hijras thus illuminates
the ways that the British conceptualised a governable colonised populace.
Issues of sedentary social patterns, economic productivity, sexual rela-
tions, household arrangements, gendered behaviours and embodiment
were closely interlinked in colonial efforts to make Hijras controllable.
This reflected the broader colonial management of population. Michel
Foucault argued that between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in
Europe there was a gradual transition from ‘sovereign’ power – in which
‘the end of sovereignty is the exercise of sovereignty’, that is, the protec-
tion of the principality – to ‘governmental’ power. The aim of the latter is
the management of population, specifically, the ‘welfare of the
31
Indrani Chatterjee, ‘When “Sexuality” Floated Free of Histories in South Asia’,
The Journal of Asian Studies 71, no. 4 (2012): 945 62; Indrani Chatterjee, ‘Monastic
“Governmentality”: Revisiting “Community” and “Communalism” in South Asia’,
History Compass 13, no. 10 (2015): 497 511.
32
On ‘legibility’ see James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the
Human Condition have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
33
Radhakrishna, Dishonoured by History; Nitin Sinha, ‘Mobility, Control and Criminality in
Early Colonial India, 1760s 1850s’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 45, no. 1
(2008): 1 33.
10 Introduction
population, the improvement of its condition, the increase of its wealth,

longevity [and] health’. This concern with population meant that issues of
reproduction, household formation and conjugality were central to
governmentality.34 As Kathleen Wilson has recently highlighted, from
the early eighteenth century, questions of population, family and sexual
relations were a significant aspect of the ‘arts of governance’ in East India
Company outposts, particularly in relation to European populations, but
increasingly in respect to non-Europeans.35 Orderly colonial subjects
were sedentary people who were engaged in economic activities that
were defined as productive, lived in households based on conjugal and
reproductive sexualities and behaved in ways that were conducive to
‘public morals’. In this context, the British viewed Hijras as a manifold
source of disorder, as ungovernable in multifarious, interlocking ways.
A number of wider colonial preoccupations intersected in the Hijra
panic, ranging from ‘immoral’ sexuality to the porousness of political
borders, from the order of public space to the kidnapping of children.
The figure of the Hijra was a sort of channel for several anxieties that
engrossed the British at mid-century. Some of these issues resonated with
wider discussions about criminality, gender and sexuality in the British
Empire. For instance, a colonial pathology of the cross-dressing, effemi-
nate ‘sodomite’ emerged in India at roughly the same time that male
effeminacy was increasingly associated with sexual deviance in Britain,
demonstrating the interconnections between colonial and metropolitan
contexts. At the same time, the Hijra panic in north India was shaped by
regional discussions and projects, such as the anxiety about the ‘criminal
tribes’, which was largely confined to the north Indian provinces of the
NWP and Punjab in this period. This mix of regional and wider imperial
factors highlights that existing explanations of the anti-Hijra campaign, as
well as the policing of ‘unnatural sex’ under section 377, oversimplify the
historical processes at play. Legal and queer studies scholars have sug-
gested that the British brought with them to India a legal culture and
a code of sexual morality that stigmatised ‘deviant’ sex.36 Historians Ruth
Vanita and Saleem Kidwai also suggest that the colonial period saw the
importation of colonial ‘homophobia’ into Indian society.37 Yet this
oversimplifies the multidirectional interactions between the metropole
34
Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality,
with Two Lectures and an Interview by Michel Foucault, eds. Graham Burchell,
Colin Gordon and Peter Miller, 91 102 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
35
Wilson, ‘Rethinking the Colonial State’, 1296, 1300.
36
E.g., Bhaskaran, ‘The Politics of Penetration’, 16 20.
37
Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, Same Sex Love in India: A Literary History (New Delhi:
Penguin Books, 2008), 221 30.
Introduction 11
and its colonies.38 Moreover, the anti-Hijra campaign was shaped by

a highly contingent set of issues that concerned colonial officials in late
nineteenth-century north India, as well as wider imperial preoccupations.
Part II of the CTA was not a simple product of imported metropolitan
sexual morality.
The colonial Hijra stereotype also resonated with Indian depictions of
the Hijra community in the 1860s and 1870s and, more broadly, with the
gender politics of the Indian ‘middle class’, which was increasingly
socially dominant. Chapter 3 shows that educated Indian men
denounced Hijras as the kidnappers, slavers and castrators of Indian
boys, as well as obscene and immoral performers. To be sure, such
accounts reflected the imbibing of colonial morality, but middle-class
Indian moral outrage was also a product of shifting class dynamics in
north Indian society. The Hijra issue did not dominate middle-class
Indian discussions of gender and sexual morality. Yet north Indian men
who did write and speak about Hijras supported severe restrictions on the
community and wide-reaching interventions like the banishment or iso-
lation of all Hijras. No Indian commentator suggested that Hijras should
be made into ‘respectable’ members of Indian society.
Nor did the NWP government contemplate any project of ‘reform’ or
assimilation into the colonial vision of Indian society. During this period,
British colonial officials often saw ‘industrious’ labour as a means to
rehabilitate Indian ‘criminals’, such as communities classified as ‘criminal
tribes’ and convicts sent to overseas penal colonies.39 Chapter 4 shows
that the British understanding of Hijras’ gender, sexual and bodily char-
acteristics precluded any such project. Hijras were apparently effeminate
and unable to perform strenuous labour, while such ‘eunuchs’ were
assumed to be incapable of moral improvement due to the physical
changes castration produced. Indeed, the British often suggested that
colonised peoples were incapable of reform and self-discipline. Several
historians of India have argued that colonial understandings of race
produced a particular form of ‘governmentality’ which, unlike that in
Europe, rarely worked through ‘disposing things’ so that people would
become self-disciplined in conformity with social, political and economic
norms. Colonial constructions of racial difference suggested to the
38
Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eighteenth
Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose
(eds.), At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
39
For a broad overview: Clare Anderson, ‘Sepoys, Servants and Settlers: Convict
Transportation in the Indian Ocean, 1787 1945’, in Cultures of Confinement: A History
of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America, eds. Frank Dikötter and Ian Brown,
185 220 (London: Hurst & Company, 2007).
12 Introduction
colonisers that racialised Indians were incapable of disciplining them-

selves, producing different techniques of governance in colonial than in
metropolitan contexts.40 However, in the case of the Hijra community, it
was not race so much as colonial understandings of gender, sexuality and
the body that ruled out the production of self-disciplining Hijras.
Instead of assimilating Hijras into ‘respectable’ Indian society – or
adopting a spatial technique of quarantine or banishment, as Indian
commentators generally suggested – the NWP administration resolved
to bring about the gradual ‘extinction’ of the ‘eunuch’ population.
The registration of ‘eunuchs’ would allow the police to identify and
prevent new cases of castration, gradually leading to ‘eunuchs’ dying
out. The removal of children from Hijra households would prevent their
initiation and castration. Interference in Hijra succession and inheritance
practices would limit new initiations. The policing of Hijras’ perfor-
mances and feminine dress would make the social and cultural category
of the Hijra invisible in public space. Hence, this scheme involved several
overlapping strategies of physical and cultural elimination. From 1865
until the early twentieth century, the NWP annually tracked its progress
in causing ‘eunuchs’ to ‘die out’. NWP officials were convinced that
colonial law and policing could cause a community with a long history
to entirely disappear.
British administrators adapted and reinterpreted common colonial
tropes of ‘dying races’ and ‘doomed races’ that circulated throughout
the British Empire in order to describe the anticipated extinction of the
Hijra community. Yet the ‘extirpation’ of the Hijra was an unusual project
in the context of British colonialism in India. Numerous historians have
demonstrated the ‘logics of elimination’ that underlay settler colonialism,
which was premised on the dispossession of indigenous peoples from their
lands.41 Yet tactics of elimination were less common in non-settler
40
Gyan Prakash, ‘The Colonial Genealogy of Society: Community and Political Modernity
in India’, in The Social in Question: New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences, ed.
Patrick Joyce, 88 (London: Routledge, 2002); Deana Heath, Purifying Empire: Obscenity
and the Politics of Moral Regulation in Britain, India and Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 17; Stephen Legg, Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban
Governmentalities (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 21 4.
41
E.g., Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of
Genocide Research, 8, no. 4 (2006): 387 409. See also A. Dirk Moses, ‘Empire, Colony,
Genocide: Keywords and the Philosophy of History’, in Empire, Colony, Genocide:
Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses,
3 54 (Berghahn Books, 2008); Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Colonialism and Genocides: Notes
for the Analysis of a Settler Archive’, in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation,
and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses, 158 71 (Berghahn Books,
2008); Raymond Evans and Bill Thorpe, ‘Indigenocide and the Massacre of Aboriginal
History’, Overland 163 (2001): 21 39.
Introduction 13
colonies such as British India, where the colonisers aimed to appropriate

and tax the produce of indigenous labour. Chapter 4 considers how we
should understand the scheme to eliminate Hijras in the wider context of
various techniques of colonial rule in different types of colonies. Though
the anti-Hijra campaign resonated with broader colonial concepts of
political authority and the wider colonial management of population –
both of which were underpinned by gender and sexuality – this project
would take a form that was rather peculiar in the context of British India:
physical and cultural elimination.
Multiple Narratives of Hijra-hood

Extirpating Hijras depended, in the eyes of colonial administrators, on
systematic and accurate information about the Hijra community.
The official Hijra archive was supposed to facilitate the ‘extinction’ of
the population it documented. Moreover, like colonial archives in gen-
eral, the corpus of state records about Hijras was shaped by, and in turn
mobilised, particular relations of power. Practices of archiving and clas-
sification also constructed certain narratives about sexuality. Thus, this
book pays attention to the process of archiving, to the ‘form’ of the archive
and not just its ‘content’.42 In Chapter 5, we see that an analysis of
archival practices reveals multiple and contested forms of knowledge
about Hijras. Many colonial officials in India represented Hijras as ‘habi-
tual sodomites’, obscene performers, kidnappers and castrators. However,
official correspondence was a forum of debate between bureaucrats, pro-
ducing contested information. Colonial knowledge emerged out of inter-
actions with various north Indians who were considered knowledgeable
about Hijras – including Hijras themselves – giving colonial records
a ‘multivocal’ character.43 Meanwhile, the NWP government’s standard
of evidence for assessing the truthfulness of local information was often
unclear to district administrators. Consequently, accounts that exceeded,
questioned or nuanced the dominant colonial narrative circulated in NWP
official circles. Even the most criminalising reports contained fragments of
other understandings of Hijra-hood. In light of the plurality of narratives
about Hijras in colonial archives, this book takes a two-pronged approach
of analysing the politics of knowledge production that underlay colonial
42
Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance’, Archival Science 2
(2002): 87, 103.
43
Ricardo Roque and Kim A. Wagner, ‘Introduction: Engaging Colonial Knowledge’, in
Engaging Colonial Knowledge: Reading European Archives in World History, eds.
Ricardo Roque and Kim A. Wagner, 1 32 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
14 Introduction
archival practices, while also examining ‘cracks’ in the dominant colonial

narrative that suggest varied understandings of Hijra-hood.
The police registers that were so central to the project of causing
Hijras to die out, in fact included brief biographical details about indivi-
dual Hijras which challenged authoritative colonial and middle-class
Indian narratives. In Chapter 6, I examine these biographical fragments
in order to construct a more textured history of Hijra lives than is evident
in most nineteenth-century accounts. This ‘life history’ approach coun-
ters the collectivising tendency of colonial archives, revealing plural
accounts of Hijra-hood.44 Like other forms of ‘microhistory’, life histories
can also highlight new aspects of broader structures and historical
patterns.45 For example, British officials claimed that aside from prosti-
tution, Hijras’ main occupations were performing and collecting badhai.
Indeed, anthropologists suggest that performance and badhai are the
most culturally significant forms of Hijra work today.46 However, the
biographical fragments on police registers evidence that many nineteenth
century Hijras carried out multiple types of labour, in addition to alms-
collection and performance. In particular, Hijras were engaged in agri-
cultural work, a fact that did not chime with the colonial representation of
Hijras as unproductive ‘beggars’. Hijra life histories portray a more
nuanced picture of the nineteenth century Hijra community, as well as
a more complex history of colonial archives.
This book builds upon the interrogation of colonial archival practices in
the work of Ann Laura Stoler and other historians.47 In particular, my
analysis has been shaped by Anjali Arondekar’s important book on colo-
nial archives and sexuality, For the Record. Arondekar critiques the histor-
ian’s practice of combing colonial archives for evidence of diverse
sexualities in the past, arguing that historians of sexuality should eschew
44
Anderson makes a similar argument. Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of
Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790 1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012), 1, 53. See also Judith M. Brown, ‘“Life Histories” and the History of
Modern South Asia’, American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (2009): 587 8;
Richard M. Eaton, A Social History of the Deccan, 1300 1761: Eight Indian Lives
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); David Arnold and Stuart
H. Blackburn (eds.), Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).
45
Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistory,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed.
Peter Burke, 101 (Cambridge: Polity, 2001).
46
Some Hijras also engage in sex work, though they claim they did not do so traditionally.
Reddy, With Respect to Sex, 54 7, 79 84.
47
Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Epistemic Politics:
Ontologies of Colonial Common Sense’, The Philosophical Forum 39, no. 3 (2008): 357;
Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives’. See also Roque and Wagner, ‘Introduction’.
Introduction 15
‘fact-finding’ for ‘fact-reading’.48 While I endeavor to heed this warning,

I take a different approach than Arondekar in several respects, as
Chapter 5 explains in more detail. Arondekar’s method of eschewing
a ‘recovery’ mode of historical research inevitably returns to questions
of historical methodology. This provides a fine-grained reading of colo-
nial archives but makes it difficult to examine the effects of archival and
classification practices on Hijras and other colonised peoples who were
labelled ‘immoral’. Moreover, a close analysis of archival practices high-
lights the fractured and contested nature of the colonial knowledge of
sexuality and reveals multiple narratives of Hijra-hood.
Surviving Criminalisation and Elimination

The question of how Hijras and other people classified as ‘eunuchs’
experienced the state through routine interactions with local officials
and ‘through practices of everyday life’ is the focus of Chapters 7–9.49
Drawing on anthropological approaches to the state, I conceptualise the
colonial state as a contextual ‘assemblage’ of practices and discourses.50
States are not unified, monolithic institutions or ‘discrete, unitary
“actor[s]”’.51 Rather, ‘the state’ is a ‘disaggregated and multilayered
institution’.52 States are experienced in interpersonal encounters with
state agents and everyday interactions with institutions, bureaucratic
practices and official spaces.53 Since the state is embedded in society,
state-society boundaries are ‘fluid and negotiable’, but as Fuller and
Harriss point out, they ‘are nonetheless perceived as boundaries’.54
The colonial state was thus at once a highly disaggregated institution,
a contingent set of practices and a powerful idea.55 By foregrounding local
contexts of colonial governance, this book dovetails with the work of
a number of historians who have demonstrated that colonial states were
‘neither monolithic nor omnipotent’.56 Although a strand of scholarship
48
Arondekar, For the Record, 1 4, 7, 10 14, 179.
49
Begona Aretxaga, ‘Maddening States’, Annual Review of Anthropology 32 (2003): 396.
50
John L. Comaroff, ‘Colonialism, Culture, and the Law: A Foreword’, Law and Social
Inquiry 26, no. 2 (2001): 305 14.
51
C. J. Fuller and John Harriss, ‘For an Anthropology of the Modern Indian State’, in
The Everyday State and Society in Modern India, eds. C. J. Fuller and Véronique Bénéï, 22
(London: Hurst & Company, 2001).
52
Akhil Gupta, ‘Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics,
and the Imagined State’, American Ethnologist 22, no. 2 (May 1995): 391.
53
Aretxaga, ‘Maddening States’, 396.
54
Fuller and Harriss, ‘For an Anthropology’, 15, 24.
55
On the ‘state effect’: Mitchell, ‘State Effect’.
56
Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony:
Rethinking a Research Agenda’, in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in
16 Introduction
has made this point since the late 1990s, many historians of colonialism
still assume that the colonial state was a relatively unified and discrete
institution, or talk of ‘the colonial project’ as if there was a singular project
at stake.57 Like John Comaroff, Jonathan Saha and Elizabeth Kolsky,
I analyse colonial governance and law through attention to everyday,
contingent practices.58
As soon as the NWP government began to implement Part II of the
CTA in the early 1870s, it was faced with the question of which people
were the ‘suspect eunuchs’ – who were ‘reasonably suspected’ of sodomy,
kidnapping and castration – at whom the 1871 law was aimed. This
depended not only on figuring out which ‘eunuchs’ were ostensibly
criminal and deviant, but also determining which individuals were
‘eunuchs’. Government policy tended to equate the term ‘eunuch’ with
the Hijra community. But colonial officials had ‘discovered’ a broad range
of people who did not fit their binary understanding of gender, in which
two distinct genders were mapped onto, and considered equivalent to,
two incommensurable, biologically constituted sexes.59 This raised the
question of the relationship between the Hijra community and other
groups with non-binary gender expression in north Indian society.
So that non-castrated male cross-dressers could be policed in addition
to ‘eunuchs’, the 1871 law defined a ‘eunuch’ as an ‘impotent man’ rather
than a castrate.60 But as Chapter 7 shows, this did not resolve confusion
over who could be defined as a eunuch/impotent man. Though colonial
categories like ‘eunuch’ had considerable power and long-lasting impacts,
such classifications often had unanticipated effects or were troubled by
local social conditions, resulting in a continual process of debate, redefi-
nition and reiteration.61
To deal with these classificatory confusions, the NWP government
sought to make the body ‘legible’, to read criminality, sexual behaviour
and sexual function from the visible appearance of the body.62 The NWP
government ruled that feminine dress (gender embodiment) and the
occupation of performance (bodily labour) indicated that a person was
a Bourgeois World, eds. Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, 6 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997).
57
Jonathan Saha, Law, Disorder and the Colonial State: Corruption in Burma c.1900
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 7.
58
Comaroff, ‘Colonialism’; Elizabeth Kolsky, Colonial Justice in British India: White Violence
and the Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 29; Saha, Law,
Disorder.
59
Thomas Walter Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 6, 21, 154.
60
61
Stoler and Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony’, 8.
62
My analysis of bodily legibility has been shaped by Anderson, Legible Bodies.
Introduction 17
a ‘suspect eunuch’, while feminine gender presentation also signalled

a person’s impotence. However, the Hijra/eunuch body was frequently
illegible to colonial officials who found that they could not determine
criminality and sexuality from bodily appearance. At first, the NWP
government was highly sceptical about the usefulness of medical knowl-
edge and excluded doctors from determining individuals’ past sexual
behaviour and impotence. Eventually, at the end of the 1870s, colonial
physicians were partially incorporated into the anti-Hijra campaign when
they were called upon to diagnose impotence. But doctors played a much
more limited role in Part II of the CTA than in the contemporaneous
regulation of venereal disease under the CDAs, which were ‘encoded with
a new and increasingly technical vocabulary of medical expertise’.63 This
differing relationship between medical and legal regulation under the
CTA and the CDAs is just one example of why provincial colonial
projects targeting sexuality deserve attention. Moreover, the contesta-
tions over medical knowledge and the shifting quality of colonial cate-
gories had significant impacts upon people labelled ‘eunuchs’. Hijras and
other north Indians who troubled binary gender categories drifted in and
out of the ‘registered eunuch’ population as local and provincial policies
changed. Registered people attempted to challenge colonial categories
through petitions and appeals to officials, but they usually found it
impossible to prove their ‘respectability’.
The fractures and tensions of local colonial governance were particu-
larly apparent in the policing of ‘eunuchs’ following their registration, as
Chapter 8 highlights. Registered peoples’ routine interactions with colo-
nial agents reveal the complexities of the ‘everyday colonial state’.64 For
Hijras, the power of the colonial state was primarily embodied in the
figure of the Indian policeman. Colonial archives obscure these everyday
interactions with the police, but the records include glimpses of the
potentially violent and intimidating nature of these encounters. In many
districts of the NWP, the anti-Hijra campaign had wide-reaching impacts
on registered peoples’ lives. Many Hijras were prohibited from partaking
in their main form of livelihood (performance); could not express their
gender identity in public space due to the prohibition of female dress; and
found their domestic arrangements regulated through surveillance and
the removal of children. Yet the pattern of local law enforcement was
uneven and variegated, differing from district to district. The provincial
government repeatedly complained that in some districts, surveillance
63
Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics, 37.
64
Saha, Law, Disorder. See also William Gould, ‘The Dual State: The Unruly
“Subordinate”, Caste, Community and Civil Service Recruitment in North India,
1930 1955’, Journal of Historical Sociology 20, no. 1 (2007): 13 43.
18 Introduction
and policing were inadequate. Although the NWP thought that law
enforcement had improved in the 1880s, some local variations in policing
practices – and thus disparities in the experiences of registered people –
persisted across the province. While there was considerable moral trepi-
dation about Hijras among British officials in the NWP, out in the
districts, there were more varied opinions on, and policies towards,
Hijras than in the upper echelons of the administration.65 The uneven
regulation of ‘eunuchs’ was also a reflection of the highly disaggregated
nature of the colonial police, despite attempts to reform the force in the
1860s. The history of the regulation of the Hijra community thus sheds
light on broader patterns of local colonial administration and policing.
The persistence of Hijras and other so-called ‘eunuchs’ in breaking the
law and carving out spaces where they could continue prohibited cultural
forms was also a major factor that produced fissures in colonial govern-
ance. Mobility was the most important strategy registered people used to
evade police. Their movements ranged from permanent migration out-
side the NWP to the regular but temporary crossing of political bound-
aries with other British provinces and princely territories. ‘Cracks’ in the
edifice of colonial power provided slim possibilities for resistance, which
Hijras exploited and widened.66 Hijras also frustrated colonial agendas in
less dramatic ways through various acts of ‘everyday resistance’, which
challenged colonial power in ‘small’ and indirect ways.67 Although Hijras’
collection of alms was legal under the CTA, the bawdy speech and actions
of ‘begging’ Hijras undermined colonial efforts to erase Hijras’ ‘obscene’
public presence. Hijras also cooperated with dominant ideologies of
masculinity to their own ends, for instance, creatively mixing masculine
and feminine clothing to avoid arrest while expressing their gender iden-
tity. Registered peoples’ power tussles with local colonial agents shaped
the uneven contours of colonial policing and surveillance. While
Hijras were criminalised due to their ‘disorderliness’, under the CTA
their refusal to fit the colonial mould of an orderly colonised subject
65
For a similar argument on prostitution: Tambe, Codes of Misconduct, xiv.
66
On resistance: Anindita Ghosh, ‘Introduction’, in Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and
the Everyday in Colonial South Asia, ed. Anindita Ghosh, 14 6 (Ranikhet: Permanent
Black, 2007); Nita Verma Prasad, ‘The Litigious Widow: Inheritance Disputes in
Colonial North India, 1875 1911’, in Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the
Everyday in Colonial South Asia, ed. Anindita Ghosh, 190 (Ranikhet: Permanent Black,
2007); Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash, ‘Introduction: The Entanglement of Power
and Resistance’, in Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South
Asia, eds. Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash, 4, 13 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991).
67
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1990); James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of
Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
Introduction 19
allowed Hijras to undermine and survive the NWP’s scheme of

elimination.
The colonial authorities’ interactions with young people in the Hijra
community threw the project of Hijra extinction into sharp relief. Two
rationales underlined the removal of male children below the age of seven-
teen from registered people’s households: first, ‘saving’ children from a ‘life
of infamy’ through their removal and ‘reform’; and second, preventing
children’s initiation and castration, which would cause Hijras to die out.
Chapter 9 shows that as the NWP administration implemented the CTA
from 1871, the project of reform was deprioritised in favour of the extirpa-
tion of Hijras. Partly, this was due to a tension in colonial accounts between
the idea that children in the Hijra community were ‘innocent’ victims and
the idea that they were agents of moral and sexual contamination and thus
incapable of transformation. Above all, the limits of the reform project
reflected the centrality of strategies of elimination to the policing of
Hijras under the CTA. The major consideration of colonial officials was
the prevention of all contact between Hijras and children, rather than the
children’s education or reform. The archived stories of removed children
rarely mentioned anything about their lives following their removal.
The NWP administration was increasingly confident that child separation –
along with the policing of adult, registered Hijras – would soon render the
Hijra population altogether extinct. Yet this colonial hope ignored the
tensions and fractures of colonial governance and Hijras’ persistent efforts
to evade, resist and survive.
Hijra/‘Eunuch’
One of the challenges of writing about the lives of nineteenth-century
Hijras is understanding how the term ‘Hijra’ was used in nineteenth-
century records authored by colonial and elite Indian commentators.
Hijra is an Urdu word derived from Persian, probably either from hiz,
the Persian root word meaning ‘effeminate’, or hich, a person who is
hichgah or nowhere.68 Hijra was the vernacular term which elite Indians
and colonial officials used most frequently in nineteenth-century north
India. However, nineteenth-century ethnologists listed a number of terms
as ‘synonyms’ for Hijra such as: ‘Fátadá’ and ‘Pavává’ in Gujarat;
‘khunsá, khojá, khusrá, [and] mukhannas’ in Punjab; and ‘mukhannas’ in
the NWP.69 Some of these terms were derogatory, notably, mukhannas,
68
Reddy, With Respect to Sex, 237.
69
Bhimbhai Kirparam, ‘Pavávás’, in Hindu Castes and Tribes of Gujarat, ed.
James Campbell, vol. 2, 506 (Haryana: Vintage Books, 1988); H. A. Rose, A Glossary
of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North West Frontier Province (Lahore: The Civil
20 Introduction
roughly meaning a ‘passive sodomite’.70 Nonetheless, there were evi-

dently regional linguistic variations. ‘Hijra’ is today used across several
regions of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, in addition to a number of
linguistically specific terms (such as the Telugu Kojja).71 In the nine-
teenth century, Hijra would have been a more common word in Hindi/
Urdu-speaking regions like north India, though it may have been evident
elsewhere, in addition to more localised terms. However, the anti-Hijra
campaign in north India seems to have privileged ‘Hijra’ as a pan-Indian
term for femininely dressed ‘eunuchs’ in colonial accounts, as well as the
writings of middle-class Indians, thereby muddying regional differences
and creating a subcontinent-wide category for non-normative sexuality
and gender: the Hijra/eunuch.
Indeed, the word ‘eunuch’ appears more frequently than ‘Hijra’ in
official state records. I use the term Hijra when the sources specifically
suggest people who were embedded in Hijra discipleship lineages and
cultural practices. However, this identification of individuals as ‘Hijras’ is
speculative, since colonial classification often makes it impossible to
determine the self-identifications of peoples categorised as ‘eunuchs’.
In fact, the term ‘Hijra’, as it is used in official records, was itself
a colonial category. When colonial officials called a person a ‘Hijra’ they
meant a femininely-dressed ‘eunuch’ and when they called someone
a ‘eunuch’ they generally meant a ‘Hijra’.72 Thus, I refer to Hijra as
both a social role with local cultural meaning and as a colonial category –
an ambiguity that unfortunately, but necessarily, reflects the classificatory
practices of the colonial government. At the same time, I foreground the
categorical slippages between ‘Hijra’, ‘eunuch’ and other indigenous
groups that were caught up in the anti-Hijra campaign.
In order to understand the lives of nineteenth-century Hijras we need to
first understand the politics and processes of knowledge production –
hence, the reader will find an analysis of Hijra life histories in Chapter 6,
following an examination of stereotyping narratives and colonial archives.
However, a brief outline of the nineteenth-century Hijra community and
other groups classified as ‘eunuchs’ will be useful here.
and Military Gazette Press, 1911), 331; William Crooke, The Tribes and Castes of the
North Western Provinces and Oudh, vol. 1 (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of
Government Printing, India, 1896), 495.
70
Nilanjan Sarkar, ‘Forbidden Privileges and History Writing in Medieval India’,
The Medieval History Journal 16, 1 (2013): 24.
71
Reddy, With Respect to Sex, 243. In Pakistan, Kunsa (Arabic derived), Khusra (Punjabi)
and Khwajasara (Urdu) are used in addition to Hijra, though Khwajasara is preferred.
Claire Pamment, personal email communication, 26 April 2015.
72
In colonial records on Indian ruled states, ‘eunuch’ primarily referred to
Khwajasarais (see below).
Introduction 21
Hijras’ feminine gender embodiment was expressed through women’s

clothing and jewellery, grooming practices (such as the shaving or pluck-
ing of facial hair) and physical gestures.73 Nineteenth-century ethnolo-
gists also reported that Hijras adopted feminine names upon initiation.74
Yet the police registers compiled in the NWP list many male names,
probably because the police demanded that Hijras use masculine
names, or perhaps due to contextual naming practices.75 In north India
today, Hijras adopt a female name and predominantly use feminine verb,
adjective and postposition forms when speaking of themselves and other
Hijras. However, Hall and O’Donovan note that Hijras ‘make greater use
of the masculine’ to refer to other Hijras ‘when signalling social distance
from the referent, whether it be respect for a superior or contempt for an
inferior’.76 While noting the ‘context-specific and fluid nature of Hijra
gender performativity’, I use female pronouns for nineteenth-century
Hijras, mirroring contemporary Hijras’ use of primarily feminine
language.77
As infertile people, Hijras were thought to have the power to bless or
curse fertility and they would thus visit households at the time of births
and weddings to sing, dance and demand badhai. They also performed
and collected badhai in public spaces like markets and religious fairs.
Hijras used several methods to persuade ungenerous potential donors,
including jokes, insults, curses and lifting their clothing to expose their
castrated body. Hijras were also cultivators, agricultural labourers, shop-
keepers, itinerant traders and weavers, among other occupations.
The Hijra community was organised into several discipleship lineages,
and in a town or region each linage had defined territories in which they
could collect alms and perform. Knowledge of Hijra performance,
mythology and gendered behaviours was passed down between Hijra
teachers and disciples. In nineteenth-century sources, the primary
terms for these relationships were the masculine words guru and chela
(disciple). Like their contemporary counterparts, nineteenth-century
Hijras probably conceptualised discipleship as a father-son relationship
to emphasise the senior Hijras’ power and thus used guru and chela, rather
73
Hardyal Singh, Report on the Census of 1891, Volume II: The Castes of Marwar Illustrated
(Jodhpur: Marwar Darbar, 1894), 122.
74
Crooke, Tribes and Castes, 495; R. E. Enthoven, The Tribes and Castes of Bombay, vol. 3
(New Delhi: D. K. Publishers Distributors, 1997 [1922]), 227.
75
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short, ‘List’, Muzaffarnagar, circa January 1873; UPSA/A/COV/
119/12: Waddington, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Basti, circa 1872.
76
Hall and O’Donovan, ‘Shifting Gender Positions’, 259.
77
Hossain, ‘Beyond Emasculation’, 511. While Hossain uses ‘s/he’ and ‘her/im’, Reddy
and Nanda use the female English language pronoun to describe Hijras. Reddy, With
Respect to Sex, 32; Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman.
22 Introduction
than the feminine guruani and cheli.78 In the 1800s, many Hijras lived in
lineage-based households, though some lived alone or with non-Hijras,
such as adopted children and male partners.79
Initiation into the Hijra community was frequently misrepresented in
colonial and elite Indian accounts since initiation was equated with
castration; yet castration was not necessary for initiation. Many
Hijras reportedly described themselves as ‘born eunuchs’ or ‘impotent’
from birth. Some who represented themselves as such may have been
castrated, but being born a Hijra was evidently a valued subjectivity and it
is clear that some Hijras were not castrated. Colonial and elite Indian
accounts also claimed that Hijra initiates were victims of kidnapping.
Some nineteenth-century Hijras were indeed of slave origins, although
in north India slavery was not an unchanging status, but was rather a form
of dependence, the power dynamics of which could change over the
slave’s life.80 Moreover, not all young people in the Hijra community
had been enslaved, while adults were also initiated as Hijras. There were
thus multiple pathways into the Hijra community.
Another group that were classified as ‘eunuchs’ under the CTA were
the Zananas (literally ‘effeminate men’), who were sometimes also called
Zankhas or Jankhas (meaning ‘effeminate’, ‘impotent’ or a dancing
boy).81 Unlike Hijras, Zananas were not organised into households struc-
tured by discipleship; they seem to have lived as male householders, with
natal relatives, wives and/or offspring. Zananas were not emasculated,
and colonial records stated that they often described themselves as ‘impo-
tent’. However, Zananas who had offspring appeared to the British to be
‘non-impotent’ because they were capable of procreative sex.82
Zananas reportedly presented themselves as feminine in behaviour, bod-
ily movements and/or dress in certain contexts – particularly when asso-
ciating with other Zananas or the male lovers they termed their
‘husbands’ – and as masculine in other contexts.83 Zananas were perfor-
mers and were often invited to sing, dance and ‘act as buffoons’ at
wedding parties. They had an ambiguous relationship to the Hijra com-
munity: while some former Zananas were apparently initiated into Hijra
78
Hall and O’Donovan, ‘Shifting Gender Positions’, 247 51.
79
This outline is based on Chapter 6.
80
Richard M. Eaton, ‘Introduction’, in Slavery and South Asian History, eds.
Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton, 4 9 (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2006).
81
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866. In north India today, Zanana and
Jankha are used interchangeably. Cohen, ‘The Pleasures of Castration’.
82
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Hobart to NWP IGP, 21 June 1876.
83
Rose, Glossary, 332; Forbes quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’,
20 April 1866.
Introduction 23
lineages, Hijras sometimes disparaged Zananas as ‘prostitutes’ in their

encounters with nineteenth-century ethnologists.84 Anthropologists note
that contemporary Zananas or Zankhas often perform Hijra-ness, which
Hijras and others describe as mere posing as Hijras.85
Beyond Zananas, other people who troubled a binary understanding of
gender were also occasionally registered as ‘eunuchs’ under the CTA.
There were rich traditions in north India in which people and deities
crossed between gender categories, particularly in ritual and perfor-
mance. Colonial officials sometimes registered men who cross-dressed
in ritual contexts, such as the Sakhis of the Ramanandi monastic order, as
‘eunuchs’. Sakhis performed feminine behaviours and dressed as women
in the course of their devotion to Sita and Ram, assuming the position of
Sita’s sakhis (female companions), a ritual practice known as sakhi-bhav.
They also observed the taboos of the menstruation period and often
entered into a parakiya or unmarried sexual relationship with Ram.86
On occasion, police also registered male actors who played female roles.
In the nineteenth century, there were diverse forms of female impersona-
tion in theatre, from performances of Hindu legends to urban, middle-
class theatre. Middle-class Indians viewed theatrical transvestism as
a moral alternative to the employment of female actors, though ‘trans-
gender masquerades . . . introduced . . . possibilities for homoerotic plea-
sure and expression’ for male audiences.87 However, female
impersonators who performed for more humble audiences were more
likely to be classified as ‘eunuchs’.
The Khwajasarais (literally, lord-superintendents of the house) –
eunuch slave-nobles who were employed in elite households and Indian-
ruled states – were also sometimes registered under the CTA.
Khwajasarais served as the guards of the female quarters, as well as
administrators, military commanders, envoys, intelligencers, collectors
of land revenue and managers of business ventures (see Figure 5). They
presented themselves as masculine, and in the case of elite Khwajasarais,
in the norms of noble masculinity, in contrast to femininely dressed
84
Rose, Glossary, 332. See also BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot to GI Secretary, 21 April 1871; UPSA/
A/COV/119/12: Hobart to NWP IGP, 21 June 1876.
85
Cohen, ‘The Pleasures of Castration’.
86
Sakhis are also known as Rasiks, ‘one who savours ras’ (juice/essence). Peter van der
Veer, Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experience and Identity in a North Indian
Pilgrimage Centre (London: Athlone Press, 1988); BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith to PA of
NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881; BL/IOR/P/2002: Low, ‘Eunuchs’, 14 September 1882.
87
Kathryn Hansen, ‘Theatrical Transvestism in the Parsi, Gujarati and Marathi Theatres
(1850 1940)’, in Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in
South Asia, ed. Sanjay Srivastava, 111 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004);
Kathryn Hansen, ‘Stri Bhumika: Female Impersonators and Actresses on the Parsi
Stage’, Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 35 (1998): 2291 300.
24 Introduction
Hijras. The Khwajasarai contingents of rulers and nobles were structured

by discipleship-like relationships, in which senior Khwajasarais were the
educators, supervisors and patrons of younger Khwajasarais. Although
they could not reproduce biological offspring, Khwajasarais formed
families of adopted kin. Some Khwajasarais were politically important
figures, yet most remained socially vulnerable due to their slave status.88
By mid-century, the power of the Khwajasarais in north India was in
decline. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, the East India Company had
sought (largely unsuccessfully) to limit the power of Khwajasarais in the
Mughal successor state of Awadh, which neighboured the NWP.89
However, the Company’s annexation of Awadh in 1856 and of Delhi in
1857 cut off many Khwajasarais’ sources of livelihood and political
patronage. This was the beginning of a gradual decline in Khwajasarais’
status, which would be compounded by changing models of elite Indian
domesticity and attitudes towards slavery.90 By the 1870s,
Khwajasarais were politically insignificant enough to be explicitly
excluded from the policing of ‘eunuchs’ under the CTA.91
Nevertheless, the NWP archives suggest that a few Khwajasarais were
registered as ‘eunuchs’ from 1871. The boundaries of the colonial Hijra/
eunuch category were often confused and porous, even as
Hijras epitomised the criminal ‘eunuch’ in colonial administrators’ eyes
and dominated the registered population. Although non-Hijras such as
Zananas periodically provoked official concern, it was the Hijra commu-
nity that was the subject of heightened colonial panic and which, in the
eyes of the British, needed to die out.
88
Indrani Chatterjee, Gender, Slavery and Law in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 45 57; Jessica Hinchy, ‘The Sexual Politics of Imperial
Expansion: Eunuchs and Indirect Colonial Rule in Mid Nineteenth Century North
India’, Gender and History 26, no. 3 (2014): 414 37; Jessica Hinchy, ‘Enslaved
Childhoods in Eighteenth Century Awadh’, South Asian History and Culture 6, no. 3
(2015): 380 400.
89
Hinchy, ‘Sexual Politics’, 414. 90 Hinchy, ‘Sexual Politics’.
91
BL/IOR/V/9/11: Stokes, CCGI Proceedings, 3 October 1870; NAI/HD/JB 30/07/1870
53 4: Khan to Strachey, 14 April 1870.
Part 1

1 The Hijra Panic
While Europeans in India had represented Hijras as an immoral people

from the late eighteenth century, it was not until the 1850s that
Hijras became the subject of a panic among India’s British colonisers.
This panic was prompted by several criminal cases which came before the
courts of the North-Western Provinces (NWP) in the 1850s and 1860s,
including the murder of a Hijra named Bhoorah and a handful of cases in
which Hijras were accused of kidnapping, enslaving and castrating chil-
dren. Like other ‘moral panics’, the colonial concern with Hijras involved
a preoccupation with, and exaggeration of, the threat that ‘deviant’ beha-
viours and people were thought to pose to the social and political order.1
While moral panics have been noted in diverse historical contexts, panic
was at the centre of how European colonial regimes operated. Despite the
often bombastic rhetoric surrounding colonial rule, the European gov-
erning elites experienced a pervasive sense of vulnerability about the
fragility of colonial power. Consequently, colonial administrators were
especially susceptible to panics about aspects of indigenous society that
were construed as a threat to colonial authority.2 It is thus useful to
distinguish between episodes of panic and structural anxiety.3 Panics were
temporally confined, reoccurring and cumulative: they were periods of
heightened anxiety that eventually subsided, often to re-emerge in a new
form at another time or place. The Hijra panic, for instance, was most
intense in north India in 1852–3, 1860–1, 1864–6 and 1870–1. Such
episodic panics arose out of the broader structures of colonial knowledge
which were marked by an enduring anxiety about inadequate intelligence
and incomplete archived knowledge. The series of court cases involving
1
In 1972, Stanley Cohen coined the term ‘moral panic’. Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and
Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and the Rockers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
2
Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”’, 159 97; Fischer Tiné and Whyte, ‘Introduction’,
1 24; Norman Etherington, ‘Colonial Panics Big and Small in the British Empire
(1865 1907)’, in Anxieties, Fear and Panic in Colonial Settings: Empires on the Verge of
a Nervous Breakdown, ed. Harald Fischer Tiné, 201 24 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016); Peckham, ‘Introduction’.
3
Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”’, 161.
27
28 Solving the ‘Eunuch Problem’
Hijras in the 1850s and 1860s sparked panic because they were single
instances which British officials struggled to fit into a broader pattern.
Colonial administrators amplified the social practices and relationships
represented in the criminal cases to draw generalised and stereotyping
conclusions about Hijra criminality.
Confident assertions of moral superiority thus existed alongside anxious
speculations in colonial accounts of Hijras. The repeated discovery and
denunciation of the Hijra community in the nineteenth century reiterated,
again and again, the idea of the colonial state as the defender of ‘public
morals’. The repetitiveness of the moral outcry highlights the performative
quality of colonial encounters with Hijras; and indeed, the performative
nature of colonial rule.4 But the repeated rediscovery of Hijras – that is, the
discovery that colonial rule had not yet ended this moral ‘problem’ –
prompted worries about the limits of colonial authority and knowledge.
Some scholars, for instance Alan Hunt, have criticised the concept of
‘moral panic’ on the basis that it implies an irrational project.5 However,
as Ann Laura Stoler has highlighted, colonial governments were ‘affective
states’ constituted by sentiments, ‘affective dispositions’ and emotions.6
In using the concept of ‘panic’, I intend to highlight the ways that episodes
of panic, as well as a continuing sense of anxiety, sparked official debates
and propelled colonial interventions. The colonial Hijra panic exagger-
ated and distorted actual social conditions – even the colonial archives
make this clear. But a certain logic did underlie the ‘panic’ and this logic is
revealing for our understanding of the gendered and sexual aspects of
colonialism, as well as the history of the Hijra community.
Early Encounters
The European travellers who wrote accounts of their journeys through
India from the sixteenth century rarely mentioned Hijras. In European
travel literature, most depictions of ‘eunuchs’ were of Khwajasarais,
masculine-embodied court officials and harem servants. Europeans por-
trayed Khwajasarais as cruel and violent to the women of the zanana
(female quarters) and in some, though not all accounts, as physically
effeminate.7 It was only following the East India Company’s assumption
4
On ‘performative’ colonial power: Wilson, ‘Rethinking the Colonial State’, 1295.
5
Alan Hunt, Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 18 20.
6
Stoler, ‘Affective States’, 4 20.
7
Hinchy, ‘Sexual Politics’, 426. Nineteenth century accounts of Khwajasarais include
Francis Rawdon Hastings, The Private Journal of the Marquess of Hastings . . ., vol. 1
(London: Saunders and Otley, 1858), 84 5; Victor Jacquemont, Letters from India;
Describing a Journey in the British Dominions of India, Tibet, Lahore, and Cashmere . . ., 2nd
The Hijra Panic 29
of the diwani (revenue raising rights) in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in

1765 – which formalised the Company’s longer transition from merchant
to polity – that European accounts of Hijras emerged. European repre-
sentations of Hijras from this period evidence an aesthetic revulsion to
Hijras’ bodies and physical appearance, as well as an assumption that
Hijras were immoral and obscene. Around 1780, a Bombay merchant
named James Forbes viewed ‘a considerable number of human beings
called hermaphrodites’ who wore ‘the habit of a female and the turban of
a man’ among the camp followers of Raghunathrav, a Company-backed
Maratha leader.8 Preston has suggested that these ‘hermaphrodites’ may
have been Hijras.9 Forbes was evidently confused and revolted by the so-
called hermaphrodites: he could not ‘solve [his] doubts and difficulties’ and
would not ‘enter into particulars’, since his ‘visit was short, and the objects
disgusting’.10 The Anglophone Flemish artist Balthazar Solvyns published
two illustrations of a ‘Hidgra, a Hermaphrodite’ dressed in female clothing,
in two volumes of etchings published in 1789 and 1808. Whereas the
earlier etchings were considered artistically ‘crude’, the ‘sumptuous’ 1808
illustrations conformed more closely to the popular picturesque style of the
time (see the 1808 Hijra etching in Figure 1).11 However, in the later
edition, Solvyns’ written account represented Hijras as obscene prostitutes,
beggars and cross-dressers – in sum, as an ‘outrage to morality’.12 It was as
if European revulsion towards Hijras could not be expressed in picturesque
visual conventions, only in written form.
In the early period of Company rule, some European physicians also
sought to understand Hijra embodiment. When Forbes encountered
femininely dressed ‘hermaphrodites’ in the 1780s, he was the guest of
a group of physicians who subjected the ‘hermaphrodites’ to a physical
examination, suggesting that from the late eighteenth century, European
edn, vol. 2 (London: Edward Churton, 1835), 92; Alexander Burnes, Travels into
Bokhara; Being the Account of a Journey From India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia . . ., vol.
1 (London: John Murray, 1834), 84; George Thomas Keppel, Personal Narrative of
a Journey from India to England, vol. 1 (London: R. Bentley, 1834), 4 5;
George Thomas Keppel, Personal Narrative of Travels in Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and
Synthia, in the Year 1824, vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn, 1827), 8.
8
James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs: A Narrative of Seventeen Years Residence in India, vol. 1
(London: Richard Bentley, 1834), 359.
9
Preston, ‘A Right to Exist’, 373; Gannon, ‘Translating the Hijra’, 128.
10
Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, vol. 1, 359.
11
Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., ‘The Solvyns Project’, www.laits.utexas.edu/solvyns project/
(accessed 27 June 2018).
12
Balthazar Solvyns, Les Hindoos, vol. 2 (Paris: Chez l’auteur; Chez H. Nicolle, 1808 12),
plate IV; Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., ‘François Balthazar Solvyns: The Etchings Online’,
www.laits.utexas.edu/solvyns project/solvynsonline/pages/Solvyns Etchings.htm
(accessed 3 May 2016).
physicians privately circulated opinions about Hijras and other people

with non-binary gender expression.13 Indeed, doctors had long been
pivotal to the construction of colonial knowledge, since they were rela-
tively conversant with Indian society and thus important information
gatherers.14 By the late eighteenth century, there was a close relationship
between European medicine and imperial power.15 The medical ‘gaze’
extended beyond the body itself to encompass culture, ‘custom’ and
religion. In the nineteenth century, colonial physicians were often ama-
teur ethnologists.16 Although doctors appear to have privately discussed
Hijras from an earlier period, it was not until the 1840s that British
physicians circulated information about Hijras in Indian and metropoli-
tan medical journals. In 1843 in the Lancet, there was a debate between
two physicians about the sexual classification of Hijras: were they her-
maphrodites, castrated men, or even ‘female eunuchs’?17 A decade later,
physicians were confident that Hijras were generally male-born castrates
or ‘eunuchs’. From the 1850s, Hijras became important to colonial
medical knowledge of Indian sexual practices, as doctors represented
Hijras as emblematic of Indian sexual ‘perversity’. Physicians claimed to
be knowledgeable about the emasculation procedure and the eunuch
body. In a fashion typical of colonial medical accounts, doctors also
included ethnographic information about the discipleship lineages, reli-
gious practices and ‘customs’ of Hijras in their publications.18 However,
there were only a handful of European accounts of Hijras published prior
to the mid-nineteenth century.
13
Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, vol. 1, 359. 14 Bayly, Empire and Information, 267.
15
Mark Harrison, ‘Medicine and Orientalism: Perspectives on Europe’s Encounter with
Indian Medical Systems’, in Health, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India,
eds. Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison, 40 2, 69, 76 (Hyderabad: Orient Longman,
2001); David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in
Nineteenth Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 43 50;
Bayly, Empire and Information, 53 4, 271 5.
16
Elizabeth Kolsky, ‘The Body Evidencing the Crime: Gender, Law and Medicine in
Colonial India’ (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2002), 320 33. See also
Mark Harrison, ‘Differences of Degree: Representations of India in British Medical
Topography, 1820 c.1870’, in Medical Geography in Historical Perspective, ed. Nicolaas
A. Rupke, 51 69 (London: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, 2000);
David Arnold, ‘Race, Place and Bodily Difference in Early Nineteenth Century India’,
Historical Research 77, no. 196 (2004): 254 73.
17
Anon., ‘Female Eunuchs in India’, Lancet 40, no. 1029 (1843): 262; A Bengal Surgeon,
‘Supposed Female Eunuchs’, Lancet 40, no. 1031 (1843): 343.
18
H. Ebden, ‘A Few Notes, with Reference to “the Eunuchs”, to be Found in the Large
Households of the State of Rajpootana’, Indian Annals of Medical Science 3, no. 6 (1856):
520 7.
The Hijra Panic 31
Hijras and the State in Western India

Meanwhile, between the 1830s and 1850s, Company officials first
became concerned with the existence of the Hijra community. Initially,
official discussions of Hijras were confined to Bombay Presidency in
western India. Bombay’s attention was drawn to the Hijra community
in 1836, when the Assistant Collector of Pune reported that there was ‘a
part of the city, where Eunuchs congregate, in such numbers as to have
obtained for it, the name of Hijera Peth [quarter], and where . . . the
practices of some of the younger members of the community are of
a nature too revolting to be mentioned’. The Assistant Collector was
especially determined to find out whether Hijras were prostitutes who
had sex with men and, to this end, he interviewed seven Hijras. Company
officials also condemned the practices through which ‘begging’
Hijras ‘extorted’ money, in particular Hijras’ exposure of their castrated
bodies. Although Hijra ‘begging’ could be prosecuted under existing
public nuisance laws, some Bombay officials argued that new legislation
would be required to prevent initiation into the Hijra community and
remove this ‘abominable practice’ from Indian society.19
This argument was typical of the language of enlightened liberal
reform that pervaded colonial discourse in India in the late 1820s and
1830s. In the early period of Company rule, between the 1760s and the
1780s, British officials had claimed to govern India through its own laws
and institutions, though legal and governing practices would undergo
significant transformation as the Company sought to reformulate ‘tradi-
tional’ symbols of authority in line with its conceptualisation of
sovereignty.20 By the 1820s, British administrators of both utilitarian
and evangelical persuasions argued that the Company should initiate
wider-reaching legal and social reforms. However, as Jon Wilson has
recently argued, the ostensible reform agenda of these years was an
attempt to centralise Company authority. Colonial rhetoric claimed
that with the final defeat of the Maratha confederacy in 1818, the
Company was the ‘paramount power’ on the subcontinent. Yet the
Company’s power was fragmented between multiple institutions, was
rendered fragile by localised conflicts and had been further destabilised
by an economic crisis in the mid 1820s, all of which lent weight to
authoritarian conceptions of Company rule. Officials represented the
centralisation of Company authority as a project of liberal reform, but
schemes of social engineering were rarely implemented and were only
19
Preston, ‘A Right to Exist’, 372, 376 9.
20
Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 2, 26 7, 34 5, 80 120.
attempted with elite Indian support.21 The 1829 prohibition of sati

(widow-burning) – which had become a colonial symbol of the oppression
of Indian women, even though it was not a widespread practice – was
emblematic of the so-called ‘Age of Reform’ in India. Yet the push to
outlaw sati had been spearheaded by elite Indian reformers like
Rammohun Roy and sati was only abolished once Company officials
were convinced that there was no ‘scriptural’ authority for the practice.22
In light of the limitations of the broader reform project, it is unsurprising
that Bombay officials wrote about Hijras in the language of enlightened
reform – and explicitly compared Hijras to sati – but did not implement any
new legislation to suppress the community. In the late 1830s, Bombay
placed its hopes in the transformative power of education to gradually end
the ‘evil’ of the Hijra community.23
A more pressing problem for the Bombay government than moral
reform was the issue of the ‘rights’ that the Hijra community had received
from the precolonial Maratha polities in the region. As Laurence Preston
has shown, the Company sought to redraw the relationship between the
state and the Hijra community. Maratha rulers had granted Hijras the
right to collect alms in defined territories and had claimed a proportion of
Hijras’ collections, creating the impression that the new ruler, the
Company, had assumed this state prerogative and sanctioned Hijra ‘beg-
ging’. In 1853, the Bombay government discontinued Hijras’ ‘right of
begging’, though it is unlikely that this had much impact on Hijra alms-
collection. The Bombay Presidency also sought to end the small grants of
rent-free land or inams that Hijras had received from Maratha polities.24
Indian rulers had used such land grants to redistribute resources to people
of humble means, to fund schools and other institutions, to distribute
political patronage and to bind subjects to the state. Existing inams were
generally (though inconsistently) recognised by the Company following
its annexations of regional states. Yet in the 1840s, a period when the
Company’s resources were especially squeezed, the British came to see
inams, which alienated potential revenue from the state, as a threat to
both colonial authority and Company finances. In Bombay, 20,000
inams had been declared illegal by 1847.25 The Bombay government
21
Jon Wilson, India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire (London: Simon &
Schuster, 2016), 195 215.
22
Anand A. Yang, ‘Whose Sati?: Widow Burning in Early 19th Century India’, Journal of
Women’s History 1, no. 2 (1989): 8 33; Singha, A Despotism of Law, 83 5, 108 20;
Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998), 42 82; Wilson, India Conquered, 214.
23
Preston, ‘A Right to Exist’, 379. 24 Ibid., 372, 379 85.
25
David Washbrook, ‘South India 1770 1840: The Colonial Transition’, Modern Asian
Studies 38, no. 3 (2004): 499 505; Wilson, India Conquered, 231 2.
The Hijra Panic 33
determined that Hijras’ rent-free land grants also breached ‘the rules of
public decency’ and could thus be discontinued. However, the policy that
was established in 1842 and upheld in 1854 was a compromise: Hijras’
inams would be converted into life grants that would terminate with the
death of the current holder, thus gradually reducing Hijras’ economic
resources over time. Preston highlights that this compromise was possible
due to the low value of Hijras’ land grants, the resumption of which would
have little impact on the Company’s revenue ledgers.26 It also suggests
that despite the moralising language of the Bombay government,
Hijras were not yet considered a major threat to colonial authority. With
the issue of Hijras’ claims to rent-free land resolved in the early 1850s, the
officials of Bombay Presidency would not consider Hijras a major ‘pro-
blem’ for the rest of the nineteenth century.
Panic in North India

By this time, the NWP was increasingly anxious about the Hijra commu-
nity in the wake of Government v. Ali Buksh, the 1852 case of the murder of
the Hijra Bhoorah. The NWP courts considered two suspects in the case:
Bhoorah’s male lover Ali Buksh, with whom she lived (‘as a prostitute’, in
the words of the judges), and one of Bhoorah’s chelas (disciples), Dullah.
The Mainpuri Sessions Court and, subsequently, the Nizamat Adalat (the
province’s highest court) ruled that Ali Buksh killed Bhoorah because she
had repeatedly attempted to leave Ali Buksh for another man.27 The judges
portrayed the case as a moment of ‘exposure’ which had shed light on
a hidden population. Their judgement stereotyped and criminalised the
Hijra community, even though a Hijra was clearly the victim of the crime in
question. Unwin, the Sessions Court judge, opened his judgement with
a statement of the ‘eunuch problem’:
The sickening details of this case involve the disgusting exposure of an abomin
able trade of unnatural prostitution regularly carried on by eunuchs dressed as
women, whom they resemble also in shape, with vested rights to contributions at
weddings, &c. in certain villages allotted to one or more of them under a sort of
acknowledged internal government. They have in fact a King, according to some
resident at Delhi, others say at Furruckabad.28
The judges portrayed Hijras as prostitutes and claimed that Hijras’ cas-
tration was for a ‘vile purpose’, by implication sex with men. They viewed
Hijras’ feminine gender embodiment as morally offensive and described
them through a language of moral contagion, as a ‘pollution’. They also
26
Preston, ‘A Right to Exist’, 384 6. 27
Government v. Ali Buksh. 28
Ibid.
characterised Hijra discipleship lineages as an alternative political structure

(an ‘internal government’) that challenged colonial rule. The case solidified
the nascent colonial stereotype of the Hijra as ‘unnatural prostitutes’, cross-
dressers, and beggars that was evident in earlier travel literature, medical
accounts and official correspondence in Bombay. Following Government v.
Ali Buksh, Company official Charles Raikes was ordered to compile
a report on the Hijra community, the circulation of which engendered
a debate in official circles about whether ‘special legislation’ was required
to control Hijras. Yet anti-Hijra legislation did not eventuate in the early
1850s, largely due to mixed official opinions on whether it was necessary.29
In the early 1860s, concern about Hijras re-emerged in the NWP
administration. In fact, the preoccupation with Hijras was one of several
panics that the official class of the NWP experienced during the 1860s.
In the revolt of 1857, the Company had lost control of most of north and
central India. The factors that had sparked the revolt differed at the local
level but included the perception that the Company had upended local
political structures through rapid territorial expansion in the 1840s and
1850s; fears of the threat of conversion by Christian missionaries; colonial
agrarian policies; and famously, the grievances of the Company’s Indian
‘sepoys’ (sipahis or soldiers). It was not until mid 1858 that the revolt was
suppressed in some areas and the Company only regained its territory
with extreme violence.30 In the revolt’s aftermath, the Company was
disbanded, British Crown rule was asserted over India, alliances were
formed with ‘loyal’ Indian elites, communication networks (including the
railways and telegraph) were extended, the police force was reformed and
the passage of several legal codes consolidated colonial law. Despite these
projects to shore up colonial authority, British officials’ sense of insecurity
intensified after 1857. Provincial administrations, particularly the former
centres of the rebellion such as the NWP, were repeatedly gripped by
panics about perceived threats to colonial rule. This was due to ‘pervasive
structural anxieties’, rather than the existence of acute political dangers.31
While the possibility of another rebellion was a reoccurring fear, colonial
officials responded anxiously to a wide range of Indian social groups and
practices in these years. In particular, colonial administrators were con-
cerned with the ‘deviant fringe’ of Indian society, that is, with socially
marginalised groups whose ways of life and social practices seemed to
29
BL/IOR/P/235/33: Simson to NWP Secretary, 31 December 1860; BL/IOR/P/438/61:
Drummond to NWP NA, 24 February 1865.
30
William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 (New Delhi:
Penguin Books, 2007); Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt, 1857 1858: A Study of
Popular Resistance (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Wilson, India Conquered, 226 65.
31
Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”’, 175, 193 4.
The Hijra Panic 35
undermine colonial efforts to know and govern the Indian population.

The colonial administration sought to control untouchable, low caste and
itinerant groups that were labelled ‘criminal tribes’, or hereditary crim-
inals by caste occupation. New laws were also passed to regulate the lives
of female prostitutes, European vagrants and lepers.32 The colonial gov-
ernment represented these marginalised peoples as criminal and deviant,
in a social and often sexual sense. The Hijra community were one such
group on the social periphery who were the subject of colonial panic
during these years.
The court cases of the 1860s added a new dimension to the colonial
Hijra panic. The British now claimed that Hijras were not only a threat to
‘public morals’, but also a danger to children, since they were the kidnap-
pers, castrators and pimps of young Indian boys. In 1860, the NWP
courts heard Government v. Munsa and four others, a case in which five
people were charged with stealing, purchasing and emasculating Gupoo,
a nine-year-old boy. According to the judgement, a man named Nugoo
had kidnapped Gupoo and sold him to Nurm Buksh, a ‘eunuch’. Nurm
Buksh subsequently organised Guppo’s castration, which was carried out
by an elderly ‘eunuch’ named Munsa and witnessed by two ‘accessories’
who were also ‘eunuchs’. The judges admitted there were some problems
with the evidence, since the case hung on the testimony of two children,
but they nevertheless convicted the accused of between ten and fourteen
years imprisonment each. Judicial officials portrayed Hijras as a threat to
the children of ‘respectable’ families and represented Gupoo as an ‘unfor-
tunate victim [who] was subjected to . . . atrocious cruelty’.33 Following
the trial, the Nizamat Adalat sent to the NWP government ‘all of the
information, regarding Hijrahs, possessed by the Court’. At the centre of
the court’s archived information was the 1852 case, Ali Buksh v.
Government. Although Raike’s 1853 report had been destroyed during
the 1857 Rebellion, the Nizamat Adalat sent on the surviving judgement
and the judges’ ‘recollection’ of what Raikes had revealed about the Hijra
community.34 In the subsequent government correspondence, officials
quoted the 1852 judgement, in particular Unwin’s summary of the ‘dis-
gusting exposure’ of the Hijra community.35 However, the loss of
archived information also allowed new meanings to be projected onto
the 1852 case, which could be a malleable and recyclable symbol of the
‘discovery’ of Hijras in north India. In 1861, the NWP government
32
Radhika Singha, ‘Colonial Law and Infrastructural Power: Reconstructing Community,
Locating the Female Subject’, Studies in History 19, no. 1 (2003): 92 4.
33
Government v. Munsa and 4 others, DNA NWP 10 (1860): 6 March 1860.
34
BL/IOR/P/235/33: Simson to NWP Secretary, 31 December 1860.
35
Ibid.; BL/IOR/P/235/33: ‘Abstract of the case of Ali Buksh.’
decided a new law targeting Hijras was necessary and sent a letter propos-
ing legislation to the central Legislative Assembly, but the proposal went
nowhere – the NWP administration never received a response.36
Yet the provincial government’s concern with Hijras would soon revive,
when in 1864 and 1865 the Sessions Court of Shahjahanpur heard five
cases of castration, enslavement and kidnapping. The Sessions Judge,
R. Drummond, and the British Magistrate, W. G. Probyn, concluded
that in June 1864 two men working for the ‘eunuch’ Buheema had
kidnapped two boys from their parental home in Gopamau in the neigh-
bouring province of Oudh.37 Allegedly, Buheema had emasculated both
boys within a few days of their abduction and had subsequently brought
them to Fatehgarh in the NWP, where she sold them to two separate
purchasers. The Shahjahanpur authorities identified three other cases in
which the castrates were adults. Although the court acknowledged that
the adults had been castrated ‘with their own consent’, it ruled that
consent was not an acceptable exemption from prosecution due to the
likelihood of death or grievous injury and since, in the court’s opinion,
castration was ‘not for the benefit of the person consenting’.38 In total, the
Shahjahanpur Sessions Court tried thirty-one persons between 1864 and
1865 for castration, kidnapping and/or enslavement.39 Drummond and
Probyn foregrounded the two cases involving children, which they char-
acterised as the ‘worst cases’, rather than those of adult castration. In fact,
Drummond appears to have lowered the age of one of the minors to
emphasise his child status, claiming that the child was ‘certainly under
10’, even though his mother insisted he was older. The Shahjahanpur
authorities also portrayed the Hijra community as a ‘gang’ that was
pivotal in a wider criminal network of kidnappers, sellers, buyers and
castrators of children.40 Once again, officials referred back to the earlier
court cases involving Hijras, particularly the 1852 case, the moment of
‘exposure’.41 In 1865, the NWP government also launched the widest
investigation into the Hijra community to date. The Inspector-General of
Police ordered District Superintendents of Police to ‘discover the whole
extent and the whole manner of the atrocious crimes’ of the Hijra. ‘Every
information’ should be recorded, the Inspector-General implored, even
things that appeared ‘trifling’.42
36
37
Oudh was not incorporated into the NWP until 1877.
38
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond, ‘General remarks’, circa 1865.
39
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Officiating Register, NWP NA, to NWP Secretary, 12 May 1865.
40
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond, ‘General Remarks’, circa 1865. See also BL/IOR/P/438/
61: Probyn to Shahjahanpur SJ, 12 December 1864.
41
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP Secretary, 9 August 1865.
42
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dodd to all NWP DSIP, 30 June 1865.
The Hijra Panic 37
There was a repetitive pattern to this series of criminal cases involving

Hijras. The ‘discovery’ of Hijra criminality and sexual immorality in each
case was followed by impassioned expressions of moral outrage from the
judiciary, the bureaucracy and the police; a drive to collect ethnographic
information about Hijras to shore up uncertain colonial knowledge;
a search of colonial archives for previously compiled information about
Hijras; and, consequently, the rediscovery of the 1852 case as the moment
that the Hijra community was first ‘exposed’. Several aspects of this
pattern were typical of how panics played out in colonial governments.
Colonial panics were fundamentally about threats to colonial power,
whether the perceived danger was to the stability of colonial rule, the
notion of European superiority or the colonial social order. Hence, in
1861, the NWP Secretary represented the Hijra community as ‘an infa-
mous organization’ which was ‘calculated’ to throw ‘opprobrium . . . on
the administration’.43 As we will explore in more depth in the next
chapter, this was because the NWP administration viewed Hijras as
a fundamentally ungovernable and disorderly population.
In moments of panic, archived ‘evidence’ was considered merely the
proverbial ‘tip of the iceberg’.44 Thus, the court cases of the 1850s and
early 1860s were regarded as a minuscule proportion of the apparently
enormous number of instances of Hijra lawbreaking. Probyn, one of the
officials involved in the Shahjahanpur investigation, was convinced that
he would bring ‘hundreds of offenders’ to justice with further investiga-
tion into Hijra kidnapping and castration – he did not.45 In fact, very few
children lived in Hijra households in the 1860s.46 Nevertheless, the see-
mingly unknowable scale of the Hijra population fed the belief that
Hijras represented a major threat to colonial authority.47 Thus, what
the British didn’t know drove the Hijra panic. More broadly, colonial
panics emerged out of anxieties about the inadequacy of colonial intelli-
gence which were structural and enduring.48 As Christopher Bayly has
observed, ‘information panics’ arose where ‘knowledgeable colonial insti-
tutions met, but failed to mesh with, the sentiment of the knowing people
of the locality’. These panics propelled the construction of stereotypes of
Indian criminality, deviance and rebelliousness. Colonial stereotypes
were thus a product of the weaknesses in colonial knowledge systems.49
43
44
Etherington, ‘Colonial Panics Big and Small’, 203.
45
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Probyn to Shahjahanpur SJ, 12 December 1864.
46
BL/IOR/P/92: Dennehy to PA of NWP IGP, 15 August 1871.
47
Court quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866; Farrukhabad DM
quoted in BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot to GI Secretary, 21 April 1871.
48
Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”’, 159 97.
49
Bayly, Empire and Information, 165 79.
When faced with uncertain knowledge, colonial administrators shaped

rumours and fragmentary information into intelligible narratives by
combing colonial archives for the records of previous panics.50 This
tended to reiterate stereotypes that had emerged out of earlier episodes
of panic and reframe them in new circumstances. Thus, NWP officials
repeatedly referred back to Government v. Ali Buksh to make sense of later
court cases and police investigations, reformulating the Hijra stereotype
that had emerged in the 1852 case.
When panics occurred in colonial administrations, moral certitude and
a pervasive sense of vulnerability went hand-in-hand. Following each
appearance of Hijras in court in the 1850s and 1860s, officials made
fervent statements of moral outrage which were circulated, quoted and
amplified in official correspondence. In continually denouncing Hijras in
highly formulaic language, British officials reiterated a moral vision of
colonial governance. Moreover, the idea of the panoptic reach of the
colonial state was reiterated through the apparent creation of
a systematic body of knowledge which rendered the secretive criminal
peripheries of Indian society transparent. But the failure of the colonial
state to suppress the Hijra community following its original ‘exposure’ in
1852 suggested the limits of the colonial state’s power and thus exacer-
bated the sense of urgency in official circles. The recourse to archived
knowledge to make sense of rediscoveries of the Hijra community did not
dampen, but rather fuelled, official panic. For instance, following the
1860 case of Government v. Munsa, the NWP Secretary wrote that
Government v. Ali Buksh had shown that ‘an evil of the most disgusting
character prevailed in these Provinces in 1852’ and the 1860 case ‘una-
voidably raised the belief that the same evil continued in unmitigated
force’, a situation which was a ‘reproach’ to the colonial government.51
While the coterie of British administrators in the NWP was anxious that
Hijras constituted a threat to colonial rule, officials in other parts of British
India did not share this view. When consulted by the Government of India
on whether Hijras were a ‘problem’, most other provinces responded in the
negative, even while describing Hijras in highly disparaging terms. Punjab
was alone in agreeing with the NWP that Hijras should be policed, but
there was not significant official concern in this neighbouring province.
The Hijra panic was thus provincial in character.52 Indeed, colonial gov-
ernance in India was highly fractured and provincialised. In a number of
provinces, patronage and family ties among British officials had shaped the
50
Fischer Tiné and Whyte, ‘Introduction’, 15.
51
52
See correspondence in BL/IOR/P/438/61; BL/IOR/P/438/62; BL/IOR/P/436/51; BL/
IOR/P/92.
The Hijra Panic 39
colonial administration and fostered official beliefs of provincial particu-

larity. Some provinces, such as Madras, promoted particular ideologies of
governance that were thought to be suited to local conditions. Provincial
governments frequently resisted administrative agendas established in
London, Calcutta or other parts of British India.53 Colonial panics also
frequently emerged from, and circulated within, a particular province
without eliciting much concern elsewhere.
The NWP certainly reflected these broader patterns. From the 1830s, the
NWP was a ‘patronage bureaucracy’ in which ties of patronage bound
together competing ‘schools’ of administration that were based around high-
ranking officials. The group that came to dominate the province was formed
through the patronage of Robert Bird and his protégé James Thomason and
argued for various reforming schemes of moral and material ‘improvement’.
As Lieutenant-Governor from 1843 to 1853, Thomason was given a wide
remit to recruit like-minded officials from other provinces.54 The men
Thomason patronised dominated the NWP government in the following
decades and included all of the Lieutenant-Governors of the post-1857 per-
iod: G. F. Edmonstone (1859–63); Edmond Drummond (1863–8); and
William Muir (1868–74).55 This group of officials were among the most
strident supporters of legislation to control Hijras. In the early 1850s,
Thomason was particularly concerned with the Hijra community and his
protégés, in a sense, inherited the issue: Edmonstone, Drummond and Muir
all subsequently called for legislation against the community.56
Patronage politics had also entrenched the power of evangelical men in
the administration from the mid 1840s. To be sure, the NWP was not the
only province in which evangelical officials shaped policy.57 Yet a ‘close
identification with missionary interests was a particular mark’ of the
NWP.58 The authority of evangelicalism endured in the NWP even
after the 1857 rebellion, a period which saw a ‘de-linking’ of the colonial
and evangelical projects in other contexts and regions.59 NWP
53
Washbrook, ‘South India 1770 1840’, 486 9.
54
Peter Penner, The Patronage Bureaucracy in North India: The Robert M. Bird and James
Thomason School, 1820 1870 (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1986), 102 5; Avril
A. Powell, Scottish Orientalists and India: The Muir Brothers, Religion, Education and
Empire (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), 80.
55
Penner, Patronage Bureaucracy, 264.
56
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP NA, 24 February 1865; BL/IOR/P/235/33:
Couper to NWP MLC, 12 February 1861; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to GI Secretary,
9 June 1865; BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot to GI Secretary, 21 April 1871.
57
E.g., Punjab. Penner, Patronage Bureaucracy, 256 7.
58
Powell, Scottish Orientalists, 79, 85, 93.
59
Penner, Patronage Bureaucracy, 264; Ian Copland, ‘Christianity as an Arm of Empire:
The Ambiguous Case of India under the Company, c. 1813 1858’, The Historical Journal
49, no. 4 (2006): 1053.
administrators like William Muir advocated for the official colonial policy
of ‘neutrality’ in the administration of religious matters, but tempered this
with a language of ‘moral improvement’ that had an ‘evangelical
subtext’.60 From this evangelical perspective, colonial intervention was
needed to morally transform Indian society and to ‘save’ innocent chil-
dren from Hijras. Edmonstone, for instance, explicitly linked the Hijra
issue to Christian morality in 1861, calling Hijras ‘a reproach to any
country under Christian rulers’.61 In short, the patronage bureaucracies
of British Indian provinces produced highly province-centric outlooks
among administrators and engendered regional panics and projects.
Although the Hijra panic was concentrated in the NWP, in the late
1800s colonial administrator-scholars in other provinces also collected
information about Hijras as a part of wider efforts to know and count the
population in its entirety. This colonial knowledge was shaped by the
official panic in north India and circulated stereotyped views of Hijras in
other parts of British India. In the second half of the nineteenth century,
Hijras often featured in published ethnographies. British ethnologists
viewed India as comprised of many little traditions, diverse customs and
‘an agglomeration of small societies’. Late nineteenth-century ethnogra-
phy in India emphasised socio-cultural knowledge over physiological
theories of race, unlike ethnology elsewhere in the British Empire.62
Ethnological knowledge also had a moral and gendered bent in India.
Colonial ethnologists sought to record religious and cultural practices
they viewed as ‘obscene’ in order to eradicate them.63 The Glossaries of
Castes and Tribes that administrator-scholars published from the 1870s
almost always featured an entry on Hijras. These glossaries broke India up
into alphabetically organised communities, primarily using caste (jati) as
a classificatory principle, although they also included non-jati groups like
Hijras. Ethnographic tomes were shaped by the perspectives of Indian
administrator-scholars who worked as British ethnologists’ ‘assistants’,
elite Indian informants and unnamed, low-status informants, including
Hijras.64 A few published ethnologists were Indian, such as Bhimbhai
Kirparam, while Indian princely states also produced ethnographic com-
pendiums. Some Glossaries provided quite detailed ethnographic infor-
mation about Hijra communities.65 Nevertheless, most ethnologists
commented on the perceived sexual deviance of Hijras. R. V. Russell
60
Powell, Scottish Orientalists, 9, 119, 197.
61
62
Bayly, Empire and Information, 352 61. H. H. Risely was an exception: Brown,
‘Ethnology and Colonial Administration’, 205 6.
63
Bayly, Empire and Information, 352 61. 64 Ibid., 359 60
65
Rose, Glossary, 331 3; Kirparam, ‘Pavávás’, 506 8.
The Hijra Panic 41
even included a commentary on the history of homosexuality at the end of

his account of the Hijra community.66
Hijras also featured in colonial censuses conducted throughout India.
Early colonial enumerations of the Indian population were rough approx-
imations. Attempts to more accurately and systematically count the entire
population began in the 1840s, culminating in 1871 in the decennial India-
wide census. The census was an outcome of the knowledge of literate
Indians who were the census takers at the local level and the abstractions
of British census officials. Censuses would become a major form of colonial
knowledge of the agglomeration of religious, occupational and (especially)
caste groups that made up Indian society.67 The categorisation of Hijras in
the decennial censuses often differed between provinces within each decen-
nial census and also shifted over time, between censuses. In the decennial
censuses taken between 1871 and 1901, the occupations of ‘Hijras’ were
variously recorded as: pimp; dancer, bard or performer; ‘indefinite and
non-productive’; and ‘miscellaneous and disreputable’.68 Colonial ethno-
graphies and censuses were imprinted with – and further contributed to –
the stereotypes that had emerged out of the official preoccupation with
Hijras in mid-nineteenth-century north India.
While the panic about Hijras was acute in NWP administrative circles –
and scholar-administrators such as doctors and ethnologists wrote mor-
alising accounts of Hijras – the non-official European population did not
experience a panic about the community. Moreover, the English-
language press in India played a relatively minimal role in discussions of
the ‘eunuch problem’ and neither sparked, nor significantly exacerbated,
the official concern with Hijras. Most of the dozen or so English-language
newspaper articles about ‘eunuchs’ that appeared in the 1860s and 1870s
were from The Pioneer, which was published in Allahabad, the capital of
the NWP and the centre of official panic about Hijras. Moreover, most of
these reports were published in response to the brief legislative debates
about the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA).69 The relatively limited
discussion of the Hijra community in Anglo-Indian newspapers was due
to Britons’ moral and aesthetic unease with public discussions of
Hijras. Accounts of Hijras were more common in forums where British
66
R. V. Russell, The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, vol. 3 (London:
Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1916), 210 2.
67
Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’, in
An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays, 230 50 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1987). See also Bayly, Empire and Information, 315 7.
68
Gannon, ‘Translating the Hijra’, 249 73; Crooke, Tribes and Castes, vol. 1, 495 7.
69
Two articles also appeared in the Madras Mail, one a reprint from the Delhi Gazette.
‘Kidnapping Children in India’, Madras Mail, 9 July 1869, 3; ‘Occasional Notes’, Madras
Mail, 31 March 1869, 3.
male officials were the main audience, like official correspondence and
reports, or in texts that carried scholarly authority.
The limited role of the press in fuelling colonial anxiety about
Hijras represents a distinct model of colonial panic. The press played
a significant part in several panics in colonial India, for instance, the
preoccupation with criminal tribes in the 1860s and the enduring anxiety
about a possible repeat of the 1857 rebellion.70 Indeed, scholars who have
deployed the concept of ‘moral panic’ have generally foregrounded the
dissemination and exacerbation of panic through mass media. Yet news-
papers did not always drive the spread of panics. Several studies have
highlighted the role of rumour and oral communication in propelling
colonial panics.71 David Arnold has noted that ‘poison panics’ in nine-
teenth-century India did not circulate in the newspapers, but rather in
popular rumour and the ‘anxieties of the colonial ruling class’.72
However, the preoccupation with Hijras in colonial north India suggests
the tendency of a circle of colonial administrators within one region to
experience intense anxiety about a ‘problem’ population. The medium
through which the Hijra panic spread was the official letter-writing through
which daily colonial administration was carried out, especially the networks
of correspondence between district administrators and the provincial head-
quarters. The paper bureaucracy that was the basis of colonial governance
fuelled and circulated anxious interpretations of Hijras.73
... ... ...
In the NWP in the 1850s and the 1860s, several particular instances of
crime – the murder of a Hijra, the kidnapping of three boys, the castration
of three adult Hijras – were extrapolated into a criminalising representa-
tion of the Hijra community as a whole. The few cases involving
Hijras that had been tried in the courts were thought to pale in compar-
ison to the enormous extent of Hijra crime. There was a circular quality to
the moments of panic in NWP official circles, as the 1852 case,
Government v. Ali Buksh, was continually rediscovered, resulting in the
70
Bayly, Empire and Information; Bayly, ‘Knowing the Country’, 3 43; Wagner, ‘“Treading
Upon Fires”’; Choudhury, ‘Sinews of Panic’, 965 1002.
71
Ann Laura Stoler, ‘“In Cold Blood”: Hierarchies of Credibility and the Politics of
Colonial Narratives’, in Engaging Colonial Knowledge: Reading European Archives in
World History, eds. Ricardo Roque and Kim A. Wagner, 35 66 (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012); Kim A. Wagner, The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the
Making of the Indian Uprising (Witney: Peter Lang, 2010).
72
David Arnold, ‘The Poison Panics of British India’, in Anxieties, Fear and Panic in Colonial
Settings: Empires on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, ed. Harald Fischer Tiné, 50
(Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
73
On the colonial obsession with accumulations of paper records: Bayly, Empire and
Information.
The Hijra Panic 43
recycling and reinvention of anxious narratives. The repeated rediscovery

of Hijras also provided occasion to castigate Hijra (and Indian) immor-
ality in a highly repetitive fashion, reiterating moral conceptions of colo-
nial power. Nevertheless, the failure of colonial rule to suppress the Hijra
community to date was a source of official worry.
The Hijra panic resonated with several broader dynamics that Robert
Peckham, Harald Fischer-Tiné, Ann Laura Stoler and other historians of
‘colonial panics’ have identified, including the sense of insecurity that
pervaded official circles, the tendency of incomplete knowledge to produce
panic and the ‘cumulative effect’ of panics which resurfaced and changed in
new contexts.74 However, the anti-Hijra campaign also highlights some
under-examined aspects of colonial panics. First, whereas Kim Wagner,
D. K. Lahiri Choudhury and Peckham have emphasised the transnational
spread of panics through imperial networks of communication, the Hijra
panic is a reminder that some panics circulated within a more confined
geographical area.75 Nonetheless, such local and regional panics could grip
colonial administrations and have transformative impacts on colonial gov-
ernance. The fractures within the Government of India, especially along
the lines of province, thus shaped the anti-Hijra campaign. Second, the
Hijra panic highlights that newspapers and other news media do not
necessarily drive the spread of panics, as most studies of ‘moral panics’
(including in colonial contexts) have suggested. The Hijra panic circulated
and intensified through the letter-writing practices that undergirded – and
in large part constituted – the ‘paper-obsessed’ colonial government of
India.76 Finally, most historians have explored colonial panics about the
perceived threat of imminent revolts and revolutionary activities, or alter-
natively, panics about disease and epidemics, which endangered the bodies
of the colonisers and the colonial economy.77 Yet the Hijra panic – along
with several studies of panics about interracial sex78 – suggest that a range
of sexual practices and relationships, as well as forms of gender expression,
could be construed as threats to colonial rule in certain contexts. However,
the question remains, why did the British view Hijras as a problem of
colonial governance and a challenge to colonial authority?
74
Fischer Tiné (ed.), Anxieties, Fears and Panic; Peckham (ed.), Empires of Panic; Stoler,
‘“In Cold Blood”’.
75
Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”’; Choudhury, ‘Sinews of Panic’, 965 1002; Peckham,
‘Introduction’, 9 11.
76
Bayly, Empire and Information, ix.
77
E.g., see Fischer Tiné (ed.), Anxieties, Fears and Panic; Peckham (ed.), Empires of Panic.
78
Jeremy C. Martens, ‘Settler Homes, Manhood and “Houseboys”: An Analysis of Natal’s
Rape Scare of 1886’, Journal of Southern African Studies 28, no. 2 (2002): 379 400;
Norman Etherington, ‘Natal’s Black Rape Scare of the 1870s’, Journal of Southern
African Studies 15, no. 1 (1988): 36 53.
2 An Ungovernable Population
The colonial stereotype of the Hijra that solidified in the mid-nineteenth

century, in the context of a panic among British officials in north India, was
multifaceted insofar as Hijras were characterised as criminal and immoral
in multiple ways. The British frequently described Hijras as ‘filth’ or as a
disease that was spreading through Indian society. This discourse of expo-
nential spread obviously heightened the official anxiety about Hijras. A
language of dirt, contamination and contagion was scattered through
colonial accounts because the British viewed Hijras as a source of disorder,
as ‘matter out of place’, which threatened the colonial moral, social and
political order. In the dominant colonial narrative, Hijras were ungovern-
able for numerous reasons. Hijras’ apparent sexual practices challenged the
heterosexual, patrilineal order of succession that colonial law sought to
entrench. Their gender expression confused binary gender categories and
undermined the classification, and thus the legibility, of the Indian popula-
tion. The performance, feminine dress, ‘begging’ and boisterous presence
of Hijras in public space challenged colonial efforts to discipline margin-
alised people in public places. Although Hijras were generally not itinerant,
they were increasingly understood as ‘wandering’ people who weakened
the stability of political borders and challenged colonial law, since mobility
and criminality were equated. Colonial officials especially associated Hijra
‘wandering’ with ‘kidnapping’, a form of illicit commerce across borders
that was linked to ‘deviant’ forms of domesticity. In colonial accounts,
kidnapping was also intimately connected to the sexual ‘corruption’ of
male children in Hijra households.
The colonial Hijra stereotype throws into sharp relief the colonial
understanding of what might constitute a governable colonised popula-
tion. As a number of historians have shown, modern states of various
kinds have been concerned with the management of population, for
instance through forms of knowledge like statistics.1 The colonial state
aimed to render the Indian population ‘legible’, that is visible and
1
Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, 91 102.
44
An Ungovernable Population 45
knowable, and therefore subjectable to colonial control.2 These efforts

intensified in the second half of the nineteenth century in India. In part,
the colonial vision of a governable population rested on sedentary ways of
life, economic productivity and subjection to colonial law. Hence, Hijras –
understood as ‘wandering beggars’ with unproductive occupations – were
ungovernable in the colonial view. However, gender, sexual and domestic
norms were also central to the colonial understanding of an orderly popu-
lation. The management of population placed reproduction, sexuality and
household formations at the centre of governance.3 The British in India
viewed households that were constituted by conjugality, heterosexual and
reproductive sexualities, and patrilineal inheritance as conducive to the
colonial social and political order.4 Hence, non-normative gender and
sexuality signalled ungovernableness and thus the existence of political
and social danger. The colonial stereotype of Hijras as a disorderly and
ungovernable people was symptomatic of the broader colonial preoccupa-
tion with rendering colonised populations legible. However, the extent to
which the colonial stereotype of the Hijra entailed manifold sources of
disorder is striking. The British in north India viewed the Hijra as a sort
of conduit for various kinds of moral, sexual, political and social danger.
The ‘eunuch problem’ intersected with several wider preoccupations of
North-Western Provinces (NWP) administrators in the mid-late nine-
teenth century, some of which were specifically a concern in northern
India, while others resonated with broader discussions that circulated in
imperial networks. For instance, the order of public space was an especially
intense concern in northern India in the aftermath of the 1857 revolt. At the
same time, the colonial narrative of the Hijra/eunuch resonated with con-
temporary metropolitan discussions of gender and sexuality. Shifts in
attitudes towards cross-dressing emerged around the same time in both
Britain and India. Similarly, colonial anxieties about the sexual ‘corruption’
of male children in the Hijra community suggest that metropolitan and
colonial notions of child sexual abuse both intersected and diverged.
Rather than charting sudden ruptures in discourses of gender and
sexuality,5 this chapter shows that in colonial contexts, as in Britain, shifts
in understandings of non-normative sexualities and gender expression
‘were neither universal nor even’, but rather complex and gradual.6 Due
2
On ‘legibility’ see Scott, Seeing Like a State. 3 Wilson, ‘Rethinking the Colonial State’.
4
Chatterjee, ‘When “Sexuality” Floated Free’; Chatterjee, ‘Monastic “Governmentality”’.
5
As Foucault’s work often suggested: Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume I:
An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990).
6
Cook, Culture of Homosexuality, 4. See also Sinfield, The Wilde Century, 13; Matt Cook,
‘Law’, in Palgrave Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality, eds. H. G. Cocks and Matt
Houlbrook, 66 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
to constraints of space, this chapter particularly compares British India

with Britain, but it suggests that concepts of gender and sexuality circulated
in broader imperial networks, even as local preoccupations shaped the
colonial stereotype of the ‘eunuch’.
Pollution and Contagion

European commentators often depicted Hijras through a language of
pollution and contagion – as a sort of disease. The word ‘filth’ and other
terms related to dirt reoccur in official records about Hijras. In 1852, the
judges who heard Government v. Ali Buksh, the court case that was
remembered as the moment the NWP discovered Hijras, condemned
the ‘filthy trade’ of Hijras, an allusion to what the judges termed ‘unna-
tural prostitution’.7 Two decades later, a colonial official wrote that
young Hijras supported older Hijras through the ‘proceeds of their
filthiness’.8 The association of Hijras with ‘filth’ extended to the male
musicians who sometimes accompanied them: according to a Nizamat
Adalat court official these musicians were ‘encouragers of the system of
castration and of all uncleanness’.9 Given this language of filth and dirt,
colonial officials occasionally used metaphors related to cleaning when
proposing interventions against the community. The Nizamat Adalat
court recommended, for instance, that Magistrates should ‘sweep’ their
districts of Hijras. Colonial officials also termed Hijras ‘pollutions’, por-
traying Hijras as a poisonous substance that infected society, just as
‘pollutions’ infected an environment or body.10 R. Drummond, a NWP
official, represented the Hijra community as ‘a system which carries
contamination far and wide’; the contamination to which he referred
was sexual ‘vice’.11 In other cases, officials spoke of a more generalised
moral contamination; for instance, the potential of child ‘eunuchs’ to
‘contaminate’ other children if they were placed together in juvenile
reformatories.12 The metaphor of ‘spread’ was also repeatedly deployed
to portray an increase in the Hijra population or Hijras’ alleged crimes. In
particular, officials claimed that Hijras ‘spread’ sodomy throughout the
Indian population, suggesting that Hijras were agents of sexual contagion
who ‘infected’ Indian men.13 The word ‘disgusting’ also reoccurs in
7 8
Government v. Ali Buksh. BL/IOR/P/96: Tyrwhitt to NWP Secretary, 26 June 1874.
9
Forbes quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
10
11
12
Court quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
13
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP NA, 24 February 1865; BL/IOR/P/438/62:
Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP Secretary, 9
August 1865.
colonial accounts. This echoed the language of disgust at the colonised

and their ‘uncivilized, racialized [and] polluting bodies’ that pervaded
colonial sanitation and hygiene campaigns.14 Administrators charac-
terised Hijras’ sexual behaviours and performances as the ‘disgusting
practices’ and ‘disgusting habits’ of Hijras.15 Hijras themselves were
also described as ‘an evil of the most disgusting character’.16
The mixed vocabulary of disease through which colonial commenta-
tors represented Hijras was typical of nineteenth-century British and
colonial terminologies. The terms ‘filth’, ‘pollution’ and ‘contamination’
were primarily related to environmental explanations of disease, whereas
the idea of person-to-person ‘spread’ was more typical of the idea of
contagion, or transmission through direct contact. The conventional
historiography holds that there were two opposed ideas of disease causa-
tion in nineteenth-century Europe: miasma theory, or transmission
through the air (the advocates of which were often called ‘anticontagio-
nists’); and germ theory, a particular understanding of contagion which
was crystallized in Koch’s bacillus theory. However, for most of the
nineteenth century, a multifactorial view of disease prevailed, which
held that individual diseases could be either contagious, endemic to a
particular locality or ‘contingently contagious’. Furthermore, advocates
of germ theory often used the terms contagion and miasma
interchangeably.17 In India, bacteriological explanations of disease did
not significantly shape government health policies until the 1890s and
thereafter public health campaigns continued to target ‘environmental
conditions that made the spread of contagion more likely’.18 However,
the varied terminology that colonial officials used to describe Hijras – as
filth, pollution, contamination and contagion – was broadly typical of the
multiple, often conflicting ways of conceptualising disease transmission
in nineteenth-century Britain and its colonies.
The spread of diseases – as well as metaphorical, ‘moral’ forms of
contagion – were acute concerns for colonial governments. Peckham
14
Colin McFarlane, ‘Governing the Contaminated City: Infrastructure and Sanitation in
Colonial and Post Colonial Bombay’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
32, no. 2 (2008): 418.
15
Forbes in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866; Government v. Ali Buksh;
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP NA, 24 February 1865.
16
17
Margaret Pelling, ‘The Meaning of Contagion: Reproduction, Medicine and Metaphor’,
in Contagion: Historical and Cultural Studies, eds. Alison Bashford and Claire Hooker, 16,
18 9, 24 32 (London: Routledge, 2001).
18
Stephen Legg, ‘Planning Social Hygiene: From Contamination to Contagion in Interwar
India’, in Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene, and Cultures of Planning in Asia, eds.
Robert Peckham and David M. Pomfret, 108 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press,
2013).
and Pomfret have argued that ‘[f]ears of contagion played a critical role in
the re-ordering of British and French colonial societies in Asia’.19 In light
of the ‘endemic’ anxiety in colonial governments about gaps in official
knowledge,20 the uncontainable and unknowable character of contagion
made both disease and metaphorical contagion especially troubling to
colonisers.21 Colonial economies depended on the circulation of goods
and people, but diseases as well as ‘contagious’ ideas could spread
through these same networks.22 Consequently, imperial boundaries
were often constituted by cordons sanitaires, particularly from the late
nineteenth century.23 Colonisation brought Europeans into contact with
colonised people, but such exchanges prompted fears of contagion and
dangerous mixing of various kinds.24
Metaphorical and physical disease were closely intertwined in the
colonial view. The control of ‘social diseases’ that were understood
through metaphors of contagion often overlapped with broader sanitation
and hygiene projects. In Lucknow in the aftermath of 1857, the British
sought to prevent future rebellion by making Lucknow a safe, organised
and clean city, a project that involved not only new sanitation procedures
based on environmentalist understandings of disease, but also the control
of ‘social diseases’, such as drunkenness and prostitution.25 Similarly, in
the early 1900s, the government of Delhi sought to reduce the spread of
diseases in the city through hygiene projects based on bacteriologist as
well as environmentalist understandings of disease, at the same time as a
programme of ‘social hygiene’ was implemented which, once again,
targeted prostitution.26 Obscenity was also contagious, in the colonial
view. British attempts to regulate obscene literature in India and other
colonies were premised upon an understanding of obscenity as ‘matter …
beyond representation’ or ‘base matter’ that endangered the ‘purity’ of
the ‘imperial body’. Thus, the policing of obscenity was ‘coterminous
19
Robert Peckham and David M. Pomfret, ‘Introduction: Medicine, Hygiene, and the
Reordering of Empire’, in Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene, and Cultures of Planning
in Asia, eds. Robert Peckham and David M. Pomfret, 1 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
20
Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”’, 159 97.
21
Alison Bashford and Claire Hooker, ‘Introduction: Contagion, Modernity and
Postmodernity’, in Contagion: Historical and Cultural Studies, eds. Alison Bashford and
Claire Hooker, 2 (London: Routledge, 2001).
22
Peckham and Pomfret, ‘Introduction’, 1.
23
Alison Bashford, Imperial Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism and Public
Health (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 1.
24
Peckham and Pomfret, ‘Introduction’, 5 6.
25
Veena Talwar Oldenburg, The Making of Colonial Lucknow: 1856 1877 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984), 27, 96 144.
26
Legg, ‘Planning Social Hygiene’, 105 22.
with and a product of’ sanitation projects.27 The representation of Hijras

as a source of contagion drew upon, and fed into, colonial discussions of
prostitution and obscenity as disease. Hijras, for instance, often came up
in debates about female prostitution.28 From the colonial point of view,
‘immoral’ sex and obscenity represented potentially frightening forms of
moral contagion.
In large part, the spread of diseases – those affecting the body, as well as
society – induced such anxiety because it suggested the breakdown of the
political or social order. For nineteenth-century Britons, disease was
essentially impurity. Margaret Pelling points out that impurity is ‘a
basic element’ of the concepts of contagion, miasma and also infection.
In the 1800s, these terms all evoked ‘the broad spectrum of religious and
moral ideas clustering around notions of pollution and taboo’.29 As
anthropologist Mary Douglas highlighted, ritual pollution and modern
ideas of hygiene are both ‘symbolic systems’ based on the ‘idea of dirt’.
Douglas argued that dirt is ‘essentially disorder’, since it is ‘matter out of
place’ that does not fit into a ‘systematic classification and ordering of
matter’. Moreover, dirt/disorder is considered ‘dangerous’ because it is
‘destructive’ to the existing social order. Attempts to prevent pollution
exhort people towards behaviours which uphold the social order, while
‘pollutions’ are also used as ‘analogies for expressing a general view of the
social order’. People who are classified as marginal, as having ‘no place in
the social system’ – like the Hijras of colonial India – are often viewed in
analogous ways to dirt and pollution, as out of place and dangerous.30
Contagion adds an extra element to the idea of pollution: exponential
spread. Bashford and Hooker highlight that contagion suggests a ‘process
of contact and transmission’ involving an agent that grows and multiplies
uncontrollably. Moreover, contagion ‘implies absorption, invasion, vul-
nerability, the breaking of a boundary imagined as secure, in which the
other becomes part of the self’.31
Hence, dirt, pollution and contagion are ultimately about impurities,
which are perceived as sources of disorder. In describing Hijras in these
terms, colonial officials identified Hijras as a danger to the colonial moral
and political order – a danger that was spreading. For colonial officials,
the threat of contagion from Hijras was not only an issue of metaphorical
contagion, it also had embodied and physical dimensions. The ‘spread of
sodomy’, for instance, was a matter of sexual contact between bodies.
27
Heath, Purifying Empire, 2 3. 28 E.g., BL/IOR/P/93: May Part A Proceedings.
29
Pelling, ‘The Meaning of Contagion’, 20 1.
30
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
(London: Routledge, 2002 [1966]), 2 4, 37, 95, 97 8.
31
Bashford and Hooker, ‘Introduction’, 4 6, 10.
The British portrayed Hijras as contaminating ‘filth’ because they did not
fit visions of colonial society and were viewed as ‘matter out of place’.
Hijras were thought to pose a manifold source of disorder because, to
British eyes, they were ungovernable in numerous ways.
Sexual Disorder
For one thing, Hijras embodied sexual disorder, in the colonial view. The
management of population towards economic and political purposes was
a central preoccupation of the colonial government in India and this
depended on the governance of household forms, sexuality and
marriage.32 Colonial law promoted an ‘order of succession’ based on
patrilineal descent and reproductive sexualities. This not only margin-
alised Hijras and other communities in which inheritance was based on
discipleship; it also promoted a norm of monogamous conjugality which
devalued – and even criminalised – non-heterosexual and non-reproduc-
tive sexual desires.33 This colonial sexual order was also based on an ideal
of a clear demarcation between the public and private spheres, in which
sex should be contained within domesticated conjugality, or at least,
should not be visible in public space.34 The British saw Hijras as not
merely located outside this sexual order, but also as a threat to it.
From the late eighteenth century, European commentators had char-
acterised Hijras as prostitutes who had sex with men. The Flemish
Anglophone artist Balthazar Solvyns claimed that Hijras’ ‘debauchery is
carried to that degree, that they … offer themselves in the public houses of
prostitution’.35 The judges who heard the 1852 case Government v. Ali
Buksh decried the existence of ‘an abominable trade of unnatural prosti-
tution’ and characterised the cohabitation of the Hijra Bhoorah and her
lover Ali Buksh as an ‘infamous connexion’.36 It should be noted that it is
difficult to determine the extent to which Hijras were involved in sex work
historically, but it does appear that many Hijras had sexual and romantic
relationships with men, even as asexual asceticism was important to Hijra
identities. In the colonial view, the threat that Hijras posed to the colonial
sexual order was amplified since their ‘immoral’ sexual practices were
thought to be ‘spreading’. In 1865, several colonial officials claimed that
32
On the broader context: Wilson, ‘Rethinking the Colonial State’; Foucault,
‘Governmentality’.
33
Chatterjee, ‘When “Sexuality” Floated Free’, 945 62. See also Mytheli Sreenivas, Wives,
Widows, and Concubines: The Conjugal Family Ideal in Colonial India (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2008), 18 44.
34
Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 297 322.
35
Solvyns, Les Hindoos, vol. 2, plate IV. 36 Government v. Ali Buksh.
‘unnatural’ sex ‘has greatly increased of late’ and ‘has reached a fearful
height in the North-Western Provinces’, a ‘spread’ for which ‘eunuchs’
were held responsible, since they apparently sexually ‘contaminated’
Indian men.37
The British in India used a varied language of euphemism to describe
Hijra sexual practices. Colonial officials did not use the word ‘homosexual’
to describe Hijras until the twentieth century.38 Indeed, though the term was
coined in Germany in the 1870s, it was only evident in the English-language
from the 1890s. Rather, ‘unnatural crime’, and several similar phrases like
‘unnatural offences’ or ‘unnatural practices’, were the most common terms
used in relation to Hijras’ sexual relationships with men.39 British officials
also deployed the term ‘sodomy’ in official correspondence.40 Several
phrases related to prostitution were also common in colonial accounts,
including ‘unnatural prostitution’ and ‘professional sodomy’.41 Sodomy
and unnatural crime could refer to anal sex between men and women, but
these terms were more commonly used to refer to sex between men in
nineteenth-century Britain. Thus, this colonial terminology implicitly
labelled Hijras ‘men’, even though Hijras viewed themselves as feminine
and thus differently gendered than their partners. Colonial commentators
also employed a range of phrases that had much wider meanings to describe
sex between men and Hijras in a more inexact and ambiguous language,
including variations on: ‘disgusting habits’; ‘vice’ (the ‘poison of vice’,
‘shocking vice’); an ‘abominable trade’; ‘wickedness’; and ‘evil’.42
This varied language of euphemism was shaped by trans-imperial dis-
cussions of sex between men. English-language newspapers in India
occasionally reported on ‘unnatural offence’ cases, in articles that ranged
from short notices of cases to be heard at the provincial court to longer
articles on particularly scandalous cases.43 As well as reporting local
unnatural offence cases, Anglo-Indian newspapers reprinted articles on
sex between men from British and other imperial newspapers.44
37
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Register, NWP NA, to NWP Secretary, 12 May 1865; BL/IOR/P/
438/61: Drummond to NWP NA, 24 February 1865; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to
NWP Secretary, 9 August 1865.
38
Russell, Tribes and Castes, vol. 3, 210 2.
39
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Pearson, Minute, 28 March 1866; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Register, NWP
NA, to NWP Secretary, 12 May 1865.
40
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
41
Government v. Ali Buksh; BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
42
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to
NWP Secretary, 9 August 1865.
43
E.g., The Pioneer, 8 February 1869, 3; ‘Oudh and Punjab’, The Pioneer, 8 November
1873, 3; ‘The Cawnpore Ginning Mills Case’, The Pioneer, 1 July 1899, 6.
44
The Pioneer, 20 May 1891, 3 4; ‘Suicide of Professor Matthiessen’, Madras Mail, 4
November 1870, 6 7.
Euphemistic vocabularies for discussing ‘unnatural’ sex thus circulated in

imperial networks. As H. G. Cocks has observed in the context of nine-
teenth-century Britain, euphemism did not prevent public knowledge,
but rather created ‘varied and subtle languages’ which ‘simultaneously
referred to homosexual desire, and tried to cover all traces of its existence
with circumlocution and evasion’.45 There was also a moral performance
involved in the euphemistic naming of sexual practices through a lan-
guage of revulsion, shock and outrage – as in the phrases ‘disgusting
habits’ and ‘shocking vice’ – which mitigated the British writer’s morally
dubious knowledge of ‘unnatural’ practices. Thus, the author simulta-
neously disclosed their knowledge and distanced themselves from the
apparently immoral behaviour.
This ‘subtle language’ of euphemism was also criminalising, since the
sexual acts that Hijras were accused of committing were criminal under
colonial law. In the early 1800s, the Company had prohibited sodomy
under several ‘Regulations’ that were partly derived from Islamic law.46
However, in 1860 a single law, section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, was
enacted in the context of a much broader project of legal codification in
the aftermath of 1857. Section 377 provided for the imprisonment (for
life, or alternatively up to ten years) of ‘[w]hoever voluntarily has carnal
intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal’
and specified that penetration was ‘sufficient’ to constitute ‘carnal
intercourse’.47 This drew on a long English legal tradition: ‘buggery’
(usually defined as anal intercourse with a man, woman or animal) had
been understood as a ‘crime against nature’ since the 1600s.48 The Indian
Penal Code (IPC) did not define what constituted ‘unnatural’ sex; how-
ever, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the judiciary inter-
preted section 377 as specifically prohibiting sodomy or anal sex
(including between men and women), but not other sexual acts such as
oral sex.49 In fact, section 377 went against the trend of nineteenth-
century British legal reform. From the 1860s, several new British laws
specifically applied to sex between men and prohibited a range of sexual
acts other than anal sex – reforms which many historians have viewed as
45
Cocks, Nameless Offences, 1, 78 9, 81 2, 85.
46
Gannon, ‘Translating the Hijra’, 320.
47
Quoted in Bhaskaran, ‘Politics of Penetration’, 15.
48
Douglas E. Sanders, ‘377 and the Unnatural Afterlife of British Colonialism in Asia’,
Asian Journal of Comparative Law 4, no. 1 (2009): 4 7; Bhaskaran, ‘Politics of
Penetration’, 17 8.
49
From 1914, judges also defined other non procreative forms of sex deemed ‘penetrative’,
like oral sex, as ‘unnatural’ intercourse. Narrain, ‘That Despicable Specimen’, 48 77;
Puri, Sexual States, 62 5.
explicitly criminalising male homosexual desire in Britain.50

Nevertheless, section 377 also had the effect of cementing the colonial
criminalisation of the ‘sodomite’.
From the 1850s, the British characterised Hijras as ‘habitual sodo-
mites’, suggesting that they were inherently sexually deviant. The NWP
government concluded in 1861 that ‘Hijrahs, or eunuchs … earn a liveli-
hood by the habitual and unconcealed practice of prostituting their
persons’.51 The provincial administration would later propose to police
‘eunuchs, who are reasonably suspected of … habitually committing
offences punishable under Section 377’.52 In 1884, a Hijra named
Khairati was tried under section 377 of the IPC on the premise that she
was a ‘habitual sodomite’. The prosecution was unsuccessful because
there was no evidence of ‘penetration’, but the case starkly revealed the
colonial view of the inherent sexual character of Hijras.53 The idea that
Hijras were ‘habitual sodomites’ partly drew upon nineteenth-century
ideas of habitual criminality which were evident in both Britain and its
colonies.54 However, this also reflected a longer transition in European
understandings of sex, from the criminalisation and denunciation of
‘sinful’ acts (such as sodomy, buggery, bestiality and so on) to the patho-
logisation of sexual types of person (for instance, the ‘sodomite’ and from
the 1890s, the ‘homosexual’). When this shift occurred has been exten-
sively debated, with various dates between the eighteenth and early
twentieth centuries suggested.55 Nevertheless, it is clear that in Britain a
gradual shift was occurring towards the idea of sexual desire as integral to
the interior self and toward the classification of sexual types.56 The
criminalisation of Hijras as ‘habitual sodomites’ was a part of these
broader transitions.
The colonial anxiety about Hijra prostitution was also closely related to
projects to prevent the spread of venereal disease through the policing of
female prostitutes. From the late 1850s, Britain and several of its colonies
introduced contagious diseases legislation, beginning with Hong Kong in
1857, Britain in 1864 and India in 1864 (the Cantonment Act) and 1868
50
UK National Archives, ‘Offences Against the Person Act 1861’, www.legislation.gov.uk/
ukpga/Vict/24 25/100/section/62/enacted (accessed 28 June 2016); Cook, Culture of
Homosexuality, 42 3.
51
52
BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot, ‘Abstract’, 21 April 1871.
53
See the discussion in UPSA/L/J/C/61/456; Arondekar, For the Record, 67 96.
54
Tolen, ‘Colonizing and Transforming’, 106 125; Brown, Penal Power, 46 68, 126 59.
55
For an overview see H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, ‘Introduction’, in Palgrave
Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality, eds. H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, 1
18 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
56
Cook, Culture of Homosexuality, 4; Sinfield, Wilde Century, 3, 13, 121 5; Cook, ‘Law’, 66.
(the Contagious Diseases Act or CDA). These laws provided for the
compulsory registration, medical examination and confinement in Lock
Hospitals of women deemed to be prostitutes, but not their male clients.
The goal was not to suppress prostitution, but to regulate the spaces in
which prostitution could occur and to prevent venereal disease, especially
among British soldiers and sailors.57 However, the CDA was not merely
about British male sexual health. All forms of prostitution (female, male
and transgender) provoked anxieties about the presence of overt sexuality
in public space. In colonial contexts, officials were concerned with pros-
titution because it represented the sexual disorder of colonised people.58
In the case of female prostitution, sexual order was closely related to racial
order: police attempted to prevent Indian prostitutes with European
clients from having sex with non-European men, while negative attitudes
towards interracial sex encouraged European prostitution, but necessi-
tated the close policing of European prostitutes.59 Moreover, the possi-
bility of sodomy occurring among British soldiers and sailors, and the
resulting need to provide them with healthy female sexual partners, was a
strong undercurrent of attempts to prevent venereal disease by policing
female prostitution.60 Yet the possibility that British men might have sex
with Hijras was unspeakable and was certainly never mentioned in north
Indian official circles, even euphemistically. Hijra prostitution apparently
‘spread’ ‘unnatural crime’ throughout Indian society. Nevertheless, an
unspoken fear that British men might seek sex with Hijras likely underlay
colonial anxieties.61 Thus, colonial commentators viewed both Hijra
prostitution and female prostitution as problems of deviant male sexual-
ity. More broadly, Hijras’ sexual relationships with men appeared to
challenge the colonial sexual order that was based on reproductive,
monogamous, heterosexual conjugality and patrilineal succession.
Gender Disorder
Although the colonisers labelled Hijras ‘men’, Hijra gender expression
did not fit within a binary understanding of gender. The colonisers saw
Hijras as in-between in ways that were not only ambiguous, but also
deeply troubling. R. Drummond, a judicial official, found the appearance
of femininely-dressed Hijras revolting: ‘Nothing could be more sad or
57
Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics; Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class; Tambe, Codes of
Misconduct; Howell, ‘Race, Space’, 229 48.
58
Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 2. 59 Tambe, Codes of Misconduct, 33, 52 8.
60
Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, 10, 162; Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 257 96.
61
It was probably for this reason that Richard Burton’s ‘lost’ 1845 report on male and
‘eunuch’ prostitution was so controversial: Arondekar, For the Record, 27 66.
disgusting than the appearance of these wretches on trial. Some, both

prisoners and witnesses, were dressed as women, and attempted to con-
ceal their faces as women are in the habit of doing when in Court’.62
Underlining this sense of disgust was the confusion of binary gender by
so-called ‘men’ who dressed as women.
The perceived categorical messiness was amplified because British
observers differed on whether Hijras’ bodies were masculine or feminine
in appearance. Illustrations of Hijras that were created or commissioned
by Europeans usually portrayed Hijras using the same facial features that
the artists used for Indian women (see Figures 1 and 2). Moreover, the
judgement on Government v. Ali Buksh stated that ‘eunuchs’ not only
‘dressed as women’ but also ‘resemble[d]’ them ‘in shape’.63 In his 1870
medical jurisprudence manual, physician Norman Chevers provided a
lengthy description of the body of Bhoorah, the murdered Hijra in the
1852 case, to prove that ‘Hijrahs’ had feminine bodies:
The mutilation seemed to have taken place before puberty, for, excepting that the
breasts were underdeveloped, the body had all the appearance of that of a woman.
There was no indication of hair on the chin, although the deceased could not have
been less than twenty five or thirty years of age, while all the limbs were rounded
and soft, and the skin fine and delicate.64
As Chevers’ account suggests, depictions of Hijras as physically feminine

were often related to colonial anxieties about the bodily transformations
caused by castration, which like ‘cross-dressing’ appeared to blur gender/
sex categories.
Yet some colonial observers interpreted Hijras’ bodies as masculine
and viewed the combination of an apparently masculine body with fem-
inine dress as an absurd contrast. In the 1850s, Dr Wright reported that
‘natural-born Eunuchs’ or ‘Khojas’ were ‘effeminate in both appearance
and manner’, but the emasculated ‘Hegiras’ could be physically mascu-
line: ‘Their voices are sometimes of manly tone, and the growth of beard,
in some cases, continues’.65 In the early 1870s, another physician, John
Shortt, inverted Wright’s typology, writing that ‘Higras’ were ‘natural
eunuchs’, but similarly claimed that Hijras were ‘strong and muscular’
and ‘had plenty of hair about the face, chest, arms, pubis, and legs’.66
Colonial accounts of Hijra gender expression were thus marked by a
62
63
Government v. Ali Buksh, 1314 6.
64
Norman Chevers, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India, Including the Outline of a
History of Crime Against the Person in India (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1870), 497.
65
Ebden, ‘A Few Notes’, 522 3.
66
John Shortt, ‘The Kojahs of Southern India’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain and Ireland 2 (1873): 406 7.
concern with tangled and disorderly categories and perceived mismatches

between genitalia, bodily appearance and dress.
From the eighteenth century, binary understandings of gender had
consolidated and hardened in Britain. To be sure, eighteenth-century
Britons appreciated and celebrated certain forms of gender masquerade
without significant anxiety about ambiguous gender.67 Yet gender was
increasingly conceptualised as divided between two incommensurably
different and biologically constituted categories: male/masculine and
female/feminine. Several historians have suggested that this represented
a shift from an older ‘one-sex model’ – in which female anatomy was
viewed as an inverted version of male genitalia, so that male and female
were a difference of degree – to a ‘two-sex’ system.68 This more rigid
conceptualisation of binary gender/sex was underlined by the idea of
‘separate spheres’, in which the ‘domestic sphere’ was the domain of
women and a moral sanctuary that was demarcated from the ‘public
sphere’, the morally corrupting, masculine field of work, business and
politics. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the concept of
‘separate spheres’ was constitutive of middle-class identity. While actual
work and social patterns were more varied, the separate spheres ideal
reinforced a binary view of gender/sex difference.69 In this context, cross-
dressing was increasingly stigmatised in early nineteenth-century Britain,
especially male transvestism in the streets.70 The British concern with the
non-binary gender expression of Hijras echoed this metropolitan convic-
tion that ‘male’ cross-dressing was immoral.
The inability of the British to confine Hijras to the male category also
upset the colonial project of making the Indian population legible to the
state. In the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion, the colonial government
attempted wider-reaching schemes of enumeration, registration and cate-
gorisation. Much has been written about British attempts to classify caste
and religion into clear, comprehensible and useful categories. The British
67
Alison Oram, ‘Cross Dressing and Transgender’, in Palgrave Advances in the Modern
History of Sexuality, eds. H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, 261 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006).
68
For two contrasting accounts: Thomas Walter Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender
from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), especially 149 92;
Karen Harvey, ‘The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Eighteenth
Century’, The Historical Journal 45, no. 4 (2002): 899 916.
69
Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English
Middle Class, 1780 1850 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987); John Tosh,
Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Education,
2005), 27 50; Claudia Nelson, Family Ties in Victorian England (London: Praeger,
2007), chapter 1; Susie Steinbach, ‘Can We Still Use “Separate Spheres”? British
History 25 Years After Family Fortunes’, History Compass 10, no. 11 (2012): 826 37.
70
Oram, ‘Cross Dressing’, 261 6.
viewed Indian society as made up of many small communities, but these

were made sense of through a ‘reified and rigid’ distinction between
Hindu and Muslim, as well as taxonomies of castes which simplified
complex and regionally varied caste practices.71 In India, as in other
colonial settings, the tensions and confusions of these categories – their
inability to satisfactorily describe colonised societies – was a cause of
disquiet.72 Ambiguity in the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female’ was also a
source of anxiety. Gender was one of the primary categories on the
decennial censuses conducted from 1871 and there were, of course,
only two categories: male and female. Thus, colonial officials were forced
to explain why both ‘male’ and ‘female’ Hijras had been recorded in the
NWP census, when the government viewed Hijras as men.73 Orderly
populations were those that could be classified and thus rendered legible;
in contrast, ungovernable populations existed on the margins of cate-
gories. Non-binary gender expression thus undermined colonial attempts
to manage the Indian population.
To British colonial administrators, the gender disorder that Hijras
posed was closely interlinked with sexual disorder, since Hijras’ feminine
clothing was viewed as an indication or sign of their sexual practices.
From the middle of the nineteenth century, British doctors connected
Hijras’ feminine dress to their sexual practices and, by the 1870s, sug-
gested causal links between gender expression and sexuality. In the
1850s, several physicians writing in the Indian Annals of Medical Science
linked Hijras’ female clothing to their ‘disreputable and revolting prac-
tices’ and the ‘grossest immorality’. Dr J. C. Bow wrote that men who
were born without sexual function or desire began to associate with
Hijras, ‘adopted female apparel’, were ‘influenced’ by the ‘persuasion’
of Hijras and eventually began to participate in ‘immoral and unnatural
practices’, suggesting that feminine gender expression and sodomy were
interlinked.74 In his widely circulated 1870 Manual of Medical
Jurisprudence, Norman Chevers suggested that in the case of Hijras,
there was a causal relationship between sodomy, physical effeminacy
and cross-dressing. For Chevers, feminine dress was evidence of Hijras’
sexual nature: ‘almost all, if not all eunuchs, who have female attire …
habitually prostitute themselves unnaturally’. Chevers used case studies
of Hijras to prove that ‘prostitution of the body in Sodomy’ in youthhood
‘unquestionably’ caused ‘impotence’, an ‘effeminate’ voice and a ‘desire’
to rid oneself of physical masculinity.75
71
72
Stoler and Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony’.
73
Crooke, Tribes and Castes, vol. 2, 495. 74 Ebden, ‘A Few Notes’, 521 3.
75
Chevers, A Manual, 497.
British officials in north India also linked Hijras’ feminine dress to

‘immoral’ sexual practices. Some NWP administrators argued that the
visibility of femininely dressed Hijra performers in public directly resulted
in sex between Hijras and Indian men. The NWP government thus
envisaged the prohibition of Hijras from performing and wearing
women’s clothing as a measure to prevent the ‘spread’ of sodomy. The
logic behind government policy – as A. O. Hume, the Magistrate of
Etawah, put it – was that ‘[b]ecause the dancing in public of eunuchs in
female clothing afterwards leads to sodomy, therefore it should be
prohibited’.76 In 1874, Tyrwhitt, the Inspector-General of Police,
warned that ‘so long as these creatures are allowed to go about singing
and dancing in women’s clothes it [sodomy] will not be put a stop to’.77
According to British administrators, it was the visual display of Hijra
bodies and the spectacle of Hijras’ feminine dress that caused sodomy,
because Hijra ‘cross-dressing’ was merely advertising for sexual services.
L. H. Griffin, an Under-Secretary to the Punjab government, claimed in
1870 that Hijras ‘solicited’ by ‘wearing the garb of women in the streets[,]
… [on] the flat roofs of their houses or from balconies’.78 In 1884, Smith,
the NWP Inspector-General of Police, described feminine clothing as ‘the
appliances of their [Hijras’] unnatural habits’.79 These colonial officials
viewed Hijras’ gender expression as an advertisement for ‘unnatural’
prostitution, rather than a mark of innate sexuality as such.
Yet some British officials saw Hijras’ feminine embodiment as evi-
dence of an inherent sexual disposition. In 1873, the NWP government
established that the cross-dressing of a ‘eunuch’ demonstrated that they
‘habitually’ committed sodomy. Government policy thus explicitly sta-
ted that Hijras’ feminine dress was proof of ‘addiction’ to ‘unnatural’
sexual practices.80 In 1874, the district authorities in Azamgarh even
called for female clothing to be ‘sufficient grounds for enforcing the law
under Section 377’, the law against ‘unnatural’ sexual intercourse,
claiming that ‘cross-dressing’ indicated an innate disposition towards
sodomy in the case of Hijras. These proposals to prove sodomy through
dress did not eventuate but demonstrate the close connections between
sexual deviance and feminine gender expression that coalesced around
the figure of the Hijra/eunuch.81 British officials also saw Zanana cross-
dressing as an indication of perverse sexual desire. For instance, in
76
Italics added. Hume quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
77
BL/IOR/P/96: Tyrwhitt to NWP Secretary, 26 June 1874.
78
BL/IOR/P/147: Griffin to GI Secretary, 25 February 1870.
79
BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 26 June 1884.
80
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to Benares DC, 19 March 1873.
81
Quoted in BL/IOR/P/96: Tyrwhitt to NWP Secretary, 26 June 1874.
1866 W. A. Forbes, the Magistrate of Meerut, wrote that in the case of ‘a

perfect [that is, unemasculated] man, who for hire dresses and sings as a
woman … it is simply depravity, which induces them to assume the
disguise and occupation of the other sex’.82 In sum, cross-dressing and
sodomy were closely interlinked in colonial accounts of the Hijra, since
Hijras’ feminine appearance was either an advertisement for sexual
commerce which encouraged Indian men to commit sodomy, or an
indication of Hijras’ inherent sexual character. The Hijra became a
colonial sexual pathology, a culturally ‘peculiar’ type of effeminate
cross-dresser/sodomite.
Yet colonial administrators and ethnologists did not link all forms of
cross-dressing in Indian society to sexual ‘immorality’. In the 1860s, in
the context of the official debates about legislation to control the Hijra
community, several district officials in north India wrote that cross-dres-
sing in theatrical contexts was generally unproblematic. Probyn, the
Magistrate of Shahjahanpur, pointed out, ‘It is the commonest practice
… among the lower castes … to perform at nautches dressed up as women.
The poorer classes frequently cannot afford the luxury of female
dancers’.83 Moreover, there was significant debate and confusion about
the sexuality of ritual cross-dressers. For instance, British officials dis-
agreed over whether Sakhis, men who wore female clothing and adopted
feminine behaviours in the course of religious devotion, were ‘addicted’ to
sodomy.84 Meanwhile, in their commentary on Indian masculinity, the
British did not generally associate sex between men with effeminacy. The
writings of nineteenth-century British men in India often arranged differ-
ent Indian religious, regional and linguistic groups on a hierarchy of
masculinity, in which the ‘effeminate’ Bengalis were thought to be the
lowest in degree of manliness. Yet the British mainly associated sodomy
with apparently masculine groups such as Punjabis, who were increasingly
termed ‘martial tribes’ from the 1850s, rather than with so-called effemi-
nate Bengalis.85 Thus, the association between sodomy, cross-dressing
and effeminacy in colonial accounts was context-specific and shifting.
82
Italics in original. Forbes quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
83
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Roberts and Spankie, ‘Draft Act’, 24 March 1866; Hume quoted in
84
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Hobart to NWP IGP, 21 June 1876; BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to
NWP&O IGP, 15 May 1882.
85
J. Wilson Johnston, ‘Strictures on Sodomy’, Indian Medical Gazette (1 August 1866):
213. See also Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the
‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1995); Sikata Banerjee, Make Me a Man! Masculinity, Hinduism, and Nationalism
in India (Albany: State University of New York, 2005).
Similarly, in Britain, cross-dressing was not linked to sexual deviance in

all contexts in this period. An association of effeminacy with sodomy had
been apparent in some settings since the eighteenth century, in particular
in the context of the Molly houses, where lower middle-class effeminate
or cross-dressing men socialised with masculine male love interests. But
male effeminacy did not necessarily indicate a desire for sex with men in
eighteenth-century Britain. In fact, effeminacy was more commonly
associated with excessive emotionalism and romantic attachment to
women, not men.86 Although male cross-dressing in the streets met with
increasing social disapproval from the early nineteenth century, transvest-
ism continued to be primarily associated with theatricality, rather than
sexual deviance, and was incredibly popular in British music halls.87 Men
dressed in female attire were generally only associated with sodomy to the
extent that this ‘disguise’ was thought to facilitate sex with men.
Moreover, the term ‘sodomite’ did not immediately connote ‘gender
inversion’ or an inherent sexual nature, a ‘way of being’, for early nine-
teenth-century Britons.88
However, in late nineteenth-century Britain, male effeminacy and trans-
vestism was increasingly linked to same-sex desire. This is particularly
apparent in the trial for ‘conspiracy to commit sodomy’ of two men
named Fredrick (Fanny) Park and Ernest (Stella) Boulton who were
arrested in female clothing in London in 1870. The Boulton and Park
case received extensive coverage in the British press, as well as English-
language Indian newspapers, between 1870 and 1871.89 When Boulton
and Park first came before a judge in 1870, ‘the categories [of] cross-dresser
and sodomite collapsed into each other’, as the case exposed a large circle
of both working-class and middle-class men that cross-dressed and had
sexual and romantic relationships with men.90 At this historical moment,
the panic about Hijra cross-dressing ‘sodomites’ was also intensifying in
India. Though colonial officials did not explicitly connect the Hijra ‘pro-
blem’ to Boulton and Park’s scandalous trial, similar discourses shaped
both instances of anxiety about cross-dressing and same-sex desire.
Yet at this point in time, in the early 1870s, the association between
male–male sex and feminine gender expression was still uneven, in
Britain, as in India. In Boulton and Park’s 1871 trial, the Attorney-
86
Sinfield, Wilde Century, 13, 27, 30 1, 38 45. 87 Oram, ‘Cross Dressing’, 261 6.
88
Cocks, Nameless Offences, 90 1.
89
E.g., ‘The Extraordinary Charge of Personating Women’, Madras Mail, 18 June 1870, 3;
‘London, 8th July 1870’, The Pioneer, 1 August 1870, 3; ‘London, 11th May 1871’, The
Pioneer, 6 June 1871, 3.
90
Charles Upchurch, ‘Forgetting the Unthinkable: Cross Dressers and British Society in
the Case of the Queen vs. Boulton and Others’, Gender and History 12, no. 1 (2000): 140.
General and the British press avoided publicising the transgression of

gender norms by middle-class men and making links between cross-
dressing and sodomy, so as not to taint national honour, middle-class
morals and the harmless fun of theatrical and drawing room transvestism.
Though sodomy and transvestism were increasingly interlinked from the
1870s in Britain, Boulton and Park’s ‘impersonations [of women] were
not automatic evidence of an inner homosexuality in 1871’.91 Yet by the
beginning of the twentieth century, particularly in the wake of the scan-
dalous 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde, a ‘queer’ or ‘homosexual’ type had
emerged in Britain that was understood in terms of effeminacy, as well as
sexual desire for men.92 Even then, in the early 1900s British newspaper
reports on sex between men generally emphasised the acts committed;
there was not a straightforward association of sex between men with an
inner sexual disposition or gendered traits.93
The association between same-sex desire, male effeminacy and cross-
dressing was contingent and ambiguous in both India and Britain, high-
lighting the ‘highly uneven’ process of change in ideas about sexuality.94
Nevertheless, the figure of the effeminate homosexual was slowly emer-
ging around the 1870s in Britain.95 The criminalisation of Hijras as cross-
dressing ‘habitual sodomites’ – and the idea that their feminine gender
expression indicated an innate sexual character – thus developed simul-
taneously to these gradual shifts in Britain, highlighting that colonial and
metropolitan changes in sexual categories and norms were closely inter-
linked. Femininely dressed Hijras represented to the British both a threat
to the heterosexual, conjugal and patrilineal colonial sexual order and a
source of gender disorder, which confused binary gender categories and
undermined the colonial classification and management of population.
Hijra Visibility, Obscenity and Public Order

For colonial commentators, Hijras were also a danger to public order and
to ‘public decency and morals’.96 Many Britons viewed Hijras as a multi-
faceted ‘pollution’ of public space because of the community’s apparently
‘obscene’ performances, ‘rude’ talk, cross-dressing, ‘begging’ and
‘vagrancy’. One of the earliest European representations of Hijras, by
Balthazar Solvyns, demonstrates the multiple ways in which Hijras did
not conform to European expectations of appropriate public behaviour:
91
Oram, ‘Cross Dressing’, 268. 92 Sinfield, Wilde Century, 3, 121 5.
93
Cook, Culture of Homosexuality, 59. 94 Sinfield, Wilde Century, 13. 95 Ibid., 8 9.
96
Italics added. BL/IOR/P/438/62: Roberts and Spankie, ‘Draft Act’, 24 March 1866.
It is doing justice to this vile class of beings, to place them as I do here among the
commonest women, whose dress even they affect to adopt … Could it be believed,
that there is a country in the world which tolerates a set of men, whose whole life is
an outrage to morality and common decency, by the ostentatious display which
they continually make of the privation of the marks of their sex? … [T]hese
Hidgras … infest as vagabonds [in] the streets and bazaars, soliciting the charity
of the passengers … When they hear of the birth of a child in a family, they come
and sing at the door, for which they expect their pay: if it is refused they endeavour
to be revenged, and in a singular way; they climb to the roof of the house, and
make water upon it.97
Solvyns’ account demonstrates several aspects of Hijras’ public presence that

European commentators disparaged throughout the nineteenth century.
Since in the dominant colonial view, Hijras’ gender expression sig-
nalled their sexual practices, femininely dressed Hijras visually displayed
‘perverse’ sexuality in public space, upsetting public/private boundaries.
Colonial commentators also repeatedly opined that Hijras’ performances
were ‘obscene’. According to Spankie, Jaunpur’s Sessions Judge, ‘Their
songs are always obscene, as well as their actions’.98 Lindsay, the Sessions
Judge of Moradabad, likewise claimed that Hijras’ performances were ‘for
the most part of an obscene nature’.99 Colonial commentators rarely
elaborated on the actual content of Hijras’ music, speech and dance.
Nonetheless, Hijra performance was interpreted as overtly sexual in
large part because Hijras were thought to embody ‘unnatural’ sexuality.
The British in India also viewed Hijra ‘begging’ as a threat to public
order, although most colonial commentators were aware of the cultural
significance of Hijra badhai (alms-collection).100 Colonial ethnologist R.
V. Russell reported that ‘the hated Hijras’ were ‘beggars’ who sometimes
became ‘very importunate’ and besieged potential alms-givers with ‘inde-
cent clamour and gestures’.101 The physician John Shortt wrote, ‘They
are not only persistent but impudent beggars, rude and vulgar in the
extreme, singing filthy, obscene, and abusive songs to compel the bazaar-
men to give them something’.102 Colonial accounts often depicted Hijra
‘beggars’ as ‘unproductive’ people and as vagrants who loafed about
outside peoples’ houses and in markets.103 In 1882, Mirzapur’s District
97
Solvyns, Les Hindoos, plate IV.
98
Spankie quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
99
Lindsay quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
100
Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, vol. 3, 226 8; UPSA/A/COA/18/5: Holderness to NWP&O
IGP, 7 August 1896.
101
Russell, Tribes and Castes, 209. 102 Shortt, ‘The Kojahs’, 406.
103
Henry Waterfield, Memorandum on the Census of British India 1871 72 (London: Eyre
and Spottiswoode, 1875), 32, 58. See also ‘Occasional Notes’, Madras Mail, 31 March
1869, 3.
Superintendent of Police complained, ‘these men [Hijras] go in gangs of

five and six and sit (dhurna) at people’s houses until they get grain, pice,
&c.’, making ‘nuisances’ of themselves.104
British observers emphasised that Hijras not only spoke about the body in
explicit ways in the context of performance and alms-collection; castrated
Hijras also exposed their bodies in public space. According to the ethnolo-
gists Kirparam and Enthoven, ‘If any one fails to give them alms they abuse
him, and if abuse fails they strip themselves naked, a result which is greatly
dreaded as it is believed to bring dire calamity’.105 In contrast, Russell
suggested that the sight of Hijra bodies was desirable to Indian onlookers,
thereby painting Indian society as immoral: ‘Some of them make money by
allowing spectators to look at the mutilated part of their body’.106 Solvyns
also claimed that Hijras publicly displayed gross bodily functions by threa-
tening to urinate on the houses of people who refused to give badhai.107
Colonial commentators viewed the exposure of the Hijra body and its ‘base’
functions as a literal and symbolic defilement of public space.108 As Chapter
6 shows, Hijra ‘flashing’ had more complex social meanings.
The notion of visibility was central to the colonial concern with Hijras’
public presence. The provision of the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA)
that would subsequently police Hijras in public places demonstrates that
it was the visual spectacle of Hijras that engendered anxiety: section 26
prohibited ‘the intention of being seen from a public street or place’ while
performing or wearing women’s clothes.109 Hence, the simple capacity of
Hijras to be seen in public space was deeply problematic for the British.
Gayatri Reddy notes a similar discourse in contemporary India: ‘it is the
visible fear of moral contagion that constructs Hijra sexual stigma and
social marginality in the public domain’.110
Although Hijras lived in towns of varying sizes, the British viewed their
public presence as an issue of urban governance, which was an acute colonial
concern from the 1860s. In this period, the colonial government sought to
regulate many aspects of Indians’ conduct in urban spaces, from their use of
environmental resources to where they chose to defecate. These projects
rested on a notion of ‘public space’ that required that individuals act in
accordance with the ‘public good’ – defined as the protection of private and
104
BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 15 May 1882.
105
Kirparam, ‘Pavávás’, 506 8; Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, 228.
106
Russell, Tribes and Castes, 202. 107 Solvyns, Les Hindoos, plate IV.
108
Government v. Ali Buksh; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP Secretary, 9 August
1865.
109
Italics added. BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act XXVII of 1871.
110
Italics in original. Gayatri Reddy, ‘Geographies of Contagion: Hijras, Kothis, and the
Politics of Sexual Marginality in Hyderabad’, Anthropology and Medicine 12, no. 3
(2005): 259.
public property and the upholding of ‘public morals’ – in spaces

that were designated as ‘public’ and therefore (in theory) commonly
accessible.111 It was not until the 1860s that the colonial government
attempted to regulate Indian-dominated parts of cities, in addition to
European neighbourhoods.112 These urban projects appear to have begun
first in northern India, as the British attempted to reassert control over
‘rebellious’ cities following 1857.113 Intensified colonial programmes of
urban regulation also coincided with the establishment of municipalities,
through which elite Indians were able to collaborate with and appropriate
colonial projects. Late nineteenth-century efforts to govern Indian cities
particularly operated through sanitation programmes. There was increas-
ingly an emphasis on disciplining marginalised peoples’ ‘threatening bodies’,
which cemented the class segregation of cities.114 The focus on the Hijra
body in public space was interlinked with this broader trend of regulating
marginalised colonial subjects’ bodies through public health projects.
At the same time, the expansion of public nuisance laws from the 1860s
equipped the police with a malleable instrument to regulate peoples’
behaviour in public space. Public nuisance laws – including certain provi-
sions of the 1860 IPC, the 1861 Indian Police Act and various municipal
laws – could be used to a range of ends, including the protection of
property and manufacturing interests and the removal of the poor from
wealthy neighbourhoods.115 Indeed, colonial administrators often used
such laws to target Hijras. In 1865, R. Spankie, the Sessions Judge of
Jaunpur, argued that Hijras’ ‘appearance in a town in public, in female
apparel, and dancing and singing, considering their acknowledged pro-
fligacy and profession, would constitute them a public nuisance, and
bring them under Section 290 of the Penal Code’.116 This reflected one
111
Sandria B. Freitag, ‘Introduction’, South Asia 14, no. 1 (June 1991): 7 8; Sudipta
Kaviraj, ‘Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices about Space in
Calcutta’, Public Culture 10, no. 1 (1997): 98, 101; William J. Glover, ‘Constructing
Urban Space as “Public” in Colonial India: Some Notes from the Punjab’, Journal of
Punjab Studies 14, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 211 24.
112
Eric Lewis Beverly, ‘Colonial Urbanism in South Asian Cities’, Social History 36, no. 4
(2011): 486, 494 5.
113
Oldenburg, Colonial Lucknow, 27 55, 96 144.
114
For an overview see Beverly, ‘Colonial Urbanism’, 485 94. See also Legg, Spaces of
Colonialism; William J. Glover, Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a
Colonial City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007); Oldenburg, Colonial
Lucknow, 96 144; Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial
Governance and Public Culture in Bombay (Farnham, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007).
115
Michael Anderson, ‘Public Nuisance and Private Purpose: Policed Environments in
British India, 1860 1947’, SOAS School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series, no. 5
(2011): 1 33.
116
Italics added. Spankie and Lindsay quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20
April 1866.
of the main aims of public nuisance laws: to uphold colonial and elite
Indian notions of moral order. Hence, public nuisance provisions were
applied not only against things like the obstruction of public paths, but
also against gambling, drinking, ‘indecent’ exposure, begging and street
walking. Because public nuisance laws were so flexible, it was the most
common category of criminal conviction from the 1870s.117 The British
defined an array of Hijra socio-cultural practices as public nuisances,
including singing, dancing, ‘rude’ talk, begging, hanging around respect-
able houses, the exposure of the body and merely the ‘appearance’ (that
is, visibility) of Hijras in public. This was typical of the variety of public
acts which were defined as a harm to the ‘public interest’ from the 1860s,
as subaltern bodies became the target of new techniques of urban govern-
ance that sought to discipline moral and hygienic forms of deportment in
public space.
Interestingly, nineteenth-century visual images created or commis-
sioned by Britons only partly conform to this dominant textual discourse
of Hijra obscenity and public disorderliness. To be sure, a clear mode of
colonial visual representation developed during the nineteenth century,
in which Hijras were shown wearing feminine dress and jewellery with
persons, props or gestures that conveyed their occupation as performers.
In a gouache painting titled ‘Eunuchs dancing’ by an anonymous Patna
artist – which appears in an album of Indian trades and occupations that
the Governor-General Francis Rawdon-Hastings and his wife collected in
the 1820s – three Hijras in feminine clothing are pictured: the central
figure is clapping (a signature gesture of Hijras); the figure on the right is
pictured with a dholak (a small drum) slung over her shoulder; and the
figure on the left appears to be turning in the midst of dancing (Figure 2).
This image is typical of the ‘sublime’ and ‘picturesque’ visual repertoire of
European-commissioned ‘Company drawings’ by Indian artists, as is
evident in the relatively subdued colour scheme and attention to
ornament.118 Later photographic representations of Hijras also empha-
sise their occupation as entertainers, sometimes showing Hijras in the
midst of a (probably posed) performance. A photograph taken in Delhi by
a European commercial photographer around 1860 shows two Hijras,
one of whom appears to be dancing, while the other looks directly at the
camera. The Hijras are accompanied by three male musicians, two of
whom hold dholaks (Figure 3). However, from the 1860s, it was more
117
Anderson, ‘Public Nuisance and Private Purpose’, 1 33; Oldenburg, Colonial Lucknow,
72. On the contested notion of ‘public nuisance’: Glover, ‘Constructing Urban Space’,
215 21.
118
Mildred Archer, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period (London:
Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992), 11, 18 19, 84 5.
common to depict Hijras in static portraiture. This reflected a broader

transition in ethnographic photography from more varied modes of repre-
sentation to ‘studio views where physical type, dress, and deportment
were all identified as “typical” of a particular group’. Subjects were
separated from their usual work setting and their occupation or caste
status was often communicated through props,119 in the case of Hijras,
the dholak or majira/manjira (cymbals). An early 1860s photograph that
was a part of a larger collection of ‘native types’ from eastern Bengal,
shows a sari-clad Hijra or ‘reputed hermaphrodite’ pictured in a make-
shift studio with two musicians, one of whom carries a dholak, while the
other holds majiras (Figure 4).120 Indian principalities also sponsored
such ethnographic photography, drawing on colonial models. A photo-
graph that appeared in an 1891 ethnography commissioned by the
Marwar darbar (court) depicts two ‘Hinjra’: one holds a dholak and the
other’s hand is placed on her hip (see cover image).
Nineteenth-century visual representations of Hijras reproduce the pre-
vailing colonial narrative by emphasising their problematic public pre-
sence as performers. The framing of these images often emphasised the
obscenity and immorality of Hijras, either through accompanying text or
even a simple caption like ‘Eunuchs dancing’, which would have conjured
associations of the exotic, abnormal and immoral for European viewers.
However, these images are ambiguous in multiple ways. For instance,
Pinney has argued that in studio photographs of ‘types’, ‘those who
controlled the representations were exercising a domination’.121 Yet
photographed Hijras generally looked directly into the camera in a rather
assertive fashion and it is tempting to conclude that they were performing
for the photographer. Moreover, visual representations of Hijras only
partially fit into colonial narratives of Hijra obscenity. The reportedly
‘indecent’ gestures of Hijras and the exposure of their bodies do not
feature in paintings and photographs, while the depicted dances of
Hijras do not appear especially sexual or erotic. Although nude and
sexually explicit ethnographic images circulated in imperial anthropolo-
gical circles, Hijras’ ‘obscene’ acts and exposed bodies were apparently
beyond the bounds of acceptable visual representation.122 In part, this
reflected a broader disquiet about ‘eunuch’ bodies: hence, there is only
119
Christopher Pinney, ‘Classification and Fantasy in the Photographic Construction of
Caste and Tribe’, Visual Anthropology 3, no. 2 3 (1990): 264 70; Christopher Pinney,
Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1997), 17 71.
120
Since these two figures are partly turned away from the camera, it is difficult to discern
their dress.
121
Pinney, ‘Classification and Fantasy’, 267.
122
Sen, ‘Savage Bodies, Civilized Pleasures’.
one surviving European photograph of a nude ‘eunuch’ from this period

in China.123 Moreover, despite the colonial moral anxiety about Hijra
‘obscenity’, several of these images adhered to picturesque conventions
that endured even after photography, with its ideology of ‘realism’, came
to dominate colonial representations of India.124 A photograph like that
of the Delhi Hijras, which was not accompanied by moralising text, could
be interpreted in a variety of ways. In fact, few nineteenth-century
Europeans collected images of Hijras and those noted above are rare
examples. There was considerable ambivalence in visual depictions of
Hijras due to the colonial disquiet about the visibility of Hijras and their
bodies. After all, many colonial officials regarded the act of being a Hijra
and being visible in public space as itself a threat to public order.
Mobility and Criminality

Another spatial dimension of the ‘eunuch problem’ was the official con-
cern that Hijras rendered colonial political boundaries porous through
their travels. Colonial officials and ethnologists noted that Hijras went on
annual ‘begging tours’, during which they performed and collected dona-
tions, especially from houses with newborn children, and visited Hijras in
their discipleship lineage.125 These travels were seasonal or periodic and
were usually of short distance, in the countryside surrounding their town
or village. Nonetheless, the British labelled Hijras a ‘wandering’ people.
Several colonial censuses classified Hijras as a ‘wandering caste’ or a
‘mendicant and vagrant caste’.126 Such census classifications suggested
that mobile Hijras were ungovernable and were related to wider colonial
efforts to render peripatetic people ‘legible’ to the state. The colonisers
sought to distinguish economically useful circulations of people from
circulations that constituted a political or military threat. Mobile peoples
who moved across borders undermined the colonial conceptualisation of
state authority as a power evenly exercised across a territory and instead
revealed the porousness of political boundaries. Uncontrolled mobility
also undermined the security of commercial and military traffic, high-
lighted the patchiness of colonial law enforcement and undermined
efforts to tax colonial subjects. The colonial state thus attempted to
123
This was Matignon’s famous 1899 photograph ‘Un eunuque du Palais imperial de
Pékin’. Melissa S. Dale, ‘Understanding Emasculation: Western Medical Perspectives
on Chinese Eunuchs’, Social History of Medicine 23, no. 1 (2010): 42 51.
124
Pinney, ‘Classification and Fantasy’, 282 4.
125
BL/IOR/P/92: Tiernan to Gorakhpur DSIP, 26 May 1871; Enthoven, Tribes and
Castes, 228.
126
W. C. Plowden, Report on the Census of British India Taken on the 17th February 1881, vol.
1 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1883), 335.
make populations sedentary so that they could be counted, identified,

taxed and controlled.127 Peripatetic people – even periodically mobile
people like Hijras – posed a challenge to colonial concepts of the state as a
territorially bounded entity. Colonial officials argued that the ‘tours’ of
Hijras should be stopped. The NWP Inspector-General suggested that
one ‘object is to stop a system of circuit periodically made by the …
Gooroos, for exacting of money from the eunuchs, and by the eunuchs
to houses where marriages are being made, for the exaction of money’.128
The unknowability of Hijras’ movements was especially troubling to
colonial administrators. Officials speculated as to how far, how regularly
and for what purpose Hijras travelled and increasingly concluded that
Hijra mobility was an indication of Hijra criminality.129
In portraying Hijras as a wandering and therefore criminal community,
officials drew upon a long tradition of colonial knowledge which had
associated itinerant communities with criminality in India. From the
1770s, the Company viewed peripatetic groups as ungovernable and
criminal. A 1772 law targeted ‘dacoits’ (gangs who committed highway
robbery targeting travellers) and provided for the punishment of dacoits
through public execution, the fining of their entire village and the ensla-
vement of their family.130 From 1773, sanyasi and fakir religious ascetics –
whose movements incorporated pilgrimage with various trading and
military activities – could no longer carry arms unless they were
sedentary.131 In the 1790s, subsequent laws targeted ‘vagrants’.132
To the colonial state, mobile communities were especially proble-
matic. The British were particularly concerned with crime committed
by groups constituted by caste, religion and other social ties; that is,
with (apparently) culturally specific forms of crime. For Company
officials, ‘collective’ crime highlighted the decentralisation of state
power, because it involved an alternative authority figure such as a
127
Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify’, 151 98.
128
129
130
The enslavement of dacoits’ families was probably never implemented. Singha, A
Despotism of Law, 26 30; Kim A. Wagner, Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early
Nineteenth Century India (Houndmills, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 34 5.
131
Sinha, ‘Mobility, Control and Criminality’, 18. See also William R. Pinch, ‘The Slave
Guru: Masters, Commanders, and Disciples in Early Modern South Asia’, in The Guru
in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Jacob Copeman and Aya Ikegame,
65 6 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012).
132
John R. McLane, ‘Bengali Bandits, Police and Landlords after the Permanent
Settlement’, in Crime and Criminality in British India, ed. Anand A. Yang, 27 30, 32 3
(Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1985); Singha, A Despotism of Law, 32, 196
7; Tom Lloyd, ‘Thuggee, Marginality and the State Effect in Colonial India, Circa
1770 1840’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 45, no. 2 (2008): 208.
patron or gang leader.133 By the early 1800s, colonial law was bifur-
cated between an ‘overt’ legal system for ordinary/individual crime,
ostensibly based on the rule of law, and a ‘covert’ system premised
on the temporary need for measures outside the rule of law to deal
with ‘extraordinary’ or collective crime.134 In fact, these conflicting
elements represented a tension within colonial law.135 In the 1830s,
the legal framework for policing forms of crime associated with
mobile groups was significantly extended through the anti-‘thuggee’
campaigns. The Hindi term thag means ‘cheat’ or ‘swindler’, but the
colonisers came to understand ‘thugs’ as stranglers who murdered
travellers in a form of ritualised murder in honour of a Hindu god-
dess, usually Bhavani.136 The anti-thuggee campaign began in the
‘native states’ but was subsequently formalised in British territories
under an 1836 law that made membership of a ‘gang of Thugs’ itself a
crime under Company law.137
The association of peripatetic peoples with criminality ossified from the
1850s, as the police of the NWP and neighbouring Punjab sought to
control the ‘criminal tribes’. The communities that were labelled ‘crim-
inal tribes’ were generally low caste, untouchable or ‘tribal’ groups that
appeared to be marginal to settled agricultural society, either because they
were nomadic, or in the case of largely sedentary communities, because
they combined hunting and forest gathering with marginal forms of
cultivation.138 In some cases, the communities deemed ‘criminal tribes’
were ‘raider-protector’ groups, mobile bands of robbers that would pre-
vent crime within a ruler or landlord’s sphere of influence, while raiding
their patron’s rivals. Such ‘robber police’ challenged colonial police
reforms.139 Hence, a diverse cross-section of marginalised social groups
came to be understood through the ‘criminal tribe’ stereotype, which had
two main elements. First, the criminal tribes were characterised as ‘wan-
derers’, obscuring the nuances of different occupations and patterns of
mobility.140 Second, the criminal tribes were thought to be hereditarily
criminal. In a much-quoted formulation, the Commissioner of East Berar
133
Singha, A Despotism of Law, 1 4, 26 35, 168 172; Freitag, ‘Crime’, 230 3.
134
Freitag, ‘Crime’, 231. See also Lloyd, ‘Thuggee’, 206, 220.
135
Radhika Singha, ‘“Providential” Circumstances: The Thuggee Campaign of the 1830s
and Legal Innovation’, Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 1 (1993): 86.
136
Wagner, Thuggee, 100 66; Singha, A Despotism of Law, 179 93; Kim A. Wagner, ‘The
Deconstructed Stranglers: A Reassessment of Thuggee’, Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 4
(2004): 931 63.
137
Singha, A Despotism of Law, 213 7.
138
J. Wilson, Final Report of Revision of Settlement of Sirsa District 1879 83 (Calcutta:
Calcutta Central Press Company, 1884), 20, 110 11, 184; Nigam, ‘Disciplining and
Policing Part 2’, 257 87.
139
Piliavsky, ‘The Moghia Menace’, 751 61. 140 Yang, ‘Dangerous Castes’, 116.
defined the ‘criminal tribes’ as groups whose ‘ancestors were criminals

from time immemorials [sic] who are themselves destined by the usage of
caste to commit crime and whose dependents will be offenders against the
law’.141 This notion of heredity was not based on the biological inheri-
tance of criminality, but rather was underlined by colonial understand-
ings of caste as static, hierarchical and based on inherited occupations.142
Some historians have argued that the ‘criminal tribes’ were a colonial
invention.143 Yet the idea of ‘robber castes’ – socially marginalised groups
who were professional criminals with specialised, hereditarily transmitted
knowledge – is evident in a range of Indian literatures.144 British and
Indian ideas of crime came together in the criminal tribes stereotype.
From the late 1850s, the Punjab and NWP governments sought to con-
trol the ‘criminal tribes’ by compiling police registers, introducing ‘ticket
of leave’ systems to control mobility and, in some cases, establishing
agricultural settlements or ‘colonies’.145
Although the NWP government viewed Hijras and ‘criminal tribes’ as
distinct criminal collectives, from the mid 1860s, Hijras were increasingly
described through the criminal tribe stereotype. Partly, this was because
from 1866, the NWP government proposed to police both groups under a
single law, leading to the passage of the 1871 CTA, which contained two
parts, one for ‘criminal tribes’ and one for ‘eunuchs’.146 More broadly,
the association of Hijras with the criminal tribes was due to the colonial
description of both as ‘wandering’ criminals. In the late 1860s and early
1870s, the handful of articles that mentioned ‘eunuchs’ in Allahabad’s
The Pioneer generally referred to them alongside the criminal tribes,
reinforcing the association of Hijras with ‘wandering’ criminal groups.147
Colonial officials even occasionally referred to Hijras as ‘members of [the]
criminal tribes’.148
141
NAI/HD/JB 10/09/1870 9: Nembhard to 1st Assistant Resident, Hyderabad, 2 May
1870.
142
Radhakrishna, Dishonoured by History, 34 5; Tolen, ‘Colonizing and Transforming’,
107 9.
143
Sanjay Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing the “Criminals by Birth”, Part 1: The Making
of a Colonial Stereotype The Criminal Tribes and Castes of North India’, Indian
Economic and Social History Review 27, no. 2 (June 1990): 131 64.
144
Anastasia Piliavsky, ‘The “Criminal Tribe” in India Before the British’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History 57, no. 2 (2015): 323 54. See also Gordon, ‘Bhils’, 139.
145
Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing Part 1’, 137 9; Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing
Part 2’, 260 6; Major, ‘State and Criminal Tribes’, 666.
146
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson to NWP NA, 30 May 1866; BL/IOR/P/92: Mayne, Note on
Tyrwhitt’s report, circa 1868.
147
‘Criminal Tribes and Professions’, The Pioneer, 21 October 1870, 2; ‘Criminal Tribes’,
The Pioneer, 22 October 1870, 3; The Pioneer, 31 August 1871, 1.
148
Colonial commentators related Hijra mobility to two particular forms

of crime. First, the seasonally peripatetic lifestyles of Hijras were appar-
ently a major cause of the geographical ‘spread’ of sodomy in Indian
society, particularly from urban centres to rural areas. R. Drummond,
the Commissioner of Allahabad, wrote in 1865:
The habits of Eunuchs lead them to travel about throughout the country … The
right of conducting their unnatural practices is … considered as property, and one
of the first measures perhaps which should be taken should be to check their
migratory habits, and thus prevent them from roaming about, spreading the
poison of vice throughout the country.149
Similarly, colonial commentators linked the mobility of criminal tribes-
women to their supposedly loose sexual morals – that is, their failure to adhere
to upper-caste marriage norms. However, this was because both itinerancy
and ‘immoral’ marriage practices indicated to the British that criminal tribes-
women were beyond ‘respectable’ society.150 Colonial accounts of Hijras
suggested something different: that their peripatetic lifestyles spread immoral
sexual practices to other segments of Indian society. This interlinkage
between ‘criminal’ mobility and sexual contagion reminds us that the
British viewed Hijras as disorderly in multifarious and intersecting ways.
Second, colonial administrators claimed that mobile Hijras were involved in
kidnapping and trafficking children. The Magistrate of Bulandshahr
remarked that ‘if the real truth was known it would probably be found that
during their absence from their homes they act as Agents for Kidnappers in
Native Independent States’.151 This emphasis on the princely states as the
source of kidnapped children heightened the anxiety about mobile Hijras and
the stability of political borders. Such accounts also resonated with a much
wider colonial concern with ‘kidnapping’ in the 1860s and 1870s.
Kidnapping and Emasculation

In the dominant colonial narrative, the Hijra initiate was a child victim of
kidnapping, sale and forced emasculation. Many colonial commentators
interpreted the discipleship hierarchies within Hijra communities as a
product of kidnapping and thus as coercive and criminal. To be sure,
some NWP administrators questioned whether all Hijras were kidnapped
as children,152 while colonial ethnologies generally did not portray
149
150
See the discussion of the settlement of Barwars in Gonda: BL/IOR/P/2909: August, A
Proceedings, no. 21 2.
151
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Willock to Meerut DC, 9 January 1873.
152
kidnapping as a means of Hijra initiation. Yet the authoritative official

account of Hijra origins began with abduction. When Hijras claimed that
they had entered the community in circumstances other than kidnapping,
the reply was often that of S. N. Martin, the Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar:
‘This I disbelieve – I think there is some system at work which we have not
found out yet’.153
The NWP government’s representation of kidnapping and castration
was largely derived from the handful of criminal cases involving Hijras
that came before the NWP courts in the 1860s. In Government v. Munsa
and four others, the 1860 case of the kidnapping, enslavement and emas-
culation of a nine-year-old named Guppo, the judges represented Hijra
kidnappers as a danger to Indian children and, more broadly, to respect-
able Indian domesticity. The Sessions Judge, E. C. Bayley, depicted
Hijras tearing apart a loving family: ‘here the youngest and favorite
child, of respectable Hindoo parents, is carried off forcibly, their dearest
affections and most cherished feelings violated to the utmost’.154 In the
following years, child saving rhetoric permeated British representations of
the Hijra community.155
Five criminal cases in Shahjahanpur district in 1864–5 – which
included the kidnapping, sale and castration of two children, as well as
three instances of adult castration – amplified Hijra criminality and con-
vinced the NWP government that Hijras were at the head of a criminal
network of kidnappers.156 Drummond, the Sessions Judge, stated that
the cases were ‘so mixed up, the one with the other’, as to suggest that a
criminal web had been uncovered in Shahjahanpur. The accused Hijras,
according to Drummond, ‘appear[ed] to have formed part of a gang who
all shared in the proceeds of the crime’ which was based at Fatehgarh, the
‘Head-Quarters of the Eunuch class’.157 The Inspector-General of Police
summed up the criminal system of kidnapping as such:
In the [Shahjahanpur] cases … it was shown that children are kidnapped and
purchased for emasculation; that there are professional emasculators; [and] that
after recovery they are again sold to others who habitually purchase and prostitute
them for purposes of sodomy. Engaged in this systematic crime there are, there
fore, the kidnappers or child stealers, sellers and buyers of male children for
emasculation [and] … the emasculators.158
153
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Martin, ‘Register of eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, 15 July 1865.
154
Government v. Munsa. See also BL/IOR/P/235/25: Morgan, Money and Gubbins,
Resolution, 22 April 1860.
155
E.g., BL/IOR/V/9/11: Stokes, Abstract of CCGI proceedings, 2 December 1870.
156
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond, ‘General remarks’, circa 1865. 157 Ibid.
158
Colonial officials obfuscated the question of whether Hijras themselves

kidnapped male children or rather procured kidnapped boys from others.
Regardless, the British increasingly represented the Hijra community as
the epicentre of a web of criminal personalities. In 1869, the Delhi Gazette
and the Madras Mail both mentioned ‘eunuchs’ as among those who
obtained kidnapped children from brokers ‘for their own professional
purposes’.159 In 1870, when J. F. Stephen implored the Council of the
Governor-General to pass an anti-eunuch law, he claimed that ‘an orga-
nized association of eunuchs … perpetuated their class by kidnapping and
castrating boys whom they either bought from the kidnappers or stole
themselves’.160 In fact, there were only sixty-one male-bodied children in
Hijra households in 1871, only one of whom was emasculated.161
The colonial stereotype of the Hijra kidnapper and castrator emerged in
the 1860s and 1870s, a period when there was considerable official discus-
sion about kidnapping. This late nineteenth-century kidnapping discourse
reflected a long-standing British concern with certain kinds of slave trading,
rather than slave holding. From the late eighteenth century, the Company
had distinguished between: first, ‘legitimate’ and ‘benign’ forms of slavery
based on men’s property rights over women and children within the house-
hold; and second, ‘illegitimate’ public commerce in slaves. Thus, while
slave holding was legal, regulations passed in 1811 and 1832 attempted to
restrict the slave trade. The Company also differentiated ‘legitimate’ trans-
fers in women and children, such as the payment of money for a bride, from
‘illegitimate’ transfers, such as the resale of a wife by her husband.162 Thus,
notions of domesticity and sexual morality influenced Company slavery
policy and abolitionist sentiment in important ways.
In the 1860s and 1870s – by which time slave holding had been
abolished under an 1843 law and the 1860 IPC – British officials tended
to regard slavery and kidnapping as distinct categories of crime, even
though they often overlapped. While the continued existence of slavery
in India was erased through the colonial rhetoric of ‘benign’ Indian
domestic servitude,163 many colonial officials decried ‘kidnapping’,
159
The Delhi Gazette article was mentioned in a subsequent Madras Mail article.
‘Kidnapping Children in India’, Madras Mail, 9 July 1869, 3.
160
BL/IOR/V/9/11: Stokes, Abstract of CCGI proceedings, 2 December 1870.
161
162
Singha, A Despotism of Law, 152 62. See also Andrea Major, ‘Enslaving Spaces:
Domestic Slavery and the Spatial, Ideological and Practical Limits of Colonial
Control in the Nineteenth Century Rajput and Maratha States’, Indian Economic and
Social History Review 46, no. 3 (2009): 323 9.
163
Indrani Chatterjee, ‘Abolition by Denial: The South Asian Example’, in Abolition and Its
Aftermath in the Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, ed. Gwyn Campbell, 150 68 (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2005).
which they associated with marginalised peoples and ‘criminal’ peripate-

tic groups. The concern with Hijra ‘kidnapping’ was symptomatic of this
broader discourse that connected kidnapping, mobility and criminality.
In 1839, William Sleeman claimed to have ‘discovered’ a new type of
‘thuggee’ called ‘Megpunnaism’, in which parents were murdered for
their children, who were then kidnapped and sold.164 In the late 1800s,
British officials closely associated the criminal tribes, fakirs and other
itinerant groups with the ‘kidnapping’ of children.165 For instance, in
1870 Clairmont Daniell, the Magistrate of Farrukhabad, informed the
NWP government,
There is a demand, undoubtedly, for both boys and girls which cannot be satisfied
by any legal disposal of their persons. For instance, eunuchs … frequently have
boys in their possession, who … in every case may be presumed to have been,
kidnapped. Fakirs and religious ascetics and mendicants bring up boys to their
own profession, who as often as not are kidnapped when young. The same is true
of Nutts, Kunjurs, travelling jugglers, and musicians; Beoparees and Bunjaras
have frequently been found with both boys and girls who they had kidnapped for
the purpose of sale.166
Nats, Kanjars, and Banjaras were all labelled ‘criminal tribes’ in the follow-
ing decades.167 In the 1860s and 1870s, then, various itinerant and semi-
peripatetic peoples fell under suspicion of kidnapping and were thereby
criminalised. Kidnapping engendered anxiety not only because it under-
mined colonial law, but also because it was associated with uncontrolled
mobility, which challenged centralised concepts of colonial authority.
In particular, kidnapping provoked colonial concern in contexts where
it involved the transfer of children to apparently ‘immoral’ situations such
as brothels or Hijra households. Colonial authorities in late nineteenth-
century India were primarily concerned with kidnapping for ‘immoral
purposes’ (or prostitution), rather than other, ‘legitimate’ forced transfers
in children. Likewise, in twentieth-century Hong Kong, Singapore and
Malaya, in the midst of controversy over mui tsais – girls who were forcibly
transferred to households to serve as domestic servants – colonial autho-
rities separated transfers of children for ‘legitimate’ domestic purposes
from ‘illegitimate’ purposes such as prostitution.168 Earlier in India,
164
W. H. Sleeman, A Report on the System of Megpunnaism … (Srirampur: Serampore Press,
1839).
165
NAI/FD/JB 11/1863 9 15: Hervey, ‘Extract, paras X and XXXIV’, 15 September 1863;
NAI/FD/PB 04/1869 224 31: Daly to GI Secretary, 31 March 1869.
166
BL/IOR/P/92: Daniell to Agra DC, 13 January 1870.
167
Robert Gabriel Varady, ‘North Indian Banjaras: Their Evolution as Transporters’,
South Asia 2, no. 1 2 (1979): 1 18.
168
Susan Pedersen, ‘The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: The Controversy
over “Child Slavery” in Hong Kong, 1917 1941’, Past & Present 171 (2001): 161 202;
officials like E. C. Bayley had argued that kidnapping for prostitution

needed to be stamped out, but the kidnapping of girls for forced marriage
was a ‘venial crime’ that was in the interests of the girl.169 The agency and
welfare of the kidnapped child was irrelevant, so long as they ended up in a
respectable domestic context. Hijras’ ostensible initiation of kidnapped
boys was thus problematic in large part because of the perceived immor-
ality of Hijras. The political disorder which kidnapping posed was closely
interlinked with sexual disorder.
The Sexual Corruption of Children

Like girls kidnapped for prostitution, male children in the ‘deviant’
domestic environment of the Hijra household were sexually corrupted,
exploited and trained to become ‘professional sodomites’, according to
colonial officials.170 The dominant colonial narrative thus portrayed the
figure of the Hijra/eunuch as not only a kidnapper and castrator, but also a
child abuser. This narrative of Hijras as a threat to Indian boys’ sexual
innocence was more prominent in official discourse than other types of
colonial accounts, like ethnography, reflecting the official panic
about Hijras in north India. NWP administrators often characterised
Hijra households as sexualised and deviant environments, as mere
brothels.171 Although an 1871 report concluded that only three per cent
of male children in Hijra households had been ‘prostituted’, nonetheless,
many British officials claimed that boys were kidnapped for ‘immoral
purposes’.172 In 1866, Court, the Inspector-General of Police, was
anxious that a ‘large number of children … are now living under the
most horrible prostitution, and are yet concealed from the Government
officials’.173 Five years later, the Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar denounced
the ‘systematic prostitution of boys for the purposes of unnatural vice’.174
Colonial officials did not claim that Hijras themselves sexually abused
young boys, but they argued that Hijras ‘taught’ boys to commit sodomy
and were the pimps of boy prostitutes.175 For NWP officials, the
Rachel Leow, ‘“Do You Own Non Chinese Mui Tsai?” Re examining Race and Female
Servitude in Malaya and Hong Kong, 1919 1939’, Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 6
(2012): 1736 63.
169
NAI/HD/PB 19/08/1870 12 9: Bayley, Memorandum, 2 July 1870; NAI/HD/PB 19/08/
1871 12 9: Elliot to GI Secretary, 18 July 1870; BL/IOR/P/92: Etah DM to Agra DC,
14 January 1870.
170
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Register, NWP NA, to NWP Secretary, 12 May 1865.
171
172
173
174
Muzaffarnagar DM quoted in BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot, ‘Abstract’, 21 April 1871.
175
supposed prostitution of children in the Hijra community spread sexual

contagion and represented a threat to the sexual order of British India.
Meanwhile, the rescue of sexualised children reiterated a moral ima-
gining of colonial authority. Thus, the need to ‘save’ boys from sexual
corruption at the hands of Hijras was a thread running through the official
discussions of Hijras from the 1860s. Drummond, who prosecuted the
Shajahanpur cases in 1864–5, argued that it was the duty of the colonial
government,
… to rescue unhappy children from a lifedom [sic] of crime and misery, for it is
notorious that the degraded class [of ‘eunuchs’] are neither more nor less than
professional sodomites … The injury to the children is irreparable, and there is too
much reason to fear that they have thus been consigned to a life of misery and
crime; and though perhaps rescued for a time, they will eventually join the
degraded class for which they were intended.176
Probyn, another Shahjahanpur official, feared ‘that the innocent victims
frequently become, in after years, themselves the propagators of crime in
its most vicious and unnatural form’.177 The following year, W. A.
Forbes, the Magistrate of Meerut, wrote that removing boys ‘from the
care of the eunuchs’ was ‘the only chance of saving them from a life of
infamy’.178
Around this time, an association between sodomy and the rape of
children was consolidating in legal contexts in India. Because the rape
provisions of the 1860 IPC applied to penal-vaginal sex only, the majority
of section 377 ‘unnatural’ intercourse cases involved non-consensual sex,
usually between an adult man and a female or male child.179 In the late
nineteenth century, as the British increasingly accused Hijras (labelled
‘habitual sodomites’) of forcibly prostituting male children, section 377
also gradually engendered close links between the categories of ‘sodo-
mite’ and ‘rapist’.
Discussions of the sexualisation of children in the Hijra community in
the 1860s and 1870s also occurred around the same time that child sexual
abuse emerged as a particular category of crime in Britain, illustrating the
broad simultaneity of metropolitan and colonial developments.180 In
modern Western Europe, the ideal of childhood positioned sexual desire
and sexual behaviour as antithetical to childhood, which was imagined as
176
177
178
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Forbes, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Meerut, 5 December 1865.
179
Bhaskaran, ‘Politics of Penetration’, 22 6; Narrain, ‘“That Despicable Specimen”’;
180
Louise A. Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England (London: Routledge, 2000),
1 3.
a period of innocence.181 Although Victorians did not use the term ‘child
sexual abuse’, they ‘had a clear concept of inappropriate sexual attention
that constituted abuse of power’.182 However, discussions of child sexual
abuse had different gender dynamics in India and in Britain.
In India, the sexualisation of boys was discussed in government and
legal circles, alongside the sexual abuse and prostitution of girls. In 1845,
Richard Burton’s notorious missing report into brothels in Karachi had
‘exposed’ to the colonial regime the existence of boy prostitutes in broth-
els frequented by British soldiers.183 Government discussions of sex
between Indian boys and men occurred in several contexts in the 1860s
and 1870s. For instance, colonial anxieties about sexual relations
between juvenile and adult prisoners, as well as between older and
younger boys in jails, prompted proposals to rebuild jails to provide
separate quarters for juveniles and was a factor that motivated the estab-
lishment of juvenile reformatories from 1876.184 In the Andaman Islands,
the Indian penal colony, various segregation practices were designed to
prevent sex among boys/youths and between boys and men.185
Meanwhile, as we have seen, the prostitution and sexualisation of
Indian boys was central to the ‘eunuch problem.’
In Britain, in contrast, legal, government and public discussions
focused almost exclusively on the girl child. Male children were largely
‘invisible’ in Victorian British discussions of child sexual abuse, despite
the police’s knowledge of the prostitution of male children and adoles-
cents. The gendering of child sexual abuse in Britain was a result of
Victorian anxieties about ‘fallen’ women, particularly within influential
social purity movements.186 In contrast, Britons in India often claimed
that Indian girls could not be ‘fallen’. British men viewed the premature
sexuality of Indian girls as entirely ‘natural’, since Indian girls apparently
reached puberty much earlier than Indian boys or European children.187
In the early 1870s, the Government of India dismissed proposals to
remove female children from brothels, in part because many colonial
officials thought that Indian girls were sexually mature from a young
181
Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval
to Modern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
182
Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse, 2 3. 183 Arondekar, For the Record, 27 66.
184
See correspondence in NAI/HD/JB 19/06/1869 14 5; NAI/HD/JB 24/07/1869 36 7;
NAI/HD/JB 11/10/1865 35 6; NAI/HD/JB 11/05/1870 59 60. See also Satadru Sen,
Colonial Childhoods: The Juvenile Periphery of India, 1850 1945 (London: Anthem Press,
2005), 69 70.
185
Manju Ludwig, ‘Murder in the Andamans: A Colonial Narrative of Sodomy, Jealousy
and Violence’, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (2013): http://samaj.revue
s.org/3633; Satadru Sen, Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the
Andaman Islands (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 206 7, 214 5.
186
Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse, 5. 187 Pande, ‘Coming of Age’, 208 9.
age.188 I also speculate that there was a different racialised dynamic of

speaking about deviant male sexuality in British India than in Britain,
which meant a more explicit discussion of sex between (Indian) men and
boys was possible.189 Though the colonial anxiety about boys in Hijra
households arose concurrently with the emergence of the concept of child
sexual abuse in late Victorian Britain – highlighting the circulation of
discourses of sexuality and childhood between metropole and colony –
gender and race shaped discussions in India and Britain in divergent
ways.
………
The British frequently used a language of dirt and disease to depict Hijras –
describing them as ‘filth’, ‘pollution’, ‘contamination’ and ‘contagion’ –
because Hijras were seen as a source of disorder and were thus described as
‘matter out of place’. Hijras’ reputed sexual practices challenged the colo-
nial sexual order, while their gender expression suggested an illegible,
unclassifiable incongruity between dress, bodies and genitalia. Hijras dis-
rupted colonial notions of ‘public order’ through their cultural practices,
embodiment and, simply, their visibility in public space. The Hijra com-
munity was understood as an itinerant group and uncontrolled Hijra
mobility signalled criminality to the British. Hijras were accused of kidnap-
ping male children whom they prostituted to Indian men, engendering a
child rescue discourse that shored up a moralised view of colonial power, as
well as decrying yet another form of sexual danger posed by Hijras. The
multiple ways in which Hijras were apparently ungovernable reveals the
colonial vision of a governable colonised population – a population which
would be visible to the state, sedentary, economically ‘productive’, and
adhere to heterosexual conjugality, patrilineal succession, binary gender
and a containment of sexuality in domestic space. For many colonial
commentators, the non-normative gender expression and intimate rela-
tionships of Hijras represented not only a moral threat, but also a political
danger, because of the ways that gender and sexuality shaped colonial
concepts of political authority.
The figure of the Hijra was a channel for various colonial anxieties and
concerns. I do not mean to imply that Hijras themselves were not a
colonial preoccupation. Rather, the ‘eunuch problem’ was viewed as
188
Jessica Hinchy, ‘Deviant Domesticities and Sexualised Childhoods: Female Prostitutes,
Eunuchs and the Limits of the State Child “Rescue” Mission in Colonial India’, in
Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific, eds. Hyaeweol Choi and
Margaret Jolly, 262 8 (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014).
189
Of course, sex between men was a feature of public discourse in Britain. Cocks, Nameless
Offences, 4.
having multiple dimensions, as being interconnected with various other

problems of governance, a multiplicity that served to heighten colonial
panic. Local or regional concerns – such as the ‘criminal tribes’ – as well as
wider imperial projects – for instance, the policing of female prostitution
under contagious disease legislation – shaped the Hijra stereotype.
Meanwhile, the colonial pathology of the Hijra as a cross-dressing ‘habi-
tual sodomite’ resonated with gradual shifts in metropolitan sexual dis-
courses in the late nineteenth century, which saw an increasing
association of sex between men with effeminacy and feminine gender
expression. The Hijra stereotype was a product of both the particular
preoccupations of the NWP government and trans-imperial and metro-
politan discussions of gender, sexuality and crime. As we will see in the
next chapter, the colonial Hijra stereotype also dovetailed with middle-
class Indian politics surrounding morality, gender and sexuality.
3 Hijras and Indian Middle-Class Morality
In the 1860s and 1870s, middle-class Indian men commented on

Hijras in the newspapers and political and social associations that prolif-
erated in north India in this period. These Indian representations of
Hijras resonated with the colonial stereotype of the Hijra in a number of
ways. For instance, middle-class men decried the kidnapping and castra-
tion of children by Hijras and represented Hijras as an immoral presence
in public space. In part, this was because middle-class Indians had rede-
fined their notions of intimacy, domesticity and gender in ways that
dovetailed with colonial discourses. At the same time, the representation
of Hijras in the north Indian public sphere was driven by changing class
dynamics in Indian society. By decrying the Hijra community, middle-
class men performed the new notions of respectability that defined their
identity in relation to other social groups. Because class politics animated
Indian intellectuals’ accounts of Hijras, there were some differences from
the dominant colonial narrative of the Hijra. Most notably, contemporary
debates about slavery in the north Indian public sphere shaped Indian
men’s accounts of Hijra initiation. While it is clear that the emerging
Indian middle class held increasingly disparaging views of Hijras, there
was not a moral panic about Hijras in north Indian society in the 1860s
and 1870s. North Indian newspapers did not feature widespread debate
about Hijras during this period. This conclusion is based on a survey of
the Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers (SVN), which the colonial
government compiled as part of its surveillance of the Indian press.1
1
The Selections included articles that the British viewed as important and was not a value
free survey of the Indian press. However, since ‘eunuchs’ were an official concern in the
1860s and 1870s, it is likely that the Selections provide a relatively full picture of the
discussion of Hijras. The Selections also include several newspapers for which entire
print runs do not survive. However, the Selections are in English and some articles were
merely summarised, while others were directly quoted. Thus, the term ‘eunuch’ is used
rather than Hijra or other Hindi/Urdu terms and some nuances of representation were
undoubtedly lost in translation. Government of India, Selections from the Vernacular
Newspapers Published in the Punjab, North Western Provinces, Oudh and the Central Provinces
(1868 75).
80
Hijras and Indian Middle Class Morality 81
The public discussion of Hijras was particularly limited compared to

several contemporary gender controversies which preoccupied north
Indians of various religious backgrounds and political outlooks, such as
issues of women’s education, prostitution, seclusion (pardah) and extra-
vagant wedding expenses.2 Because Hijras were not as closely linked to
the old elite as were female courtesan performers known as tawa’if – who
became an important foil for middle-class definitions of gender and
sexual norms – middle-class men’s concern with the Hijra community
was comparatively muted.
Pre-nineteenth-Century Elite Accounts

Despite a growing literature on same-sex love and transgender expres-
sion in South Asian history, no study has focused specifically on
pre-nineteenth-century accounts of people called ‘Hijras’.3 However,
we find some fragmented evidence of attitudes towards Hijras in studies
of gender and sexuality in Persian and Urdu texts. Sarkar’s research on
elite men’s Persian accounts of sex between men in the Delhi Sultanate
and the Mughal Empire mentions the moral denunciation of male-
bodied people who expressed femininity. Sarkar’s study does not refer
to Hijras, but rather to ‘mukhannas’, which he translates as ‘sodomite’
(specifically, the ‘passive partner’).4 However, earlier Arabic texts used
its equivalent ‘mukhannath’ to refer to men with ‘effeminate’ gender
presentation5 and Indian Persian sources portrayed some, though not
all, ‘mukhannas’ as wearing female clothing.6 Whether Hijras were
labelled ‘mukhannas’ in this earlier period is unclear, though nineteenth-
century ethnologies of Punjab and the North-Western Provinces
(NWP) list the term as a ‘synonym’ for Hijra, probably indicating that
elite Indian informants had described Hijras as mukhannas.7 In medieval
Persian chronicles and histories, relationships between elite men
(including rulers) and mukhannas were seen as a ‘violation of the orga-
nisational poles of Islamic probity – religion and blasphemy, public and
private, masculine and feminine, heterosexuality and homosexuality’.
2
Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Ruby Lal, Coming of Age in Nineteenth
Century India: The Girl Child and the Art of Playfulness (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013); Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the
Hindu Public in Colonial India (New York: Palgrave, 2002).
3
Notably Vanita and Kidwai, Same Sex Love. 4 Sarkar, ‘Forbidden Privileges’, 21 62.
5
Everett K. Rowson, ‘The Effeminates of Early Medina’, Journal of the American Oriental
Society 111, no. 4 (1991): 671 93.
6
Sarkar, ‘Forbidden Privileges’, 37 8.
7
Rose, Glossary, 331; Crooke, Tribes and Castes, vol. 1, 495.
These contemptuous elite accounts attempted to contain diverse sexual

and gendered practices that did not fit within official articulations of
masculinity. There were a range of social settings – such as poetry
assemblies and coffee-houses – where elite men expressed lust for
Khwajasarais (eunuch-slaves) and lower-status ‘beardless’ boys/men.8
Yet it is likely that, viewing Hijras through the same lens as mukhannas,
elite men disparaged Hijras’ gender embodiment.
Urdu poetry from the 1700s and early 1800s contains ambiguous,
though generally negative, views of Hijras. Ruth Vanita’s study of rekhta
and rekhti poetry9 provides a few examples of the use of ‘Hijra’ as a slur to
insult a man for his inadequate masculinity. Poets also associated
Hijras with promiscuity. Sa‘adat Yar Khan Rangin (1757–1835) criti-
cised a Hijra named Anandi who promised to give up her ‘bad habits’
(that is, her sexual practices) but did not keep her promise. Possibly, the
Hijra would have been acceptable to Rangin if she had refrained from ‘bad
habits’, though this interpretation is countered by Rangin’s disparaging
question, ‘Was a son ever born to a Hijra?’ Nevertheless, there is a note of
ambiguity in other poetic references to Hijras. For instance, in another
work, Rangin describes a flirtatious exchange with a poet called Begham.
Begham is described as feminine, but her/his biological sex is unclear and
she/he is probably intended to be a male poet taking on a female persona.
In the middle of this bawdy interaction, Begham admonishes Rangin by
calling him a Hijra: ‘Give up this Hijrapan [Hijra-ness] and take on
manliness [mardi]’. Rangin rebukes Begham for calling him a Hijra, but
as he does so, he ambiguously refers to himself through both feminine and
masculine verb conjugation.10 On the one hand, calling a man a Hijra was
a common insult, but on the other hand, Urdu poetry (especially rekhta
and rekhti) involved play of various kinds, including gender play and
gender-crossing.11 In the burgeoning Hindi and Urdu newspapers of
the late nineteenth century, Indian men would condemn Hijras in much
stronger terms.
Middle-Class Politics
In the early modern period, the cosmopolitan Indian public of state
officials, intellectuals, aristocracy and religious communities had
8
‘Boy’ did not simply refer to age. Sarkar, ‘Forbidden Privileges’, 27 36.
9
In rekhta the speaker is male and in rekhti female, though rekhti was written by male poets.
10
Vanita translates ‘Hijrapan’ as ‘eunuchism’, but I feel Hijra ness is a better translation, so
I have adapted her translation. Ruth Vanita, Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry
in India, 1780 1870 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 187 8, 225, 247 9.
11
Ibid., 17 8, 177 8, 224, 233 4.
communicated through wide-reaching information networks, hand-

written media and debating and poetry assemblies. By the early 1800s,
some intellectual elites began to engage with the new printed media and
forms of political organisation associated with the European community,
adapting their intellectual culture in the process. By the 1850s, there were
numerous Urdu, and to a lesser extent Hindi, newspapers in the NWP.12
Those who partook in late nineteenth-century public debate were almost
all men and were members of the Indian middle class, which was emer-
ging as a socially and politically powerful group in this period.
The ‘middle class’ was defined as much through cultural practices and
political projects, particularly participation in the press and new forms of
social and political association, as by markers of income and occupation.
Nevertheless, men who defined themselves as middle class generally came
from the ‘service communities’ comprised of upper-caste Hindus and
ashraf (high-born) Muslims who had been employed as the
munshis (writers) of powerful men, Indian states and the Company.
Between the 1820s and 1850s, men from service communities were
increasingly educated in the new Western-style educational institutions
and they were typically employed as government officials, lawyers, edu-
cators, publishers and journalists. In order to distinguish themselves from
the old elite – such as Indian rulers, the courtly nobility and prominent
rural landlords – middle-class men adapted and reinterpreted British
concepts of modernity. At the same time, they drew upon ideas of ‘tradi-
tion’ and older notions of proper social hierarchies to distinguish them-
selves from the lower orders of society.13 For instance, for Hindus and
Sikhs, high caste and middle-class status were closely intertwined and
quotidian caste practices were an important ingredient of class identity.14
Notions of respectability were central to the formation of the Indian
middle class. There were various dimensions to middle-class respectabil-
ity, such as temperance, thrift, productivity, education and ‘improving’
leisure activities – all of which defined the middle class in contrast to the
old elite. New constructs of gender and sexual morality were also pivotal
to the idea of respectability. A central preoccupation of middle-class men
was the ‘women’s question’: how, and to what extent, should Indian
12
Bayly and Joshi offer different accounts of the extent of continuity in Indian intellectual
culture: Bayly, Empire and Information, 180 3, 187 9, 199 207, 238 43; Sanjay Joshi,
Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 24 8, 31 3, 37 9.
13
Joshi, Fractured Modernity, 6 10, 21, 24 8, 43 7, 51, 53 6; Bayly, Empire and
Information, 229 38; Margrit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth
Century Delhi (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 241 68.
14
Anshu Malhotra, Gender, Caste and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial
Punjab (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 2 3, 33 45.
women be ‘reformed’ and ‘uplifted’? The middle-class feminine ideal was

a woman who was frugal and efficiently managed household expenses;
who observed proper social hierarchies; who was educated (appropriately
for a woman); who adhered to revived and reinvented patriarchal ideals
like stridharma (‘husband worship’) and pativrata (‘virtuous wife’); and
who upheld ‘tradition’.15 The articulation of middle-class respectability
thus required the close regulation of women’s behaviour and sexuality.
The late nineteenth century also saw a narrowing of the marriage prac-
tices deemed moral – in particular, a shift to dowry – since marriage
customs articulated middle-class (and high caste or ashraf) status.16
Though notions of tradition were deployed to define middle-class gender,
domesticity and conjugality, these were modern constructs of tradition,
shaped by the new historical context.
Conversely, middle-class men adapted Victorian gender and sexual
morality to marginalise the courtesans or tawa’if of north India.17
Tawa’if were literate and artistically skilled courtesans who functioned
as entertainers and experts in courtly etiquette, as well as providers of
sexual services.18 In Lucknow and other parts of north India, tawa’if
became the symbol of moral corruption and sexual immorality for the
middle class. This was because courtesans obviously affronted the mid-
dle-class wifely ideal and were also wealthy and autonomous women. But
the criticism of courtesans was also an attack on an important symbol of
the old order, since the tawa’if were closely associated with the aristocracy
and Indian rulers. Middle-class commentators labelled courtesans ‘pros-
titutes’, ignoring the complex internal hierarchies of the tawa’ifkhanas
(courtesan houses), the cultural refinement of the tawa’if entertainers and
their much higher status than randis (women who provided sexual ser-
vices only). Even before the passage of contagious diseases legislation in
India in 1864 and 1868, north Indian commentators called for measures
15
Joshi, Fractured Modernity, 68 79; Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes, 355 78. See also
Mytheli Sreenivas, ‘Conjugality and Capital: Gender, Families, and Property under
Colonial Law in India’, The Journal of Asian Studies 63, no. 4 (2004): 937 60;
Sreenivas, Wives, Widows, and Concubines; Judith E. Walsh, Domesticity in Colonial
India: What Women Learned when Men Gave Them Advice (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2004).
16
Malhotra, Gender, Caste and Religious Identities, 45 81.
17
Joshi, Fractured Modernity, 60. Similar debates occurred in south India about Devadasis,
professional performers who are often described as ‘temple women’, though ‘courtesan’
is a better term, given that they also performed in ‘salon’ and court contexts:
Davesh Soneji, Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
18
Veena Talwar Oldenburg, ‘Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of
Lucknow’, in Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia,
eds. Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash, 23 61 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991); Oldenburg, Colonial Lucknow, 131 42.
to control prostitutes. In sum, middle-class gender and sexual norms –

which combined Victorian morality and ambiguous notions of women’s
uplift with redefined notions of ‘tradition’ – were central to the self-
fashioning of the middle class.19
‘We are Shocked’: Middle-Class Accounts of Hijras

A number of middle-class men denounced the Hijra community, as a part
of their broader efforts to establish their respectability through calls for
the elimination of ‘immoral’ social practices. In the 1860s and 1870s,
there were a handful of articles that condemned Hijras in the north Indian
Urdu and Hindi press.20 A few middle-class men also wrote letters to the
colonial government on the need to control Hijras, though only three
survive for late nineteenth-century north India.21 Meanwhile, the Indian
Reform League debated the issue of ‘eunuchs’ in the context of its
discussion of the kidnapping of children in 1870, suggesting that other
middle-class socio-political associations may have also discussed the
Hijra community.22 However, Hijras were not as relevant to middle-
class political and cultural projects as courtesans, because Hijras did not
possess the social and economic power of tawa’ifs, or their close ties to
Indian princes and nobility.
The dominant depiction of Hijras in the north Indian public sphere was
as kidnappers and castrators, a discourse that overlapped in some respects
with the colonial stereotype of the Hijra kidnapper and castrator.
However, middle-class Indian commentators used the term ‘slavery’
more frequently in relation to the Hijra community than colonial writers.
As we have seen, British commentators tended to avoid the explicit term
‘slavery’ – since slavery was illegal under colonial law but considered
‘benign’ in its domestic forms – and instead condemned ‘kidnapping’ –
which they associated with marginalised groups and criminal collectives.
This difference in terminology and emphasis between colonial and mid-
dle-class Indian accounts was a consequence of the broader debates about
slavery in north Indian society at this time. For instance, educated Indian
Muslims debated the existence of slavery in the 1860s and 1870s, in the
19
Joshi, Fractured Modernity, 62 8; Oldenburg, Colonial Lucknow, 131 42; Oldenburg,
‘Lifestyle as Resistance’.
20
Most of the relevant articles I have found in the SVN were in Urdu, though this reflects
the predominance of Urdu in north Indian newspaper publishing in these years.
21
Murdan Ali Khan’s letter excerpted in ‘Nagpore’, The Pioneer, 27 June 1866, 4; NAI/HD/
JB 30/07/1870 53 4: Khan to Strachey, 14 April 1870; NAI/HD/JB 02/1890 110 112:
Rai to GGI, 1 November 1889.
22
‘Address of Lalla Badri Pershad to the Indian Reform League: On the Suppression of the
Sale and Purchase of Minors’, The Pioneer, 29 October 1870, 3.
context of a renewed debate over what was required of Muslims living

under non-Muslim rule. In their Urdu publications, Indian modernists
like Syed Ahmad Khan and his younger protégé Chiragh Ali argued on
the basis of Qur’anic exegesis that slavery was un-Islamic. Concubinage
particularly came in for criticism. Chiragh Ali, for instance, condemned
the trade in concubines and ‘catamites’ in princely states and argued,
contrary to a widespread interpretation, that the Qur’an did not condone
a man’s sexual relations with his female slaves. However, significant
sections of the ulama, particularly those associated with the Deoband
madrasa, condemned the modernist interpretation of religious texts on
slavery. Moreover, the modernists’ efforts to convince the Indian princes
to change their domestic practices required delicate and diplomatic
phrasing.23 Condemning slavery within the lower orders of society was
not as politically problematic. Thus, in north Indian newspapers, articles
that condemned the failures of Indian princes to prohibit slavery were
significantly outnumbered by articles on enslavement for brothel prosti-
tution and kidnapping by ‘nomadic’ groups like Kanjars.24
In the context of these debates about slavery in Indian society and the
NWP government’s anxiety about ‘eunuchs’, some middle-class Indian
men decried kidnapping and slavery within the Hijra community.
In 1866, Murdan Ali Khan wrote a letter to the NWP government that
was subsequently published in the English-language newspaper
The Pioneer. Khan argued that as a result of enslavement and kidnapping
by ‘eunuchs’, the ‘advancement of children and mankind is greatly
restricted’. The first point in Khan’s itemised list of the ‘crimes’ of the
‘wicked race’ of eunuchs was ‘Purchasing slaves to make them
eunuchs’.25 The Secretary of the Indian Reform League, Lalla Badri
Pershad, also claimed in an 1870 speech ‘On the Suppression of the
Sale and Purchase of Minors’ that 90% of ‘eunuchs’ (by which he
seems to have meant Hijras) had been ‘either kidnapped or bought’.26
Likewise, in August 1871, the Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq published a long essay by
Syed Ahmad Khan in which he decried the continued existence of slavery
in India: ‘We are shocked to hear from day to day of prostitutes receiving
23
Avril A. Powell, ‘Indian Muslim Modernists and the Issue of Slavery in Islam’, in Slavery
and South Asian History, eds. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton, 262 86
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
24
Criticism of the arrest of a prince for slave holding: Nur ul Absar, 15 June 1871, SVN,
309 11, in BL/IOR/L/R/5/48. On kidnapping for prostitution: Urdu Akhbar, 1 July 1871,
SVN, 347 8, in BL/IOR/L/R/5/48; Punjabi Akhbar, 23 April 1870, SVN, 168 9, in BL/
IOR/L/R/5/47; Rohilkhand Akhbar, 3 September 1870, SVN, 343 4, in BL/IOR/L/R/5/
47. On kidnapping by nomadic people: Karnamah, 21 November 1870, SVN, 452 3, in
BL/IOR/L/R/5/47.
25
‘Nagpore’, 2. 26 ‘Address of Lalla Badri Pershad’, 3.
new damsels, hermaphrodites new proselytes, and nawabs new eunuchs, and
cannot but heap the greatest censure on Government for suffering these
abuses to exist’. Khan thus linked slavery to sexual immorality by lumping
together prostitutes, court and harem eunuchs (Khwajasarais) and ‘her-
maphrodites’ (probably Hijras, given the reference to discipleship
lineages).27
Some middle-class commentators suggested that the ‘conversion’ or
‘inducement’ of adults was a major avenue into the Hijra community and
saw this as a problem demanding government attention. A writer in the
newspaper Urdu Delhi Gazette, for example, linked Hijras’ initiation of
adults to their mobility and opined that ‘these men should not be allowed
to rove at large in cities and towns, seeing that they always use their best
endeavours in inducing men to join their fraternity’.28 Nevertheless, the
focus in most middle-class Indian accounts was on the enslavement and
forcible initiation of children, not adults.
Several articles in north Indian newspapers also condemned the castration
or ‘mutilation’ of children in the 1860s and 1870s.29 Indian journalists and
commentators pointed to the failures of colonial law to prevent castration,
implicitly or explicitly criticising the government for a lack of action. In 1870,
one contributor to the Urdu Delhi Gazette wrote that in the mid 1860s, when
police had ordered Hijras to report to police stations in Farrukhabad, the
Hijras had merely provided information on their discipleship lineages and
‘dancing at fairs’ and mentioned nothing of the forcible castration of chil-
dren. In contrast, the writer continued, the records of the colonial courts
showed that Hijras were the perpetrators of ‘mutilation’. The author decried
the fact that scores of such cases never came to the attention of the govern-
ment and were never prosecuted.30 A correspondent for the Koh-i-Nur
reported in 1871 that a Brahman boy had been castrated in the 35th
Regiment of Mian Mir cantonment. The Selections reported that
‘The writer regrets to find that no notice should be taken of this abominable
crime in the cantonment, and thinks it not unlikely that it is for this very
reason that the cantonment was chosen as a fit place not only for depriving
the lad of his caste, but for making a eunuch of him’. Here, the colonial
discourse on castration was turned on its head: rather than the Indian
princely state being the source of new eunuchs, the colonial army canton-
ment is represented as a lawless space where boys are castrated.31
27
The term ‘hermaphrodite’ was used in English language translation in the SVN, but it is
not clear what Urdu word Khan used. Tahzib ul Akhlaq, 3 August 1871, SVN, 449 51,
in BL/IOR/L/R/5/48.
28
Urdu Delhi Gazette, 19 November 1870, SVN, 442, in BL/IOR/L/R/5/47.
29
‘Nagpore’, 2. 30 Urdu Delhi Gazette, 19 November 1870.
31
Koh i Nur, 9 September 1871, SVN, 542, in BL/IOR/L/R/5/48.
Although the kidnapping, enslavement and castration of children was

the dominant theme of the discussion of Hijras in north Indian news-
papers, Indian men did comment on other aspects of the Hijra commu-
nity, particularly in direct communications with the colonial government.
For instance, middle-class Indians increasingly viewed Hijras as an
obscene presence in public space. In his letter to the NWP government,
Murdan Ali Khan listed ‘dancing and singing’ as one of the four ‘crimes’
of eunuchs, though he did not elaborate on why performance constituted
a ‘crime’.32 In 1889, Mahtab Rai, a Delhi lawyer, wrote an English-
language letter to the Government of India to ‘expose’ the ‘extremely
obscene’ habits of castrated performers who dressed in women’s clothes,
which included ‘effeminate speech, deportment, and movements’, ‘very
obscene and filthy language’ and ‘immoral and indecent talk’, as well as
the ‘abominable’ crime of sodomy.33 In contrast, colonial records suggest
that Hijras’ performances were generally considered inoffensive in rural
and urban north India. In early 1871, the Magistrate of Farrukhabad
reported that to most, there was ‘nothing offensive in seeing an eunuch . . .
dancing or singing in public in female attire’.34 Of course, such accounts
reinforced colonial rhetoric about the immorality of Indian society.
Nevertheless, many north Indians probably viewed Hijras’ performances
as merely a part of the bawdy celebrations surrounding marriages, which
often involved gender-crossing, ribaldry and erotic jokes.35 In contrast,
middle-class commentators increasingly decried the ‘indecent displays of
dancing and singing’ at weddings, which were ‘[f]ashions introduced by
men of an immoral character for the sake of sexual gratification’.36
Meanwhile, north Indian newspapers condemned the ‘obstinate’ meth-
ods that mendicants of various kinds used to ‘extort’ money from shop-
keepers and called for a ‘strict prohibition’ against such ‘nuisances’.37
32
‘Nagpore’, 2.
33
Rai did not use ‘Hijra’, though he described discipleship, performance and gender
practices associated with the community. Instead, he termed these people ‘Naggal’
(nakkal: mimic, imitator or actor) and ‘Bhandelu’ (bhandela or bhand: itinerant actor or
comic), while specifying that they were castrates. NAI/HD/JB 02/1890 110 112: Rai to
GGI, 1 November 1889. See also NAI/HD/JB 30/07/1870 53 4: Khan to Strachey,
14 April 1870.
34
BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot, ‘Abstract’, 21 April 1871. See also UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Palmer to
Muzaffarnagar DSIP, 6 January 1873.
35
William Crooke, Religion and Folklore of Northern India (New Delhi: S. Chand & Co.,
1972 [1926]), 279 80.
36
Rohilkhand Literary Society’s Journal, December 1870, SVN, 117 120, in BL/IOR/L/R/
5/48.
37
Lawrence Gazette, 16 February 1872, SVN, 112 4, in BL/IOR/L/R/5/49. See also Oudh
Ukhbar, 23 February 1869, SVN, 100 1, in BL/IOR/L/R/5/46.
These middle-class attitudes towards ‘immoral’ wedding entertainments

and ‘begging’ obviously marginalised Hijras.
Middle-class concerns with Hijras’ ‘indecent’ and ‘immoral’ public
behaviour represent a shift during the nineteenth century in attitudes
towards popular culture, which middle-class commentators increasingly
censured as obscene, thereby marginalising cultural forms associated with
the lower orders.38 Meanwhile, in an analogous move, middle-class com-
mentators sought to distinguish themselves from the old elite by criticis-
ing the ‘sensuous’ and ‘debaucherous’ entertainments of the nobility and
princes. Middle-class men thus criticised various cultural forms in order
to construct their class identity.39 Indian men’s condemnations of Hijras’
performances and public presence are also evidence of the indigenous
appropriation of colonial concepts of public space. Early modern Indian
ideas of common space differed from colonial constructions.
To generalise, the modern European idea of public space is premised
upon universality of access to spaces defined as public, as well as a clear
division from ‘private’ domestic space. In contrast, early modern Indians
made a distinction between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. While the
‘inside’ was ‘viewed as familiar, safe, [and] under the control of those
involved’, the ‘outside’ contained strangers and was intrinsically
disorderly.40 In the nineteenth century, middle-class Indians reinter-
preted the notion of public space in light of pre-existing indigenous
ideas.41 Indian middle-class concerns with the public presence of
Hijras were related to a conception of public space with defined rules of
public conduct.
Though Indian middle-class accounts were underlined by a sense that
Hijras were immoral people, representations of Hijras’ sexual practices
were more common in middle-class men’s communications with govern-
ment than in their journalism. Knowledge of sex between men and
Hijras may not have been compatible with new notions of Indian middle-
class masculine respectability. For instance, in 1870, the Indian Reform
League considered ‘eunuchs’ in the context of a debate about the ensla-
vement of children, but the Secretary, Lalla Badri Pershad, stated that he
would not ‘dilate on his treatment of the loathsome subject of eunuchs’.
Pershad confined his comments to the proposal of measures to suppress
38
Sumanta Banerjee, ‘Bogey of the Bawdy: Changing Concepts of “Obscenity” in 19th
Century Bengali Culture’, Economic and Political Weekly 22, no. 29 (1987): 1199, 1202;
Charu Gupta, ‘“Dirty” Hindi Literature: Contests About Obscenity in Late Colonial
North India’, South Asia Research 20, no. 2 (2000): 98.
39
Joshi, Fractured Modernity, 45 9.
40
Freitag, ‘Introduction’, 7 8; Kaviraj, ‘Filth’, 98, 101.
41
Glover, ‘Constructing Urban Space’, 211 24; Glover, Making Lahore Modern.
eunuchs, rather than explaining why they were ‘loathsome’.42 Some

middle-class Indian men were more explicit in characterising Hijras as
sexual deviants. In 1866, Murdan Ali Khan’s brief report on ‘eunuchs’ for
the NWP administration decried the ‘unnatural offence so prevalent
amongst them’, using the language of colonial laws against ‘unnatural’
sex.43 Meanwhile, some elite Indians appear to have imbibed, and possi-
bly shaped, the association of Hijra ‘cross-dressing’ with sexual ‘perver-
sity’ in colonial accounts. In his 1870 letter to the Government of India,
Syed Ahmad Khan suggested that it was the sexual immorality of
Hijras that made their feminine dress problematic: performing in female
clothing was ‘an occupation which might be deemed excusable did
[Hijras] not eke it out by lending themselves to practices as abhorrent to
our feelings as they are unmentionable’ – by implication, sex with men.44
Nevertheless, middle-class commentary on the sexual immorality of
Hijras was more common in official contexts than in the newspapers.
Similarly, although there was discussion in the north Indian press of the
ostensible threat that Hijra castrators and kidnappers posed to Indian
boys, there was limited commentary on the sexualisation of such children.
One exception was lawyer Mahtab Rai’s 1889 English letter to the
Government of India, in which he outlined proposals for ‘preserving’
children from ‘a life of perpetual gross immorality, crime, and infamy’
at the hands of performing eunuchs.45 Mahtab Rai’s characterisation of
Hijras as a threat to children’s sexual morality dovetailed with late nine-
teenth-century shifts in ideas about childhood and sexuality among the
Indian middle class. As we saw above, while medieval Persianate chroni-
clers often denounced male-male sex, representations of ‘boys’ and
‘youths’ as objects of sexual desire were ‘a familiar part’ of north Indian
courtly culture. However, ‘boy’ had multiple meanings, sometimes
though not always referring to age.46 In the second half of the nineteenth
century, the influence of both colonial sexual morality and European
concepts of childhood produced moral anxiety about the sexual ‘corrup-
tion’ of boys in north Indian society. Elite Indian men increasingly con-
ceptualised childhood as a distinct and sexually innocent stage of life.47
Meanwhile, middle-class intellectuals purged homoerotic poetry from the
Urdu literary cannon in the decades after 1857. The furore over a 1927
42
‘Address of Lalla Badri Pershad’, 3. 43 ‘Nagpore’, 4.
44
NAI/HD/JB 30/07/1870 53 4: Khan to Strachey, 14 April 1870.
45
NAI/HD/JB 02/1890 110 112: Rai to GGI, 1 November 1889.
46
Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Kingdom, Household and Body: History, Gender and Imperial
Service under Akbar’, Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 5 (2007): 917 8; Ruby Lal,
Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (New Delhi: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 103, 115 6, 153 4; Vanita and Kidwai, Same Sex Love, 131, 134, 137 40.
47
On middle class concepts of childhood see Sen, Colonial Childhoods.
collection of stories about sex between men and youths by Pandey Bechan
Sharma ‘Ugra’ – and the book’s widespread censure as obscene, even
though it condemned male-male sex – suggest that by the 1920s, male
youths were no longer publicly representable as objects of male sexual
desire.48 Though there was not significant anxiety in the north Indian
public sphere about the sexual ‘corruption’ of boys in the Hijra commu-
nity, Mahtab Rai’s 1889 letter dovetailed with this broader unease about
homoerotic literary representations of youths.
... ... ...
North Indian middle-class men were not preoccupied with the existence
of the Hijra community in the late nineteenth century, a period when
gender issues like the ‘women’s question’, marriage practices and courte-
sans elicited heated debate. Nonetheless, Hijras offended the moralised
notions of respectability and new norms of gender, sexuality and domes-
ticity through which middle-class Indian men defined their social iden-
tities. When Hijras became an issue of government concern in the 1850s
and 1860s in north India, some educated Indians were quick to distance
themselves from the community and to censure Hijras as criminal and
immoral. The overlaps in middle-class Indian and colonial accounts of
the Hijra are striking. Indian journalists, lawyers and government officials
represented Hijras as kidnappers, slavers, castrators, an obscene public
presence and sexually immoral – that is, in quite similar terms to colonial
discourse. This was due to the appropriation of colonial morality by the
emerging Indian middle class, as well as north Indian class politics and
debates about social issues. Yet there were several differences of emphasis
and language between colonial and middle-class Indian accounts.
Educated Indians’ representations of Hijra initiation as a process of
enslavement were animated by contemporary discussions of slavery in
the north Indian public sphere. Consequently, middle-class men were
much more concerned with slavery and castration than other aspects of
the Hijra community.
Educated Indian men who wrote and spoke about Hijras supported
sweeping government action against the Hijra community. For some, the
answer lay in intensified police surveillance to ensure the prosecution of
Hijras’ crimes and the rescue of Indian children. In 1866, Murdan Ali
Khan advised the NWP government that a ‘list of them [‘eunuchs’]
should be prepared in every district’ and ‘[s]pies [should] be appointed
48
Vanita and Kidwai, Same Sex Love, 228; Charu Gupta, ‘(Im)possible Love and Sexual
Pleasure in Late Colonial North India’, Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 1 (2002): 198 202;
Pandey Bechan Sharma, Chocolate, and Other Writings on Male Male Desire, ed. and trans.
Ruth Vanita (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006 [1927]).
to enquire secretly and report their doings’.49 Khan proposed the use of
police registration in a period in which this was becoming a key tool of
colonial governance.50 Police surveillance, Khan suggested, would also
facilitate the saving of Indian children: ‘the children they have for evil
purposes’ should ‘be rescued and returned to their original owners and
guardians’. Khan further proposed that Hijras ‘be punished if found
trading [in children] in future and Political Agents [in Indian principa-
lities] be desired to aid in this matter’, thereby reinforcing the association
of the ‘native states’ (and the old elite) with castration, the slave trade and
the Hijra community.51
However, most Indian commentators suggested measures to spatially
separate Hijras from Indian society or British territories through means of
banishment and quarantine. For instance, Lalla Badri Pershad of the
Indian Reform League proposed that ‘a certain island or hill should be
selected where they may be inhabited, and all intercourse with towns or
cities intercepted’. Though Pershad felt that the government should
provide ‘eunuchs’ with some funds for their ‘support’, his aim was one
of passive extermination. If eunuchs were isolated, ‘there is every hope
that not a single eunuch will remain on the surface of the earth’.52
Likewise, Syed Ahmad Khan also advocated for the spatial separation
of ‘Hijrahs’ from the rest of society, in addition to their registration. He
proposed that ‘certain localities should be assigned [to] them, within
which they must reside during the remainder of their natural lives, not
going beyond the limits thereof’.53 In 1870, a contributor to the news-
paper Urdu Delhi Gazette argued that ‘the effectual remedy’ to the Hijra
problem would be for the colonial government to ‘banish all eunuchs
from British India’.54 By calling for the extreme method of isolating or
banishing Hijras, middle-class Indian men sought to clearly demarcate
class differences and to cleanse Indian society. However, rather than
spatially separating Hijras, the NWP government decided to render
Hijras extinct by means of physical and cultural elimination.
49
‘Nagpore’, 4.
50
Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify’, 151 98; Wilson, India Conquered, 302 4.
51
It is unclear whether Khan’s mention of children’s ‘owners’ refers to their parents/
relatives or to their ‘master’ (prior to Hijra initiation), though he certainly assumes that
the children were enslaved. ‘Nagpore’, 4.
52
Italics in original. ‘Address of Lalla Badri Pershad’, 3.
53
54
Urdu Delhi Gazette, 19 November 1870.
4 The ‘Gradual Extirpation’ of the Hijra
The British in India frequently amplified racial and cultural differences

between coloniser and colonised, while colonial governance was premised
on a ‘rule of colonial difference’, upon the maintenance of racial distinctions
and categories.1 However, in circumstances where the colonisers considered
the perceived alterity of colonised peoples as a problem, a threat to the
colonial order, this difference needed to be dealt with, either through assim-
ilation (to ‘respectable’ indigenous or European society), geographical
separation (such as quarantining) or elimination.2 In north India, the
British viewed Hijras as one such ‘problem population’. As we have seen,
many colonial officials considered Hijras a multifaceted threat of contagion
because they saw Hijras as a source of disorder, an ungovernable population.
But how was this ‘problem’ to be solved? Rather than assimilation to, or
separation from, society, Hijras were to be eliminated. From 1865, the
explicitly stated aim of the North-Western Provinces (NWP) government
was to bring about the ‘extinction’ or the ‘gradual extirpation’ of the Hijra
community.3 This project of elimination was formalised under Part II of the
1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) and had several dimensions, including: the
prevention of the physical ‘reproduction’ of Hijras through the enhanced
prosecution of castration; interference in Hijra discipleship and succession
practices; the removal of children from Hijra households; the reduction of
Hijras’ means of livelihood; and cultural elimination through the prohibition
of performance and female dress in public.
This was a somewhat unusual colonial project. As several histor-
ians have noted, the elimination of indigenous peoples (biologically
or culturally) underlined the project of settler colonialism, which was
1
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Elizabeth Kolsky, ‘Codification and the
Rule of Colonial Difference: Criminal Procedure in British India’, Law and History Review
23, no. 3 (2005): 631 83.
2
Aidan Forth, ‘Britain’s Archipelago of Camps: Labor and Detention in a Liberal Empire,
1871 1903’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 16, no. 3 (2015): 680.
3
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to all NWP DC, 9 June 1865; BL/IOR/P/840: Robertson to
NWP&O IGP, 3 April 1877.
93
premised upon the dispossession of indigenous people from their

lands. Non-settler colonies, such as India, did not generally seek to
eliminate indigenous people, instead exploiting their labour or taxing
the produce of their labour.4 Three factors account for why the British
in north India attempted to ‘extirpate’ Hijras. First, and most impor-
tantly, colonial administrators had no interest in harnessing the labour of
Hijras, whether towards economic, punitive or reformative ends. Even
though the British defined Hijras as ‘unproductive’ peoples, very few
officials suggested a programme of reform through work – a typical
strategy towards criminalised peoples at this time. This disinterest in
the potential value of Hijras’ labour was due to the colonial view that
Hijras were incapable of moral transformation or ‘hard labour’ due to the
nature of their bodies. A second reason for the project to eliminate
Hijras was that the British understood Hijras as a population that was
‘created’ through the bodily modification of emasculation, a perverse
form of biological reproduction. However, as some colonial officials
recognised, this misunderstood the process of becoming a Hijra through
initiation into a discipleship lineage. A third factor behind the scheme to
‘extirpate’ Hijras was the colonial vision of state power: the idea that
colonialism could cause the extinction of an immoral population encap-
sulated a view of the panoptic reach of the colonial state.
The anti-Hijra campaign could be termed genocidal, in that it aimed to
eventually bring about the complete elimination of the Hijra community.
To a large extent, the scholarly analysis of genocide still hinges on its defini-
tion under international law, specifically under the 1948 United Nations
convention.5 Yet this dominant legal definition of genocide does not cover
the full spectrum of elimination strategies applied against Hijras. Article II of
the 1948 convention arguably encompasses two aspects of the policing of
Hijras in the NWP: first, the prevention of castration and interference in
initiation (imposing ‘conditions of life calculated to bring about its [the
group’s] physical destruction in whole or in part’); and second, the removal
of children (‘[f]orcibly transferring children of the group to another
4
Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism’, 387 409; Patrick Wolfe, ‘Structure and Event: Settler
Colonialism, Time, and the Question of Genocide’, in Empire, Colony, Genocide:
Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses,
112 42 (Berghahn Books, 2008); Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’; A. Dirk Moses,
‘Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History’, in Genocide and Settler Society:
Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, ed. A. Dirk Moses,
3 48 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004); Veracini, ‘Colonialism and Genocides’;
Raymond Evans, ‘“Crime Without a Name”: Colonialism and the Case for
“Indigenocide”’, in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern
Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses, 143 57 (Berghahn Books, 2008); Evans
and Thorpe, ‘Indigenocide’.
5
Moses, ‘Genocide and Settler Society’, 19 25.
The ‘Gradual Extirpation’ of the Hijra 95
group’).6 However, the 1948 definition does not include techniques of

cultural elimination which were important in the anti-Hijra campaign.
This is symptomatic of a broader problem: the prioritisation of physical
destruction in international law has led to a classification of different
sub-types of genocide, such as ‘cultural genocide’ or ‘gendercide’,7
which can create an implicit comparison to the ‘real thing’ (physical
elimination). Thus, I find it more useful to analyse the anti-Hijra cam-
paign in terms of Patrick Wolfe’s concept of multifaceted ‘logics of
elimination’, rather than applying legal and scholarly definitions of gen-
ocide. The framework of ‘logics of elimination’ allows us to think about
multiple strategies of elimination and how they related to each other, as
well as why different strategies were deployed in different contexts.8

In the 1860s and early 1870s, there was considerable debate in NWP official
circles about how to deal with the ‘problem’ of Hijras, a debate which hinged
on two questions: first, were Hijras a criminal collective; and second, if so,
should they be assimilated into, spatially separated from, or eliminated from
Indian society? The issue of whether Hijras were an inherently criminal
community was an important one according to the logic of colonial law,
which rested on a distinction between individual crime – which could be
dealt with under the ‘ordinary’ criminal law – and collective crime – which
required additional policing and judicial measures and the criminalisation of
membership of the collective.9 The first calls for government action against
Hijras in the NWP in the early 1850s were based on the idea that
Hijras represented a criminal ‘system’.10 In 1861, the NWP administration
implored the central government that a ‘Special Law’ against ‘eunuchs’ was
necessary because of the ‘magnitude of the evil’, even though the 1860
Indian Penal Code (IPC) could be used to prosecute all of the crimes of
6
Registration under the CTA aimed to prevent castration. Whether the CTA could be
defined as ‘genocidal’ under the 1948 convention would depend on whether Hijras are
defined as ‘a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. United Nations, ‘Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’, https://treaties.un.org/doc/p
ublication/unts/volume%2078/volume 78 i 1021 english.pdf (accessed 28 March 2018).
7
On gendercide see: Adam Jones, ‘Gendercide and Genocide’, Journal of Genocide
Research 2, no. 2 (2000): 185 211; Øystein Gullvåg Holter, ‘A Theory of Gendercide’,
Journal of Genocide Research 4, no. 1 (2002): 11 38. These prominent conceptualisations
of gendercide are restrictive since physical destruction or killing is emphasised as well
as essentialist Jones, for instance, equates gender with sex difference.
8
Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism’, 402 3.
9
Singha, ‘“Providential” Circumstances’, 86; Freitag, ‘Crime’, 231.
10
which Hijras were accused.11 The IPC included specific sections prohibiting
castration, kidnapping, enslavement and ‘unnatural’ sexual intercourse.
NWP judges had also determined that the public nuisance provisions of
the Code could be applied against ‘houses of resort for eunuchs’ – that is,
Hijra households, which were regarded as brothels – as well as Hijras’ sing-
ing, dancing, feminine clothes and ‘actions’ – all of which were apparently
‘obscene’ and therefore a public nuisance.12 However, Court, the Inspector-
General of Police, argued that although ‘the law is sufficient for the criminal
acts committed by the community . . . legislation is necessary against the
entire body’.13 In 1865, R. Drummond, an official who had gained some
recognition as a Hijra expert, not only supported ‘special legislation’, but also
proposed a ‘special department’ modelled on the Thuggee and Dacoity
Department to ensure ‘uniform action’ against ‘eunuchs’ across different
British provinces and Indian principalities.14 The NWP government
rejected the idea of a Eunuch Department, but agreed that ‘special legisla-
tion’ was needed.15
Yet several British officials were unconvinced that Hijras required addi-
tional legislation and some also doubted whether Hijras were a criminal
community. In 1865, in response to the first draft of legislation targeting
‘eunuchs’, a number of administrators agreed with R. M. Edwards, the
Magistrate of Bareilly, that ‘no Bill is required, inasmuch as the provisions
of the Penal Code meet all that is necessary, and all that really can be obtained
by a special enactment’. Some British officials who opposed anti-Hijra
legislation saw the community as an ‘organized body’ that carried on an
‘abominable trade’ – that is, as a criminal collective – but thought that the
IPC was sufficient.16 Others questioned whether Hijras were so important
a ‘class of criminal’ that ‘direct interference’ was needed.17 However, in 1870,
when opinions were canvassed on another draft law targeting ‘eunuchs’, no
British official in the NWP argued against ‘special legislation’.18 Subsequent
official correspondence reveals that some lower-ranking British administra-
tors continued to doubt whether Hijras represented a criminal ‘system’, but
the tide of opinion in the province was against them.19
11
12
BL/IOR/P/235/33: Simson to NWP Secretary, 31 December 1860; Spankie quoted in
13
14
15
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to Allahabad DC, 11 September 1865.
16
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866. See also BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson
to NWP NA, 30 May 1866.
17
Italics in original. BL/IOR/P/438/62: Pearson, Minute, 28 March 1866.
18
BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot, ‘Abstract’, 21 April 1871.
19
E.g., UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short to Muzaffarnagar DM, 30 October 1872.
If the Hijra community was a criminal collective, how should it be sup-

pressed? One of the first suggestions proffered was the spatial separation of
Hijras by some means of banishment, quarantine or segregation. In 1852,
Unwin, the Sessions Judge who heard the case of Government v. Ali Buksh,
argued that ‘some penal enactment’ should be passed ‘which shall effectually
rid the Company’s dominions . . . of such pollutions’. Magistrates should
‘sweep’ or ‘clean’ their districts of ‘eunuchs’ and thus confine them to the
‘more congenial limits’ of the Indian principalities, especially in the case of
those ‘made in Native States’.20 Around this time, some British officials
made ad hoc efforts to banish Hijras to Indian-ruled states. For instance, in
the 1850s, an army doctor stationed in Rajasthan, Dr J. C. Bow, ‘forcibly
expelled’ from the Mewar Bhil Corps’ cantonments ‘all the Eunuchs and
their companions’ and noted with satisfaction that they later ‘lived at some
distance’, in the territories of the surrounding Rajput principalities.21 Rather
than banishment, some administrators suggested geographical separation
through confinement to an institution. In 1871, Daniel, Farrukhabad’s
Magistrate, argued that Hijras needed to be ‘collect[ed] together and seclud-
[ed] under proper supervision’ in a reformatory where they would ‘defray
almost all the expenses of their maintenance by learning and practicing useful
trades’. This ‘seclusion’ would effect Hijras’ ‘elimination from native society’
and ‘contribute nearly as much to the diminution of unnatural vice, as the
seclusion of Thugs in public reformatories has contributed to put down
thuggee’.22 As we saw in the previous chapter, some middle-class Indian
men also argued for the confinement of Hijras to ‘a certain island or hill’,23 or
alternatively, demanded that the government banish Hijras from British
territories.24
But the NWP government never seriously considered the possibility of
sequestering Hijras in an institution or the Indian-ruled states.
In contrast, in the late nineteenth century, colonial governments in
India and elsewhere sought to confine various problem populations that
were thought to be dangerous and potentially criminal – including in
India, the ‘criminal tribes’, famine victims and people suspected of plague
infection – to camps that were ‘instruments of collective detention that
operated outside normal judicial procedures’. Although these camps were
often based on ideologies of reform and the eventual integration of con-
fined people into society, Aidan Forth highlights that they were ‘instru-
ments of the modern “gardening state”’, which ‘embodied an
Enlightenment impulse to classify and rationalize large populations on
20
Government v. Ali Buksh. 21 Ebden, ‘A Few Notes’, 522.
22
Farrukhabad DM quoted in BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot, ‘Abstract’, 21 April 1871.
23
‘Address of Lalla Badri’, 3. 24 Urdu Delhi Gazette, 19 November 1870.
a macro scale, rooting out potential “weeds” in the name of order,

prosperity, and social purity’.25 The official obsession with ‘economy’
was a major reason that the NWP government did not seek to confine
Hijras to an institution. The NWP was also reluctant to establish large
numbers of ‘settlements’ for the criminal tribes during the 1870s and
1880s, due to the expense.26
Nor did the provincial government countenance any attempt to assimilate
Hijras into ‘respectable’ Indian society through ‘reform’. During the nine-
teenth century, British officials in India and other colonies viewed ‘produc-
tive’ and ‘industrious’ labour as the primary means through which ‘criminals’
could be rehabilitated and integrated into law-abiding society. In the penal
colonies to which Indian convicts were sent, such as the Straits Settlements,
colonial administrators saw ‘hard labour’ and ‘skilled labour’ as ways to
transform Indian transportees into an ‘industrious lot of men’.27 To be
sure, there was less emphasis on reformative labour in Indian prisons than
in overseas penal colonies.28 Yet from the 1850s, the Punjab and NWP
governments sought to sedentarise the ‘criminal tribes’ either through their
confinement to a ‘settlement’ or the restriction of their mobility to a given
area (the more common approach in the NWP), thereby compelling these
communities to earn their livelihood through ‘honest’ work like agriculture
and transforming them into a morally upright working poor.29 In particular,
the British viewed ‘productive’ labour as a means through which criminal
men could be transformed into respectable members of society. For women,
they were more likely to suggest marriage and domesticity as methods of
rehabilitation, even as women’s labour was exploited in penal colonies and
criminal tribe settlements.30
However, British officials did not propose labour as a means of reform-
ing Hijras, whom they considered incapable of assimilation into ‘respect-
able’ Indian society. Daniel was among a very small minority in
suggesting that Hijras should be taught ‘useful trades’. Yet he did not
see skilled labour as a means of assimilation, instead arguing for the
permanent quarantining of Hijras.31 Another judge from Farrukhabad
25
Forth, ‘Britain’s Archipelago of Camps’, 651 2, 659 66.
26
E.g., discussion in BL/IOR/P/2208: July, A Proceedings, no. 1 12.
27
F. J. Mouat, ‘On Prison Ethics and Prison Labour’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
54, no. 2 (1891): 213 62; John Frederick Adolphus McNair, Prisoners Their Own Warders
(London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1899).
28
Anderson, ‘Sepoys, Servants and Settlers’, 185 220, especially 198 9.
29
Nigam, ‘Disciplining and Policing Part 2’, 257 87; Major, ‘State and Criminal Tribes’,
657 88.
30
On women in jails and penal colonies: Anderson, ‘Gender, Subalternity and Silence’;
Vaidik, ‘Settling the Convict’; Sen, ‘Rationing Sex’; Sen, ‘The Female Jails’.
31
Farrukhabad DM quoted in BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot, ‘Abstract’, 21 April 1871.
argued that the government should place poorer Hijras in an ‘Asylum’

and ‘maintain them[,] until by dint of training to [a] certain trade they
would be able to earn an honest livelihood for themselves’, perhaps
implying that such productive Hijras could be integrated back into Indian
society.32 These Farrukhabad officials were alone in suggesting the voca-
tional training of Hijras or the extraction of their labour. Moreover, the
term ‘reform’ was only used in discussions of Hijras in relation to children
in Hijra households, whom some British officials thought could be ‘res-
cued’ from an immoral life with early intervention.33 In contrast, colonial
administrators regarded adult Hijra initiates as incapable of assimilation
into their vision of a moral Indian society.
In large part, this was because of the dominant colonial understanding of
Hijras’ bodies. Colonial officials generally regarded Hijras as physically
weak ‘men’ who were incapable of strenuous labour. Court, the NWP
Inspector-General of Police, reported in the mid 1860s that Hijras ‘are
quite as feeble and effeminate as women, if not more so, and physically
unable for hard work’.34 Providing Hijras with occupations that were
appropriate for women (according to colonial standards) would confuse
the British definition of Hijras as men, yet Hijras were apparently incapable
of reform through masculine forms of work. Moreover, colonial adminis-
trators viewed castration as a bodily modification that produced permanent
changes in the individual’s sexuality, gender, physical appearance and
morality.35 Castrated Hijras were not morally plastic and were thought to
be entirely incapable of moral improvement through any means. In fact, the
question of whether adult ‘eunuchs’ could be moulded into moral mem-
bers of society never came up in official discussions. However, debates
about the capacity of children in Hijra households to be ‘rescued’ from
immorality threw into sharp relief the British assumption that castrated
people, especially castrated adults, were incapable of moral reform.36
Colonial understandings of Hijra gender and sexuality precluded any
project of assimilation or reform aimed at producing self-disciplining sub-
jects. The historiography of ‘governmentality’ helps to clarify this. Foucault
argued that from the eighteenth century in Europe, the primary object of state
power shifted from the maintenance of sovereignty to the ‘problem of popu-
lation’. This form of power, ‘governmentality’, works through ‘disposing
things’, so that people are self-disciplined to live their lives in certain ways.
32
Officiating Judge of Farrukhabad, quoted in ibid.
33
E.g., BL/IOR/P/438/62: Williams to NWP Secretary, 20 November 1865.
34
35
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Probyn to Shahjahanpur SJ, 12 December 1864; BL/IOR/P/438/61:
Drummond, ‘General Remarks’, circa 1865.
36
Sovereignty did not altogether disappear as a form of power but intersected

with governmentality in the management of population.37 However, several
historians have argued that governmentality took a particular form in colonial
contexts. The imperative to impose and maintain colonial power meant that
‘sovereign’ forms of power were in tension with experiments with ‘modern’
techniques of managing populations. Due to the ‘rule of colonial difference’
the colonisers regarded colonised peoples as unable to govern themselves and
thus only rarely attempted to produce self-disciplining colonial subjects.38
The NWP government certainly did not aim to ‘dispose things’ so that
Hijras would become self-disciplined, assimilated members of ‘respectable’
Indian society. However, this had more to do with colonial understandings of
Hijras’ gender, sexuality and embodiment than race.
The Elimination of the Hijra

Rather than physically isolating or reforming Hijras, from 1865, the NWP
government aimed to create conditions in which Hijras would gradually ‘die
out’. This project was explicitly termed one of ‘gradual extinction’, or less
commonly, ‘extirpation’, ‘extermination’ or ‘extinguishment’. The first
articulations of this scheme suggested that with the prevention of castration,
Hijras would eventually disappear. This proposal was symptomatic of the
colonial view of castration as an ‘unnatural’ form of biological reproduction
through which ‘eunuchs’ were ‘made’ or ‘created’. Hence, British officials
sometimes characterised Hijras as a ‘race’, a term which in the late nine-
teenth-century British Empire primarily meant a biologically constituted
community.39 S. N. Martin, Muzaffarnagar’s Magistrate, described the
‘practice of making boys eunuchs’ through ‘emasculation’ as the means
through which ‘eunuchs . . . continue the race of eunuchs to after genera-
tions’. Martin saw this as a perverse type of reproduction and consequently
represented ‘eunuchs’ as an ‘unnatural race’.40 Interestingly, some Indian
commentators also called Hijras a race. In 1870, the Secretary of the Indian
Reform League hoped that ‘in a few years death will cut short their race, and
at least put an end to their name’.41 The idea that castration was the means of
37
Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, 91 102.
38
Prakash, ‘Colonial Genealogy of Society’, 88; Heath, Purifying Empire, 17; Janaki Nair,
‘Beyond Nationalism: Modernity, Governance and a New Urban History for India’,
Urban History 36, no. 2 (August 2009): 331; Legg, Spaces of Colonialism, 21 4.
39
Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory,
1880 1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 1997), 19 59. On biological ideas
of race and criminality: Anderson, Legible Bodies, 141 202.
40
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Martin to Meerut DC, 15 July 1865.
41
The address was printed in English, so it is unclear if he used the English ‘race’. ‘Address
of Lalla Badri Pershad’, 3.
Hijra reproduction abridged a much more complex process of initiation to

simply an act of bodily modification. While initiation rituals and submission
to a guru were necessary to become a Hijra, the evidence suggests that
emasculation was not a requirement of community membership in the nine-
teenth century.42 Similarly, in South Asia today, Hijra-hood ‘is an identity
acquired through various and repeated ritual and gender practices’, rather
than through castration.43
Nonetheless, the prevention of castration was at the centre of colonial
attempts to cause the extinction of Hijras. To be sure, castration was
already illegal under the 1860 Penal Code, but officials argued that extra
measures were needed to combat castration. In February 1865, the dis-
trict administrator R. Drummond argued that ‘until some measures are
taken to keep the class of Eunuchs under close supervision and to check
all attempts to add to their number’, the ‘fearful height’ of ‘unnatural
crime’ in the NWP ‘must remain unchecked’.44 R. Drummond’s propo-
sal was the first suggestion that all future increase in the population of
‘eunuchs’ should be prevented and it resonated with high-ranking NWP
officials. In June, the Lieutenant-Governor, Edmund Drummond (no
relation to R. Drummond), and his Secretary, R. Simson, framed the
anti-Hijra campaign as a project of ‘extinguishment’ or ‘extinction’.
On June 9, Simson wrote to the divisional Commissioners that in order
to put a stop to the ‘disgusting crime’ of the kidnapping and emasculation
of ‘youths’ for ‘professional sodomy . . . one of the first and most essential
measures . . . is . . . limiting and thus finally extinguishing the number of
Eunuchs’.45 On the same day, Simson also wrote to the Inspector-
General of Police detailing how this might be brought about:
It seems to His Honour [the Lieutenant Governor] that the first step to prevent an
increase in the number of Eunuchs, and thus gradually lead to their extinction, is to
have a Register carefully prepared in each district of all those now living in it . . .
The Village Police and Heads of Mohullas [urban neighbourhoods] will be
required to report every addition to their numbers, and, on receipt of this infor
mation, enquiry can at once be made as to the antecedents of the individual, and if
the case proves to be one of recent emasculation, the necessary steps can be taken
to punish the offending parties.46
From late 1865, district authorities drew up police registers of ‘eunuchs’.

The NWP government proposed registration as a technique to bring about
Hijra extinction in the broader context of a push to verify the identities and
42
See Chapter 6 for further discussion. 43 Hossain, ‘Beyond Emasculation’, 495.
44
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP NA, 24 February 1865.
45
Italics added. BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to all NWP DC, 9 June 1865.
46
Italics added. BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to NWP IGP, 9 June 1865.
activities of colonial subjects in the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion.47

The colonial government produced registers of the personal details of gov-
ernment servants, property transactions and, in some areas, births and
deaths.48 The British were especially keen to register criminalised popula-
tions, including the ‘criminal tribes’, ‘bad characters’ and prostitutes, among
others. As Singha has highlighted, registers were intended to mark out ‘the
potential range of police power’ and serve as ‘public rituals of its
demonstration’.49 In the anti-Hijra campaign, registration additionally
aimed to bring about the extinction of Hijras by identifying new initiates
(and preventing their castration), facilitating prosecutions for castration and
tracking the (hopefully declining) Hijra population.
Many divisional and district authorities supported this project of caus-
ing Hijras to die out. Several British officials pressed for the passage of
a new law that would make evasion of registration by ‘eunuchs’
a punishable offence. Even administrators who argued for relatively lim-
ited government interventions were among those who called for the
extinction of Hijras. C. R. Lindsay, the Sessions Judge of Moradabad,
was opposed to any ‘special legislation’ against Hijras, but argued that if
the registration of ‘eunuchs’ and the ‘working of the Penal code . . . [were]
carefully and rigorously carried into effect, . . . the measures so taken will
lead to the extinction of organized bodies of eunuchs’.50
However, many NWP administrators felt that in order to prevent
castration and cause Hijras to die out, male children would also need to
be removed from Hijra households. In late 1865, Court, the Inspector-
General of Police, argued that a law should be passed to ‘prohibit . . .
eunuchs from having the care or possession of any child under the age of
fourteen years’. Court’s proposal, which implied that children living with
Hijras should be removed, was based on the assumption that ‘male
children of very tender years’ in Hijra households were ‘most certainly
intended for emasculation’.51 In 1866, Robertson, the Commissioner of
Allahabad agreed that the introduction of a law prohibiting ‘the posses-
sion of an unregistered eunuch below a certain age . . . will prove success-
ful for the gradual extermination of the clan’.52 In fact, by 1866, several
children had already been separated from Hijra households by district
authorities.53 Since this was ‘not . . . strictly legal’ under existing law, an
47
Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify’, 151 98. 48 Wilson, India Conquered, 302 4.
49
Singha, ‘Settle, Mobilize, Verify’, 152, 155, 189. See also Radhika Singha, ‘Punished by
Surveillance: Policing “Dangerousness” in Colonial India, 1872 1918’, Modern Asian
Studies 49, no. 2 (2015): 241 69.
50
Lindsay quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
51
52
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Robertson to NWP Secretary, NWP, 27 June 1866.
53
E.g., UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Martin to Meerut DC, 15 July 1865.
1865 order that ‘all boys, not emasculated, found in charge of Eunuchs,
[were] to be taken away from those people, and placed in other guardian-
ship’ was ‘communicated demi-officially’ to district authorities, rather
than through an official ‘circular order’.54
This was one of several child removal projects that were attempted in
the British Empire in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the
Australian regions of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern
Territory, ad hoc nineteenth-century removals of Aboriginal children
were formalised into a state-led project at the beginning of the twentieth
century. Mixed-race or ‘half-caste’ children, especially girls, were forcibly
removed from their families so that they could be raised according to
‘white standards’ and (in the case of girls) could marry and procreate with
whites, eventually ‘breeding out the colour’. After World War II,
Australian child removal shifted to a project of cultural assimilation.55
In India, officials toyed with the idea of removing children from ‘criminal
tribe’ communities in the late nineteenth century, but it was only in 1911
that colonial authorities were invested with the power to separate children
from their families. This aimed to prevent the generational perpetuation
of hereditary criminality, which was conceptualised as a product of caste,
rather than in biological terms.56 The removal of children was thus
a technique of governance that was used to diverse ends, from causing
Hijras to ‘die out’ to combatting ‘hereditary’ criminality in India; from
‘breeding out’ Aboriginality to assimilation in Australia. In certain cir-
cumstances, including the anti-Hijra campaign, child removal was
a method to eliminate colonised populations.
However, some NWP officials realised that stopping castration would
not prevent the initiation of Hijras, even if it could theoretically lead to
castrated persons dying out. Eventually, the NWP government would
also intervene in Hijra succession practices in order to prevent initiation.
In August 1865, R. Drummond proposed that ‘some measures’ were
needed to ‘prevent Eunuchs [from] succeeding to property belonging to
the brotherhood’ – by which he meant the Hijra community – such as
54
BL/IOR/P/92: Carmichael to NWP Secretary, 29 August 1871.
55
Robert Manne, ‘Aboriginal Child Removal and the Question of Genocide, 1900 1940’,
in Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian
History, ed. A. Dirk Moses, 234 60 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004).
56
No detailed analysis of child removal under the CTA has yet been published.
Radhakrishna, Dishonoured by History, 130 1; Major, ‘State and Criminal Tribes’, 675.
Some Eurasian and impoverished European children were removed from their parents
and sent to a ‘Home’ in Kalimpong in the early 1900s. However, philanthropists and
officials had limited legal powers to effect removal without parental consent.
Satoshi Mituzani, The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and the ‘Domiciled Community’ in
British India, 1858 1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 137 79.
registering their property and prohibiting ‘future alienations by gift or

otherwise’. Drummond’s reasoning was that ‘[m]any of them are very
wealthy’ and the ‘temptation’ to inherit this wealth was ‘an inducement to
youths to consent to join this degraded class’.57 In fact, colonial records
evidenced that while some Hijras were comfortable, many were of humble
means.58 Nevertheless, Drummond recognised that not all Hijra initiates
were kidnapped and enslaved children, as the dominant colonial narrative
claimed. Some Hijras, including some ‘youths’, clearly chose to be
initiated. Drummond may have also realised that Hijra initiation could
not be reduced to the bodily modification of castration alone. The NWP
government replied that the existing law could not ‘prevent one Eunuch
from giving or bequeathing his property by will to another’.59 To resolve
this issue, the 1871 CTA provided the authorities with powers to interfere
in Hijra succession practices in order to prevent initiation and augment
the eradication of castration, so that Hijras would become extinct.60
The anti-Hijra campaign also involved a project of cultural elimination,
which sought to erase Hijras as a visible presence in public space and to
stigmatise Hijra cultural and gender practices. On 9 June 1865, in addi-
tion to proclaiming the project to ‘extinguish’ Hijras, the Lieutenant-
Governor also expressed his ‘strong’ support for the prosecution of
‘Eunuchs appearing in public in female attire and dancing for hire’.61
This resuscitated an earlier 1860 proposal from the Nizamat Adalat of ‘an
enactment, declaring that Hijrahs, appearing in public in female apparel,
or dancing for hire, shall be liable to prosecution as bad characters, or
punishable by fine and imprisonment’.62 Laws against ‘bad characters’
had a long history in British India, beginning with a 1793 law.63 Under
the 1861 Code of Criminal Procedure, Magistrates could demand ‘secur-
ity for good behaviour’ from any person who ‘by repute’ was ‘of notor-
iously bad livelihood’ and imprison those who did not furnish security for
up to three years.64 Bringing Hijras’ cultural practices within the ambit of
‘bad character’ legislation would serve two purposes, according to the
Nizamat Adalat. First, it was ‘loudly demanded by public morality and
decency’ and was a means to prevent ‘scandalous’ acts in public
space. Second, with the punishment of singing and dancing, ‘these con-
siderable sources of their [Hijras’] gain’ would be ‘cut off’ and ‘a severe
57
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP Secretary, 9 August 1865. 58 See Chapter 6.
59
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to Allahabad DC, 11 September 1865.
60
61
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to GI Secretary, 9 June 1865.
62
63
Singha, ‘Punished by Surveillance’, 242 4.
64
‘Act No. XXI of 1861’, http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/textofcentralacts/1861.pdf
(accessed 12 February 2018).
blow will be given [to] . . . the demoralizing system’.65 Because Hijra

performance was intimately intertwined with alms-collection, prohibiting
the former would have a negative impact upon the latter.
In 1865, the Nizamat Adalat sought opinions from British district and
divisional officials on the idea of demanding ‘security for good behaviour’
from Hijras who performed and wore women’s clothes in public. While NWP
administrators debated the proposed method of prohibition, they also articu-
lated several rationales for the criminalisation of these cultural practices.
First, some officials reiterated the argument that impoverishing Hijras by
reducing their incomes from performance would lead to their ‘gradual
suppression’.66 A few British administrators suggested that the pauperisation
of Hijras would be a means to reduce the Hijra population. According to
Sapte, who oversaw Agra Division, ‘The number of these individuals very far
exceeds what I had anticipated, and shows the urgent necessity of the most
stringent measures being adopted to put a stop to the loathsome source from
which these wretches gain their livelihood’.67 A second justification was that
Hijras’ performance and feminine dress was a cause of sodomy, either
because these acts ‘afterwards lead . . . to sodomy’, or because they were
advertising for Hijra ‘prostitution’.68 Third, many NWP administrators saw
the suppression of Hijra performance and gender embodiment as a necessary
move to combat ‘obscenity’ in public places. Even the mere ‘public appear-
ance’ of Hijras was considered ‘always obscene’: Hijras should thus be made
invisible in public space.69 More specifically, some British officials argued
that the colonial government’s aim should be to stigmatise and thereby
eliminate Hijras’ cultural practices. A judge from Jaunpur, R. Spankie,
wrote ‘The aim should be to fix a public stigma not only on the eunuchs
who display themselves in public in female clothes, and sing and dance for
hire, but also on those who employ them’. By punishing not only Hijras, but
also ‘any person having them to sing and dance in his own house or else-
where’, Hijra performance would be ‘checked’.70 Although officials articu-
lated several rationales for the prohibition of Hijra performance traditions
and gender expression, this was clearly part of the NWP’s broader scheme of
‘gradual extinction’ (and was even launched on the same day).
By impoverishing Hijras, NWP administrators hoped to reduce their num-
bers. Moreover, the prohibition of performance and feminine dress was an
65
66
BL/IOR/P/438/61: NWP NA Register to NWP Secretary, 12 May 1865.
67
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Sapte to NWP Secretary, 16 September 1865.
68
Lindsay and Hume quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866. See
also BL/IOR/P/147: Griffin to GI Secretary, 25 February 1870.
69
Lindsay and Spankie quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
70
Spankie quoted in ibid.
attempt to stamp out important Hijra cultural practices and eliminate the
Hijra community as a visible social group in public space.
Hence, the proposed anti-Hijra campaign incorporated several differ-
ent techniques of elimination. The physical reproduction of the Hijra
community (as it was understood by the colonial state) would be circum-
vented through the prevention of castration, the removal of children from
Hijra households and interference in initiation and succession practices.
In addition, Hijra cultural traditions (performance and by extension,
badhai) and gender embodiment (feminine dress) would also be stamped
out. The NWP government aimed to ‘extirpate’ Hijras’ physical existence,
as well as eliminate Hijras as a cultural entity. In fact, what we might term
the ‘biological’ and ‘cultural’ modes of elimination were overlapping and
intersecting. Colonial administrators framed proposed interventions into
Hijra practices of succession as a means to prevent growth in the ‘eunuch’
population, but this was also an attack on the cultural practices associated
with discipleship. The prohibition of performance would target Hijra
cultural traditions but was also intended as a way to undermine Hijras’
livelihoods and thus their material survival.
Eventually, this scheme of elimination would be passed into law. By the
end of the 1860s, there had been a five-year-long debate in NWP official
circles about how to solve the ‘eunuch problem’ and several years of police
registration of Hijras, but no ‘special legislation’ had been enacted.
However, in 1870, the Hijra community came to the attention of a newly
arrived English lawyer who was overseeing a renewed programme of legis-
lative reform in the Governor-General of India’s legislative Council. This
man, James Fitzjames Stephen, would spearhead the push for an anti-Hijra
law and would shape this law in accordance with his legal and political
ideology. Stephen argued that in both metropolitan and colonial contexts,
liberty could not exist except under a ‘powerful, well-organised, and intel-
ligent government’ that policed the ‘shared morality’. Rather than educa-
tion, Stephen claimed that the criminal law was ‘by the far the most
powerful and by far the roughest engine’ for effecting the moral transforma-
tion of society.71 Coercive state action had a ‘moral and rational purpose’ to
control the barbaric and perverse within society, which Stephen contended
was a necessary function of a civilised nation.72 Thus, in their colonies, the
British should not ‘shrink from enforcing’ Western ideas or from eradicat-
ing ‘barbaric’ customs.73 In 1872, on his return to Britain, Stephen would
71
Stephen quoted in Stefan Petrow, Policing Morals: The Metropolitan Police and the Home
Office, 1870 1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 10 11.
72
Gary Peatling, ‘Race and Empire in Nineteenth Century British Intellectual Life: James
Fitzjames Stephen, James Anthony Froude, Ireland, and India’, Eire Ireland 42, no. 1 2
(2007): 160.
73
Stephen quoted in ibid., 168 72.
articulate these ideas in his prominent critique of John Stuart Mill’s liberal
utilitarianism. Two years earlier, the anti-Hijra campaign had fit neatly
within his vision of the law as the enforcer of a common morality that
would lance deviant elements from society.
Stephen secured the backing of the Government of India for anti-Hijra
legislation, leading to the passage of Part II of the Criminal Tribes Act of
1871, a law Stephen himself drafted. But he failed to garner the support of
the other provinces. Aside from the NWP, only Punjab concurred that
a law targeting ‘eunuchs’ was necessary. Following the passage of Part II
of the CTA, Punjab drew up rules for its implementation in four cities,
but the law was never enforced.74 The CTA also applied to Oudh, yet
Part II of the law was only implemented in this province when it was
incorporated into the NWP in 1877. The ‘gradual extinction’ of the Hijra
community would remain a provincial project, localised in the NWP.
Partly for reasons of administrative convenience, Stephen and the NWP
government proposed that both ‘eunuchs’ and the ‘criminal tribes’ should
be policed under the same law. Like Hijras, the so-called criminal tribes
were largely a concern in the north, especially in the NWP and Punjab.
Moreover, the British viewed both Hijras and the criminal tribes as problem
populations and criminal collectives. However, Part I of the CTA, which
targeted criminal tribes, and Part II, which targeted eunuchs, had quite
different aims and, consequently, applied different policing techniques.
Part II of the CTA incorporated most of the strategies of elimination that
NWP officials had proposed in the previous five years. A ‘eunuch’ was
defined as including ‘all persons of the male sex who admit themselves, or
on medical inspection clearly appear, to be impotent’. This definition was
introduced in part, because many Hijras stated they were ‘born as eunuchs’,
rather than castrated.75 District authorities were empowered to draw up
a register of the ‘names and residences’ of those ‘eunuchs’ who were ‘reason-
ably suspected of kidnapping or castrating children’ or ‘committing offences’
under section 377 of the IPC, the law against ‘unnatural’ intercourse.76
The CTA thus criminalised the Hijra/eunuch as a kidnapper, castrator and
sodomite. Registration was a means of surveillance, but also a way to ensure
that castration was stamped out and the Hijra population was not ‘repro-
duced’. Also to this end, ‘any eunuch so registered who keeps in his charge . . .
or under his control’ a boy of sixteen or under could be punished with two
years of imprisonment and/or a fine. Moreover, Magistrates were
74
NAI/HD/JB 12/1872 72 3: Griffin to GI Secretary, 8 November 1872; BL/IOR/L/PJ/5/
82: Barron to Delhi DC, 22 August 1910.
75
BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act No. XXVII of 1871. Another motivation was the registration of
non castrated people like Zananas. See Chapter 7.
76
Registered people could appeal their registration to district authorities. BL/IOR/V/8/42:
Act. No. XXVII of 1871.
empowered to remove boys of sixteen or under from the houses of registered

‘eunuchs’ and ‘return’ them to their ‘parents or guardians’ or, if they could
not be found, to make arrangements ‘necessary for the maintenance and
education of such boy’. People registered as ‘eunuchs’ were also prohibited
from ‘being or acting as guardian to any minor’ or ‘adopting a son’, to aid in
the removal of children. Additional measures were introduced to intervene in
succession and inheritance. District authorities were empowered to compile
property registers of ‘eunuchs’ and to punish ‘eunuchs’ who concealed their
property.77 Registered people were also barred from making a gift or a will in
order to disallow the passing down of property between Hijra gurus and
chelas. These various measures targeting children, adoption and inheritance
were designed to prevent both initiation and castration, thereby reducing the
number of Hijras and bringing about their extinction. In addition, Hijra
cultural traditions and gender embodiment were prohibited through impri-
sonment and fines. The law stated that a registered ‘eunuch’ who ‘appears
dressed or ornamented like a woman, in a public street or place, or in any
other place, with the intention of being seen from a public street or place, or
who dances or plays music, or takes part in any public exhibition, in a public
street or place or for hire in a public house’ could be arrested without
a warrant and could be punished for up to two years and/or fined. Hijras’
visible public presence would thus be eliminated.78
The 1871 law did not outlaw alms-collection. However, allowing Hijra
‘begging’ did not necessarily undermine the goal of cultural elimination.
To colonial officials, Hijras who collected alms without wearing feminine
clothing or performing did not have a visible presence in public space,
distinct from other ‘beggars’. Of course, this entirely ignored the cultural
significance of Hijras’ presence at births and weddings.
The key mechanism for the surveillance and policing of the ‘criminal
tribes’ under Part I of the CTA was also registration, reflecting the broader
significance of police registers as a technique of colonial governance at this
time. However, beyond this, the provisions aimed at the ‘criminal tribes’
differed from the sections targeting ‘eunuchs’ in a number of ways. First, Part
I of the CTA included an elaborate system of passes to contain criminal tribe
mobility, whereas there was no ‘pass system’ under Part II.79 To enforce
sedentary lifestyles, people registered as criminal tribes were subjected to
daily ‘head counts’ and could only leave their village or town if they obtained
a pass issued for no longer than fourteen days.80 In the 1860s, several NWP
77
They would be prosecuted under section 176 or 177 of the IPC (concealment of
information and provision of false information to public servants). Ibid.
78
Ibid. 79 Ibid.
80
‘Rules under section 18 of the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871’, in NAI/HD/JB/01/1874/
119 21.
officials had proposed a pass system to regulate Hijras’ ‘wanderings’, but

under the CTA, the only means of controlling the movements of ‘eunuchs’
was through registration and surveillance. The lack of a pass system for
‘eunuchs’ would cause considerable annoyance among police officials in
the following decades.81 But the NWP and Indian administrations did not
view the suppression of Hijra migration as essential. This was partly because
of the added police work, but also because the British did not aim to make
Hijras sedentary and productive workers, in contrast to the criminal tribe
agenda. Thus, a second point of difference was that under Part I of the CTA,
registered criminal tribes could not be ‘settled or removed’ unless measures
were taken to ensure that they could ‘earn a living’ in their new place of
residence.82 Though ‘eunuchs’ were prevented from performing in public,
Part II did not require the provision of ‘eunuchs’ with an alternative liveli-
hood, since officials assumed they could not be reformed through labour.
Finally, under the 1871 CTA, the removal of children was only attempted in
the regulation of ‘eunuchs’, and not with respect to the ‘criminal tribes’.
Recall that it was not until 1911 that an amendment to the CTA provided for
the removal of criminal tribe children.83 Child removal was a more practic-
able policy in the small Hijra community than among the numerous groups
that were classified as criminal tribes. Yet the implementation of child
removal in Hijra communities was also a consequence of the centrality of
strategies of elimination to the design of Part II of the CTA.
The aims of the first and second parts of the law were thus diametrically
opposed: while the British wished to ‘reform’ the criminal tribes through
sedentary (preferably agricultural) labour, hopefully achieving their inte-
gration into the lower ranks of ‘settled’ rural Indian society,84 the colonial
government aimed to eliminate Hijras as a ‘biological’ and cultural entity,
to cause their ‘gradual extinction’. Interestingly, while the anti-Hijra
campaign took a different approach than the concurrent criminal tribes
project in India, there were a number of parallels between the ‘extirpa-
tion’ of the Hijra and the governance of British settler colonies.
Colonial Projects of Elimination

The anti-Hijra campaign was one of a number of programmes of elimination
that targeted particular colonised populations in the British Empire.
However, the elimination of indigenous peoples was more characteristic of
81
For example, BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 15 May 1882.
82
Radhakrishna, Dishonoured by History, 191 2; BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act No. XXVII of 1871.
83
Sen, Colonial Childhoods, 57; Major, ‘State and Criminal Tribes’, 675.
84
657 88.
settler colonies (and former settler colonies like the United States) than non-
settler colonies (or ‘colonies of exploitation’) such as India. This was due to
structural differences related to land and labour. In his analysis of the United
States and Australia, Patrick Wolfe has argued that a ‘logic of elimination’ is
‘the primary motivation or agenda’ of settler colonialism, which is ‘first and
foremost a territorial project, whose priority is replacing natives on their land’
with settlers, rather than exploiting indigenous labour. In settler colonies,
elimination has both ‘negative’ elements, since it aims for the ‘dissolution of
native societies’, as well as ‘positive’ elements, because it strives to create ‘a
new colonial society on the expropriated land base’. Wolfe argues that colo-
nial invasion is a ‘structure and not an event’, an ongoing process that is
‘continuous over time’. As such, multiple modes of elimination were
attempted in settler colonies depending on context, including: frontier vio-
lence; the spatial relocation of indigenous peoples; the removal of indigenous
children from their families; ‘statistical elimination’ (such as the ‘blood quan-
tum’ regime in the United States); and the elimination of cultural practices.
In many of these strategies, cultural and biological elimination coincided and
overlapped.85 Other historians have similarly demonstrated the links in settler
colonies between indigenous people’s dispossession of their lands, repopula-
tion of the land with European settlers and the ‘elimination’ or ‘genocide’ of
indigenous people themselves.86 Evans and Thorpe have termed this process
‘indigenocide’, meaning ‘an encompassing lethal or malignant attack upon
those “born to that place”’, which incorporates ‘peoplehood destruction’ with
‘environmental and cultural destruction’. Evans adds that while the ‘extermi-
nation of indigenous people . . . was not always actively pursued, invariably it
was agreeably countenanced and openly anticipated’.87
The anti-Hijra campaign obviously cannot be explained through the ‘zero
sum’ conquests over land which were central to the structure of settler
colonialism. Indeed, historians of settler colonies, such as Moses and
Wolfe, have frequently drawn comparisons to British India and other non-
settler colonies, where they argue that ‘elimination’ or ‘genocide’ policies
were generally not evident due to the ‘absence of permanent settlers’,88 as well
as the colonial imperative to ‘extract . . . an economic surplus’ by utilising
indigenous labor (whether directly or through taxing the produce of labour,
as through agrarian revenue).89 The NWP government’s policies towards
85
Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism’, 387 409; Wolfe, ‘Structure and Event’, 112 42.
86
Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’, 3 54; Moses, ‘Genocide and Settler Society’, 3 48;
Veracini, ‘Colonialism and Genocides’, 158 71.
87
Evans, ‘“Crime Without a Name”’, 143 57. See also Evans and Thorpe, ‘Indigenocide’,
21 39.
88
Except for in some colonial wars of conquest: Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide’, 22, 26.
89
Wolfe, ‘Structure and Event’, 103.
Hijras were not, evidently, about access to land. From the perspective of the
British in north India, Hijras were an immoral and criminal people who were
ungovernable in multiple ways and thus needed to be gradually ‘extirpated’.
However, it is significant that the NWP government did not aim to exploit
Hijras’ labour or to transform them morally and culturally through reforma-
tive, ‘industrious’ work. The lack of colonial interest in appropriating Hijras’
labour was perhaps unusual in a ‘colony of exploitation’, but was
a precondition of the attempted elimination of Hijras. The British failure to
exploit the labour of Hijras is an important parallel to settler colonial projects
of indigenous elimination.
British attempts to ‘extirpate’ Hijras in north India should caution
against overly sweeping contrasts between settler and non-settler coloni-
alism in relation to projects of elimination. Several of the settler colonial
strategies of elimination that Wolfe notes were evident in the anti-Hijra
campaign, including the removal of children and the elimination of
cultural practices.90 Like the ‘gradual extinction’ of Hijras in north
India, settler colonial projects of elimination also had important gendered
and sexual dimensions. Morgensen highlights that ‘procedures of indi-
genous elimination’ involved ‘settler regulation of sexual relations, gender
identity, marriage, reproduction, and genealogy’.91 Moreover, people
with non-binary gender expression were sometimes specifically targeted
for elimination in both settler and non-settler colonies. Deborah
A. Miranda argues that in Spanish California, third-gender people who
performed important death rituals – whom the Spanish called ‘joya’ (a
sarcastic term meaning ‘jewel’) – were targeted with ‘active, conscious,
violent extermination’. A recorded instance of the massacre of forty
joyas in 1513 suggests that frontier violence was sometimes directed
specifically at third-gender people. Moreover, missionaries deployed var-
ious strategies of cultural elimination in subsequent centuries, such as:
imposing male names upon individual ‘joyas’; the enforcement of mascu-
line dress and forms of work; and the punishment of ‘joyas’ who did not
conform to masculine norms or attempted to inhabit female social spaces.
By the twentieth century, the role of undertaker was no longer performed
by openly third-gender people.92 While the Spanish anti-joya campaign
began several centuries prior to the British attempts to make
90
Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism’, 399 401.
91
Scott Lauria Morgensen, ‘Theorising Gender, Sexuality and Settler Colonialism:
An Introduction’, Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 2 (2012): 10 12.
92
Miranda terms this ‘gendercide’. Deborah A. Miranda, ‘Extermination of the Joyas:
Gendercide in Spanish California’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16, no.
1 2 (2010): 253 84.
Hijras extinct, these two instances show that indigenous elimination

schemes sometimes specifically targeted non-binary gender expression.
From as early as 1870, even prior to the passage of the CTA, NWP
officials expressed their confidence that ‘eunuchs are fast dying out’.93
According to the NWP government, the likelihood of Hijra depopulation
did not mean that ‘special legislation’ was unnecessary; it was still needed
to accelerate and guarantee Hijra extinction. But throughout the 1870s,
British administrators were confident that ‘the hope may be ascertained
that this class is dying out by natural causes’.94 Hence, officials talked
about the impacts of colonial rule on Hijras in terms of the colonial trope
of the ‘dying race’ or the ‘doomed race’, the idea that certain non-
European peoples would inevitably become extinct.
For most of the eighteenth century, the idea of extinction was controver-
sial in Europe, since it undermined the Christian view of the world as the
perfect and divine design of God. At the same time, eighteenth-century
‘stadial’ ideas of human progress – which held that humans advanced
along several stages between ‘savagery’ and ‘civilisation’ as their modes of
subsistence changed – could either suggest that ‘uncivilised’ people could
progress to higher stages of development with assimilation to European
society, or alternatively, that ‘savage’ peoples would disappear when they
came into contact with the ‘civilised’. In the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, these concepts of stadial development were reinter-
preted through new notions of race. Increasingly, races were viewed as
discrete biological entities in which social and cultural difference was
a result of biology. Nineteenth-century Europeans saw species extinction
as a product of processes of natural change and explained human extinction
as a consequence of racial difference. From the 1860s, human extinction was
increasingly understood in terms of Darwinian concepts of evolution, as
a result of competition between ‘tribes’ in which the ‘fittest’ survived.
‘Primitive’ races could not possibly survive encounters with more highly
evolved races. Scientists and anthropologists sought to catalogue such ‘dying
races’ before they disappeared altogether. Popular culture both celebrated
and mourned the passing of the idealised ‘last of their tribe’, meaning the last
‘full blood’ survivor. Meanwhile, in existing and former settler colonies, the
assumption that indigenous people would inevitably become extinct shaped
government policies, such as the attempts in early twentieth-century
Australia to encourage reproduction between white men and mixed-race
women in order to ‘breed out’ ‘half castes’ while the ‘inevitable’ extinction of
93
BL/IOR/L/PJ/5/14: Barrow to GI Secretary, 13 January 1871. See also Tyrwhitt quoted
in BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot, ‘Abstract’, 21 April 1871.
94
BL/IOR/P/1138: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 28 May 1878.
‘full bloods’ unfolded.95 The trope of the doomed race also circulated in
British India. The British were convinced that the indigenous peoples of the
Andaman Islands, India’s penal colony, were a ‘dying race’ that needed to be
documented through ethnography and photography before it disappeared.96
The idea that certain colonised peoples would unavoidably die out in the
face of European civilisation was a powerful and seductive narrative of
European colonialism and the march of progress. The NWP’s attempts to
cause the extinction of Hijras drew on these broader representations, but also
differed in important ways from other nineteenth-century discussions of
human extinction. First, colonial conceptualisations of Hijra group-hood
were highly ambiguous. As we have seen, the British saw emasculation as
an ‘unnatural’ form of physical reproduction and, in this respect, viewed the
Hijra as a biologically constituted group. NWP officials described Hijras as
a ‘race’,97 and also as a ‘caste’,98 ‘tribe’99 or ‘clan’100 – all of which, in different
ways, implied a community one was born into. At the same time, colonial
officials often termed Hijras a ‘sect’, implying a religious community, or
referred to the Hijra community as a criminal collective, through terms like
‘organised class’, ‘gang’ or ‘system’.101 Hence, colonial knowledge of the
Hijra community only partially matched the predominant late nineteenth-
century understanding of a race as a distinct biological unit.
Second, British officials’ accounts of Hijra extinction differed from the
causes of extinction that European colonisers offered in other instances.
The extinction of human, animal and plant species was generally viewed as
a part of natural environmental change, which was augmented in the case of
human populations by inherent racial differences and the moral failings of
‘primitive’ people (such as prostitution, interracial sex, drunkenness and
drug use).102 In contrast, NWP officials envisaged the impending extinction
95
Sadiah Qureshi, ‘Dying Americans: Race, Extinction, and Conservation in the
New World’, in From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire,
1800 1950, eds. Astrid Swenson and Peter Mandler, 267 88 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013); McGregor, Imagined Destinies, 19 59. See also Miles A. Powell,
Vanishing America: Species Extinction, Racial Peril, and the Origins of Conservation
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 3 6, 14 45; Alan Lester, ‘Settler
Colonialism, George Grey and the Politics of Ethnography’, Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space 34, no. 3 (2016): 492 507; Manne, ‘Aboriginal Child Removal’.
96
Satadru Sen, ‘Savage Bodies, Civilized Pleasures: MV Portman and the Andamanese’,
American Ethnologist 36, no. 2 (2009): 364 79.
97
98
Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, 207.
99
MacAndrew quoted in BL/IOR/L/PJ/5/14: Barrow to GI Secretary, 13 January 1871.
100
BL/IOR/P/92: Tiernan to Gorakhpur DSIP, 26 May 1871.
101
E.g., BL/IOR/P/235/25: Morgan, Money and Gubbins, Resolution, 22 April 1860; BL/
IOR/P/438/61: Dodd to all NWP DSIP, 30 June 1865; BL/IOR/P/92: Williams to NWP
Secretary, 31 January 1870; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to all NWP DC, 9 June 1865.
102
McGregor, Imagined Destinies, 48 62.
of Hijras as a positive result of the moral transformations brought about by

colonial rule and colonial policies. Standard nineteenth-century explanations
of human extinction – that emphasised the operation of natural laws and the
survival of the fittest – did not explicitly feature in British discussions of
Hijras, even as colonial officials drew on the broader trope of the ‘dying race’.
Finally, the response of British settlers to the depopulation of indigen-
ous peoples was more varied than the reaction of the British in north India
to the possible extinction of Hijras. For NWP officials, the ‘dying out’ of
Hijras was something to be actively pursued and, if successful, to be
welcomed as a moral good. In contrast, British settler colonialists
described indigenous extinction through mixed discourses, including
celebration, resignation and mourning. Although settlers and colonial
governments actively and explicitly pursued indigenous extinction in
certain contexts – and the settler colonial project was implicitly under-
lined by a ‘logic of elimination’ – there were numerous attempts to
‘protect’ and ‘preserve’ ‘dying’ peoples. Such projects often accelerated
the removal of indigenous peoples from their land or were premised on
their cultural elimination.103 Yet some of these preservation programmes
assumed that the ‘dying’ populations were doomed, but nevertheless
possessed some desirable traits, such as ‘noble savagery’. In contrast,
the Hijra community did not have any redeeming qualities for the
British colonisers of north India.104 Officials described Hijras through
a vocabulary of disgust and moral outrage, as ‘degraded’ and ‘detestable’
people or an ‘unnatural race’.105 NWP administrators thus adapted the
colonial trope of the ‘dying race’ in specific ways, in light of their under-
standings of Hijra group-hood, embodiment and moral qualities.
The idea that colonial rule would eventually result in the ‘extinguishment’
of immoral colonised subjects like Hijras was a satisfying narrative of the
wide reach of the colonial state. Nowhere in the official discussion of
Hijras is there a hint of moral qualm about causing the ‘extermination’ of
the Hijra community. ‘Eunuchs’ were apparently a problem population
that was beyond moral redemption. Most British officials in north India
believed it was only right that they should die out.
103
Qureshi, ‘Dying Americans’, 266, 274 8; Powell, Vanishing America, 119 57;
Ezra Rashkow, ‘Idealizing Inhabited Wilderness: A Revision to the History of
Indigenous Peoples and National Parks’, History Compass 12, no. 10 (2014): 818 32.
104
Thanks to Miles Powell for highlighting this point.
105
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP Secretary, 9 August 1865; UPSA/A/COM/9/2:
Martin to Meerut DC, 15 July 1865; BL/IOR/P/840: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary,
17 September 1877.
Part 2
Multiple Narratives of Hijra-hood

5 The Hijra Archive
By the late 1860s, the North-Western Provinces government had

amassed a substantial volume of reports, correspondence, police registers
and statistics about Hijras. This archive emerged out of the project to
gradually ‘extirpate’ the Hijra community. Certain documents, like police
registers, were intended to assist the police in causing Hijras to die out.
The criminalising colonial Hijra stereotype, upon which the scheme of
elimination was based, also pervaded the official archive. Yet an exam-
ination of the processes through which colonial knowledge was produced
and practices of archiving highlights that there were multiple forms of
archived knowledge about the Hijra community, beyond the dominant
colonial narrative. Moreover, official archives hint at more-varied Indian
attitudes towards Hijras than the disparaging accounts of middle-class
commentators examined in Chapter 3. Here, I read colonial archives
‘along the grain’, foregrounding practices of intelligence collection,
record-keeping and circulation, as well as the conventions through
which the credibility of information was assessed.1 This chapter high-
lights the need to move beyond ‘discourse analysis’ to consider more
deeply the interactions, contexts and networks of information out of
which colonial knowledge of the Hijra community developed.2 Whereas
published accounts and upper-level government records present more
abstract forms of colonial knowledge, the multilayered and disaggregated
official colonial archives reveal multiple and contested narratives about
Hijras.
1
Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives’, 103.
2
For critiques of primarily discursive approaches see Richard M. Eaton, ‘(Re)imag(in)ing
Other2ness: A Postmortem for the Postmodern in India’, Journal of World History 11, no. 1
(Spring 2000): 57 78; Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, ‘Orientalism and
the Postcolonial Predicament’, in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives
on South Asia, eds. Carol A. Breckenridege and Peter van der Veer, 1 19 (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); Roque and Wagner, ‘Introduction’. For a slightly
different perspective: Tony Ballantyne, ‘Colonial Knowledge’, in The British Empire:
Themes and Perspectives, ed. Sarah E. Stockwell, 182 (Malden: Blackwell, 2008).
117
118 Multiple Narratives of Hijra hood
Colonial knowledge was a product of encounters with north Indian

society and dialogues with local people who were considered knowledge-
able about the Hijra community. ‘Respectable’ prominent men like land-
lords, commercial and banking magnates and key political allies were
particularly sought-after information-providers. However, ‘native infor-
mants’ also included: literate people of lower status like small-time law-
yers; village headmen; neighbourhood watchmen; Hijras’ neighbours;
and Hijras themselves. It is often difficult to determine who had the
authority to speak about ‘eunuchs’, how the statements of Indian infor-
mants were translated and what was left out. Yet it is clear that colonial
knowledge was grounded in cross-cultural interactions at the local level.
In this sense, colonial archives are ‘multivocal’.3
A single letter from a British district officer typically contained multiple
viewpoints on the Hijra community in an (often failed) attempt to recon-
cile local intelligence, the views of subordinate Indian police, the author-
itative paradigms of official knowledge and the individual interpretation
of the British official. As a consequence, district authorities often sent
contradictory information to their superiors. Moreover, British and
Indian officials interpreted local knowledge in a number of different
ways. While some district administrators partly or substantially revised
their prior assumptions as a result of local intelligence, other district
officials only incorporated the views of Indian informants when they
dovetailed with the colonial eunuch stereotype. Colonial archives were
thus forums of ‘protracted debate’ between officials, which produced
sometimes confused knowledge.4 This profusion of contentious informa-
tion did not always undermine or disrupt colonial knowledge, but it did
result in the archiving of multiple ways of understanding the Hijra com-
munity. Although criminalising colonial representations of ‘eunuchs’
were invested with authority and circulated widely in official circles,
marginal accounts usually languished in district government offices.
At the same time, information and opinions about Hijras that the provin-
cial government considered irrelevant or incorrect occasionally reached
the upper echelons of officialdom and undermined common colonial
assumptions. This was because the ‘hierarchies of credibility’ that deter-
mined what forms of knowledge were authoritative and truthful were not
always clear, resulting in information ‘out of place’ that did not fit into
familiar narratives.5
3
Roque and Wagner, ‘Introduction’, 19.
4
Stoler and Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony’, 8, 14.
5
Stoler, ‘Epistemic Politics’, 357; Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives’, 100, 103.
The Hijra Archive 119
For the North-Western Province (NWP) government, the contested

representations of Hijras in official archives were a troubling hurdle to
suppressing the community and demonstrated the failure of colonial
intelligence collection. Although the colonial panic about
Hijras subsided after the passage of the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act
(CTA), ongoing anxieties about gaps and inconsistencies in official
knowledge were evident in the following decades. These anxieties were
structural in nature. Even as the colonial government amassed more and
more information about Hijras and other types of ‘eunuchs’, there was an
enduring anxiety about lacunas in intelligence.6
My examination of the colonial Hijra/eunuch archive builds upon
Anjali Arondekar’s important analysis of sexuality and colonial archives
in her 2009 book For the Record. Yet my approach differs from
Arondekar’s in several ways. Arondekar critiques the ‘recovery’ mode of
archival research, in which the historian seeks to uncover the ‘secret’ of
non-normative sexuality in the past by mining colonial sources. This
mode of ‘recovery’ often perpetuates aspects of colonial accounts, in
that it reads the presence of non-normative sexuality from archival
absence. Arondekar advocates for a ‘reading practice’ that eschews the
‘frenzied “finding”’ of documents and examines colonial archives as
‘spaces of fact-reading’ rather than ‘fact-finding’. The scholar should
thus ‘grasp, precisely not to fix’, should ‘know and not know the colonial
record’.7 Through a close analysis of district level archives, this chapter
extends Arondekar’s argument that historians of sexuality should inter-
rogate archival practices. Ann Laura Stoler has also convincingly argued
that historians should examine the form of the archive and not just its
content.8 But there are some limitations to Arondekar’s approach. First,
any history that eschews ‘recovery’ altogether will primarily revolve
around questions of historical methodology. As Ruby Lal has put it,
could such a history ‘ever escape the question of history itself’?9
Arondekar’s approach produces a rich analysis of the truth and fiction
effects of colonial records, but cannot address the other effects of colonial
archival practices and, more broadly, of colonial sexual regimes. Yet
6
For a similar analysis: Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon Fires”’, 159 97. See also Bayly, Empire
and Information, 165 79; Choudhury, ‘Sinews of Panic’; Fischer Tiné and Whyte,
‘Introduction’.
7
Arondekar, For the Record, 1 4, 7, 10 14, 179. For an elaboration of my engagement with
Arondkear see Jessica Hinchy, ‘The Eunuch Archive: Colonial Records of
Non Normative Gender and Sexuality in India’, Culture, Theory and Critique 58, no. 2
(2017): 127 46.
8
Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives’, 103; Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 11 2.
9
Ruby Lal, ‘The Lure of the Archive: New Perspectives from South Asia’, Feminist Studies
37, no. 1 (2011): 106.
colonial archives and categories were ‘systems of power that [had] multi-
ple effects on lives and bodies’.10 Second, Arondekar’s book somewhat
oversimplifies colonial archives. Arondekar argues that colonial records
‘scripted’ sexual perversity through ‘an evidentiary paradox: a known
prevalence of the crime [of ‘unnatural’ sexual conduct], and an equally
known rarity of its documentation’. That is, the rampant existence of
sexual perversity in India was evidenced through its archival absence.
Arondekar argues that this produced a ‘seamless narrative’ of sexual
perversity.11 However, the archived colonial accounts of the Hijra com-
munity do not neatly fit into the ‘everywhere/nowhere model’ that
Arondekar postulates, or indeed, into any single narrative. Analysis of
the different layers of the archives and the varied ‘itineraries’ of official
documents12 highlights the multiple narratives surrounding Hijras.
Collecting Local Intelligence

The first effort to gather local intelligence about Hijras in the NWP
occurred in 1853, though the records of the enquiry were lost in the 1857
rebellion.13 1860 and, in particular, 1865 saw renewed intelligence col-
lection drives at the district level. The accumulation of information
continued after 1865 and became more regular and systematised follow-
ing the implementation of the 1871 CTA. Four main types of official
records were archived in the NWP: first, correspondence between British
district authorities, the Commissioners of Divisions (who oversaw several
districts) and the provincial government; second, special reports that
were occasionally commissioned into aspects of the ‘eunuch problem’;
third, annual reports on the implementation of the CTA that were pro-
duced after 1871; and fourth, the district ‘registers of eunuchs’ and
‘registers of property possessed by eunuchs’ that police compiled in
1865–6 and 1872–3 (and periodically revised thereafter).14
This official knowledge of the Hijra community was a product of
encounters with various local people whom Indian police officials and
10
María Elena Martínez, ‘Archives, Bodies, and Imagination: The Case of Juana Aguilar
and Queer Approaches to History, Sexuality, and Politics’, Radical History Review 120
(2014): 175.
11
Arondekar, For the Record, 11.
12
Bronwen Douglas, ‘Encounters with the Enemy? Academic Readings of Missionary
Narratives on Melanesians’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 43 (2001): 41;
Catherine Trundle and Chris Kaplonski, ‘Tracing the Political Lives of Archival
Documents’, History and Anthropology 22, no. 4 (2011): 407 14.
13
14
Registers of eunuchs were compiled from 1865, but property registers were only com
piled from 1871.
British administrators interviewed from the 1850s. The British in India

had long depended on information from ‘knowledgeable people’ in
Indian society, though colonial intelligence-collection practices had
undergone significant change by the mid-nineteenth century. In the con-
text of the rapid territorial expansion of the East India Company state
between the 1780s and 1810s, the Company’s archived information
about Indian society and politics had grown considerably.
The Company sought to harness knowledgeable communities, such as:
harkaras (intelligence agents); the munshis (writers) of Indian states; the
women of the zanana (women’s quarters) who were central to political
alliance-building; and Khwajasarais (eunuch-slaves) who circulated
information between male and female spaces. By the 1830s, the
Company had established several institutions that functioned as impor-
tant repositories of information, such as the medical service and the
revenue establishments. Even so, older information networks survived
at the local level. Moreover, until the 1840s, the police establishment was
extremely fractured and decentralised. Para-military police agents would
pass intelligence they had collected from itinerant people and travellers to
local police stations. Colonial police also received information from
watchmen known as chaukidars or goraits, low caste men who combined
watch and ward duties with delivering mail and menial work.
The chaukidars in turn sourced information from low-status people like
barbers and midwives who were well informed about everyday events in
neighbourhoods. However, the British failed to fully utilise certain impor-
tant lines of communication – in particular, religious networks – and often
did not comprehend the complexity and nuances of local information.15
After the 1857 rebellion, the Government of India concluded that the
existing system of police intelligence was a failure in need of reform.
The Police Commission of 1860 sought to increase efficiency and keep
costs low, while retaining an image of an aloof colonial state, ruling from
afar. To these ends, local watchmen or chaukidars communicated with the
police through local elites and village headmen, who were effectively placed
in charge of the watchmen. However, the regularity and detail of the
intelligence that police received from chaukidars varied between and within
districts. The police’s knowledge of rural society could not compete with
that of the chaukidars, who remained under the control of local landlords.
In the late nineteenth century, the colonial police thus continued to rely on
older systems of watch and ward, but this was an uneasy cooperation.16
15
Bayly, Empire and Information, 56 96, 143 68. On Khwajasarais see Hinchy, ‘Sexual
Politics’, 414 37; Chatterjee, Gender, Slavery and Law, 45 57.
16
Bayly, Empire and Information, 332 4; Erin M. Giuliani, ‘Strangers in the Village?
Colonial Policing in Rural Bengal, 1861 to 1892’, Modern Asian Studies 49, no. 5
To gather intelligence on the Hijra community, the NWP authorities

depended on information from various north Indians, which was col-
lected through both the formal colonial police structure and the local
chaukidari networks. Hijras and other people classified as ‘eunuchs’ were
important sources of intelligence and shaped colonial knowledge in sev-
eral ways. From the NWP’s perspective, Hijras’ life histories would
deepen the colonial government’s ethnographic understanding of
Indian ‘eunuchs’ and thereby assist police efforts to suppress them.
The collection of intelligence from Hijras occurred on a somewhat differ-
ent footing than intelligence gathering in other criminal law contexts.
The incorporation of members of ‘criminal’ collectives into the legal
system in the capacity of informers or ‘approvers’ was a common practice
in nineteenth-century British India. Under a 1796 regulation, the testi-
mony of pardoned criminals was admissible in court and in the mid
1830s, in the context of the anti-thuggee campaigns, approvers were
exempted from capital punishment and transportation, but not imprison-
ment. Though thug approvers shaped colonial knowledge of crime in
dialogue with colonial officials, the lives of thug approvers depended on
telling a story of ‘thuggee’ that dovetailed with official assumptions.17
In contrast, there was no formal approver system in the policing of
‘eunuchs’. There is only one reference in official records to a ‘eunuch’
acting as an ‘informer’ in a criminal case, in an 1865 case of alleged
‘kidnapping and emasculation’.18 The NWP government was more inter-
ested in Hijras as a source of ethnographic information than as approvers.
In 1865, the Inspector-General of Police ordered all district
Superintendents to collect the biographies of local ‘eunuchs’:
Very much information the Inspector General expects to obtain from the
Eunuchs themselves. Many will not be able perhaps to remember exactly the
history of their lives before, at, and immediately after, undergoing emasculation;
many will perhaps profess ignorance to conceal their history; but many will,
I think, be easily induced to recount some part of such history, and these revela
tions put together will probably make a good fund of information.19
This 1865 order highlights the importance that the NWP government
placed on individual life histories. Yet the order also suggests that the
(2015): 1378 1404; David Arnold, Police Power and Colonial Rule, Madras, 1859 1947
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Michael Silvestri, ‘The Thrill of “Simply
Dressing Up”: The Indian Police, Disguise, and Intelligence Work in Colonial
India’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 2, no. 2 (2001): https://doi.org/10
.1353/cch.2001.0024.
17
Freitag, ‘Crime’, 239; Wagner, Thuggee, 36; Singha, Despotism of Law, 217 9.
18
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dalmahoy, ‘Report on a case of kidnapping . . . ’, 9 December 1865.
19
statements of ‘eunuchs’ should not be accepted at face value, because

they might seek to deceive colonial officials or hide certain details of their
lives. Hijras made dubious informants, given their perceived criminality
and deviance. Yet the supposed immorality of Hijras was not an insur-
mountable barrier to the collection of intelligence from the community.
From the 1810s, prostitutes had been enlisted as spies in the anti-thuggee
campaigns on the rationale that criminals like thugs spent their stolen
booty on women and drink.20 Likewise, from the late 1860s, in the
context of the Contagious Diseases Act, police collected information
about prostitutes from brothel madams.21 In the official view, Hijras too
were suspect informants, but nonetheless potentially useful informants
on ‘vice’.
Thus, in 1865, British district officials in the NWP began an oral
history project of sorts with local Hijras. W. A. Forbes, the Magistrate
of Meerut, reported in December 1865 that he was ‘now personally
summoning each Eunuch entered in our list and taking down his history
from his own mouth from which some information may be obtained,
which should prove valuable in our endeavours to suppress the
system’.22 The district police registers of ‘eunuchs’ appear to have been
largely based upon the statements of Hijras. It is clear that local police
sometimes also interviewed and registered people who were not members
of Hijra communities, but wore female clothing in everyday ritual
or theatrical settings, such as Zananas, so-called ‘effeminate men’ who
performed and sometimes wore women’s dress. Eventually, the self-
descriptions of such non-Hijras led the authorities to classify several sub-
categories of ‘eunuch’. The district police registers evidence the ways that
Hijras and other people with non-binary gender expression shaped official
knowledge. In 1865, the Magistrate of Bulandshahr summarised the
statements of several so-called eunuchs in the remarks column of the
district register. The Magistrate fitted individuals’ statements about
themselves into colonial narratives of criminality by foregrounding details
of emasculation, but also noted Hijras’ kinship relationships and disciple-
ship lineages. Hossein Buksh, a sixty-year-old ‘eunuch’ who lived in
Shikarpur, ‘States that he has been an Eunuch from Birth and was taught
dancing and singing by one [illegible] Eunuch who had adopted him’.
Middle-aged Oowda, a resident of Anupshahr, ‘States that when he was
about 4 years old some Eunuchs of the Lower Provinces sold him to
Heerah Eunuch deceased of Anoopshuhur and that he is by birth an
Eunuch’, while Begum, a twenty-five-year-old, ‘States that about 8 or
20
Wagner, Thuggee, 47 8, 60 2. 21 Tambe, Codes of Misconduct, 43.
22
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Forbes to Meerut DC, 4 December 1865.
10 years ago he came from the Muttra District and took up his abode with
Ameer Bukhsh and Raheemun Eunuchs’.23 Similarly, the Saharanpur
register seems to have been based on the statements of Hijras. The entry
for Alladia reads: ‘Does not know the place and name of the person by
whom made. Is a native of Marwar & came with other Eunuchs in the
Hurdwar [Haridwar] fair & nowadays lives with Khuda Bux Eunuch’.24
The means that police officials used to – as the 1865 circular order put
it – ‘induce’ Hijras to provide information about their lives are unclear in
most official documents. One hint is contained in the 1873
Muzaffarnagar district register, which noted that several registered people
were ‘afraid’ due to the police’s enquiries.25 We can only guess at the
extent to which police interviews with Hijras were coercive and intimidat-
ing, since such violence was erased in the official records.
Hijras appear to have developed repeated forms of self-representation
in the course of their interactions with colonial officers. For instance,
there were two primary descriptions of ‘eunuch’ embodiment on the
surviving district registers: first, as ‘emasculated’; and second, as
a ‘Eunuch by Birth’, ‘Born a Eunuch’ or ‘Born Eunuch’. Though the
representation of Hijras/‘eunuchs’ as emasculated was much more com-
mon, the repetition of variations on the eunuch-by-birth category is
striking, particularly since this label jarred somewhat with the dominant
colonial discourse of kidnapping and forcible castration. In Saharanpur
district, for instance, just over half of the registered ‘eunuchs’ reported
they were ‘Born a Eunuch’ in 1865, a much higher proportion than in the
other districts of Meerut division. Moreover, all of the people who were
registered in Saharanpur city – a group who appear to have lived in
a single Hijra household – stated that they were ‘Born a Eunuch’.26
This seems to have been a wider form of public self-representation, out-
side of the context of colonial policing. In Saharanpur, like most other
districts, it was only in 1865 that Hijra communities came into close and
regular contact with police. This suggests that, at this stage, the self-
representations of Hijras had not been shaped by a significant period of
interaction with colonial authorities and bureaucratic categories.
Moreover, the 1865 Muzaffarnagar register reported that certain
‘eunuchs’ were ‘Said to be a eunuch by birth’, perhaps suggesting that
this was how they had described themselves to local people who provided
information to police.27 Being a Hijra from birth was evidently a valorised
23
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Bulandshahr DM, ‘List of Eunuchs’, 17 October 1865.
24
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Robertson, ‘Statement of Eunuchs’, Saharanpur, 24 October 1865.
25
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, circa January 1873.
26
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Robertson, ‘Statement of Eunuchs’, Saharanpur, 24 October 1865.
27
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Martin, ‘Register of eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, circa July 1865.
identity and for this reason uncastrated Hijras, and probably also some
castrated Hijras, described themselves as such.
Yet there are indications that eunuch-by-birth became a repeated mode
of self-representation from the mid 1860s. The examples noted above of
Hijras in particular towns or households describing themselves as ‘born
eunuchs’ suggest that Hijras who lived together or were linked by disciple-
ship networks strategically developed regular forms of narrative for offi-
cial consumption. In the context of the NWP government’s intensified
efforts to prosecute emasculation from 1865, some Hijras likely described
themselves as a eunuch-by-birth to evade the police and avoid prosecu-
tion. Moreover, the standardised category of eunuch-by-birth emerged
out of a process of translation, both into English and into a standardised
category, and probably obfuscated and simplified more diverse self-
representations. Thus, the eunuch-by-birth category was a product of
the convergence of the self-representations of Hijras, the knowledge of
local people and the bureaucratic need to produce regular classifications –
and was subsequently repeated in a more standardised form by Hijras in
their interactions with colonial agents. Consequently, variations on
eunuch-by-birth appear as a category on the district registers produced
in the early 1870s.28
There are also hints in the records that Hijras frequently refused to
disclose information to the police. For instance, many registered people
who stated that they were castrated claimed that they did not know when,
where or by whom they were emasculated. Although some Hijras who
were castrated as children may not have remembered the operation, many
probably withheld information due to the criminalisation of castration
under the Penal Code. In some districts, such as Muzaffarnagar, no
registered people reported the circumstances of their emasculation,
while in Bulandshahr two-thirds provided no information.29 It is tempt-
ing to see this as evidence of Hijras’ agency and their efforts to evade the
police. By withholding information about their pasts, Hijras certainly
frustrated colonial intelligence collection and may have also protected
local Hijras from the law. However, this tendency to ‘profess ignorance to
conceal their history’ also reinforced colonial stereotypes of Hijra crimin-
ality and magnified official doubts about the reliability of intelligence
from such people.30 Even as official knowledge was shaped by British
28
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Webster, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Meerut, 7 May 1873; UPSA/A/
COM/29/8: Campbell, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Bulandshahr, 6 January 1873.
29
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Martin, ‘Register of eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, circa July 1865;
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Bulandshahr DM, ‘List of Eunuchs’, 17 October 1865.
30
and Indian officials’ encounters with Hijras, there were persistent qualms
about the truthfulness of these people of purportedly dubious morals.
In addition to Hijras, British and Indian officials also gathered intelli-
gence from various sections of north Indian society. In particular, district-
level correspondence suggests that British Magistrates and District
Superintendents of Police usually called upon the ‘respectable’ inhabi-
tants of the area to provide ethnographic information about the Hijra
community and to give their opinion on the criminality of local
Hijras. These respectable Indians were generally people that the British
had sought to cultivate as collaborators in the aftermath of 1857, includ-
ing: ‘loyal’ sections of the old aristocracy and the princes; rural landlords
(known as taluqdars in Oudh and zamindars elsewhere in north India);
and urban raises (patrons or magnates), particularly the banking and
commercial elite and, to a lesser extent, prominent lawyers, judges and
officials. These men who controlled networks of clients or had claims to
‘traditional’ elite status were the main mediators between the colonial
government and the north Indian population. The NWP also sought to
establish a ‘Muslim alliance’ by promoting the leadership of some Muslim
‘modernist’ intellectuals and professionals, like the colonial judicial offi-
cial and founder of Aligarh Muslim University, Syed Ahmad Khan,
whom we met in Chapter 3. For colonial officials in north India, the
Islamic community was largely responsible for the 1857 rebellion and
an alliance with Muslims was thus crucial to the stability of colonial
rule.31
Given that Syed Ahmad Khan was the lynchpin of the Muslim alliance,
it is unsurprising that he was the most important north Indian informant
of the NWP government. In 1870, Khan provided a typology of the three
castrated and ‘impotent’ groups in north Indian society: first, Khwajasarai
(eunuch-slave) ‘custodians’ of the female quarters who did not ‘outrag[e]
public decency by any immoralities’ because they were employed in
domestic settings by respectable men; second, Hijra performers who
lent ‘themselves to practices as abhorrent to our feelings as they are
unmentionable’; and third, Zananas who were ‘impotent’, but not
castrated, and rivalled the Hijras ‘in their obscene and disgusting
depravity’.32 Khan’s letter circulated at the highest levels of the colonial
administration and his typology influenced official knowledge.
The definition of a ‘eunuch’ as an ‘impotent man’ under the 1871 CTA
31
C. A. Bayly, ‘Local Control in Indian Towns The Case of Allahabad 1880 1920’,
Modern Asian Studies 5, no. 4 (1971): 289 302; F. C. R. Robinson, ‘Consultation and
Control: The United Provinces’ Government and its Allies, 1860 1906’, Modern Asian
Studies 5, no. 4 (1971): 313 8.
32
Italics in original. NAI/HD/JB 30/07/1870 53 4: Khan to Strachey, 14 April 1870.
was partly introduced to allow the registration of Zananas and was sig-
nificantly shaped by Khan’s description of Zanana ‘impotence’.
Moreover, Khan’s communication reassured British officials that they
need not risk upsetting elite Indians by policing Khwajasarais. In contrast
to Khan’s letter, few direct communications from north Indian infor-
mants reached the upper levels of government. However, a number of
British district administrators stated that they had elicited the opinions of
‘respectable’ Indians, most likely rural landholders and urban raises
(patrons).33
People of lower status relative to these prominent men also provided
police with information about Hijras. Although colonial records do not
specifically identify them as sources of information, it is likely that local
informants included literate, but not especially elite people like
pandits and malauvis (authorities on religious law), who set up numerous
vernacular schools in this period, as well as district court lawyers known as
mukhtars, whose numbers grew with a huge expansion in litigation from
mid-century. Such people – defined by their literacy and access to printed
media – often reported crime to the police and communicated informa-
tion to the colonial state through petitions, letters and newspapers.34
Colonial records also specifically mention that the police relied upon
chaukidars for intelligence. Hence, the old neighbourhood watch and
ward networks that were unevenly integrated with the police establish-
ment provided information about ‘eunuchs’. Hijras’ immediate neigh-
bours and higher-status lambardars (village heads) were also among the
police’s informants.35
Local informants furnished police with two types of information about
Hijras. First, they provided brief biographies of individuals that police
used in the compilation of district registers. In 1873, the neighbours of
Hijras in Muzaffarnagar district supplied Indian police with short
narratives of their childhoods, their relationship to their gurus, their migra-
tions and their domestic arrangements. For instance, ‘the inhabitants of
Kiranah and Semerchun Pulwaree’ informed police of thirty-five-year-old
Heera’s travels as a child with two senior ‘eunuchs’ and her later migra-
tions to the towns of Jansath, Charthawal and Kiranah, as well as
her relationships to other ‘eunuchs’ in the region. Likewise, the police
learnt about Motee ‘[b]y the neighbours of Motee who are fully
acquainted with his previous habits’. Meanwhile, the ‘Lumburdars
33
34
35
and Chowkeedars etc. of Mouza Sutheree’ village provided an account

of the Hijra Fyzun’s life.36
The second type of intelligence that local communities provided was
their opinion on whether individual ‘eunuchs’ were ‘suspected’ of kid-
napping and emasculation or were ‘addicted to sodomy’.37 This enquiry
into local opinion involved collecting local rumours and innuendo about
Hijras. In 1873, the Commissioner of Meerut ordered the Magistrates
and Superintendents of Police in his division to determine whether ‘sus-
picion’ attached to particular eunuchs ‘in the popular opinion’.38
H. D. Willock, the Magistrate of Bulandshahr, thus noted in the remarks
column of the district register ‘the opinions of the inhabitants of the towns
in which the Eunuchs reside’. However, these opinions were rendered in
the language of colonial bureaucracy. The remarks column stated next to
each person either ‘There is strong suspicion that this Eunuch is addicted
to sodomy’ or ‘Is not obnoxious to suspicion’.39 A few years later,
R. T. Hobart, the Inspector-General of Police, sought intelligence on
whether Zananas and theatrical cross-dressers were ‘reputed to be notor-
iously addicted to sodomy’ and were ‘universally believed to practice
bestial purposes amongst themselves’.40 Processes of translation
undoubtedly obscured the meaning of north Indian informants’ state-
ments. English-language terms such as ‘sodomite’ and ‘homosexual’ have
‘very different semantic loads’ and carry ‘a set of gratuitous nuances’
compared with the various, roughly equivalent Hindi and Urdu
terms.41 These slippages and tensions in translation shaped colonial
knowledge of local sentiment.
Meanwhile, British officials debated the reliability and usefulness of the
intelligence supplied by different sections of north Indian society. Many
Magistrates and District Superintendents of Police thought that ‘respect-
able’ Indians were much more reliable than people from lower social
strata. For instance, Willock, Bulandshahr’s Magistrate, claimed that
ordinary people and police did not ‘know anything’ of the Hijras’ ‘true
characters’. Willock trusted in the opinion of Jewar town’s ‘respectable’
inhabitants.42 However, not all British district officers invested elite
informants with greater authority. In 1865, Martin, the Magistrate of
Muzaffarnagar, felt that ‘respectable’ Indians, especially Muslims, were
36
Ibid.
37
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Campbell, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Bulandshahr, 6 January 1873;
38
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Lind to NWP Secretary, 31 January 1873.
39
40
41
Cohen, ‘Pleasures of Castration’, 296.
42
closely implicated in the ‘system’ of ‘eunuchs’ and were thus unreliable

sources.43 Notwithstanding these debates about the veracity of various
types of informants, the attitudes of north Indians of varied backgrounds
clearly did impact upon official knowledge of Hijras. Yet local intelligence
was selectively used, often distorted and incorporated into official
accounts to varying degrees depending on context. Moreover, the views
of local people shaped official knowledge more markedly at the district
level than the upper echelons of government.
The intelligence collection of Indian policemen represented the most
immediate site for the production of official records out of the views of
north Indians. It was Indian police officers, not British district adminis-
trators, who were usually charged with finding and interviewing ‘eunuchs’
and other north Indian informants. Three ranks of Indian police were
involved in the collection of intelligence from the mid 1860s: subordinate
police officers at local police stations; the Sub-Inspectors in charge of
stations; and higher-ranking Inspectors, who sometimes coordinated
intelligence collection in a given area.44 In the office of the NWP
Inspector-General of Police, relatively high-ranking Indian police officials
were sometimes given responsibility for coordinating intelligence gather-
ing throughout the province. For instance, when the NWP Secretary,
R. Simson, issued an executive order calling for the registration of
‘eunuchs’ in 1865, he ordered the Inspector-General of Police to appoint
‘an officer of energy and experience’ like Moulvie Mahommed Mobeen to
discover lawbreaking and to coordinate information gathering across the
NWP.45
In compiling reports, Indian police made decisions about which infor-
mants and what types of intelligence were useful to an understanding of
local Hijras. Although government priorities shaped the intelligence
Indian police collected, their views did not always conform to those of
their superiors.46 Nor were the attitudes of police officers homogenous.
In Muzaffarnagar, Inspector Nurayan Singh did not suspect any of the
local Hijras of committing crimes or being ‘sodomites’. The 1873 report
that Short, the Muzaffarnagar District Superintendent of Police, com-
piled from the information Nurayan Singh gathered was not saturated
with discourses of criminality like many other official documents.47
Likewise, in 1875 Ghazi’s Superintendent ordered all Inspectors and
heads of police stations to enquire into local Hijras, ‘but in no single
43
44
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Young to PA of NWP IGP, 20 January 1875.
45
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to NWP IGP, 9 June 1865.
46
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Palmer to Muzaffarnagar DSIP, 2 November 1872.
47
instance did they shew any sufficient grounds’ to suggest that

Hijras kidnapped and castrated children, or committed sodomy.48
In contrast, some Indian police represented Hijras and other ‘eunuchs’
in terms of criminality and immorality. In 1871, the Indian police in
Mathura ‘assured’ the Magistrate, who was concerned about an unemas-
culated child living with ‘eunuchs’, that ‘a boy would never have been in
a Eunuch’s hand so long without suffering some injury’, thus reinforcing
criminalising colonial narratives.49 Similarly, Indian police in Azamgarh
recommended the registration of three people who, it later turned out,
were ‘non-impotent’ because the Indian police thought they were ‘of
immoral character’.50 The varied intelligence Indian police provided on
the character and background of individual ‘eunuchs’ shaped the compi-
lation of district registers and the construction of colonial knowledge.
In addition, a few Indian police wrote ethnographic reports about
Hijras. In 1873, R. Annesley, the District Superintendent of Benares
compiled a summary of the ethnographic enquiries of Inspector Bhow
Chunder, ‘a highly intelligent officer’ who apparently knew the local
Hijras’ ‘habits perfectly’.51 Unfortunately, only Annesley’s English-
language synthesis of Chunder’s findings survives. This document never-
theless demonstrates that Chunder gathered information that police used
in surveillance and law enforcement, such as the names of the Hijras in the
district who were ‘skilful’ in the emasculation procedure. Additionally,
Chunder provided ethnographic information on: the internal hierarchies
of the local Hijra community; the various rituals which Hijra medical
practitioners performed during the emasculation operation; the methods
used to surgically remove the genitals; and the celebrations that followed
the patient’s recovery.52 Chunder’s short ethnography was certainly
moulded by colonial priorities – and thus described the emasculation
operation at length – but also influenced Annesley’s opinion on the
criminality of the Benares Hijras. For some British officials, their general
doubts on the veracity of Indians also applied to the Indian police. While
the Inspector-General of Police, R. T. Hobart, claimed that Indian police
concealed information out of ‘shame’ at such an embarrassing topic,
C. Robertson, the NWP Secretary, claimed that they were morally sus-
pect and thus unreliable.53 Still, the Indian police had a central role in
48
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Young to PA of NWP IGP, 20 January 1875.
49
BL/IOR/P/92: Mathura DM to Agra DC, 26 January 1871.
50
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to Benares DC, 28 March 1873.
51
USPA/A/COV/119/12: Annesley to Benares DM, 12 April 1873. 52 Ibid.
53
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Hobart to NWP IGP, 21 June 1876; BL/IOR/P/1614: Robertson
to NWP&O IGP, 19 September 1881. See also, BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond to NWP
Secretary, 9 August 1865; BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
collecting and synthesising the ethnographic information contained in

their British superiors’ reports.
Contested Narratives in Colonial Archives

While Indian informants from various social groups gave differing infor-
mation to colonial agents, Indian and British officers interpreted and
synthesised local information in numerous ways. The provincial admin-
istration generally invested greater authority in those accounts that con-
formed to familiar, stereotypical narratives about Hijras/‘eunuchs’.
To determine the veracity of intelligence, the NWP government also
established formulas for the composition of official documents and the
standards of evidence by which information should be assessed.
However, the reports of British district administrators frequently called
into question official knowledge. While accounts that contradicted or
nuanced the dominant narrative rarely reached an official audience
beyond the division level, some marginal documents circulated more
widely among NWP administrators and fractured the coherence of offi-
cial knowledge. Moreover, since colonial knowledge emerged out of
dialogues with local people, even within a single report or letter, numer-
ous views about Hijras could be evident.
The assortment of archived information is particularly evident in the
only surviving district-level correspondence, which is from the districts of
Meerut and Benares divisions and is held in Allahabad.54 In these files
there are several layers of official documentation. As we have seen, the
District Superintendents of Police compiled registers of ‘eunuchs’ that
were based on intelligence gathered by Indian police and contained brief
biographical information on individuals. District registers were then
framed and interpreted by British District Magistrates and
Superintendents who summarised this information into reports to their
superiors, the divisional Commissioners. The Commissioners then con-
structed yet more abstract forms of knowledge, often (though not always)
fitting district officers’ reports into acceptable and authoritative forms for
consumption by the provincial government. The NWP administration
rarely preserved this district- and division-level correspondence, which
represents the periphery of the official ‘eunuch’ archive.
British District Superintendents’ and Magistrates’ reports on police
registers often recorded multiple views of Hijras, even in instances
where the official sought to reinforce stereotyped understandings of
Hijra-hood. In 1865, S. N. Martin, the Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar,
54
UPSA/A/COM/9/2, UPSA/A/COM/29/8, and UPSA/A/COV/119/12.
tried to fit local Hijras’ statements into authoritative forms of colonial

knowledge, but in the process, recorded fragments of their self-
representations. The register of ‘eunuchs’ stated that all of the registered
people either did not know the details of their emasculation or were ‘Said
to be a eunuch by birth’. In the remarks column of the register, Martin
elaborated on the statements of the registered people in the form of
a cursory summary of the ‘eunuchs’ as a collective, which he immediately
dismissed as false:
All these eunuchs tell the same story, they are ignorant of their parents, caste, &
place of birth they were made eunuchs at a very early age only one recollects
having been cut with a knife by his teacher, Gooroo, who was also a Eunuch, & is
dead . . . Many of them say they came from the East, district & place unknown,
they begged their way along, & eventually fell in with other eunuchs This
I disbelieve . . . [A]ll eunuchs . . . [rear] boys who have been either stolen, or are
orphans, or deserted by parents.55
While Martin reiterated the colonial stereotype of Hijras as the kidnap-
pers and castrators of children, he also recorded something of the ways
that Hijras constructed their life histories in their interactions with the
police. Martin’s criminalising account is fractured by distorted fragments
of Hijra self-representations, including the assertion of many that they
were ‘eunuchs by birth’, not castrates, and the claim that they had
eventually ‘fallen in’ with other Hijras, rather than being kidnapped.
An 1873 letter from F. M. Lind, the Magistrate of Bulandshahr, was
similarly ‘multivocal’ and included accounts of the opinions of various
social groups, albeit in a highly summarised form. The Bulandshahr
register was based on ‘the opinion of the inhabitants of the towns in
which the Eunuchs reside’; however, Lind claimed that these opinions
were ‘not to be relied on’. He added,
The fact is that neither the Police nor their [that is, ‘eunuchs’’] neighbours know
anything of their true characters. They simply know them as popular performers
at wedding parties or other such festive meetings. Of their doings in the villages
which they frequent they have no knowledge . . . The respectable Residents of
Jewur [Jewar] very strongly recommend that the Eunuchs of their town should be
confined to its limits. They could not but speak well of their behaviour at home
but stated that it was most probable that singing and dancing was not the sole
object of their visiting the country as is the custom.56
Lind attempted to frame local knowledge and sentiment in terms of the
authoritative colonial narrative of the Hijra kidnapper, but alternative
ways of viewing Hijras produced cracks in his criminalising account.
55
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Martin, ‘Register of eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, circa July 1865.
56
Most informants, as well as the Indian police, viewed Hijras as merely

performers at ‘festive occasions’. Even ‘respectable’ Indians spoke ‘well’
of Hijras’ behaviour, though they admitted, perhaps after being pressed
by Lind, that it was possible that Hijras committed crimes when they
visited the countryside. Thus, there were contradictions in the represen-
tation of Hijras between different layers of colonial record-keeping – for
instance, between the district registers compiled from Indian policemen’s
interviews and the correspondence among British officers about those
registers – as well as contradictory narratives within these different archi-
val layers.
British district administrators often interpreted local intelligence in
varied ways. When the police first interviewed Hijras, several district-
and division-level officials altogether dismissed Hijras’ accounts of their
lives and reiterated the dominant colonial stereotype. In 1865 in
Dehradun, the local ‘eunuchs’ all stated that they were ‘Born
a Eunuch’, but the Superintendent concluded that they were in fact
‘emasculated at such an early age as to remember no other condition’.57
Yet the statements of Hijras and other local people often led district
officials to question the authoritative narrative. In the mid 1860s, several
officials challenged the NWP government’s conclusions from the kidnap-
ping and castration cases of the early 1860s. For instance, B. Sapte, the
Commissioner of Agra, concluded that not all Hijra initiates were
kidnapped children.58 Several British district officials interpreted local
intelligence as evidence that ‘eunuchs’ lived by performance and alms-
collection, but not by prostitution.59 In Azamgarh, the Magistrate, James
Amson, wrote that Hijras ‘dance [in] public, and live by this alone and
[by] offerings which they receive in the course of their peregrinations’, but
claimed that there was no evidence ‘as far as has yet been ascertained’ that
they were prostitutes.60 Often, Commissioners roundly condemned these
district officials who misunderstood ‘colonial common sense’.61
Alternatively, Commissioners simply didn’t send district reports that
troubled official assumptions to their superiors. But this was not always
the case. Official documents, even those that circulated in the upper-
levels of government, often contained multiple forms of knowledge about
Hijras.62
57
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Dehradun DSIP, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, 19 October 1865.
58
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Sapte to NWP Secretary, 16 September 1865. See also BL/IOR/P/
438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
59
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Robertson to NWP Secretary, 27 June 1866.
60
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Amson to Benares DC, 16 November 1872.
61
Stoler, Along the Archival Grain.
62
As such, the NWP government repeatedly reiterated official knowledge to

district officials; these reiterations have in fact left extensive records of
colonial administrators’ failures to construct a coherent narrative about
the ‘eunuch problem’.63 For instance, marginal forms of knowledge repeat-
edly ruptured the representation of ‘eunuchs’ in the annual reports on the
‘working’ of Part II of the 1871 CTA. Each year, District Superintendents
of Police wrote reports and compiled statistics on the registered people in
their districts, which the Deputy Inspector-General of Police synthesised in
a province-wide report and statistical table. The NWP Secretary then
assessed the report in his ‘annual review’, which was in turn circulated
back to the district officials. While this process was designed to monitor
law enforcement, it was also intended to annually inculcate district officials
with the provincial government’s understanding of ‘eunuchs’. But as
a result, the annual report and review were littered with descriptions of
‘errors’ in district officers’ comprehension of ‘eunuchs’, which far from
making official knowledge uniform, rendered it heterogenous.
A few examples from Deputy Inspector-General O. L. Smith’s 1881
annual report illustrate the multivocal character of these documents. First
of all, Smith’s report contained traces of local intelligence that under-
mined the dominant narrative of eunuchs’ domestic arrangements.
Whereas colonial officials generally assumed that Hijra households were
entirely separate from biological and affinal kinship and contained only
kidnapped or immorally acquired children, officials in Allahabad district
reported that four boys in Hijra households were ‘the sons of chelás
[disciples] living with eunuchs’, suggesting some Hijra initiates had bio-
logical or adopted children. Meanwhile, one boy was ‘found with his
uncle, a eunuch, at Gonda’, implying that some children in Hijra house-
holds were relatives of Hijras. Registered peoples’ domestic lives were
clearly more complex than most officials assumed. Moreover, varied
opinions among British administrators were evident in the 1881 report.
To give just one example, the District Superintendent of Sitapur and the
Deputy Commissioner of Lucknow disagreed on whether Zananas and
religious devotees who wore female clothing known as Sakhis were ‘sus-
pected’ of sodomy. Smith attempted to settle the matter, concluding that
‘zenanas and sakhies by repute in no way differ from hijras in their habits’
and were thus ‘suspected’ of having sex with men.64 Despite his attempts
to smooth over conflicting opinions and intelligence, Smith’s report
nonetheless hints at local forms of knowledge and records mixed inter-
pretations among British officials.
63
BL/IOR/P/1816: Reid to NWP&O IGP, 14 August 1882.
64
Colonial representations of ‘eunuchs’ thus reflect an important broader

characteristic of colonial knowledge: although European colonisers often
used stark dichotomies to understand colonised societies, colonial
archives contained multiple, inconsistent and ambiguous accounts.
This plurality of colonial representations was a consequence of: first,
the importance of diverse non-European ‘informants’ who attempted to
portray their societies in line with their worldviews and interests;
and second, the politics of knowledge production that shaped Europeans’
accounts.65 Though colonial narratives were fissured and often contra-
dictory, many histories of colonialism still overestimate the coherence and
singularity of colonial representations of colonised ‘others’. This has
certainly been the case in the few existing historical studies of Hijras.66
Yet the official representation of Hijras was fractured between and within
different levels of colonial archives. From the perspective of the provincial
government, the lack of homogeneity in official information indicated
that there had been troubling failures in intelligence collection.
Enduring Anxieties about Colonial Knowledge

By the late 1870s, the panic about Hijras in official circles had died down
somewhat, as officials expressed confidence that, through registration and
intelligence collection, the colonial government would know, and even-
tually solve, the ‘eunuch problem’. Yet even as the colonial government
archived more and more information about Hijras, there was a continuing
sense of anxiety in the NWP government that this information was
inadequate and that the Hijra ‘system’ was incompletely known. These
enduring anxieties about intelligence failure were typical of colonial gov-
ernance in India. The partial and uneven incorporation of information
collected from local people into formal and abstract forms of colonial
knowledge produced structural weaknesses in colonial ‘information
systems’.67 The Hijra panic of the 1850s and 1860s had emerged out of
these structural anxieties and after it subsided, there was a continuing
sense of vulnerability to intelligence failure. The substantial expansion of
the NWP’s archived information about the Hijra community did not cool
official anxieties about perceived gaps in information.68 Officials fre-
quently resorted to the authoritative colonial Hijra stereotype to fill in
65
Douglas, ‘Encounters with the Enemy?’, 41 6; Stoler, ‘“In Cold Blood”’.
66
Gannon argued that 1871 was a moment of ‘consensus’ which fixed previously unstable
representations of Hijras. Gannon, ‘Translating the Hijra’, 247 301.
67
Bayly, Empire and Information, 17, 143, 167 8. See also Wagner, ‘“Treading Upon
Fires”’, 161, 191, 193 4.
68
Choudhury makes a similar point: Choudhury, ‘Sinews of Panic’.
lacunas or contradictions in their knowledge.69 Yet this often created

further tensions in their accounts.
Anxieties about inadequate intelligence were evident in the reports on
various dimensions of the ‘eunuch problem’ produced by the NWP Police
Department. For instance, the authors of reports into ‘kidnapping for
immoral purposes’ often admitted the tenuousness of their empirical
claims and the gaps in their knowledge, even as they made sweeping
assertions about crime in India. In 1870, the Deputy Inspector-General
of Police, E. Tyrwhitt, apologised in his ‘report on the crime of kidnap-
ping as it prevails in the North-Western provinces’ that
. . . the information I have as yet obtained as to the system pursued in ‘kidnapping
for immoral purposes’ is not [as] satisfactory or conclusive as I would wish. It is an
extremely difficult task to gather facts under this heading of the crime, unwilling as
I have been to risk failure by too precipitate action.70
Despite this uncertain and patchy information, Tyrwhitt concluded that

‘There can be little doubt that in our Provinces kidnapping for immoral
purposes is carried on to some extent, and one rises from the perusal of
the above statements with a feeling of pain at parents selling their children
into prostitution’.71 The kidnapping stereotype filled in the gaps in intel-
ligence, but sat at odds with much of the information the police had
collected in the districts.
Reports on Zananas and other gender-crossing north Indians evi-
denced a similar anxiety about deficient official knowledge, alongside
generalisations about deviance and criminality. In 1876, Hobart, the
Deputy Inspector-General of Police, wrote a report on a ‘class’ of ‘non-
impotent’, occasionally cross-dressing men who performed in public and
apparently prostituted themselves and ‘boys for hire’. Hobart primarily
associated this gender and sexual category with Zananas. Yet he doubted
his information was accurate and exhaustive: the report merely presented
‘the facts as far as I can collect them’. According to Hobart, there were
significant gaps in the information at hand:
It has been with some difficulty that information has been obtained at all on this
repulsive subject. Many [British] officers (I judge from their replies) have shown
but little interest in the matter, and indeed information on such a subject is
notoriously difficult to collect. The shame attaching to such an enquiry, the fear
of ultimate legal proceedings, the extraordinary regard which native officials show
for a long established usage, all stand in the way. To illustrate this I may quote the
69
By comparison: Stoler, ‘“In Cold Blood”’, 39.
70
Tyrwhitt’s report considered kidnapping by ‘eunuchs’ alongside kidnapping by other
groups. BL/IOR/P/92: Tyrwhitt to NWP Secretary, 22 February 1870.
71
Ibid.
case of the District Superintendent of Aligarh, who at first reported on the

strength of the assertions of his native police officers, that there was no such
class of men, but who afterwards found such a class in large numbers.72
Due to the difficulties of gathering information about such subjects, the
British apparently knew nothing about ‘immoral’ gender and sexual
practices in vast swathes of colonial territory: ‘In the face of the difficulty
experienced in obtaining the names of men who may fairly be called
“professional catamites”, if we have obtained a list of 253 such creatures
in ten districts, the presumption is that in all districts they will number
more than one thousand when enquiry is more vigorously pursued’.73
Hobart believed that there were enormous lacunas in colonial intelligence
about Indian sexuality, but he resorted to colonial stereotypes to plug the
perceived gaps in colonial knowledge. He assumed ‘unnatural crime’
thrived where intelligence was absent.
Into the 1880s and 1890s, there was anxiety in the NWP government
that district registers and province-wide statistics were riddled with errors
and did not accurately account for the entire ‘eunuch’ population. For
instance, in 1882 there was an extended correspondence between the
office of the Inspector-General of Police and divisional authorities about
‘errors and omissions’ in the annual report on ‘eunuchs’, especially in
relation to the number of people on the police registers.74 There was
a continuing concern that the police still did not know the full extent of
the ‘eunuch’ population. Official anxieties about lacunas and uncertain-
ties in colonial intelligence persisted into the late nineteenth century, even
as the ‘eunuch’ archive expanded. British officials tended to resort to
familiar narratives of Hijra-hood to make sense of conflicting information
and what they didn’t know. In some cases, a lack of intelligence was
viewed as evidence of sexual immorality and criminality. This is a good
example of Arondekar’s argument that in colonial accounts, the absence
of evidence for ‘unnatural’ sexuality was taken as proof of the ‘abundance’
of native perversity.75 However, as we have seen, this was not the only
narrative in colonial archives.
... ... ...
Attention to the practices of record-keeping, archiving and circulation
that underlined colonial knowledge throws into sharp relief the multiple
narratives about Hijras in colonial archives. These varied and contested
accounts of Hijras were evident, in part, because colonial accounts
72 73
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Hobart to NWP IGP, 21 June 1876. Ibid.
74
BL/IOR/P/1816: Hobart to NWP&O Secretary, circa 1882.
75
Arondekar, For the Record, 11.
emerged out of asymmetrical dialogues with north Indian society.

Informants of varied social backgrounds – including landlords, promi-
nent raises, locally important literate men, village headmen, chaukidars,
Hijras and their neighbours – shaped the archive in uneven but percep-
tible ways. Indian police officers’ and British administrators’ interpreta-
tions of this local intelligence were heterogeneous, resulting in reports
from the districts that contradicted or confused criminalising colonial
narratives. The representation of ‘eunuchs’ varied between and within
different types of official records. Even individual documents could con-
tain varied understandings of Hijras due to traces of local knowledge and
various official viewpoints. The NWP administration’s need to reinforce
official knowledge actually preserved an extensive record of failures to
create a consistent narrative about Hijras. The annual bureaucratic ritual
of the report on Part II of the CTA not only disseminated authoritative
official knowledge down to the district level, but also circulated varied and
contradictory knowledge of the Hijra community from the districts up to
the level of the provincial government. Even as the NWP government
amassed a significant volume of ethnographic information, statistics and
administrative precedent, there was a lasting sense of anxiety about
patchy and inconsistent information. However, the plural forms of
knowledge in colonial archives allow us to piece together a fuller view of
nineteenth-century Hijras’ lives.
6 Hijra Life Histories
From the contestations of official archives, fragments of nineteenth-

century Hijras’ lives emerge, which were obscured in authoritative colo-
nial narratives and middle-class Indian stereotypes. As Clare Anderson
has recently argued, focusing on the stories of individuals ‘center[s]
marginalised peoples in histories of Empire’.1 Individual life histories
also challenge the collectivising tendencies of most nineteenth-century
accounts. Biographical fragments thus nuance the picture of the Hijra
community that we would see if our focus remained at the level of the
group.2 Rather than taking the approach of prosopography – which seeks
to create a collective biography by analysing what was typical to a group –
I foreground individual Hijra lives, wherever possible.3 Life histories not
only illuminate broader social structures, power relations and socio-
cultural meanings, they can also force a rethinking of these broader
patterns. In this sense, this chapter takes a microhistory approach.
By reducing the scale of analysis to the history of a particular life, com-
munity or event, microhistory aims to challenge our understanding of
broader historical processes. Microhistories are premised on ‘the belief
that microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved.’4
Drawing on this life history and microhistory methodology, this chapter
pieces together the lives of individual Hijras and interweaves them with
what we know from more generalising types of historical records such as
ethnographies, moving back and forth between the level of the particular
and the general.
By examining nineteenth-century Hijras’ life histories, this chapter
provides an account of the community that not only questions, but also
aims to move beyond, the dominant colonial narrative, even as it largely
1
Anderson, Subaltern Lives, 1, 53. 2 Brown, ‘“Life Histories”’, 587 95.
3
Lawrence Stone, ‘Prosopography’, Daedalus 100, no. 1 (1971): 46 79.
4
Levi, ‘On Microhistory’, 101. For general introductions to microhistory see:
Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory: Two or Three Things that I Know About It’, Critical
Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993): 10 35; Matti Peltonen, ‘Clues, Margins, and Monads:
The Micro Macro Link in Historical Research’, History and Theory 40 (2001): 347 59.
139
utilises colonial records. Archived biographies throw into relief four

aspects of nineteenth-century Hijras’ lives. First, although Hijra perfor-
mance and alms-collection (badhai) were enormously culturally signifi-
cant, Hijra life histories also reveal that they had a wide range of
occupations, including animal husbandry, farming, shopkeeping and
domestic service. Agriculture was an especially important form of
Hijra work but was downplayed in most colonial accounts because this
did not chime with the portrayal of Hijras as unproductive, wandering
beggars. The rich anthropological literature on Hijras that has emerged
in recent decades has highlighted the enduring importance of perfor-
mance and badhai to contemporary definitions of Hijra-hood,5 yet his-
torically, Hijras combined these iconic Hijra occupations with various
forms of labour. Second, brief colonial biographies of Hijras highlight
that discipleship genealogies linking gurus and chelas (disciples) were
central to Hijras’ self-representations in their interactions with police.
Hijra life histories suggest that the community was a type of what
Indrani Chatterjee has termed ‘monastic government’, that is, a form
of economic and political organisation based on communities of tea-
chers and disciples.6 Third, while nineteenth-century ethnologists sug-
gested that the ‘typical’ Hijra household contained several generations
of chelas and gurus, Hijra domestic arrangements were in fact more
diverse. Hijra households incorporated various forms of kinship, while
some Hijras lived with non-Hijras, including widowed women and male
lovers.
Finally, Hijra biographies suggest that slavery was one of several
situations in which people were initiated into the Hijra community.
The presence of initiates of slave origin in Hijra households needs to be
situated in the wider historical context in which discipleship lineages
and practices of enslavement were interlinked in various social groups.
Hijras who had been enslaved in childhood do not appear to have had
a lower status in the Hijra community in adulthood. Yet enslavement
was not the only circumstance in which children were initiated as
Hijras; moreover, there are numerous examples of youths and adults
undergoing initiation. The colonial panic about Hijra kidnapping dis-
torted the complex relationship between discipleship and slavery in
Hijra communities and overstated the number of children living with
Hijras.
5
E.g., Reddy, With Respect to Sex; Hossain, ‘Beyond Emasculation’; Pamment, ‘Hijraism’.
6
Chatterjee, ‘Monastic “Governmentality”’; Indrani Chatterjee, Forgotten Friends: Monks,
Marriages and Memories of Northeast India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Hijra Life Histories 141
Archived Life Histories

Most of the surviving biographical information on nineteenth-century
Hijras was recorded on the ‘registers of eunuchs’ and ‘registers of property
possessed by eunuchs’ that North-Western Province (NWP) police com-
piled from 1865.7 Such district registers were bureaucratic accounts of
individual lives recorded according to colonial categories of useful infor-
mation. The following is a typical entry on a ‘register of eunuchs’ from
Meerut:
Name: Begum Father’s name: Heera Age: 30 When Emasculated: In the

age of 15 Place of Residence: Pegunah [pargana] Meerut; Meerut city District
& towns frequented by them: Meerut[,] villages about Ostensible Means of
Livelihood: Dancing Remarks: [blank]8
Name, father’s name, age, date of emasculation, place of residence,

places ‘frequented’, ‘ostensible means of livelihood’ and property – this
is generally what we know of those people who were registered as
‘eunuchs’. Fragments of Hijras’ biographies are also far and few between
in the colonial archives. The only surviving district registers are from just
two divisions of the NWP: Meerut and Benares.9 Though colonial
records often reduced the lives of Hijras to a handful of classes of infor-
mation that had a policing or surveillance purpose, occasionally a colonial
official failed to follow the prescribed formula for recording Hijras’
biographies.10 Some district registers that did not follow the required
format called official knowledge into question and troubled the sweeping
categories of colonial rule. These unconventional biographical accounts
thus shine a sliver of light on aspects of Hijras’ everyday life that usually
went unrecorded. Take, for example, the following entry from the district
register of Basti:
Chuppeea [Chhapia pargana, Basti district] Name: Neeazun Property:

Several head of Cattle (Bullocks, Cows, Horses, goats) utensils etc., home &
well. Remarks: Lives by husbandry, no suspicion, has a boy 12 years of age
who[se] marriage with a girl in Shunkerjoha [?] Police Station [illegible] has been
celebrated.11
The Basti district register not only dispensed with the required format, it
also recorded information that the NWP government usually considered
irrelevant. For example, it highlights the diverse occupations of people
7
Property registers were compiled under the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA).
8
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Webster, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Meerut, 7 May 1873.
9
See files UPSA/A/COV/119/12, UPSA/A/COM/29/8 and UPSA/A/COM/9/2.
10
On archival conventions: Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives’, 87 109.
11
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Waddington, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Basti, circa 1872.
registered as ‘eunuchs’, including agricultural work like animal husban-

dry. The Basti register also records Neeazun’s efforts to arrange the
marriage of an adopted boy and hints at some of the complexities of
Hijra domestic arrangements.
One surviving document in particular – the register of ‘eunuchs’ in
Muzaffarnagar district of Meerut division – recorded remarkably detailed
accounts of the lives of eleven so-called eunuchs.12 It included not only
the brief details that were required by the colonial state, but also a short
biography of a few hundred words for each of the eleven registered people.
The Muzaffarnagar register emerged out of the context examined in the
previous chapter, in which disputes among officials about Hijra crimin-
ality and sexual deviance – that were underlined by heterogeneous inter-
pretations of local intelligence – produced multiple colonial narratives
about Hijras. The Muzaffarnagar authorities compiled such an unusually
detailed register in order to justify their policies to their superiors.
In 1872, the Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, G. Palmer, questioned the
failure of W. A. Short, the District Superintendent, to register a single
person under Part II of the recently passed Criminal Tribes Act.13
In response to Palmer’s demand for more information, Short ordered
Inspector Nurayan Singh ‘to enquire and report on each individual
case’.14 Singh interviewed the ‘eunuchs’ of the district and their neigh-
bours, as well as the village heads (lambardars) and watchmen (chauki-
dars), and compiled a register ‘in Vernacular’, which was then translated
into English and archived. The purpose of the Muzaffarnagar register was
to prove that the local ‘eunuchs’ did not need to be kept under surveil-
lance; consequently, it did not criminalise Hijras like most official
documents.15 Processes of translation undoubtedly obscured locally rele-
vant social and cultural meanings. The priorities of the NWP adminis-
tration also shaped the document in important ways; for instance,
resulting in an emphasis on the circumstances of people’s emasculation.
Nevertheless, the Muzaffarnagar district register is an important record,
providing a relatively full account of individual lives. This chapter thus
intertwines the biographies of the Muzaffarnagar ‘eunuchs’ with various
other life histories of nineteenth-century Hijras.
As the above discussion highlights, the majority of archived life his-
tories were recorded as accounts of ‘eunuchs’, not ‘Hijras’. It is some-
times difficult to distinguish those ‘eunuchs’ who identified as Hijras from
12
13
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Palmer to Muzaffarnagar DSIP, 2 November 1872.
14
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short to Muzaffarnagar DM, 3 December 1872.
15
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, circa January 1873;
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short to Muzaffarnagar DM, 26 December 1872.
those who found themselves categorised as ‘eunuchs’ because they cross-

dressed in theatrical or ritual contexts, or because their everyday gender
expression was non-binary. The archives suggest that most registered
people were Hijras, but a sizeable minority were not. Moreover, the
word ‘Hijra’, as it appears in official accounts, was a colonial category.
When colonial officials did use the term Hijra, they applied that label
according to the logic of colonial assumptions about Hijra-hood, not
necessarily because an individual had described themselves as such.
Where individual life histories refer to either discipleship lineages, initia-
tion or to cohabitation with other ‘eunuchs’, we can be reasonably con-
fident that the people in question were members of Hijra lineages.
However, some of the groups that were occasionally classified as
‘eunuchs’ were also organised by discipleship, particularly Sakhis who
cross-dressed in ritual contexts. Any ascription of Hijra identity is thus
necessarily tentative. Consequently, I foreground the ways that colonial
categories shape surviving fragments of nineteenth-century Hijras’ lives.
Hijra Work
Most late nineteenth-century life histories of ‘Hijras’ or ‘eunuchs’ note
that they performed and begged for alms, which was usually termed
badhai (a ‘congratulatory gift’). These ‘occupations of the Hijra’16
involved particular social, ritual and gendered practices and were vital
to notions of Hijra-ness in nineteenth-century north India. Colonial
records like police registers sometimes bifurcated performance and bad-
hai, although they were intimately interrelated, classifying Hijras/eunuchs
as either performers or beggars.17 To take the ‘eunuchs’ of Muzaffarnagar
district as an example, several were ‘beggars’, according to the ‘ostensible
livelihood’ column of the register, including Kureemun, Motee, Jowahra,
Heera and Fyzun, who were all in their thirties, forties or fifties.
The occupation of fifteen-year-old Chimmun was ‘Begging & dancing’,
while forty-two-year-old Alladia’s work was ‘Dancing’. Four middle-aged
and elderly people who lived together in what appears to have been a Hijra
household – Jowaha, Wufatee, Pearee and their guru Ameer Bux – had the
occupations of ‘Dancing and singing’.18 However, the official classifica-
tion of some people as beggars, and others as dancers and singers, prob-
ably had more to do with differences in their economic means, with the
relatively poor classified as ‘beggars’. The biographies of the
16
Hossain, ‘Beyond Emasculation’, 495.
17
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Alone, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Azamgarh, 9 October 1872;
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Webster, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Meerut, 7 May 1873.
18
Muzaffarnagar ‘beggars’ make it clear that they had also learnt to sing and
dance, usually in their youth.19
Colonial ethnography – both published scholarly tomes and the prac-
tical ethnography of colonial officials – includes hints of the cultural
significance of Hijras’ singing, dancing and alms-collection. Ethnologist
H. A. Rose’s 1907 account of Punjabi ‘birth observances’ highlights
several ways in which the Hijra community was embedded in local ritual
economies:
. . . [A] hı̄jrā . . . goes daily to each mahallah (street) and cries Huā betā ? Kaun sā
ghar jā gā ? (i.e. ‘Has a son been born?’ ‘Which house has awakened?’). Some child,
or [a] sweeperess [sic] . . . informs [the Hijra] of the family in which a son or
a daughter was born; going to that house he gets two pice for a daughter and four
for a son, and informs all the bhā nds, bhandelas, etc. (players, actors, buffoons,
etc.); from that time . . . all those whose business it is to sing, dance, play, or
amuse, begin to come, and after singing or acting for an hour or two demand their
presents and go away, only to come back again on the chhattı̄ [the sixth day after
the birth].20
Hijras also had a recognised right to collect alms at times other than the
births of children. They performed and received alms on the occasion of
weddings, for instance, and received grain from cultivators at certain
points in the agricultural cycle.21 Hijras also requested money from
bazaar shoppers and shopkeepers.22 Few accounts detail Hijras’ perfor-
mance practices, but Hardyal Singh noted in his ethnography of Marwar
that ‘They sing and dance, their music consisting of Dholak [a small, two-
sided drum], and Majiras [cymbals]. They chiefly clap their hands when
they sing’.23
Hijra lineages had defined territories in which they could collect alms
and perform. Rose wrote that in Punjab, Hijras had ‘divided the Province
into regular beats from which birt or dues are collected’.24 There were
reports of similar practices in the NWP. In 1871, a police officer from
Gorakhpur named Tiernan described how:
The Eunuchs of Goruckpore partition the district into certain plots, one of which
is allotted to each clan, and it is considered a point of etiquette with each clan to
confine its operations within the limits of its own proper circle; it is the custom of
the clan on hearing the birth of male children within its jurisdiction to go to the
19
Ibid.
20
Italics in original. H. A. Rose, ‘Muhammadan Birth Observances in the Punjab’,
The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 37 (1907): 243.
See also BL/IOR/P/92: Tiernan to Gorakhpur DSIP, 26 May 1871.
21
Russell, Tribes and Castes, 207.
22
Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, 228; Rose, Glossary, 332 3; Shortt, ‘The Kojahs’, 406.
23
Singh, Report on the Census, 122. 24 Rose, Glossary, 331.
houses of the parents and make a rejoicing by dancing and singing, obtaining
a pecuniary reward for their trouble; these visits of congratulation and rejoicing
are made in the course of the Eunuch’s annual tour, which take[s] place in the
month of August.25
Tiernan’s report and other sources suggest that Hijras were seasonally
mobile as they visited nearby towns and villages that were ‘allotted’ to
their discipleship lineage, where they performed and collected alms.26
The biographical fragments recorded on the district registers also shed
light on Hijra mobility in the context of badhai. Three broad patterns of
mobility are evident from the registers.27 First, most ‘eunuchs’ visited
towns and villages in the surrounding region, or as the district registers
put it, visited ‘villages about’. These were travels of relatively short dis-
tance in the nearby countryside, usually not exceeding the limits of the
district. Groups of ‘eunuchs’ who lived together visited the same places,
further suggesting that Hijras visited a regular circuit of villages that was
recognised as part of their lineage’s territory. All of the ten ‘eunuchs’
whom police registered in Meerut city (named Amar Bux, Fyez Bux,
Noor Bux, Begum, Khoda Bux, Booley Bux, Jugun, Khowaz Bux,
Maula Bux and Wazeer) visited ‘villages about’ Meerut city. Indeed,
most of the registered people in Meerut district only visited ‘villages
about’ their own town or village.28 Second, a significant minority of
registered people periodically visited towns further afield, including in
other districts of the NWP, other British provinces and Indian-ruled
states. Begum and Goolub, who lived in Mowana pargana, another part
of Meerut district, visited ‘Mowana villages about in Meerut District and
Diranuggur [Dara Nagar?] villages in the Bijnour District’.29 Finally,
a very small minority of registered ‘eunuchs’ were itinerant and spent
a high proportion of their time travelling. These more mobile people
generally did not appear on the early registers, although police subse-
quently brought some under surveillance.30 Hijras were generally not
peripatetic, despite the colonial rhetoric of Hijra ‘wandering’, but peri-
odic travels that were usually of relatively short distance were important to
Hijras’ social and cultural life, particularly to Hijra alms-collection.
Hijras’ ‘claim to alms rest[ed], as with other religious mendicants, in
the sacred character which attache[d] to them’, as the colonial ethnologist
25
BL/IOR/P/92: Tiernan to Gorakhpur DSIP, 26 May 1871.
26
27
A small minority of registered people apparently did not leave their town. This paragraph
is based on the registers in UPSA/A/COM/9/2; UPSA/A/COM/29/8; and UPSA/A/COV/
119/12.
28
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Webster, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Meerut, 7 May 1873. 29 Ibid.
30
R. V. Russell explained.31 Hijras appear to have had plural religious

practices, including worship of local Hindu deities, regionally and trans-
regionally important Hindu deities and Sufi saints.32 In western and
possibly also northern India, Hijras were especially associated with wor-
ship of the goddess Bahuchara Mata.33 The vast majority of Hijras in the
NWP stated they were Muslim on the census,34 though the colonial effort
to separate the Hijra (and Indian) population into the categories of Hindu
and Muslim oversimplified the more complex religious practices of
Hijras. The origin legends of the community, though derived from
Hindu traditions, were important to Hijras of other religious affiliations as
well.35 Daily worship and alms-collection evoked Hijras’ definition of
themselves as the ‘houses’ or ‘temples’ of the goddess36 and as persons
‘devoted’ to the ‘service of the goddess’.37 Hijras’ self-representation as
spiritual ascetics and their right to collect alms were related to beliefs
about fertility. At least ideally, Hijras were castrated or were ‘born that
way’, a condition the police registers described as being a ‘eunuch by
birth’ or ‘born a eunuch’.38 Hijra mythology, as reported by nineteenth-
century and early twentieth-century ethnologists, suggested that Hijra
embodiment and infertility was divinely sanctioned.39 In western India,
Hijra legends held that Bahuchara Mata had ordained that all men ‘born
impotent’ should be emasculated and should wear women’s clothing.40
As persons who were infertile, Hijras were thought to have the ability to
bless the fertility of others. This belief was related to Hindu creation
myths in which Siva breaks off his linga (phallus) and throws it onto the
ground, the linga becoming ‘a source of universal fertility as soon as it has
ceased to be a source of individual fertility’.41 Hijras’ association with
fecundity tied them to procreative sexuality, to which they were both
peripheral (as infertile persons) and central (as persons with some
power over fertility). The flipside to Hijras’ ability to bless fertility was
their power to curse if they were refused alms. An early twentieth-century
31
Russell, Tribes and Castes, 209.
32
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Annesley to Benares DM, 12 April 1873; NAI/HD/JB 02/1890
111: Rai to GGI, 1 November 1889. On contemporary South Asia: Hossain, ‘Beyond
Emasculation’, 504 6.
33
34
Crooke, Tribes and Castes, 495 7. Also see Russell, Tribes and Castes, 207.
35
Rose, Glossary, 331 2; Shortt, ‘Kojahs’, 403.
36
Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, 226 7. 37 Russell, Tribes and Castes, 207 8.
38
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Webster, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Meerut, 7 May 1873; UPSA/A/
COM/29/8: Campbell, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Bulandshahr, 6 January 1873; Reddy,
With Respect to Sex, 92 3, 122, 134.
39
Russell, Tribes and Castes, 207 8. 40 Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, 207.
41
Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980), 135; Reddy, With Respect to Sex, 97.
ethnographic account, for instance, mentions a fear among householders

that ‘calamity’ would befall anyone who refused to pay Hijras.42 If refused
alms, Hijras would deal out choice insults and they might lift their cloth-
ing and expose their lack of genitals.43 The Hijra gesture of lifting up their
clothing ‘recreates the violence of castration’ and displaces it on to the
ungenerous householder or shopkeeper, according to Lawrence Cohen.44
Modern anthropologists argue that in India, begging is understood in
terms of an ‘ethos of worship’ and carries the moral weight of asceticism.
But begging is also a form of ‘coercive subordination’, in part because
cursing is the flip side of blessing, and in part because the beggar’s
exaggerated performance of dependence is designed to trap the social
superior in an obligation of generosity. However, this is an ambiguous
enactment, constituting ‘a celebration of dependence or a subtle (and
coercive) complaint about it’.45 The administrator-scholar H. A. Rose
hinted at the ‘coercive subordination’ of Hijra ‘begging’ in his remark that
aside from zamindars (landowners), people ‘dare not refuse their fees, and
every shopkeeper has to pay them one pice in the year’.46
Although performance and badhai were central to notions of Hijra-
hood, the brief biographical details recorded on the district registers
highlight that most Hijras in fact combined these practices with
a variety of different types of work. In district registers that were relatively
detailed, many people were listed as having multiple sources of income.
In Muzaffarnagar district, Jowaha, Wufatee, Pearee and their guru Ameer
Bux had ‘2 gardens and one house; they support themselves from their
rent and income’, as well as from ‘Dancing and singing’.47 Similarly, the
entry on the 1872 Basti district register for a ‘eunuch’ named Amola who
lived in Kaptanganj reads, ‘Begs, cultivates & dances’. The register states
‘Beg & cultivate’ next to the names of Emamun, Chourasee, Deedaroo,
Rugbunsee and Lalla, who were residents of Amorha, another town of
Basti district. Descriptions of other Basti ‘eunuchs’ recorded several
occupations including: ‘begging’; ‘dances at the birth [sic] of children’;
‘lives by husbandry’; and ‘cultivate[s] land’.48 Registers from Gorakhpur
and Bulandshahr that were compiled in 1872 and 1873 mention a wide
42
43
NAI/HD/JB 02/1890 111: Rai to GGI, 1 November 1889; Solvyns, Les Hindoos, vol. 2,
plate IV.
44
Cohen, ‘Pleasures of Castration’, 297.
45
Italics in original. Arjun Appadurai, ‘Topographies of the Self: Praise and Emotion in
Hindu India’, in Language and the Politics of Emotion, eds. Catherine A. Lutz and
Lila Abu Lughod, 101 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
46
Rose, Glossary, 333.
47
48
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Waddington, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Basti, circa 1872.
variety of occupations among registered people, including: renting out

houses or shops; animal husbandry; tenant farming; work as agricultural
labourers; shopkeeping; itinerant petty trading; weaving and tailoring;
and domestic work.49 In 1877, the occupations of ‘eunuchs’ in the
NWP were variously reported as ‘begging, cultivating, tailoring, selling
eggs, keeping carts, weaving, cooking, tobacco selling, and field labour’.50
These biographical details suggest that nineteenth-century Hijras’
sources of livelihood were much more diverse than colonial accounts, as
well as middle-class Indian narratives, usually suggested.
A few registered people were employed by Indian-ruled states, though
it is unclear if these ‘eunuchs’ were Khwajasarais (eunuch-slave house-
hold servants and administrators) or Hijras. A handful of registered
people in Azamgarh and Ghazipur were servants of the Nawab of
Murshidabad in Bengal, but the registers do not state what sorts of
work they did. For instance, in 1873, twenty-three-year-old ‘Cassim
Alli’ (Kasim Ali), who lived in Sikandarpur village of Azamgarh district,
was listed as a ‘Servant to the Nawab of Moorshedabad’, though the other
‘eunuchs’ registered in the village were described as ‘beggars’.51
The district ‘Registers of Property Possessed by Eunuchs’ give us
further glimpses of registered people’s varied means of livelihood.
The property registers mention a few relatively wealthier households of
‘eunuchs’ who received rental income from houses they owned. Some co-
resident groups of registered people also sold the produce of groves they
tended (though they did not always own the land) or were
kashtkars (tenant farmers). Many registered people owned a few animals
such as horses, mares, bulls, cows and buffalos, suggesting they were
engaged in animal husbandry. A few registered individuals or groups
owned shops or were traders, such as a shoe-seller named Malagir who
owned a substantial quantity of shoes in Bulandshahr.52
Perhaps because of Hijras’ diverse forms of work and income, their
financial means also varied. Many district registers of property list owners
of pakka (well-built) houses, owners of kaccha (makeshift) houses and
49
Ibid.; UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Alone, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Azamgarh, 9 October 1872;
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Meerut DSIP, ‘Register of property’, 23 April 1872; UPSA/A/
COM/29/8: Bulandshahr DM, ‘Register of property’, 9 January 1873; UPSA/A/COV/
119/12: Webster, ‘Register of property’, Gorakhpur, circa 1872 3; BL/IOR/P/97:
Hobart to NWP IGP, 4 May 1875.
50
BL/IOR/P/840: Hobart to NWP&O IGP, 11 September 1877.
51
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Alone, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Azamgarh, 9 October 1872;
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Elliot to Meerut DC, 19 March 1873.
52
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Meerut DSIP, ‘Register of property’, 23 April 1872; UPSA/A/
COM/29/8: Bulandshahr DM, ‘Register of property’, 9 January 1873; UPSA/A/COV/
119/12: Webster, ‘Register of property’, Gorakhpur, circa 1872 3; UPSA/A/COM/29/8:
Short, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, circa January 1873.
people who owned only moveable property. In Meerut district, for

instance, the 1872 register listed three individuals and four groups who
each owned a ‘Pukka dwelling house’ and six groups that each had
a ‘dwelling house’, with the build of the house unspecified. Meanwhile,
two groups of ‘eunuchs’ and one individual owned a ‘Cutcha dwelling
house’ and five people only owned moveable property.53 The economic
means of Hijras evidently differed somewhat.
In short, the district registers indicate that Hijras performed more wide-
ranging forms of work than the accounts that circulated in the upper-
levels of officialdom generally allowed. To be sure, some people who were
not initiated as Hijras were also included on the district registers due to
their gender expression, but it is clear that Hijras dominated the registered
population, suggesting that Hijras were often engaged in multiple types of
work. In particular, the registers imply that many Hijras were engaged in
some form of agriculture – whether cultivation, tending fruit groves,
agricultural wage labour or animal husbandry – usually alongside perfor-
mance and alms-collection. Hijras’ agricultural work needs to be situated
in the context of the gendering of agricultural labour in nineteenth-
century India. Both Indian men and women were heavily involved in
agricultural work, though men tended to do the ploughing and sowing,
while women did the transplantation, weeding and, often, animal hus-
bandry. Wealthier men increasingly removed the women of their families
from publicly visible agricultural work, yet even secluded rural women
‘undertook a variety of agricultural . . . tasks which were . . . subsumed
within the daily routine of domesticity’. Within less wealthy families,
women’s work in the fields and waged agricultural labour was vital to
household incomes, especially when men migrated for work. Although
such female agricultural work was widespread, it was increasingly defined
as unfeminine if outside a ‘domestic’ context. Nevertheless, in practice,
agricultural labour was not a purely masculine domain in nineteenth-
century India.54
For the British, however, agriculture was a manly form of work. Very
few British officials commented on Hijras’ agricultural work, even though
cultivation, ‘field labour’ and husbandry were the most common occupa-
tions, aside from performance and ‘begging’. The exclusion of Hijras’
agricultural labour from the vast majority of colonial accounts was due to
53
The valuations of this property varied widely, but British officials claimed Hijras were
hiding immoveable property, so they may not be reliable. UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Meerut
DSIP, ‘Register of property’, 23 April 1872; UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Webster, ‘Register of
property’, Meerut, 7 May 1873.
54
Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 63 5, 74 83.
the powerful association of seasonally mobile and apparently ‘criminal’

peoples like Hijras with ‘unproductive’ occupations in colonial India.55
British administrators defined agriculture as an industrious and mascu-
line type of labour, as was evident in projects to reform ‘criminal tribes-
men’ through ‘settling’ them as cultivators.56 The fact that many
Hijras were already performing such ‘reformative’ work did not fit into
the dominant Hijra stereotype. Nor did middle-class Indian men mention
Hijras’ agricultural labour in their writings on the community. Similarly,
the agricultural work of other criminalised communities was also obfus-
cated in colonial and elite Indian accounts. For instance, Ramnarayan
Rawat has shown that the social marginality of Chamars, an ‘untouchable’
community, was perpetuated through colonial and upper-caste Hindu
representations of Chamars as ‘traditional’ leather workers, even though
they were ‘primarily peasants’. In the late nineteenth century, this ‘occu-
pational stereotype’ was interlaced with Chamars’ criminalisation as ‘cat-
tle poisoners’.57 Although somewhat different social dynamics and
historical processes were at play in the Chamar and Hijra cases, it is
notable that the agricultural work of both groups was obscured because
it complicated criminalising and marginalising narratives.
Hijra Discipleship Lineages

Knowledge related to performance, badhai and Hijra deportment was
transmitted through discipleship lineages. Guru and chela (disciple)
were the main terms that were reported in colonial records, though
Hijras may have also used other words, such as pir or murshid for teacher
and murid for disciple. Almost every biography recorded on the
Muzaffarnagar register of ‘eunuchs’ notes the knowledge traditions
through which training in performance was passed down from ‘teachers’
to ‘pupils’. As a child, Wufatee ‘was patronized by Chutluggun for 6
years’ and after she was ‘emasculated’ ‘Chutluggun taught him to
dance’. When Pearee was a young adult she ‘went to Neadra eunuch at
Jansut [Jansath] and had learned singing and dancing’. The biography of
Motee, a so-called ‘beggar’, reports that ‘when he was a minor’ three
‘eunuchs’ named Hosein Bux, Pearee and Emun ‘taught him to sing and
dance [and] hence he has supported himself by singing and dancing’.58
55
Sinha, ‘Mobility, Control and Criminality’.
56
Ironically, many were already cultivators. BL/IOR/P/840: Hobart to NWP IGP,
17 July 1876.
57
Ramnarayan S. Rawat, Reconsidering Untouchability: Chamars and Dalit History in North
India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 5 12, 54 84.
58
Other sorts of knowledge were also transmitted through discipleship

lineages. A Delhi lawyer named Mahtab Rai wrote in 1889 that ‘eunuchs’
in Lucknow annually held a fair or mela where they competed in ‘abus-
[ing] each other’ with ‘very obscene and filthy language’. Rai added that
they were ‘proud of their victory over others in such language’.59 This skill
in bawdy, humorous and insulting talk was learnt through discipleship
lineages. Chelas also learnt gendered norms of behaviour and embodi-
ment from their guru. In their accounts of Hijras in western India, the
ethnologists Kirparam and Enthoven reported that following initiation,
there was a ‘probationary period [which] lasts from six to twelve months,
during which the conduct of the novice is carefully watched’, suggesting
that Hijra gurus enforced norms of proper Hijra behaviour.60
Some Hijra gurus who performed the nirvan or castration operation also
passed their medical and ritual knowledge onto their disciples and other
Hijras in their lineage. The ‘most skillful and best known operator’ in
Benares, Koosme, regularly travelled between Benares and Sasaram in
Bihar with her chela Sugoonah.61 The early twentieth-century ethnologist
Enthoven mentioned that the emasculation operation was ‘held to corre-
spond to a birth ceremony’ which made one into a Hijra, explaining why
those who performed the procedure were known as dais or midwives.62
The emasculation procedure was loaded with ritual significance and the
Hijras who performed the operation carried out rituals of devotion to
particular deities.63 Hijra dais were also among the various people in
north Indian society that were considered medically knowledgeable,
beyond formally trained practitioners such as ayurveda vaids and unani
hakims.64 Colonial physicians noted that Hijras had devised methods to
numb the patient’s genitals – such as binding them with string, desensitis-
ing the patient with cold water and administering bhang (cannabis) – as
well as means of stopping haemorrhaging and treating the wound –
including the application of natural substances such as hot sesame oil,
59
NAI/HD/JB 02/1890 111: Rai to GGI, 1 November 1889.
60
According to these ethnologists, Hijras were also known as ‘pavayas’ in this region.
Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, 227; Kirparam, ‘Pavávás’, 506 8.
61
UPSA/A/COV/19/12: Annesley to Benares DM, 12 April 1873.
62
Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, 227. See also Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman, 26.
63
64
On women’s medical expertise: Anshu Malhotra, ‘Of Dais and Midwives: “Middle
Class” Interventions in the Management of Women’s Reproductive Health A Study
from Colonial Punjab’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 10, no. 2 (2003): 229 59;
Charu Gupta, ‘Procreation and Pleasure: Writings of a Woman Ayurvedic Practitioner
in Colonial North India’, Studies in History 21, no. 1 (2005): 38; Martha Ann Selby,
‘Narratives of Conception, Gestation, and Labour in Sanskrit Ayurvedic Texts’, Asian
Medicine 1, no. 2 (2005): 271 3.
soft clay, various tree barks and warm water.65 Hijras’ medical practice
was another form of knowledge that was transmitted through Hijra dis-
cipleship hierarchies.
Hijras often lived in households that were structured by discipleship
relationships. For instance, in Muzaffarnagar district Ameer Bux,
Peearee, Jowaha and Wufatee were linked by discipleship ties and lived
together in a household in Jansath. In Ameer Bux’s youth, her guru
Mungloo lived with two other Hijras named Chutluggun and Niadra,
both of whom had their own chelas. After the deaths of all the three of the
elder Hijras, Ameer Bux became the ‘tutor’ of Peearee, Niadra’s chela, as
well as Chutluggun’s chelas Jowaha and Wufatee. Hijra chelas would
sometimes initiate their own chelas, who were known as nati-chelas. Not
all Hijras lived in such households based on discipleship lineages.
However, most of the Muzaffarnagar biographies recounted the indivi-
dual’s discipleship lineage, even in the case of those who lived alone or
with non-‘eunuchs’, highlighting the centrality of discipleship to Hijras’
lives.66 Hijra chelas were expected to perform guru seva (service). Such
service was typical of guru-chela relationships more broadly and could
include worship of the guru, the menial work of a servant and care of the
guru in times of illness.67 The judgement on the 1852 murder case
Government v. Ali Buksh hinted at guru seva when it noted that Mathee,
one of the chelas of Bhoorah (the murdered Hijra), ‘cooked Bhoora’s
food’.68
Discipleship lineages not only structured individual Hijra households,
but also appear to have linked multiple households. Some
Hijras periodically moved between several households in which they
had discipleship links. For instance, in Benares there were ‘two gangs of
Eunuchs with their respective headmen’. One of these lineages was linked
to a household in Sasaram in Bihar and was regularly visited by the
Sasaram Hijras.69 On important occasions, Hijras who were linked by
discipleship ties, but lived in different towns and cities, would gather
together. Rose reported:
65
Shortt, ‘The Kojahs’, 403 4; Ebden, ‘A Few Notes’, 521, 523 4; Chevers, A Manual,
497. Whether Hijras’ medical practice was limited to the emasculation operation is
unclear given a reference to them performing circumcisions. Anon., ‘Female
Eunuchs’, 262.
66
E.g., Heera on UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar,
circa January 1873.
67
Jacob Copeman and Aya Ikegame, ‘The Multifarious Guru: An Introduction’, in
The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Jacob Copeman and
Aya Ikegame, 34 7 (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012); Reddy, With Respect to Sex,
156 9.
68
Bhoorah is spelt inconsistently in the judgement: Government v. Ali Buksh.
69
Pánipat contains a typical Hijrá fraternity. In that town they live in a pakka [well
built] house in the street of the Muhammadan Báolis. . . . The permanent resi
dents of this abode only number 7 or 8, but an urs or anniversary is held at which
a fairly large number collect. But the largest gathering takes place on the occasion
of a gadi nashini or succession to the office of headman, when some 200
assemble.70
Thus, individual Hijra households appear to have functioned as nodes in

broader discipleship networks that linked multiple, geographically distant
households.71
Rose’s account of the pomp with which a gadi nashini was celebrated
also points to the ways that discipleship structured Hijra patterns of
succession. However, it is not entirely clear how the ascension of a new
head was determined. In the case of the Jansath household, for instance,
the Muzaffarnagar register merely identifies the since-deceased ‘tutor’ of
each of the Jansath ‘eunuchs’ and states: ‘Mungloo[,] Chutluggun and
Niadra old eunuchs died; after their death he [Ameer Bux] being the tutor
of Eunuchs’. Why Ameer Bux, rather than one of Chuttluggun’s or
Niadra’s chelas, became the ‘tutor’ of the Jansath ‘eunuchs’ is not stated.
In this case, age and/or longevity of lineage membership may have been
the deciding factor, since Ameer Bux reported her age as sixty, while the
other inhabitants of the household were apparently aged between thirty-
five and forty-five.72 It is likely that a gadi nashini was often an occasion of
conflict and dispute between contending Hijras. Such conflict also fre-
quently occurred in monastic communities upon the death of the head of
a discipleship lineage.73
The inheritance of grants issued by Indian rulers may have exacerbated
such conflicts around Hijra succession. Precolonial states had often
granted Hijras land or allowances. The Maratha state, for instance, had
granted both inams (rent-free lands) and cash allowances to Hijras. These
grants were generally of low value, but were often supported by legal
documentation. Preston’s examination of Hijra inams in western India
evidences that they were passed down between generations of teachers
and disciples, but does not clarify whether the successor to the position of
the household head inherited the inam, or whether all the disciples of
a deceased guru inherited.74 In the NWP, colonial officials interpreted
Hijra succession practices as implying the ‘communal’ ownership of
70
Rose, Glossary, 331 2.
71
By comparison: Chatterjee, ‘When “Sexuality” Floated Free’; Chatterjee, ‘Monastic
“Governmentality”’.
72
73
Chatterjee, ‘Monastic “Governmentality”’, 501.
74
Preston, ‘A Right to Exist’, 283 4.
property. Thus, in cases where several ‘eunuchs’ lived together, the dis-
trict registers of property recorded both moveable and immoveable prop-
erty as belonging to all the members of the household.75 Colonial records
from the NWP suggest that in this region, both moveable and immove-
able property was still being passed down between generations of Hijra
teachers and disciples in the 1860s.76
Colonial officials viewed Hijra discipleship lineages as a subversive and
seditious form of political authority. In 1852, the judges who heard the
case of Government v. Ali Buksh reported that the Hijra community had ‘a
sort of acknowledged internal government. They have, in fact, a king,
according to some, resident at Delhi; others say at Furruckabad’.77
The following year, the Magistrate of Mainpuri, Charles Raikes, claimed
that ‘Furruckabad was the head-quarters of the Eunuch class. Here their
king resided, having two Wuzeers [vazirs, high-ranking ministers], one at
Delhie, and another at Lucknow. They were proved to be governed by
laws of their own’.78 In the mid 1860s, Court, the NWP Inspector-
General of Police, reported:
. . . these creatures live under a government of their own; they have a King
(Dilsookh Raee is his name, and he is, or was, resident of Delhi), and in these
Provinces, Naibs, or Deputy Governors, at Furruckabad, Mynpoorie, Jaloun,
certainly, and it is believed also at Aonla, in the Bareilly District, and at
Jounpore. Under the Naibs are Gooroos.79
In part, these descriptions of Hijra discipleship as a form of ‘internal

government’ reflected the colonial view that ‘extraordinary’ collective
crime represented an alternative locus of political authority that chal-
lenged the power of the colonial state.80
However, these accounts also suggest that the Hijra community repre-
sented a form of ‘monastic governmentality’, to use Indrani Chatterjee’s
term. Monastic governments were communities of disciples centred on
a powerful teacher. In early modern India, lay donors made land grants to
the heads of discipleship lineages, who exercised sovereignty within these
donated domains, which were exempt from lay taxation and policing.
75
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Webster, ‘Register of property’, Gorakhpur, circa 1872 3;
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Waddington, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Basti, circa 1872; UPSA/A/
COM/29/8: Webster, ‘Register of property’, Meerut, 7 May 1873; UPSA/A/COM/29/
8: Bulandshahr DM, ‘Register of property’, 9 January 1873.
76
77
78
This was R. Drummond’s recollection of Raike’s report. BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond
to NWP Secretary, 9 August 1865. See also BL/IOR/P/235/25: Morgan, Money and
Gubbins, Resolution, 22 April 1860.
79
80
Singha, Despotism of Law, 1 4, 26 35, 168 72; Freitag, ‘Crime’, 230 3.
Monastic estates thus took the form of geographically delineated terri-

tories. Such bounded monastic communities functioned as ‘nodes’ that
were linked to other monastic estates by ‘lay nomads’ who circulated
ideas, practices and goods (including across ‘sectarian’ lines). In early
modern India, monastic and lay governments were intertwined in multi-
ple ways. Monastic governments were also ‘household centered’ in that
discipleship lineages were often intertwined with marriage alliances
between the male and female disciples of teachers. From the late eight-
eenth century, the size and importance of monastic estates was gradually
reduced as a result of colonial policies, while the Anglicised Indian middle
class began to conceive of religious and political authority in new ways.81
Communities based on discipleship lineages were also increasingly mar-
ginalised because they did not fit the conjugal model of succession, based
on biological reproduction and centred on marriage, which the colonial
state and middle-class Indians defined as the norm in the nineteenth
century.82 Hijra discipleship lineages were not as large scale, economic-
ally significant and politically important as some Sufi, Vaishnava, Shaiva
and Buddhist lineages. However, recall that within these broader patterns
of monastic governmentality, Hijras had historically received small grants
of land and allowances from some Indian rulers.83 Hijra households also
functioned as nodes in networks of discipleship lineage that linked multi-
ple households, while Hijra households had defined ‘territories’ in which
they could collect alms and, in this sense, were geographically delineated
entities. The Hijra community should thus be understood as a form of
monastic government.
Hijras’ Domestic Lives

While discipleship was central to notions of Hijra-hood, not all
Hijras lived in households that were structured by discipleship hierar-
chies. Colonial scholar-officials generally characterised the typical Hijra
household as comprising a ‘tutor’ or ‘headman’ and several disciples.
As we have seen, some Hijras in Muzaffarnagar – like Ameer Bux and
her chelas Peearee, Jowaha and Wufatee – lived together in such house-
holds. However, the biographies of several Muzaffarnagar ‘eunuchs’
illuminate considerable variations in domestic arrangements and thus
nuance more ‘collectivising’ types of colonial accounts. Several Hijras in
Muzaffarnagar district did not live with other Hijras, though they prob-
ably maintained links to their discipleship lineage. Kureemun had lived
81
Chatterjee, ‘Monastic “Governmentality”’, 498 501, 504.
82
Chatterjee, ‘When “Sexuality” Floated Free’, 945 62. 83 Preston, ‘A Right to Exist’.
with her guru Sookchain but since Sookchain’s death, she had not lived
with other Hijras. After the death of Fyzun’s guru Chunda and subse-
quently the death of her two young Hijra chelas Eda and Nuseebun, Fyzun
lived alone.84
Other life histories suggest that Hijras were not always separated from
reproductive and conjugal family units, as colonial discourse suggested.
Motee’s biography indicates that Hijras’ households sometimes included
non-Hijras. In the early 1870s, Motee lived with a boy named Alladia and
Alladia’s uncle Peer Bux. After the death of his brother, Peer Bux had
placed his widowed sister-in-law and Alladia with Motee. When Alladia’s
mother died, Peer Bux and his own children moved in with Motee.
Alladia was not intended to become a Hijra, so Motee had organised
Alladia’s marriage to a suitable girl. Motee’s life history suggests that
children in Hijra households were not necessarily initiated into the com-
munity and some Hijras organised the marriages of children they had
adopted or cared for. Hijra households sometimes included the biological
relatives of Hijras. Chimmun, a fifteen-year-old recent initiate in
Muzaffarnagar district, lived with her widowed mother and brother, as
well as her Hijra guru, Janee. Hence, Hijra living arrangements were
various and could incorporate discipleship as well as biological and adop-
tive kinship.85
The information that colonial authorities collected in other districts
also showed the existence of diverse relationships within Hijras’ house-
holds. There are scattered references to various forms of kinship-making
in Hijra households. For instance, Hijras often referred to each other
through kinship terms. Rose noted that in Panipat Hijras ‘call[ed] one
another by such names as mási, “mother’s sister,” phuphi, “aunt,” and so
on’.86 Although such Hijra kin were related to each other by lineage, these
relationships did not involve gurus and their own chelas. Hijras also
‘adopted’ children who were not initiated into the Hijra community.
For instance, a Hijra named Goolbuddun in Azamgarh district ‘brought
up a boy’ who became a ‘married man, and the father of a family’.87 These
forms of kinship are similar to the kinship-making practices among
Khwajasarais who worked in elite homes and Indian states, who com-
monly formed networks of kin, particularly through the establishment of
sibling relationships, as well as the adoption and fostering of both
Khwajasarai and non-Khwajasarai children.88
84
85
Ibid. 86 Rose, Glossary, 332.
87
88
Hinchy, ‘Enslaved Childhoods’, 389 90.
Some of the children in Hijra households were the offspring of widows

who lived with Hijras. These children were sometimes married to
a suitable partner or alternatively were initiated into the Hijra
community.89 The families of musicians who performed with
Hijras often lived in Hijra households, accounting for more than one in
five children living with Hijras in the 1860s and 1870s.90 Some Hijras also
lived with men with whom they had long-term romantic and sexual
relationships. For instance, the Hijra Bhoorah – whose murder sparked
the Hijra panic in 1852 – lived with her male lover Ali Buksh, as well as
two chelas. Bhoorah had reportedly run away to live with another man,
when Ali Buksh murdered her.91 In sum, district-level records show that
Hijra domestic arrangements were enormously varied, notwithstanding
the importance of discipleship networks to Hijras’ everyday lives.
Hijra Initiation
The dominant colonial and middle-class Indian narratives about
Hijras claimed that most initiates were kidnapped and forcibly castrated
as children. In contrast, district-level colonial records contain multiple
accounts of Hijra initiation, including varying circumstances of child,
youth and adult initiation. However, the existing historical sources give
us few hints as to the understanding of childhood within the Hijra com-
munity. The term ‘child’ in colonial and middle-class Indian accounts of
Hijras was culturally specific and far from value-free: for both groups,
childhood was constructed as an age of innocence and was increasingly
numerically defined.92 Though police registers and other district records
highlight the diverse circumstances in which people were initiated as
Hijras, these documents do not disclose the meanings of childhood for
Hijras themselves.
The enslavement of young people is one of the several representations
of initiation that emerge from district-level colonial archives. A number of
the Hijras in Muzaffarnagar district appear to have had slave origins.
The Muzaffarnagar register reported that three ‘eunuchs’ in the district
were bought and sold as children. The biography of fifty-year-old
Kureemun states:
89
BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP IGP, 28 June 1876; UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Benares
DC, ‘Abstract of replies’, 23 November 1875.
90
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Lumsden to Benares DC, 15 April 1873.
91
92
Zazie Bowen and Jessica Hinchy, ‘Introduction: Children and Knowledge in India’,
South Asian History and Culture 6, no. 3 (2015): 317 29; Ishita Pande, ‘“Listen to the
Child”: Law, Sex, and the Child Wife in Indian Historiography’, History Compass 11, no.
9 (2013): 687 701.
It appears from the enquiry that before he was resident of Rampoor [Rampur] in
the Hathrus [Hathras] District, and name of his father was Hunsook Jolaha, her
and her sister were kidnapped from their home by a Bunjara of Mirza Teela of
Bhopal Circle[.] 40 years ago the late Bunjara had sold him to Sookhchain
Eunuch when he was of 7 years of age.93
Kureemun’s story suggests that Hijras sometimes bought children from

itinerant people who trafficked slaves. Banjaras were a community of
transporters, which colonial officials labelled a ‘criminal tribe’ and asso-
ciated with the kidnapping of children in the late nineteenth century.94
In the case of another Muzaffarnagar Hijra named Jowaha, the register
contains no information about her prior to the age of seven, when
‘Deedaree eunuch’ performed the emasculation operation on her. Two
other ‘eunuchs’, Boolakee and Malagin, subsequently brought Jowaha to
Jansath and sold her to Chutluggun, who was one of the three since-
deceased elder Hijras in the Jansath lineage.95 Fyzun, a forty-three-year-
old ‘eunuch’ who lived in the village of Satheri, had also apparently been
sold as a child. The lambardars (village heads) and chaukidars (watchmen)
of Satheri reported that ‘Khooshalee Eunuch’ ‘brought’ six-year-old
Fyzun from Mainpuri district in the mid 1830s and sold Fyzun to
Seelhoo, presumably another Hijra. After four years, ‘Seelhoo gave him
[Fyzun] to Chunda at Sutheree’ – whether in exchange for payment is
unclear – and she had resided in the village ever since. These life histories
suggest that Hijras sometimes bought children from traffickers and also
sold children among themselves.96
Additionally, several of the eleven Muzaffarnagar ‘eunuchs’ came to
live with adult ‘eunuchs’ at a young age, though the circumstances in
which the adults acquired these children were not mentioned. The gaps in
these biographies perhaps reflect the wider language of silence and euphe-
mism through which personal histories of enslavement were recounted in
nineteenth-century India.97 These children may have been trafficked in
the broader slave trade in north India or given away or sold by their
parents in circumstances of famine, impoverishment or widowhood.
Wufatee, for example, had been the chela of Chutluggun, but it was ‘not
known how he [Wufatee] came to Chutluggun when he was of two years
93
The use of both the female and male English language pronoun was due to slippages in
translation. UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar,
circa January 1873.
94
Varady, ‘North Indian Banjaras’.
95
96
Ibid.
97
Indrani Chatterjee, ‘Slavery, Semantics, and the Sound of Silence’, in Slavery and South
Asian History, eds. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton, 287 315 (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2006).
age’. According to the dates and ages recorded on the register (which were
probably an approximation) Wufatee would have been two in 1840.
In 1837–8, north India experienced a widespread famine. Wufatee was
possibly either orphaned during the famine or had been given away or
sold by starving relatives.98 Heera is another person who entered a Hijra
household as a child in ambiguous circumstances. Heera’s biography
does not tell us anything about her life before the age of eight, when
she started to travel around northern India with two ‘eunuchs’,
Lushkurnee of Meerut and Raejeesing of Delhi. In the case of Jowahra,
a forty-five-year-old who lived in the town of Thana Bhawan, the register
merely states, ‘Zoolfee Eunuch of Thana Bhowun had brought Jowahra in
childhood but it is not known from where’. Motee, another resident of
Thana Bhawan, had arrived in the town when she was about eight with
three older ‘eunuchs’ who taught her to sing and dance. Once again,
nothing is mentioned of Motee’s life before the age of eight.99 Whether
these Hijras were of slave origins is unclear, but the Muzaffarnagar register
implies that their ties to their natal families were permanently severed.
These life histories of Hijras in Muzaffarnagar suggest that, in some
cases, slavery structured Hijra households and intersected with disciple-
ship relationships. Slavery in South Asian history is best thought of as
a ‘process’, rather than ‘a fixed status’. The nature of the master-slave
relationship could change over the course of a slave’s lifetime, so that
slavery was ‘a particular origin, a particular career, and a particular rela-
tionship to a . . . master’, rather than an unchanging legal status.100
Moreover, slavery was intertwined with discipleship lineages not only in
the Hijra community, but also in other social groups. North Indians had
used the language of discipleship to describe relationships of enslavement
since at least the sixteenth century. In his Ain i Akbari, Abu’l-Fazl writes
that the Mughal emperor Akbar mandated that the bandas (slaves) in his
army should be termed chelas, though they subsequently remained
enslaved. By calling both nobles and people of lower status like slaves
chelas, Akbar cemented his ties to these groups and envisaged himself as
a pir or guru.101 Chela became one of the main terms for ‘slave’ in north
India. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, slaves were inter-
changeably referred to as chelas and as adopted children, highlighting
that slavery, discipleship and kinship were discursively entangled.102
98
The famine occurred to the south of Muzaffarnagar, around Agra.
99
Ibid. 100 Eaton, ‘Introduction’, 4 9.
101
Abu’l Fazl ibn Mubarak, Ain i Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann, vol. I (Calcutta: Baptist
Mission Press, 1873), 253; Pinch, ‘The Slave Guru’, 64, 66, 70 1, 74.
102
Nicholas Abbott, email communication, 12 December 2016.
Conversely, many chelas in monastic lineages were acquired in childhood

as slaves. For instance, hierarchies of slavery and discipleship often over-
lapped among Shaiva gosain warrior-ascetics. Some of the most famous
gosains of the eighteenth century were enslaved as children. In the case of
such warrior-ascetics, enslavement was not necessarily a barrier to
advancement within military hierarchies and could actually facilitate
such advancement. The linguistic and lived overlaps between slavery
and discipleship emerged because both slavery and discipleship implied
deracination through the severance or loosening of ties to one’s natal
family, as well as the assumption of new socio-cultural identities.103
Hence, the partial overlap between enslavement and discipleship in the
Hijra community was not unique. Moreover, as in gosain communities,
childhood enslavement was not an impediment to Hijra guru-hood. I have
not found any evidence that slave origins adversely effected a Hijra’s
ability to become a senior guru as an adult.
In fact, children were initiated into the Hijra community in a number of
circumstances, including but not limited to enslavement. Colonial court
cases and official correspondence suggest that some children were kid-
napped and then sold to Hijras, who were not generally involved in the
kidnapping itself.104 Periods of political, social and economic crisis – such
as regime changes, rebellions and famines – provided traffickers with
increased opportunities.105 There is evidence that relatives sometimes
sold children to traffickers or gave them to Hijras. In Etawah in the mid
1860s, a child was sold to Hijras by his cousin after both the child’s parents
died.106 Parents also reportedly gave children who were ‘born eunuchs’ or
‘hermaphrodites’ to Hijras.107 In periods of famine, in particular the Upper
Doab famine of 1860–1, Hijras ‘took in’ or adopted children, as happened
to a boy in Mathura.108 The provision of food and shelter in times of famine
often resulted in perceived indebtedness. 109 Such care may have bound
the hungry child to the Hijra, though colonial officials usually interpreted
the Hijras’ motives as benign in these cases. Notwithstanding the silences
and ambiguities of the records, it is clear that some child initiates were
enslaved, while others were given by parents or ‘taken in’ by Hijras.
103
Pinch, ‘The Slave Guru’; William (Vijay) Pinch, ‘Gosain Tawaif: Slaves, Sex and
Ascetics in Rasdhan, ca. 1800 1857’, Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 3 (2004): 559 97.
104
Government v. Munsa; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond, ‘General remarks’, circa 1865.
105
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dalmahoy, ‘Report on a case of kidnapping’, 9 December 1865.
106
Ibid.
107
These terms appear in the English language records. BL/IOR/P/438/61: Sapte to NWP
Secretary, 16 September 1865.
108
BL/IOR/P/92: Williams to NWP Secretary, 31 January 1870; BL/IOR/P/92: Mathura
DM to Agra DC, 26 January 1871.
109
Chatterjee, ‘Slavery, Semantics and Silence’, 295.
Yet colonial anxieties about the threat that Hijras posed to Indian boys
overstated the actual number of children in Hijra communities. A very
small number of children actually resided with Hijras in the 1860s; for
example, three out of 586 ‘eunuchs’ in Agra division were under
sixteen.110 In mid 1871, only sixty-one boys were ‘living under the
guardianship of Eunuchs’ in the NWP, suggesting that the vast majority
of the estimated 2500 ‘eunuchs’ in the province were not living with
children.111 Only one of these sixty-one male children had been emascu-
lated, while a significant number of the boys lived with biological relatives,
as well as Hijras.112 The NWP government concluded that Hijras were
hiding children from the authorities, yet police did not find significant
additional numbers of children in subsequent years.113 Altogether, there
were between ninety and 100 male children found living with registered
‘eunuchs’ from the 1860s to the 1880s, of whom very few had been
emasculated, while a significant minority also lived with their biological
parents.114 The dominant colonial stereotype significantly exaggerated
the number of children living with Hijras in the mid-nineteenth century.
Moreover, the recorded life histories of the ‘eunuchs’ of Muzaffarnagar
include examples of the initiation of people in their mid-late teens and
early twenties, highlighting that ‘youths’ and ‘adults’ were also Hijra
initiates. Take, for example, the Muzaffarnagar authorities’ description
of sixty-year-old Ameer Bux, the ‘tutor’ or guru of the Jansath household
of Hijras. Until the age of fourteen, Ameer Bux lived with her mother and
unlike many Muzaffarnagar ‘eunuchs’, Ameer Bux knew the name of her
father, Bencha. Around the age of fourteen, Ameer Bux ‘came at Jansut
[Jansath] to Mungloo Eunuch’. In light of her apparent age on initiation,
it is possible that Ameer Bux chose to join the Hijra community.
Bolstering this interpretation, the register does not mention any
110
111
BL/IOR/P/92: Dennehy to NWP IGP, 15 August 1871.
112
113
Between 1875 and 1885, police found two child eunuchs; fourteen unemasculated boys
who lived with ‘eunuchs’; fourteen boys who lived with both biological relatives and
‘eunuchs’; and eleven girls. BL/IOR/P/840: Hobart to NWP&O IGP,
11 September 1877; BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP&O IGP, 28 June 1876; BL/
IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith to
NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881; BL/IOR/P/1467: Webster to NWP&O Secretary,
31 May 1880; BL/IOR/P/97: Hobart to NWP IGP, 4 May 1875; BL/IOR/P/1816:
Smith to NWP&O IGP, 15 May 1882; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith to NWP&O IGP,
26 June 1884; BL/IOR/P/2460: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 27 April 1885; BL/IOR/P/
2002: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 4 June 1883.
114
There were three periods in which children were enumerated: in 1865 70 (11 boys); in
1870 1 (61); and following the implementation of the CTA (30). As there may be
overlap between these enumerations, the number of 90 100 is probably an
overestimation.
circumstances of impoverishment, distress or orphanhood in the account

of Ameer Bux’s life, in contrast to some of the other Muzaffarnagar
biographies. Ameer Bux’s guru Mungloo ‘after a short time’ sent Ameer
Bux to Sikandra Rao in Aligarh district, where a ‘eunuch’ named Deedur
Bux emasculated her.115
Pearee, one of the people who lived with Ameer Bux in 1873, appears to
have become a Hijra in her late teens or early twenties. Pearee, who was
forty in 1873, was born in Pilibhit in Bareilly district and was
a ‘hermaphrodite’, according to the English-language register. ‘[I]n child-
hood’, the register states, ‘he [Pearee] went out from his house and about
ten years he had served under Bukhshish Alee Mookhtar [court ‘pleader’
or lawyer] at Mozufurnuggur [Muzaffarnagar]’. The district register does
not mention why the young Pearee left her biological relatives, or the type
of service she performed for the mukhtar. We do know that after ten years,
when Pearee was probably in her late teens or early twenties, she ‘went to
Niadra eunuch at Junsut and had learned singing and dancing’.116
Other colonial records also mention cases of ‘adults’ and ‘youths’ who
were initiated as Hijras. Recall that among the five cases of castration that
were tried in Shahjahanpur in 1864–5, only two cases involved the castra-
tion of children, while the rest were cases of ‘voluntary’ adult
emasculation.117 In 1865, R. Drummond, the judge who had heard the
Shahjahanpur cases, noted that ‘youths’ often ‘consent to join’ the Hijra
community.118 A. O. Hume, the Magistrate of Etawah, also concluded
‘It is not to be supposed that all [‘Hijrahs’] are emasculated against their
will, or without their consent; ten at least of the 78 [in Etawah] underwent
the operation at their own desire, after they were well grown up ([above]
16 years old); and two of them after they were past 30’.119 Because the
NWP government was less concerned with the initiation of youths and
adults, than with children, fewer life histories of older initiates were
compiled and archived. It is impossible to determine the proportion of
Hijras who were initiated in different age brackets, but it is clear that
Hijras were initiated at a range of ages. The Hijras of north India included
people who were initiated as youths and adults, young people who
entered the Hijra community along with their relatives, children who
115
116
Ibid.
117
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Probyn to Shahjahanpur SJ, 12 December 1864; BL/IOR/P/438/61:
Drummond, ‘General Remarks’, circa 1865. For other cases of adult emasculation see:
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Saunders to Benares DC, 30 October 1872; BL/IOR/P/2460:
Woodburn to NWP&O IGP, 1 July 1885; UPSA/A/COA/18/5: Berril to NWP&O IGP,
1 May 1896.
118
119
Hume quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
were bought and sold into slavery, children who were given to Hijras by
their relatives and children who were ‘taken in’ by Hijras.
... ... ...
Official colonial archives were multivocal and fractured by numerous,
conflicting narratives about Hijras. Among these narratives were the brief
life histories of individual Hijras that were recorded on district police
registers of ‘eunuchs’. These biographical snippets complicate the picture
of the Hijra community in most colonial and middle-class Indian
accounts. Archived life histories show that many Hijras combined sing-
ing, dancing and the collection of badhai with various other sorts of work,
including: the production of cloth and clothes; shopkeeping, marketing
and itinerant trading; domestic service; and, above all, agricultural work
such as cultivation, agricultural wage labour, animal husbandry and the
keeping of fruit orchards. Biographies of individual Hijras reveal the
centrality of discipleship to their lives and suggest that the Hijra commu-
nity was a form of monastic government, a type of socio-political organi-
sation based on discipleship networks. Notwithstanding the social and
cultural significance of these discipleship ties, Hijra domestic arrange-
ments were relatively diverse and encompassed discipleship hierarchies,
various forms of kinship, service relationships, cohabitation with widows
and their children, and relationships with male lovers. Discipleship ties
were also interlaced with master-slave relationships in the Hijra commu-
nity and some Hijras were of slave origins. This reflected the broader
intersections of slavery and discipleship, both in the language used to
describe slavery and the recruitment of initiates of slave origins into
communities structured by discipleship. However, children were initiated
into the Hijra community in a number of circumstances, while youths and
adults also became Hijras. Some children in Hijra households were not
initiated as Hijras, but rather married to suitable partners. The Hijra life
histories in colonial archives thus suggest an often fragmented and some-
times contradictory, but nevertheless more nuanced picture of nine-
teenth-century Hijra communities.
Part 3
Surviving Criminalisation and Elimination

7 Classifying Illegible Bodies, Contesting
Colonial Categories
From 1871, the government of the North-Western Provinces (NWP)

began the process of implementing Part II of the Criminal Tribes Act
(CTA) with a project of categorisation. The overarching aim of the law
was to cause ‘Hijras’ or ‘eunuchs’ to gradually die out through interlock-
ing strategies of cultural and physical elimination. But first, the autho-
rities needed to identify the targets of the law: ‘eunuchs’.
The Government of India was clear that not all ‘eunuchs’ were to be
registered, certainly not the relatively ‘respectable’, and by now politically
unimportant, Khwajasarais, the eunuch-slaves of elite households and
Indian principalities.1 Rather, the plan was to register criminal and sexu-
ally immoral ‘eunuchs’. The task of district administrators was thus to
determine which local people could be ‘reasonably suspected’ of kidnap-
ping, castration and sodomy – the main crimes of which ‘eunuchs’ were
accused – and register these people under the CTA. Yet identifying
‘suspect eunuchs’, as this criminal ‘type’ came to be called, required
that district authorities first figure out which individuals could be char-
acterised as ‘eunuchs’. This term was equated with the Hijra community,
but officials had ‘discovered’ various other people with non-binary gender
expression who were not castrated and did not describe themselves as
‘Hijra’. To get around this problem, the CTA had defined a eunuch as an
‘impotent man’ so that various uncastrated peoples could be kept under
surveillance. But it was unclear how impotence could be determined.
The problem of who should be registered under the 1871 law boiled
down to the question of which principles of classification could be used to
understand the sexual ethnography of Indian society. NWP officials were
presented with two sets of questions. First, how did the Hijra community
relate to other sexually ‘immoral’ groups in Indian society? Were other
cross-dressing performers ‘habitual sodomites’ and ‘criminals’,
like Hijras apparently were? The second set of questions centred on the
means by which colonial authorities might render bodies legible and
1
BL/IOR/V/9/11: Stokes, Proceedings of CCGI, 3 October 1870. Contrary to Khan’s
argument, colonial officials did differentiate between Hijras and Khwajasarais. Khan,
‘What is in a Name?’, 226.
167
168 Surviving Criminalisation and Elimination
subject to classification.2 What visible bodily characteristics could serve

as signs of criminality and sexual immorality? Conversely, what forms of
knowledge and principles of classification would be useful in determining
sexual embodiment? How were colonial officials to identify particular
physical and sexual traits, like eunuch-hood or impotence?
The NWP proposed that if a ‘eunuch’ either wore female clothing or
performed in public, they could be ‘reasonably suspected’ of kidnapping,
castration and/or sodomy – exactly which didn’t seem to matter – regard-
less of whether there was intelligence that they had committed any of
these crimes. Moreover, the administration decided that ‘men’ who wore
feminine clothes could also be termed ‘impotent’, without necessitating
any medical evidence of impotence. Thus, both gender embodiment and
occupation (that is, bodily labour) indicated the criminality of indivi-
duals, as well as their sexual embodiment. This definition of the ‘suspect
eunuch’ and ‘impotent man’ in terms of dress and performance cemented
the association of the Hijra community with criminality and sexual ‘per-
versity’. But at the same time, the ‘suspect eunuch’ category was nebulous
and highly ambiguous. Throughout the late nineteenth century, the
boundaries of this category continually changed as officials encountered
people who confused established classifications or were faced with
changes in provincial-level policy. The NWP administration’s efforts to
read and classify the bodies of the diverse peoples labelled ‘eunuchs’
repeatedly failed. Often, individual bodies did not fit neatly within colo-
nial categories.3 Bodily appearance and social grouping frequently
appeared to contradict each other. The policing of ‘eunuchs’ in north
India thus confirms the findings of Clare Anderson in the context of penal
colonies and Indian jails: colonial efforts to render bodies legible often
failed, reflecting ‘the ambiguities rather than the relentlessness of colonial
power’.4 While the shifting categories that were deployed in the regula-
tion of ‘eunuchs’ certainly show the tensions and contradictions of colo-
nial rule, the failure to render the eunuch body legible is additionally
revealing on two counts.
First, the categorisation of eunuchs in the NWP highlights the con-
textual nature of the colonial regulation of sexuality, in particular the
fractures within and between different projects to shape sexual norms
and behaviours. Initially, the NWP government refused to ascribe to
a medicalised definition of impotence, instead relying on embodied gen-
der expression and occupation to indicate who could be termed an
2
My account of the body and legibility has been influenced by Anderson, Legible Bodies.
On legibility generally see Scott, Seeing Like a State.
3
Stoler and Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony’, 7.
4
Anderson, Legible Bodies, 2 4.
Classifying Illegible Bodies 169
‘impotent man’. But some district officials insisted that the people they
had classified as ‘impotent’ were in fact ‘virile’ – some even had offspring.
As such, the provincial government called upon medical expertise to
determine impotence from the late 1870s. But judicial and police officials
continued to doubt the usefulness of medical knowledge in classifying
‘eunuchs’. Although there was considerable overlap between the stereo-
type of the Hijra/eunuch evident in medical texts and other types of
colonial accounts, when it came to the enforcement of the CTA, legal
and medical classifications and forms of knowledge diverged. The NWP
administration’s reluctance to utilise medical expertise to classify sexu-
ality is in marked contrast to the role of physicians in other contempora-
neous colonial projects to regulate sexuality. Physicians were central to
the apparatus of surveillance, registration and policing established under
the contagious diseases legislation that was enacted in several parts of the
British Empire from the 1850s to the 1880s. The much-studied case of
the regulation of venereal disease and prostitution has suggested a greater
extent of interlinkage between medical and legal regulation than is evi-
dent in other colonial projects to shape sexual morality, such as the
policing of ‘eunuchs’.5
Second, the changing boundaries of colonial categories had everyday
consequences and material repercussions that are important for our under-
standing of the experiences of Hijras and other marginalised peoples clas-
sified as ‘eunuchs’.6 In many parts of the NWP, so-called ‘suspect eunuchs’
were registered and kept under surveillance throughout the four decades
that the CTA was enforced. Death was the only reason for the removal of
people from the register in some districts. Yet in several parts of the NWP,
individuals drifted in and out of police surveillance as provincial and local
categorisations altered. Unfortunately, colonial records only occasionally
hint at the ways that registered people negotiated and sought to manipulate
official principles of classification. This chapter concludes with an analysis
of this fragmentary evidence of the ways that Hijras and other ‘eunuchs’
navigated shifting colonial categories.
The Signs of the ‘Suspect Eunuch’

The enforcement of the CTA hinged on the classification of ‘eunuchs’
into two categories: first, those whom officials believed could be
5
Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics; Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class; Tambe, Codes of
Misconduct; Phillips, Sex, Politics and Empire. On the interwar period see: Stephen Legg,
Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities and Interwar India (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2014).
6
Anderson, Subaltern Lives, 18; Martínez, ‘Archives, Bodies, and Imagination’.
‘reasonably suspected’ of kidnapping, emasculation or sodomy;

and second, ‘harmless’ or relatively ‘respectable’ eunuchs. However,
district authorities took a number of approaches to the classification of
‘eunuchs’ immediately following the passage of the CTA, from 1871 to
1873. This was because British officials determined the suspiciousness of
local ‘eunuchs’ by interpreting and selectively incorporating the views of
north Indian informants. While local intelligence often contradicted
British administrators’ assumptions, neither were British officials’ under-
standings of the suspect eunuch category homogenous or coherent.
In some districts, British officials thought virtually all eunuchs were
‘suspect’ and should be registered. These administrators often dismissed
local intelligence and privileged colonial stereotypes of eunuchs. As one
Deputy Inspector-General of Police put it, some district authorities ori-
ginally registered ‘all kinds of eunuchs without distinction’.7 In Meerut
district, H. B. Webster, the Magistrate, registered all forty-six ‘eunuchs’
in the district since ‘most Eunuchs are guilty of unnatural crimes and . . .
all of them are guilty of the atrocious practice of emasculating boys’.8
Bulandshahr’s Magistrate, H. D. Willock, concluded that all but two
‘eunuchs’ were guilty of kidnapping and emasculating children.9
According to Webster and Willock, actual evidence of criminal acts was
unnecessary and local intelligence was superfluous. The fact of ‘eunuch’-
hood was proof enough of criminality.
Yet most British district administrators registered only a proportion of
the total ‘eunuch’ population and drew upon local sentiment and knowl-
edge to distinguish between different types of ‘eunuchs’. For instance, in
Benares district, Annesley, the Superintendent of Police, initially ordered
only six people to be registered from the city’s two Hijra lineages.10
Nonetheless, British officials differed to some degree on what type of
‘eunuch’ the CTA should target. While C. Robertson, the Magistrate of
Mirzapur, registered people he thought were ‘habitual sodomites’, the
Magistrate of Benares, J. J. F. Lumsden, only registered people who were
‘emasculators by profession’ and made little mention of sodomy.11
Finally, in some districts – including Dehradun, Muzaffarnagar,
Saharanpur, Azamgarh and Basti – authorities did not register a single
7
BL/IOR/P/97: Hobart to NWP IGP, 4 May 1875.
8
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Webster to Meerut DC, 7 May 1873. See also UPSA/A/COM/29/
8: Meerut DM to Meerut DC, 29 November 1872.
9
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Willock to Meerut DC, 6 January 1873. See also, UPSA/A/COV/
119/12: Saunders to Benares DC, 30 October 1872.
10
USPA/A/COV/119/12: Annesley to Benares DM, 12 April 1873.
11
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to Benares DC, 3 November 1872; UPSA/A/COV/
119/12: Lumsden to Benares DC, 4 October 1872; UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Annesley to
Benares DM, 12 April 1873.
‘eunuch’ in the early 1870s. In some cases, this was because British
officials disputed the legality or harshness of the CTA.12 Another factor
was British administrators’ varied understandings of the ‘suspect eunuch’
category. A number of district officers questioned the NWP government’s
characterisation of ‘eunuchs’ as sexually immoral and criminal.
R. Waddington, the Superintendent of Basti district, and F. E. Elliot,
the Magistrate, initially objected to registering ‘eunuchs’ who lived in
households where children were present, as well as people who reportedly
resided with their ‘Pakkya’ (pimp) and people who ‘by outward
appearance . . . seemed to be inclined to sodomy’ – all of which
indicated to the provincial government that the individuals were
‘suspect eunuchs’.13 British officials who argued against the registra-
tion of ‘eunuchs’ in their district often regarded ‘local opinion’ and
investigations by Indian police as important sources of information
that proved that local people were not ‘suspect’.14 In Azamgarh,
Amson, the British Magistrate, argued that the ‘careful enquiries’ of
Indian police officers demonstrated that there were ‘no eunuchs of
the criminal class’ in the district.15 Frequently, British district and
divisional officials disagreed on whether particular local people were
‘suspect’. This was the case in Meerut, where the Magistrate and his
superior, the Commissioner, could not agree on whether the district’s
‘eunuchs’ were criminal.16 The inability of officials to distinguish
‘suspect’ and ‘harmless’ eunuchs makes plain the ambiguity of these
categories.
These contradictory local classifications meant that the experiences of
people branded as eunuchs varied considerably in the early 1870s.
In a number of districts, including Meerut and Bulandshahr, entire
Hijra communities appear to have been indiscriminately registered
under the CTA. In these districts where the reach of the suspect eunuch
category was wide, Zananas, cross-dressing religious devotees like
Sakhis and male actors who played female roles were probably also
classified as eunuchs and prevented from wearing feminine clothing or
performing in public spaces. Yet in a handful of NWP districts, Part II of
12
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, circa January 1873;
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Palmer to Muzaffarnagar DSIP, 6 January 1873. See also UPSA/
A/COM/29/8: Lind to NWP Secretary, 31 January 1873; UPSA/A/COM/29/8:
Jenkinson to Meerut DC, 5 December 1872.
13
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Waddington to NWP IGP, 15 February 1873; UPSA/A/COV/
119/12: Elliot to Benares DC, 19 May 1873. See also UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Amson to
Benares DC, 16 November 1872.
14
E.g., UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to Benares DC, 19 May 1873.
15
16
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Meerut DM to Meerut DC, 29 November 1872.
the CTA does not seem to have initially impinged in significant ways on
the lives of Hijras and these various male-bodied people with feminine
gender expression. From the perspective of the NWP government, the
initial classification of eunuchs at the district level had been an absolute
failure.
As such, in March 1873, the provincial administration established new
principles of classification and standards of evidence to identify ‘suspect
eunuchs’. A circular order established that wearing female clothing and
performing in public were ‘prima facie grounds for suspicion’, that is, for
registration and surveillance under the CTA.17 This order was the basis of
NWP government policy until the CTA was repealed in 1911. In 1907,
the NWP Manual of Government Orders still contained the 1873 policy
that:
Dressing in female clothes and dancing and singing are no doubt prima facie
grounds for suspicion, but they may of course be rebutted. Many ways are open by
which a Magistrate may obtain grounds for coming to a sensible judgement. If the
eunuchs lead an immoral life, the fact will be generally ascertainable from com
mon report and the kind of company kept by them. . . . Without, therefore, going
so far as to lay down any rigid rule that the names of all eunuchs who dance and
sing in public dressed in female attire should be entered on the register, at any rate
all eunuchs who dance and sing in public dressed in female attire should be
registered under the Act.18
The contradiction in the last sentence perfectly sums up the provincial

government’s policy: the scope to ‘rebut’ the assumption that
a performing and/or femininely-dressed ‘eunuch’ could be ‘reasonably
suspected’ of sodomy, kidnapping and castration was actually very nar-
row. Government policy explicitly rejected the need for ‘absolute legal
proof’ of crimes committed for the registration of a person under Part II of
the CTA.19 From the perspective of the provincial administration, this
model of law enforcement was appropriate to a criminal collective such as
‘eunuchs’. The policy on ‘reasonable suspicion’ also reflected the increas-
ingly close association between cross-dressing, feminine physical appear-
ance and ‘sodomy’ in colonial accounts of Hijras from the mid-nineteenth
century, since it mandated that transvestism was in fact evidence of
‘immoral’ sexuality. The ‘suspect eunuch’ type thus encapsulated the
emerging colonial sexual pathology of the cross-dressing sodomite.20
17
18
UPSA/L/J/C/111/772D: Winter to all UP DC, DM and IGP, ‘Rules’, 2 April 1907.
19
BL/IOR/P/1138: Robertson to all Oudh DC, 24 September 1878; BL/IOR/P/1614:
Smith to NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881; UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to Benares DC,
20 June 1873.
20
See Chapter 2.
The 1873 policy suggested two means for identifying ‘suspect

eunuchs’: first, their dress, which could be read from the body;
and second, their occupation. The first test for whether an individual
belonged to the ‘suspect’ category, dress, was a consequence of the
uneasy and ambiguous equation of the Hijra community with the ‘suspect
eunuch’ category, which thus required visible, physical clarification
through the gendered appearance of the body. This was symptomatic of
the ways in which the British in India sought to make the bodies of
prisoners, convicts and criminalised peoples ‘legible’ to the state.
On the one hand, the colonial government attempted to use ‘visible
signs’ that could be read from the body to verify individuals’ identities.
On the other hand, the British deployed the body to construct racial,
caste, criminal and sexual ‘types’. Often, specific forms of knowledge and
penal techniques were deployed in both ways. However, these strategies
of bodily legibility often had limited success, even as the colonial penal
archive grew. Police experimented (largely unsuccessfully) with prison
photography to identify individual prisoners and convicts through photo-
graphic records of their bodies, while at the same time, ethnographic
photography classified various social groups and types. In the early nine-
teenth century, godna or penal tattoos were supposed to identify indivi-
dual transmarine convicts, though they often failed as an
‘individuating . . . strategy’. Later in the century, colonial police regarded
tattoos as signs of criminality that could identify members of criminal
collectives such as the ‘criminal tribes’.21 Tattoos were one among several
physical ‘tokens’ that colonial authorities believed indicated membership
of the criminal tribes, including ‘Mongolian’ features, deportment and
personal hygiene.22 Thus, colonial authorities ‘read’ criminalised bodies
in order to verify individual identities, as well as to classify social groups.
However, the ‘eunuch’ body was used in policing in a slightly different
way than the ‘criminal tribe’ body. Although tattoos and other physical
‘tokens’ were thought to indicate criminal tribe membership, in practice
these were not used in the course of police surveillance to find and identify
‘criminal tribespeople’.23 However, in the regulation of ‘eunuchs’, the
NWP government went one step further and used bodily characteristics
as actual tools of policing, to detect ‘suspect eunuchs’ who should be
registered under the CTA.
The second sign of a ‘suspect eunuch’ was occupation, which was
verified in two main ways: either through intelligence that an individual
performed (gathered from the individual in question or another person);
21
Anderson, Legible Bodies, 4, 19 23, 32 6, 63 72, 87 9, 142 62.
22
Tolen, ‘Colonizing and Transforming’, 111 2. 23 Anderson, Legible Bodies, 87 9.
or through a police sighting of the person performing in public space.

Thus, in practice, the occupation ‘test’ for ‘eunuch’ criminality often
involved the observation of a ‘visible sign’: the embodied performance
and bodily labour of singing and dancing. Moreover, the female dress of
a person thought to be a ‘eunuch’ often suggested to the police that they
were a performer, so that the gender appearance of a person was fre-
quently taken as an indication of their occupation.
The new policy that a ‘reasonable suspicion’ could be established
against any cross-dressing or performing ‘eunuch’ resulted in an immedi-
ate increase in the number of registered people in many districts. In Basti,
several inquiries had not produced ‘suspicious facts’ about the local
‘eunuchs’, yet following the 1873 circular order, the authorities deter-
mined that twenty-one people ‘must at once be registered’ because they
‘dance in public wearing women’s clothes’. Similarly, the police in
Benares immediately registered twenty-nine ‘eunuchs’ as a result of the
new policy.24 At its height, the registered ‘eunuch’ population was
approximately 1400.25
Nevertheless, according to the NWP government, British district offi-
cials continued to misinterpret the characteristics of the ‘suspect
eunuch’.26 On several occasions after 1873 British district administrators
disagreed with each other on whether individuals belonged to the criminal
category and should be registered. When W. Oldham, the Magistrate of
Ghazipur, ordered the registration of his district’s ‘eunuchs’ in 1875, the
Superintendent of Police, R. J. Young, characterised the evidence for
Oldham’s ‘suspicion’ of these people as flimsy. According to Young, ‘in
no single instance’ had it been found that ‘any of [the ‘eunuchs’] had been
suspected of committing the crime[s] specified in the Act’, that is, sod-
omy, kidnapping and castration.27 Young received a severe rebuke from
his superiors, but was far from the only district official to question the
criminality of Hijras and other so-called ‘eunuchs’.28
Inconsistencies in classification and registration persisted into the
1880s and 1890s. For instance, in 1880 the NWP Secretary,
C. Robertson, was exasperated at the failure of the Hardoi authorities to
properly identify ‘suspect eunuchs’:
24
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Benares DC, ‘Abstract of replies’, 23 November 1875.
25
UPSA/A/COA/18/5: Holderness to NWP&O IGP, 7 August 1896.
26
BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879.
27
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Oldham to Benares DC, 6 February 1875; UPSA/A/COV/119/
12: Young to NWP IGP, 20 January 1875.
28
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Carmichael to Ghazipur DM, 23 February 1875. See also BL/
IOR/P/1614: Smith to NWP IGP, 6 July 1881.
One unregistered eunuch . . . is said to sing and dance in female attire and, if this is
so, he should most certainly be registered . . . The Deputy Commissioner of Kheri
adds that there was no suspicion of misconduct [against local ‘eunuchs’]; and yet
he goes on to say that four live by begging and dancing, and the register shows
seven living by cultivation and dancing, and one is suspected of committing
unnatural offences.29
The provincial government’s standards of evidence for identifying sus-

pect eunuchs were not applied in Hardoi as intended, allowing perfor-
mers, cross-dressers and ‘sodomites’ to continue to escape registration.30
However, even the NWP administration’s position was somewhat
inconsistent. In the 1880s, for instance, the NWP endorsed the dereg-
istration of dozens of ‘eunuchs’ who were now deemed ‘beyond suspi-
cion’, calling into question the government’s earlier principles of
classification. In particular, British officials deregistered people who
were found to have ‘harmless’ and ‘productive’ occupations, especially
agricultural work. In fact, many Hijras had combined agricultural work
with performance and alms-collection when they were initially registered
in the early 1870s. The deregistration of these ‘productive’ people was
due to the belated official acknowledgement of Hijras’ diverse forms of
livelihood and a subsequent readjustment of the suspect eunuch
category.31 Some elderly people were also removed from the registers,
since it was assumed that they were no longer ‘habitual sodomites’.
In 1884, colonial authorities removed sixty out of a total of 1006 people
from the registers.32 The following year, another sixty-one were
deregistered.33 Yet by the 1890s and early 1900s, the NWP government’s
attitude had swung in the opposite direction and high-ranking officials
suggested that all ‘eunuchs’ were deviants and criminals who needed to be
policed. Only ‘extreme old age’ or ‘blindness’ might indicate that ‘the
eunuch is rendered absolutely incapable of misconduct’ and the ‘pre-
sumption’ was ‘against exemption’ for any registered person.34
The boundaries of the suspect eunuch category thus continued to
fluctuate as it was revised and questioned from within the colonial admin-
istration. The bodies of ‘eunuchs’ were frequently illegible to the colonial
29
30
BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith to NWP IGP, 6 July 1881.
31
Ibid.; BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to NWP IGP, 15 May 1882; BL/IOR/P/2460: Smith to
NWP IGP, 27 April 1885; BL/IOR/P/1816: Hobart to NWP&O Secretary, circa 1882;
BL/IOR/P/1281: Noad, ‘Statement’, 5 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith, ‘Statement’,
15 May 1882.
32
33
BL/IOR/P/2460: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 27 April 1885.
34
UPSA/L/J/C/111/772D: Winter to all UP DC, DM and IGP, ‘Rules’, 2 April 1907. See
also, BL/IOR/P/3606: Part B Proceedings, August, no. 40.
state due to classificatory confusions, contradictory information and

official disagreements. The appearance of individual ‘eunuch’ bodies
often failed to match up with colonial categories of social groupings and
criminal types. Even as colonial categories were powerful frameworks
for dividing up and understanding colonised societies, they were tenuous,
unstable and constantly in need of reinforcement. Colonial states
expended significant effort on redefining categories that had unexpected
consequences or failed to satisfactorily classify difference, whether racial,
religious, class, caste, gender or sexual.35 The NWP government’s efforts
to use bodily signs to render the complexity of gender practices within
Indian society comprehensible required the ongoing recalibration of the
‘suspect eunuch’ category when it failed to fit local social conditions or to
meet bureaucratic needs.
Identifying Sodomites
The flipside of the NWP government’s use of gendered self-presentation
(women’s clothing) and bodily labour (performance) to identify
‘sodomites’ was its rejection of medical knowledge as means of determin-
ing individuals’ sexual behaviour. In their efforts to understand local
sexual practices and subjectivities, some district officials suggested that
Civil Surgeons could be enlisted to identify ‘habitual sodomites’ through
the visible ‘signs’ that nineteenth-century physicians believed sodomy left
on the body. Yet the NWP administration was highly sceptical of the
usefulness of medical knowledge in classifying sexuality.
The NWP government’s reluctance to enlist medical expertise to iden-
tify ‘suspect eunuchs’ seems surprising for two reasons. First, by the
1870s, physicians were involved in several aspects of the judicial and
police administration in colonial India. Although non-medical officials
had previously circumscribed the role of doctors in the broader colonial
administration, from the 1850s, physicians were appointed as jail super-
intendents and were prominent in discussions of prison reform.36
The post-1857 preoccupation with sanitation also resulted in the estab-
lishment of the medical post of ‘Sanitary Commissioner’ in the provincial
governments in 1868.37 The judiciary were also increasingly receptive to
the use of medical evidence in criminal cases. In the 1860s, a formal legal
framework for medical testimony was enacted.38
35
Stoler and Cooper, ‘Beyond Metropole and Colony’, 8 9.
36
Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 98 102.
37
Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo Indian Preventive Medicine,
1859 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 8 9.
38
Kolsky, ‘Body Evidencing the Crime’, 278 347.
British physicians in India also played a significant part in the policing

of prostitution, one of the most widespread forms of the sexual regulation
in the late nineteenth-century British Empire. In India, the 1864
Cantonment Act established a legal framework for compulsory medical
examinations of prostitutes in military cantonments and the punishment
of women who refused examination. The 1868 Contagious Diseases Act
(CDA) significantly extended the population of regulated women by
allowing similar measures in urban areas. In Bombay, for instance,
women who were registered as prostitutes had to present their ticket of
registration to the police on demand and could be banned from entering
certain areas. These police measures intersected with medical regulation:
registered women were required to present themselves for medical exam-
ination every seven days. If a medical officer determined that a woman
was diseased, she would be confined to a hospital for an indefinite period.
The Bombay rules even specified how the speculum should be used to
examine the vagina, suggesting that physicians were involved in the
framing of the law, as well as its implementation. Doctors were thus
charged with inspecting and recording the vagina in minute detail.
Tambe notes that police, medical and judicial officials ‘contested each
other in open and sometimes vicious ways’, but this contestation was
largely over which branch of government was to blame for the apparent
failures of the contagious disease laws. Physicians were pivotal to the
regulation of prostitution under the Contagious Disease laws and their
knowledge of sex and venereal disease carried authority in the colonial
administration.39 Yet despite the broader influence of medical knowledge
in the colonial administration in the second half of the nineteenth century,
especially in the regulation of sex, the NWP government was not inter-
ested in incorporating doctors into the registration and classification of
eunuchs.
A second reason why this is surprising is that British physicians in India
claimed to be experts in identifying ‘sodomites’ from physical ‘signs’.
Discussions of sodomy in Anglo-Indian medical literature occurred in
the context of continental European physicians’ efforts from the 1850s to
found a ‘science’ of determining past sexual behaviour through physical
examination. The two continental European authorities on the subject
were the German physician J. L. Casper and the French physician
Ambroise-Auguste Tardieu. Casper claimed to have identified several
reliable signs to identify the ‘passive partner’ in sodomy – including
a ‘trumpet-like depression of nates towards the anus’ and a ‘smooth
39
Tambe, Codes of Misconduct, 30 8, 44 5. See also Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class,
10 39; Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 39 46.
condition of the skin in the neighborhood of the anus’ – but dismissed the
capacity of medical examination to determine the sexual behaviour of the
‘active party’.40 In contrast, the French authority, Tardieu, claimed that
active pederasts could be identified by their peculiarly-shaped penises.41
Though Casper and Tardieu disagreed on the extent to which medical
examination could offer evidence of past sexual behaviour, both claimed
to have established a new form of expert knowledge. In contrast, mid-
nineteenth century tomes of British medical jurisprudence did not theo-
rise possible anatomical signs of sodomy. The most prominent British
medical jurisprudent, Alfred S. Taylor, claimed that sodomy was ‘rather
a legal than a medical question’.42 In prominent sodomy cases – like R.
v. Boulton and Park, the famous 1870–1 case in which Fredrick (Fanny)
Park and Ernest (Stella) Boulton were accused of sodomy after their
arrest in feminine clothing – British physicians claimed to be ignorant
about sodomy.43 It was not until 1883 that discussion of the physical signs
of sodomy appeared in a British work of medical jurisprudence, in
Thomas Stevenson’s posthumous revision of Taylor’s earlier work.44
In the settler colony of Australia, physicians ‘appear to have knowingly
chosen not to write about male-to-male sex’ in the early twentieth cen-
tury, well after the appearance of medical literature on sodomy in
Britain.45
Comparison between the medical knowledge of sodomy in continental
Europe, Britain and its settler colonies has suggested to historians such as
Ivan Crozier and Lisa Featherstone that British doctors disavowed exper-
tise on sodomy in order to deny the existence of sexual perversity in
British metropolitan and settler societies.46 Yet in India, a number of
British doctors published about sodomy, suggesting that claims to expert
40
Johann Ludwig Casper, A Handbook of the Practice of Forensic Medicine, Based Upon
Personal Experience, vol. 3 (London: New Sydenham Society, 1864 [1857]), 331 4,
388; Ivan Crozier, ‘“All the Appearances Were Perfectly Natural”: The Anus of the
Sodomite in Nineteenth Century Medical Discourse’, in Body Parts: Critical Explorations
in Corporeality, eds. Christopher R. Forth and Ivan Crozier, 67 (Lanham: Lexington
Books, 2005).
41
Vernon A. Rosario, The Erotic Imagination: French Histories of Perversity (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 74.
42
Alfred S. Taylor, Medical Jurisprudence (London: John Churchill, 1848 [1844]), 643.
43
Ivan Crozier, ‘The Medical Construction of Homosexuality and its Relation to the Law
in Nineteenth Century England’, Medical History 45 (2001): 66 73. See also Crozier,
‘The Anus’, 74 7.
44
Alfred S. Taylor, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, ed. Thomas Stevenson (London: J &
A Churchill, 1886 [1883]), 718.
45
Lisa Featherstone, ‘Pathologising White Male Sexuality in Late Nineteenth Century
Australia Through the Medical Prism of Excess and Constraint’, Australian Historical
Studies 41 (2010): 346.
46
Crozier, ‘The Anus’, 77; Featherstone, ‘White Male Sexuality’, 347.
knowledge about ‘perverse’ sexual behaviours were not as morally pro-

blematic in India as they were in metropolitan or settler colonial contexts.
Thus, the flow of medical knowledge between metropole and colony was
not a straightforward radiation of knowledge outwards from the ‘centre’
to the ‘periphery’.
A survey of sodomy cases that came before the NWP Nizamat Adalat in
the 1850s – prior to the passage of section 377 of the Indian Penal Code
(IPC) in 1860 – demonstrates that Civil Surgeons in India routinely
provided medical evidence.47 While Nizamat Adalat judges did not con-
sider the depositions of Civil Surgeons alone sufficient to justify convic-
tion, medical testimony was usually a significant part of the evidence in
sodomy cases.48 In 1866, the Indian Medical Gazette published an article
by Dr. J. Wilson Johnstone on the ‘Physical Evidences of Sodomy’, which
appears to be the first published summary of the ‘signs’ of sodomy in
colonial India. Johnstone claimed he had acquired ‘considerable experi-
ence’ with identifying sodomites and had determined that ‘A true sodomy
wound is triangular; the base external, with the sides of the triangle
retreating into the fundament’.49 Johnstone’s article was published seven-
teen years before any locally published medical jurisprudence literature
appeared in Britain. Following Johnstone, several British physicians in
India published commentaries on the physical signs of sodomy, including
Norman Chevers in 1870 and Robert Harvey in 1875.50 Harvey even
claimed that Anglo-Indian medical knowledge was more advanced than
that of continental European physicians and made no reference to the
British medical profession as a source of knowledge.51 In short, British
medical men in India could make claims to knowledge about sex that were
morally problematic at ‘home’.
Although British physicians in India claimed to be experts in the
medical aspects of sodomy, the NWP government did not propose to
use medical knowledge to identify those ‘eunuchs’ who could be ‘reason-
ably suspected’ of sodomy. Instead, throughout the nineteenth century
47
Prior to 1860, sodomy was criminalised under a series of regulations including
Regulation XII of 1834. Gannon, ‘Translating the Hijra’, 320.
48
Government v. Ramdial (Appellant), DNA NWP 10 (1860): 604 09; Government
v. Khurukgir, Muha Singh, Popee, Holgass, and Chutta (Appellants), DNA NWP 3 (1853):
178 81; Government v. Bunsee (Appellant), DNA NWP 5 (1855): 445; Case of
Abdoolruzak, DNA NWP 5 (1855): 465 6; Government v. Gheesa, Shoojayut Ulee,
Mulhun, Mehee Lol, and Dwarka (Appellants), DNA NWP 6 (1856): 789; Government
v. Buldeo (Appellant), DNA NWP 9 (1860): 512; Case of Bidree and Others, DNA NWP 5
(1855): 165 6.
49
Johnston, ‘Strictures on Sodomy’, 213. 50 Chevers, Medical Jurisprudence, 706 9.
51
Robert Harvey, ‘Report on the Medico Legal Returns Received from the Civil Surgeons
in the Bengal Presidency during the Years 1870, 1871, and 1872’, Indian Medical Gazette
10 (1 December 1875): 309 10.
the provincial government insisted that feminine dress and ‘obscene’

performance were the markers of an ‘addiction’ to sodomy. The NWP
administration’s sceptical attitude towards medical expertise was thrown
into sharp relief in the official discussion surrounding a section 377 case in
1884. In the case of Queen Empress v. Khairati, a Hijra named Khairati,
who was registered under the CTA in Moradabad district, was tried
under section 377 for intercourse ‘against the order of nature’.
The prosecution case claimed that Khairati had ‘habitually subjected’
herself ‘to unnatural offences’. However, the Allahabad High Court dis-
missed the case since there was no evidence of the occurrence of specific
sexual acts.52 Consequently, Spedding, the Magistrate of Moradabad,
felt that the High Court’s ruling left local authorities with inadequate
powers to prevent sex between men and Hijras. He proposed that the
CTA should be amended to include a provision ‘that the proved habitual
commission of unnatural offences ought to be made punishable under
Part II. of the Criminal Tribes’ Act’. Spedding further suggested that
medical examination should be used to establish that an individual ‘habi-
tually’ committed sodomy.53
The NWP government rejected the proposed legislative amendment
on several grounds, including that it would only apply to ‘eunuchs’ and
thus would be too restricted in scope to have an impact on sodomy in
Indian society more generally.54 However, the provincial government
also vetoed Spedding’s scheme due to non-medical officials’ doubts
about the accuracy of medical examination in determining a person’s
sexual behaviour. One high-ranking NWP official wrote that ‘even the
best Civil Surgeons may make mistakes’. Moreover, physicians could not
determine the date on which a sexual act had occurred, meaning that ‘a
repentant eunuch might be punished for long abandoned vices’.55
C. J. Connell, the Secretary to the NWP government, similarly argued:
To punish persons who showed marks of commission or abetment of unnatural

crime merely on medical evidence that the marks, &c., proved the commission
would be always very dangerous. You must, for safety, have proof, direct or
circumstantial, of the commission of the offence with a particular person or
persons known or unknown, and if the law were so altered, it would have to
apply, in justice, not only to eunuchs, but to every one class.56
52
UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: J.O.M., Memorandum, 23 August 1884. Anjali Arondekar ana
lyses this case but not in the context of the CTA. Arondekar, For the Record, 67 91.
53
Italics added. UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: J.O.M., Memorandum, 23 August 1884.
54
Ibid.; UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: Connell, Memorandum, 27 August 1884.
55
UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: J.O.M., Memorandum, 23 August 1884.
56
UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: Connell, Memorandum, 27 August 1884.
Thus, colonial officials in the judicial and police branches undermined

the authority of medicalised classifications of sexuality. The provincial
government continued to rely upon the visible signs of occupation and
gendered appearance to identify ‘eunuchs’ suspected of sodomy who
should be registered under the CTA and rejected the use of medical
techniques in determining past sexual behaviour. This stood in marked
contrast to the colonial policing of venereal disease and female prostitu-
tion, the centrepiece of which was medical examination. In the anti-
‘eunuch’ campaign, the colonial regulation of gender and sexuality was
fissured: medical and legal officials were divided on the techniques by
which Hijras and other sexual ‘deviants’ should be classified and gov-
erned. Yet despite this scepticism about medical expertise on sodomy, the
porous boundaries of the eunuch category would eventually prompt the
NWP government to call upon physicians to determine which individuals
could be defined as ‘eunuchs’ under the CTA.
Determining Impotence
Part II of the 1871 CTA defined ‘eunuchs’ as ‘all persons of the male sex
who admit themselves, or on medical inspection clearly appear, to be
impotent’.57 The government understood this legal definition of impo-
tence as encompassing emasculated people, as well as non-emasculated
people without procreative sexual function. In 1865, British officials had
found that some Hijras described themselves as ‘eunuchs from birth’.58
Colonial ethnologists also reported that Hijras frequently represented
themselves as having been born ‘impotent’, even if they were subse-
quently castrated.59 Of course, the vernacular terms used by Hijras are
unclear and some who described themselves as having a congenital con-
dition may have been castrated. But the records suggest that not all Hijra
initiates underwent the nirvan or castration operation. Another reason for
the CTA’s definition of a eunuch as an impotent man was the discovery
from 1866 of people known as Zananas (‘effeminate men’) or Jankhas/
Zankhas, terms that appear to have been used interchangeably.60 Officials
described these people as ‘unemasculated men’ who were ‘invariably
sodomites’.61 Colonial accounts differed on whether Zananas/
57
Italics added. BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act No. XXVII of 1871.
58
Court quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866; UPSA/A/COM/
29/8: Campbell, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Bulandshahr, 6 January 1873.
59
Russell, Tribes and Castes, 209; Enthoven, Tribes and Castes, 227; Rose, Glossary, 332;
Shortt, ‘The Kojahs’, 403.
60
Today Zanana and Jankha are used interchangeably in north India. Cohen,
‘The Pleasures of Castration’.
61
Zankhas wore female or male dress – probably indicating that their gender
presentation was contextual – though most officials claimed that they
wore women’s clothing. Zananas/Zankhas were performers who report-
edly had a similar repertoire to Hijras. But they were not members of Hijra
lineages and seem to have usually lived with their biological kin, wife and/
or children. In 1870, the government received intelligence from the
prominent Muslim intellectual Syed Ahmad Khan that ‘effeminate
men’ known as ‘Zenanas’ were impotent ‘by some defect of birth, by
accident, or other natural causes’.62 From this point on, ‘Zenana’ became
the primary term that NWP officials used for unemasculated, cross-
dressing performers, whom they classified as ‘impotent men’. Many
British administrators also assumed that ritual cross-dressers such as
Sakhis, who enacted feminine behaviours and wore female dress as
a form of religious devotion, were ‘impotent’.63
The association between impotence and non-normative gender and
sexual practices under the CTA made sense from the vantage point of
contemporary British ideas about impotence. Impotence, understood as
an incapacity for procreative sex, was an important marker of failed
masculinity in Victorian Britain. From the mid-nineteenth century, doc-
tors and other ‘experts’ on sex associated impotence with effeminacy and
by the late nineteenth century, with homosexuality. According to the
early sexologists of the 1880s, sodomy and impotence existed in
a causal relationship. Sodomy was either the last resort of the incurably
impotent man or conversely, same-sex desire was the most obvious cause
of impotence.64 Colonial Indian medical literature also linked impotence
to sodomy and effeminacy from the early 1870s. Norman Chevers argued
in 1870 that impotence could be a result of ‘habitual’ sodomy, as well as
a cause of an effeminate physical appearance. Chevers contended that
‘prostitution of the body in Sodomy, for several years before or about the
period of puberty, would unquestionably cause impotence’.65 There was,
then, a broader association between impotence and ‘perverse’ gender and
sexuality in Britain and British India that dovetailed with the stereotyping
colonial knowledge of Hijras and Zananas. Moreover, impotence was part
of the wider colonial critique of Indian masculinity, politics and society.
62
63
BL/IOR/P/97: Colvin to NWP IGP, 12 August 1875; BL/IOR/P/2002: Low, ‘Eunuchs’,
14 September 1882. On Sakhis: Robert P. Goldman, ‘Transsexualism, Gender, and
Anxiety in Traditional India’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 113, no. 3 (1993):
388 90; van der Veer, Gods on Earth, 162 9.
64
Angus McLaren, Impotence: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2007), 112.
65
Chevers, Medical Jurisprudence, 496 7, 706 7.
For instance, British writers disparaged Indian rulers whom they claimed
were sexually exhausted in adulthood due to youthful sexual excess.66
It is also significant that the definition of a eunuch as an impotent man
was shaped by intelligence from elite Indians like Syed Ahmad Khan.67
These informants likely drew upon the meanings of impotence in Indian
medical traditions. Classical Sanskrit ayurveda writers viewed impotence
as a problem of humoral imbalance and identified several causes of
impotence including: looking at defiled or despicable women; diet; exces-
sive sex; injury; a congenital condition; and celibacy.68 Unani medicine in
the Greco-Islamic tradition also saw impotence as a humoral problem: it
was essential that bodily equilibrium between the four humours was
maintained and sex was neither too frequent, nor infrequent.69
However, ayurveda literature also associated ‘impotence’ with various
‘gender variants’, including a ‘motley aggregation of physical sexual
anomalies and dysfunctions . . .; atypical gender-role behaviour . . .; and
sexual behaviour variations or paraphilias’. These gender variant people
were collectively described as tritya prakriti, or ‘third nature’. Ayurveda
authorities described third-nature people as exhibiting ‘a lack or limita-
tion of procreative ability or inclination’. ‘Impotence’ did not necessarily
refer to a physical sexual incapacity but might refer to a contextual disin-
clination towards procreative sex.70 Whether Indian informants had
described Zananas and Hijras as ‘impotent’ in this sense is unclear, but
impotence and infertility evidently had complex meanings in Indian
society that differed from the British understanding of impotence as
incapacity in procreative sex. However, Indian concepts of impotence
were undergoing change in the second half of the nineteenth century.
While humoral concepts of impotence retained their relevance, ayurveda
and unani practitioners also increasingly emphasised that sexually
immoral practices like masturbation, homosexuality and fornication
66
John Shortt, ‘Medical Topography of Modern Orissa Extending Between 19° & 22°
Latitude North and Between 83° and 88° East Longitude’, Indian Annals of Medical
Science 4, no. 9 (1854): 177; NAI/FD/PC 24/11/1849 165: Sleeman to GI Secretary,
30 October 1849.
67
68
Joseph S. Alter, ‘Ayurveda and Sexuality: Sex therapy and the “Paradox of Virility”’, in
Modern and Global Ayurveda: Pluralisms and Paradigms, eds. Dagman Wujastyk and
Frederick M. Smith, 182 3, 186 9 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008).
69
Guy N. A. Attewell, Refiguring Unani Tibb: Plural Healing in Late Colonial India (New
Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007), 248 9, 252.
70
Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling, ‘The First Medicalization: The Taxonomy and
Etiology of Queerness in Classical Indian Medicine’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 3,
no. 4 (April 1993): 593 7, 599 600, 602 3; Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling,
‘“Like a City Ablaze”: The Third Sex and the Creation of Sexuality in Jain Religious
Literature’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 6, no. 3 (January 1996): 333 6.
were causes of impotence.71 North Indian informants’ descriptions of

Hijras and Zananas were shaped by emerging associations between impo-
tence and sexual deviance in popular Indian medical literature, as well as
older associations between gender variance and procreative disinclina-
tion/inability. Colonial and elite Indian concepts of impotence thus par-
tially overlapped in the late nineteenth century.
However, as police implemented Part II of the CTA from 1871, they
found it difficult to definitively classify unemasculated people as either
impotent or virile. In the following years, the issue of how to distinguish
‘impotent’ and ‘non-impotent’ people was the cause of constant headache
for the NWP government. Two main problems arose. First, British
administrators found that local reports of the ‘impotence’ of particular
individuals were unreliable, even when registered people had described
themselves as ‘impotent’. By translating local intelligence into the
Victorian-era British discourse of impotence, British officials had
obscured the nuances of local sexual and bodily concepts. Second, if
intelligence of impotence could not be trusted, what visible, bodily signs
might indicate impotence? The CTA made it clear that impotence could
be established through medical examination, but the NWP government
initially circumscribed the role of physicians, in line with its rejection of
medical expertise on sodomy. Instead, government policy mandated that
the fact that an individual dressed in women’s clothes – or had dressed
femininely prior to the introduction of the CTA – was evidence of impo-
tence. Conveniently, police could determine an individual’s feminine
gender expression from observing the ‘eunuch’ body. Once again, the
NWP government resorted to physical signs that were visible to the eyes
of police, rather than medical knowledge of the body.
In 1871, the tensions between local and colonial understandings of
impotence became apparent in Mirzapur district, where the Magistrate,
C. Robertson, had registered three ‘impotent persons’ who were ‘in the
habit of dressing like women’ and were ‘suspected’ of sodomy.72
The next year, Robertson began to doubt they were really impotent and
ordered a medical examination by the Civil Surgeon. The physician con-
cluded that their ‘masculine power seemed intact’. But perplexingly, all
three ‘had admitted being impotent’, suggesting that local meanings of
sexuality and embodiment had been lost in translation.73 Elliot, the NWP
Secretary, reprimanded Robertson and claimed he had ‘acted wrongly’.
Despite the provision for medical determination of impotence under the
71
Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, 66 72, 79; Attewell, Refiguring Unani, 244 7,
250, 256 8.
72
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to Benares DC, 3 November 1872.
73
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to Benares DC, 28 March 1873.
CTA, Elliot claimed (incorrectly) that a ‘medical examination . . . is

neither prescribed nor contemplated by the law’. Instead, ‘[t]he fact of
these individuals dressing like women & otherwise comporting them-
selves like Eunuchs is perfectly sufficient’ for them to be defined as
‘impotent men’.74 Robertson reregistered the three persons but protested
that under the CTA he could not legally register ‘a person who is neither
a eunuch nor impotent’.75
In 1876, in the midst of renewed concerns that Zananas were not
impotent, the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, R. T. Hobart, gath-
ered information from each district on whether ‘there was a class of non-
impotent men who occasionally dressed as women, wore long hair,
danced and sang – kept youths and prostituted their own persons and
those of boys for hire’. Hobart outlined two relevant indigenous cate-
gories: ‘Zenana’ and ‘Bhuggatua’. Zananas, Hobart wrote, ‘dress as
women, many have wives and families, [and] dance and sing at weddings,
fairs and public gatherings’. Hobart added that they ‘may or may not be
addicted to unnatural crime’, but claimed that they ‘are commonly
reputed to be addicted to bestiality, and are certainly always in the way
of falling into temptation’. That such men could be householders, hus-
bands and fathers defied colonial common sense. Moreover, reports from
some districts that Zananas could be both ‘passive’ and ‘active’ sexual
partners with men challenged colonial assumptions about the ‘passive’
sexual behaviours of cross-dressing and ‘effeminate’ men.76
Hobart’s definition of ‘Bhuggatuas’ was brief: ‘The Bhuggatuas . . .
would appear to be a peculiar and single caste, who adopt the same calling
as, and are even more obnoxious to suspicion than, the “Zenana”’.
Hobart was probably referring to Bhagatiya, meaning either
a community of performers and entertainers or, more generally, a male
dancer. Hobart also referred to a group of Brahman ‘Bhagats’ who
brought up their sons in ‘a profession of dancing and singing in women’s
clothes, and to the consequent deeper crime’. Hobart regarded these
‘Bhagats’ as a sub-category of ‘Bhuggatuas’. Bhagat means ‘devotee’
and can refer to either Vaishnava ascetics or a community of musicians
and dancers in Rajasthan. This suggests that various groups of performers
and religious devotees were caught up in the category of cross-dressing
‘unnatural’ prostitutes.77 Although Hobart concluded that both
74
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to Benares DC, 20 June 1873.
75
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to Benares DC, 1 July 1873.
76
77
Ibid; UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Hobart, ‘Appendix: Bestiality’, 21 June 1876. The earliest
reference to Bhagatiyas in official records was: BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dalmahoy, ‘Report on
a case of kidnapping’, 9 December 1865.
Zananas and Bhagatiyas were probably ‘addicted’ to ‘unnatural’ sexual

practices, men who had fathered children and were capable of procreative
sex could not be termed ‘impotent’, at least according to the colonial
understanding of the term. As such, in 1877 the provincial government
ordered that all registered Zananas and ‘non-impotent men’ should be
removed from the registers. The IPC should be used against people who
were ‘addicted to unnatural crime’, but could not be defined as ‘eunuchs’
under the CTA.78
To work out which registered ‘eunuchs’ were actually impotent, from
the late 1870s district authorities increasingly ordered the medical exam-
ination of non-emasculated people. The year 1878 saw a spate of medical
examinations across the NWP. As the NWP Secretary noted, the original
classification and registration of eunuchs had evidently been a failure:
In the Meerut Division six names were struck off the register, as the result of
special medical examination; and the Commissioner notes that ‘it is remarkable
that so long after the formation of the original register, there should still be cases
where on examination it turns out that these persons should never have been
registered as eunuchs[’] . . . In the Agra district also [the] Commissioner reports
that no less than ‘21 of the persons borne on the register are not eunuchs, but
“zenánás”, and the Magistrate has ordered their names to be struck off from the
register’. In Mainpuri, one name was expunged, the medical examination having
shown the man not to be a eunuch. The large number of registered persons now
declared not to be eunuchs would appear to indicate considerable carelessness in
the original compilation of the register, or singular indifference to the disgrace and
inconvenience on the part of those whose names were entered on the district
lists . . . In the Allahabad Division also 13 names have been expunged, medical
examination having proved their owners not to be eunuchs. No less than 12 of
these cases occurred in Fatehpur district.79
The NWP government endorsed this widespread recourse to medical

expertise in order to correct ‘carelessness’ in the classification and regis-
tration of eunuchs. Yet many non-medical officials continued to regard
clinical observation as an imprecise knowledge of impotence. Moreover,
while the physical examination of the body generally signified the ‘ration-
ality and clinical objectivity of Western medicine’ in colonial discourse,80
colonial physicians often admitted their inability to determine the sexual
function of Zananas. Tensions between medical and legal concepts of
gender and sexuality persisted even after physicians were incorporated
into the project of regulating ‘eunuchs’.
78
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 17 July 1877; UPSA/A/COV/119/
12: Hobart to NWP&O IGP, 21 June 1876.
79
80
Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 53 4.
For instance, the medical examination of Zananas in Lucknow high-

lights the uncertainties of colonial classifications of impotence and virility.
In 1879, G. J. Low, the Lucknow Superintendent of Police, sent five
Zananas to the Assistant Civil Surgeon. Yet the physician could not
definitively pronounce any of the five Zananas he inspected to be impo-
tent – or irrefutably ‘non-impotent’, for that matter. For example, Sajad
Husain ‘[a]dmitted he was impotent’, but the Assistant Civil Surgeon
thought he was probably not impotent, while Kalu, who ‘[d]enied he was
impotent’, was ‘[t]o the best of the Assistant Civil Surgeon’s judgement’
not impotent but was nonetheless ‘suspicious’. In light of this failure of
medical expertise, in 1879 Low dropped the issue of Zananas and their
registration remained undecided. However, in 1882 Low compiled a new
list of seven ‘suspicious’ individuals who stated they were Zananas,
claimed they were ‘impotent from birth’ and wore their hair ‘like
a woman’. Low was inclined to register these Zananas on the basis of
their gender appearance and reported self-representations, regardless of
their medical impotence. Yet despite the failure of medical evidence in
1879, the Deputy Commissioner of Lucknow ordered another medical
examination.81 Even after two rounds of medical examinations, Low was
unable to classify Zananas as definitively either impotent or virile. He
wrote in 1882:
Zanána is one whose male organs have been rendered impotent by rubbing, or
whose virility has been taken away by drugs or potions. The term also includes
males, not impotent, who adopt female attire, wear women’s jewels, make use of
feminine gestures and expressions, apply misi [a powder] . . . to their teeth, and
kajal (lamp black) to their eyelids, and wear their hair long.82
Zananas could be either ‘impotent’ or ‘not impotent’, it seemed.

In Sitapur district too, the question of whether Zananas were impotent
resulted in their repeated registration and deregistration on several occa-
sions between 1882 and 1884.83 In fact, there was considerable confusion
in several districts on whether Zananas and other non-castrated registered
peoples were ‘impotent’, even after medical examinations were carried
out.84
How did physicians go about determining impotence? Unfortunately,
no original reports from medical officials survive, but there are several
hints in surviving judicial and police records. First, the determination of
81
BL/IOR/P/2002: Low, ‘Eunuchs’, 14 September 1882. 82 Ibid.
83
BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 15 May 1882; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith to
NWP&O IGP, 26 June 1884.
84
E.g., BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/1467:
Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 31 May 1880; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith to NWP&O IGP,
4 June 1883.
impotence partly depended upon what could be observed from the body.
Physicians usually visually examined the genitals and commented on their
‘appearance’. Yet the records suggest that not a lot could be garnered
through merely observing genitalia.85 Second, medical officers’ pro-
nouncements on impotence were influenced by their opinions on whether
the individual was ‘addicted’ to sodomy, even though the association
between non-normative gender embodiment, ‘unnatural’ sexual beha-
viour and impotence had been called into question. In Lucknow, the
Assistant Civil Surgeon’s conclusions on whether individuals were impo-
tent and on whether they were ‘suspected’ of sodomy were mutually
reinforcing.86 Finally, physicians assumed that elderly men were impo-
tent. For instance, the Lucknow Assistant Civil Surgeon concluded that
an elderly Pathan named Ghulami was impotent on the basis of his age
alone.87 Colonial physicians who examined Zananas were on somewhat
unfamiliar ground: the Victoria-era medical treatment of impotence was
premised on restoring potency to men who complained of impotence, not
medically determining impotence or virility.88 There is no indication that
physicians tested sexual function through manual stimulation. Instead,
colonial doctors paid as much attention to age, sexual behaviour and
gendered appearance as they did to the functioning of the genitals and
repeatedly expressed their inability to make definitive conclusions.
Though the slippages between colonial categories and indigenous social
roles had forced the NWP government to call upon medical expertise,
doubts about the authority and accuracy of medical knowledge of impo-
tence persisted in colonial circles. There was not a straightforward trajec-
tory towards the medicalisation of colonial views of ‘eunuch’ sexual
deviance.
Experiencing and Contesting Colonial Classifications

The shifting boundaries of administrative categories had quotidian, mate-
rial implications for Hijras, Zananas and other diverse peoples caught up
in the ‘suspect eunuch’ category. Moreover, these changes in principles of
categorisation played out differently across the NWP. In a number of
districts, changes in principles of classification resulted in fluctuations in
the registered population, but elsewhere the number of registered
‘eunuchs’ was relatively stable.89 One district where the registered popu-
lation was steady was Muzaffarnagar district. The district authorities were
85
86
BL/IOR/P/2002: Low, ‘Eunuchs’, 14 September 1882. 87 Ibid.
88
McLaren, Impotence, 126 48.
89
The discussion below is based on the ten years from 1875 1884.
initially reluctant to register the ‘eunuchs’ of Muzaffarnagar, whose lives

we examined in Chapter 6. After Part II of the CTA was eventually
implemented in Muzaffarnagar in 1876, thirteen people were registered.
Thereafter, the number of people on the eunuch register generally only
changed as a result of deaths, migrations and the occasional record-
keeping error. In 1883, the Magistrate removed an unnamed person
from the Muzaffarnagar register who was no longer ‘suspected of immoral
practices’. Otherwise, shifting principles of classification do not seem to
have significantly changed the small registered population in
Muzaffarnagar.90
In other districts, however, people moved in and out of the suspect
eunuch category and the presence of the police in their everyday lives
changed over time. In Agra district, 123 people were originally registered,
but by the end of 1874, only nineteen remained on the district register.
During the course of 1875, the total ‘eunuch’ population grew to 159, as
an additional 140 individuals were registered. For the majority of these
140 people, this was probably the second time they had been considered
‘suspect eunuchs’ and brought under police surveillance. In the following
four years, the registered population was relatively stable. But in 1879, the
authorities removed twenty-one people from the register because they
were ‘not eunuchs’.91
Fatehpur district saw similar fluctuations in the registered population.
Here, from 1876 to 1878 the number of registered people had hovered
between thirty-six and thirty-nine, as small numbers of people were
added or removed for unstated reasons. Yet in 1878, the Commissioner
of Allahabad division ordered twelve people to be removed from the
register because medical examinations had determined they were not
impotent. At the same time, three ‘eunuchs’ were added to the
Fatehpur register, though the reasons why were not stated.
The following year another nine people were removed from the
Fatehpur register, due to unspecified ‘errors’. In 1882, the Fatehpur
authorities struck out the names of four people who were ‘proved not to
be eunuchs’, while three ‘eunuchs’ were deregistered because they were
‘old and infirm’, and thus assumed to no longer be ‘suspect’. In 1884, the
Magistrate of Fatehpur ordered that another ‘eunuch’ should be dereg-
istered for unspecified reasons.92
90
BL/IOR/P/840: Hobart, ‘Statement’, 11 September 1877; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith,
‘Statement’, 4 June 1883.
91
BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart, ‘Statement’, 28 June 1876; BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to
NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/1467: Webster, ‘Statement’, 31 May 1880.
92
BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/1281: Noad,
‘Statement’, 5 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/1467: Webster, ‘Statement’, 31 May 1880; BL/IOR/
By the early 1880s, the NWP government was concerned that autho-
rities were removing people from the district registers of eunuchs too
rapidly. In response, the authorities of some districts reregistered people
or added new names to the registers, as happened in Kanpur, Jaunpur and
Mirzapur district in 1882.93 In sum, the porous and fluid boundaries of
colonial categories shaped the everyday lives of Hijras and other margin-
alised peoples who moved in and out of the ‘suspect eunuch’ category.
In some cases, these changes in classification were prompted by the
efforts of registered people to contest colonial categories. As soon as Part
II of the CTA was introduced in 1871, the provincial government
received numerous written petitions from people challenging their regis-
tration under the law. Many registered people also sought audiences with
district Magistrates and Superintendents of Police to verbally state their
case.94 The petitions of registered ‘eunuchs’ suggest a certain level of
engagement with the idioms of colonial legality. Since the late eighteenth
century, the East India Company had stipulated that petitioning was the
only legitimate means for appealing colonial policies and all other actions
to achieve redress constituted ‘rebellion’.95 This colonial culture of peti-
tioning government had existed in northern India for at least half
a century and was cemented by the politics of the post-1857 period, as
north Indians petitioned the government in huge numbers to demon-
strate their loyalty and achieve redress.96 Unfortunately, the surviving
records do not include original petitions from registered people, only brief
summaries or passing references. It is likely that most petitioning
‘eunuchs’ engaged the services of a scribe, who would have rendered
their demands in the language and idioms of colonial governance.
Surviving summaries of petitions are further mediated by the interpreta-
tion of the British official. Nevertheless, these petitions hint at some of the
ways that people registered as eunuchs challenged colonial classifications.
Some people petitioned to be removed from the register on the basis
that the CTA should not apply to them. Unfortunately, the surviving
records rarely state why these petitioners argued that the law was inap-
plicable in their case. However, petitioners appear to have challenged the
assumption that they were criminal or sexually immoral, since in several
instances, district authorities subsequently concluded that petitioners
P/1467: Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 31 May 1880; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith,

‘Statement’, 4 June 1883; BL/IOR/P/2460: Smith, ‘Statement’, 27 April 1885.
93
BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith, ‘Statement’, 4 June 1883.
94
BL/IOR/P/97: Colvin to NWP IGP, 12 August 1875; BL/IOR/P/1614: Part
B Proceedings, January, no.12; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 26 June 1884.
95
Potukuchi Swarnalatha, ‘Revolt, Testimony, Petition: Artisanal Protests in Colonial
Andhra’, International Review of Social History 46 (2001): 107 29.
96
Oldenburg, Colonial Lucknow, 116 44.
could not be ‘reasonably suspected’ of sodomy, kidnapping and castra-

tion. In 1873, the Home Department of the Government of India
received an ‘original English memorial from Peer Buksh and Raheem
Buksh residents of Mohtashimgunge and Yehyapore, in the city of
Allahabad . . . complaining that their names had been registered in the
list of eunuchs prepared under Act XXVII. of 1871, and praying that they
might be excluded from the said list’. Whether these two petitioners
succeeded is not stated in the records.97 Later that year,
J. J. F. Lumsden, the Magistrate of Gorakhpur, reported to his superiors
that ‘several applications were made to me in April and May last by
Eunuchs, stating that their names had been without any sufficient
grounds entered in the Register and praying they might be struck off’.
After Burill, the District Superintendent of Police, conducted a ‘careful
enquiry’, Lumsden concluded ‘that in some instances at least names had
been entered without sufficient cause’ and removed twenty-one people
from the district register.98 Thus, petitions from registered people
prompted a few British district administrators to deregister individuals
or to revise the established principles of classification in their district. Yet
even when petitions to district authorities were successful, higher-ranking
officials often reversed the local decision, providing only a temporary lull
in colonial regulation.99
Petitions and complaints from people registered as ‘eunuchs’ contin-
ued into the 1880s and 1890s. In 1882, the police in Ballia district
conducted an enquiry into people ‘who are believed occasionally to
dress as women and are suspected of leading themselves to unnatural
lust’. It is possible that these people were Sakhis, since the colonial
records suggest that their cross-dressing had ‘religious significance’.
The enquiry into the cross-dressers of Ballia district ended in the dismis-
sal of the head-constable after the reputed cross-dressers defended their
moral character. The Magistrate of Ballia reported:
The dangers and difficulties in the way of such enquiries . . . were illustrated by the
case of Mansab Ali, head constable of this district, who being directed to make the
enquiry in his thana [police station], proceeded to do so in so open and public
a manner as to give rise to a great scandal, by the open summoning to the thana of
persons suspected of this practice. The persons so treated brought a charge of
bribery against the head constable, and although this charge was not substan
tiated, my predecessor found that he had acted corruptly in molesting men of
97
BL/IOR/P/95: Part B Proceedings, January, no. 67.
98
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Lumsden to Benares DC, 7 July 1873; BL/IOR/P/96: Elliot to
NWP IGP, 21 July 1874.
99
undoubted respectability, and dismissed him. His case is pending in [sic]

appeal.100
Thus, one way to negotiate and challenge official classifications was to

prove one’s respectability. However, convincing British officials of one’s
moral character may have been easier for unemasculated people whose
gender expression had acknowledged ‘religious significance’, like Sakhi
religious devotees. Few registered ‘eunuchs’ were able to convince British
district administrators that they were not ‘supicious’.
... ... ...
The boundaries of the ‘suspect eunuch’ category shifted throughout the
four decades that Part II of the CTA was enforced in the NWP, from 1871
until 1911. From the perspective of the NWP government and perhaps
the majority of British district administrators, the Hijra community –
understood as cross-dressing sodomites who kidnapped and castrated
children – were the suspect eunuchs at whom the CTA was aimed. But
this equation of ‘Hijra’ and ‘suspect eunuch’ was highly unstable and
contested. Colonial officials found it difficult to pin down the relationship
between the Hijra community and other ‘immoral’ groups in Indian
society, in particular: uncastrated but ‘effeminate’ Zananas; ritual cross-
dressers like Sakhis; and performers such as Bhagatiyas. The NWP gov-
ernment attempted to map out the sexual geography of north Indian
society but was persistently faced with the question of what to do with
people who appeared to be Hijras, but were not.
An interrelated question was how to make bodies legible. Could embo-
died characteristics indicate criminality and deviance? Moreover, how
could officials determine an individual’s sexual past and sexual function?
Government policy held that ‘eunuchs’ who were ‘reasonably suspected’
of sodomy, kidnapping and castration could be identified through gender
embodiment and bodily labour, specifically through women’s dress and
performance in public. Yet colonial administrators found it difficult to
definitively ‘read’ the bodies of ‘eunuchs’. Moreover, most judicial and
police officials were either hostile or ambivalent to medical expertise as
a means to render bodies legible and the NWP government only reluc-
tantly and partially incorporated doctors into this policing project.
Although colonial physicians claimed to be experts on the physical
‘signs’ of sodomy, the provincial administration rejected proposals to
determine which ‘eunuchs’ were sodomites through medical examina-
tion. Initially, the authorities also refused to use medical knowledge to
determine individuals’ impotence. Eventually, the disjunctures between
100
Ballia DM quoted in BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 4 June 1883.
colonial and local understandings of impotence prompted the NWP

government to call upon medical expertise. Yet district officials continued
to doubt the usefulness of medical knowledge of sex. The anti-Hijra
campaign thus stood in contrast to the policing of prostitution under
colonial contagious diseases laws, in which doctors played a central
role. The shifting classifications of marginalised peoples under the CTA
thus highlight the potential ruptures within colonial projects of sexual
regulation, between medical officials, on the one hand, and judicial and
police officials on the other.
At the same time, the ambiguity of the ‘suspect eunuch’ category
reveals the varied impacts of the CTA on people labelled as ‘eunuchs’,
both between different parts of the NWP and over the course of the
nineteenth century. Administrative classifications had important reper-
cussions for people like Zananas and Sakhis, many of whom found
themselves repeatedly registered and deregistered. Even though
Hijras epitomised the ‘suspect eunuch’ in the dominant official view,
many Hijras were reclassified several times, depending on different dis-
trict officials’ perceptions of their deviance, criminality and sexual embo-
diment. Yet people registered as ‘eunuchs’ sought to negotiate and
challenge these changing classifications by petitioning district officials
and the provincial government for their deregistration, with limited suc-
cess. Following their registration, Hijras and other so-called eunuchs also
persistently attempted to lessen colonial interventions into their lives
through evasion, resistance and strategies of survival.
8 Policing, Evading, Surviving
Kheri district. The report is very meagre and not satisfactory. For
instance, it is stated that the eunuchs live by begging and dancing, but
there were no prosecutions, though it is not said that the dancing was of
a harmless character. I cannot think that the subject is receiving a proper
degree of attention in this district. It is not a pleasant one, but it is work
and must be done.1
E. Tyrwhitt, Inspector General of Police, 5 July 1879
After a person was registered as a ‘eunuch’ under Part II of the Criminal

Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871, several aspects of their everyday life became
the target of colonial regulation. Their property was registered by the
police, facilitating domestic surveillance and, in the case of Hijras, allow-
ing government intervention in succession and inheritance practices.
The registered person was informed that if they danced, played music
or wore women’s clothing or ‘ornaments’ in public space – or even in
areas visible from public places – they could be fined or imprisoned for two
years. If they lived with a male child of sixteen years or under, they risked
fines and up to two years in jail (meanwhile, the child would be removed).
Moreover, the newly registered ‘eunuch’ was told that if they planned to
leave the district, they should report their movements to the local police.2
These various provisions aimed to not only control, but to eliminate the
Hijra/eunuch population. Intensified police surveillance would prevent
emasculation and thus ‘gradually lead to their extinction’.3 Interference
in inheritance and succession would, it was hoped, remove financial
‘inducements’ to initiation and thus reduce the numbers of Hijras.4
The prohibition of performance and feminine gender embodiment
would erase Hijras as a publicly visible social group, effecting their cul-
tural elimination.5
1
Italics in original. BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879.
2
BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act No. XXVII of 1871; NAI/HD/JB 03/1872 91: NWP Government,
‘Draft Rules’, circa February 1872.
3
4
5
194
Policing, Evading, Surviving 195
Throughout the forty years that Part II of the CTA was enforced, from
1871 to 1911, the fabric of local law enforcement was uneven, tightly knit
in places and loosely woven elsewhere. In several parts of the North-
Western Provinces (NWP), the CTA was an inescapable part of daily
life for Hijras and other people classified as ‘suspect eunuchs’, such as
Zananas, uncastrated male-bodied people who contextually presented
themselves as feminine. Police in many districts closely monitored the
gender embodiment, public presence and movements of ‘eunuchs’. For
instance, in much of the NWP, registered people whose main source of
livelihood was performance, in particular Hijras, saw their livelihoods
severely reduced by the prohibition on playing music and dancing in
public. Some British district officials even condoned or encouraged illegal
policing measures, such as forcibly stripping Hijras and Zananas of their
feminine clothing. But not all district authorities heeded the call to per-
form the ‘unpleasant’ but ‘necessary’ work of policing ‘eunuchs’, to
paraphrase Tyrwhitt. There were significant gaps in police surveillance
in some parts of the NWP. As such, this chapter pays close attention to the
variegated policing and legal practices at the local level and foregrounds
what we know about everyday encounters between people registered as
‘eunuchs’ and colonial officials.
The unevenness of local law enforcement – and the consequent varia-
tions in the experiences of registered people – reminds us that the colonial
state was not a unitary actor or a monolithic institution in the way it is
often conceptualised. The vision of colonial governance at the upper
echelons of the Empire’s administrative hierarchy usually differed con-
siderably from the varied practices of governance on the ground.
Conflicting agendas, priorities and knowledge fissured colonial
administrations.6 Meanwhile, colonised peoples experienced the colonial
state through their interactions with Indian officials, and to a much lesser
extent, with British officials. It was often the Indian police constable, not
the European sahib, who embodied colonial power at the local level.
The ‘everyday state’ under colonial rule was embedded in local social
hierarchies and relations and was the sum of highly contextual practices of
governance.7 As such, the colonial regulation of sexuality was fissured
and subject to the forces of local circumstances, social conditions and
competing official agendas.8
6
Stoler and Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony’, 6; Comaroff, ‘Colonialism’,
305 14; Perry, ‘State of Empire’.
7
Saha, Law, Disorder, 7 12. On anthropological approaches: Fuller and Harriss, ‘For an
Anthropology’.
8
For similar analysis see: Phillips, ‘Heterogeneous Imperialism’; Tambe, Codes of
Misconduct.
The varied pattern of policing in the anti-Hijra campaign was due to

several factors. British officials held differing attitudes towards the poli-
cing of indigenous gender and sexual morality. The district-level records
show a range of perspectives, from the view that Hijras posed a major
challenge to colonial political and moral authority, to the view that there
were more important aspects of local governance than ‘eunuchs’. Yet
locally contingent policing practices were also a reflection of the generally
uneven character of colonial law enforcement in the decades following the
1857 rebellion. The regulation of ‘eunuchs’ thus mirrored the broader
tensions and fractures of local colonial administration. Moreover,
Hijras and other people caught up in the CTA developed various strate-
gies to resist and survive the colonial project of ‘gradual extinction’. Local
policing was thus shaped by the tenacious and determined efforts of
people labelled as ‘eunuchs’ to evade police and simply get by.
Recently, Shahnaz Khan has written, ‘There appear to be no records . . .
of the ways in which . . . hijra critiqued or disobeyed colonial laws’.9 This
may be true of some regions, but colonial archives document at length
north Indian Hijras’ efforts to keep on the move and avoid police, to limit
police surveillance of their domestic lives, and to continue criminalised
gendered and cultural practices.
The question of how to conceptualise ‘resistance’ and ‘agency’ was the
subject of some controversy in South Asian historiography towards the
end of the last century, particularly in the wake of Subaltern Studies
scholars’ attempts to recover ‘autonomous’ subaltern politics in revolts,
riots and protests. A number of historians justifiably criticised the early
Subaltern Studies approach to ‘resistance’, which they noted oversimpli-
fied socio-economic structures into an elite-subaltern dichotomy, did not
sufficiently theorise power relations and tended to privilege direct forms
of resistance.10 I will not rehash these debates here, but it will be useful to
briefly outline how I conceive of agency and power. First, a focus on
merely the oppositional actions of Hijras and Zananas would exclude
more complex forms of agency from our view. I examine not only direct
resistance, but also various practices of what Scott called ‘everyday resis-
tance’ that challenged colonial power in ‘small’ and indirect ways.11
What’s more, the ‘production, circulation, negotiation and contestation
of meaning in everyday life’ is as equally significant as overt forms of
9
Shahnaz Khan, ‘Khwaja Sara, Hijra, and the Struggle for Rights in Pakistan’, Modern
Asian Studies 51, no. 5 (2017): 1287.
10
Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of
Resistance in Colonial South Asia’, Modern Asian Studies 22, no. 1 (1988): 189 224;
Haynes and Prakash, ‘Introduction’.
11
Scott, Arts of Resistance; Scott, Weapons of the Weak.
‘resistance’.12 It is also important to recognise that relatively subordi-

nated people can exercise agency by cooperating with dominant groups
or dominant ideologies to their own ends. Second, power relations
consist of a process of ‘“micro” pushing and shoving’ in which subordi-
nated groups constantly push the ‘limits of the possible’.13 Power is
repeatedly ‘tested and eroded’ by subalterns and reconstituted in
response, so that power and struggle ‘often coexist and shape each
other’.14 ‘Cracks’ in the edifice of power provide interstitial possibilities
for resistance, which subordinated groups exploit and widen.15
The colonial government’s policing of ‘eunuchs’ was fissured and
uneven, providing possibilities for registered people to challenge the
law. But these opportunities were won and expanded by criminalised
people, sometimes at considerable risk. The actions of people classified
as eunuchs thus shaped the contours of the colonial system of regulation
and surveillance.
Encounters with Colonial Officials

The colonial archives give us only a few glimpses into Hijras’ and other
registered peoples’ everyday interactions with colonial officials. As such,
the contexts and spaces in which registered ‘eunuchs’ were most likely to
meet agents of the colonial state are not always clear, while the power
dynamics of these interactions are even more obscure. Out in the districts
of the NWP, it was the European district Magistrate who oversaw the
policing of eunuchs. The Magistrate was the only district-level official
who had the power to make changes to the district registers. Magistrates
were also supposed to communicate about the migrations of ‘eunuchs’ to
other districts.16 However, most registered people probably came into
contact with the district Magistrate only rarely, if ever. Certainly, a few
Magistrates reported that they had personally interviewed registered
people and taken down their histories.17 Yet the British official whom
Hijras and other ‘eunuchs’ were more likely to encounter was the District
Superintendent of Police. The Superintendent was responsible for
12
Assa Doron, Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges: Passages of Resistance (Farnham,
Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), 15.
13
Scott, Arts of Resistance, 193, 196 7.
14
Haynes and Prakash, ‘Introduction’, 4, 13. See also: O’Hanlon, ‘Recovering the
Subject’, 222.
15
Ghosh, ‘Introduction’, 14 6; Prasad, ‘The Litigious Widow’, 190.
16
NAI/HD/JB 03/1872 91: NWP Government, ‘Draft Rules’, circa February 1872; UPSA/
L/J/C/111/772D: Winter to all UP DC, DM and IGP, ‘Rules’, 2 April 1907.
17
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Forbes to Meerut DC, 4 December 1865; UPSA/A/COV/119/12:
Alone to Azamgarh DM, 6 May 1873.
initially drawing up the eunuch register and the property register.18 He

oversaw the policing of eunuchs at the thanas (police stations) in his
district and had to ensure that changes to provincial policies were imple-
mented at the local level. By the late 1880s, the NWP government
required all Superintendents to personally question each ‘eunuch’ regis-
tered in his district at least once a year, usually during his ‘cold season
tour’ of the district.19 An annual interview was not required when the
CTA was first implemented, but in the 1870s many Superintendents had
nevertheless interrogated registered people and checked the ‘thana regis-
ters’ on their winter tours, and this was later adopted as standard
practice.20
Nevertheless, the colonial officials with whom registered people most
frequently interacted were undoubtedly the local Indian police. In most
cases, Indian police had exercised ‘quasi surveillance’ over Hijras since
at least 1865, when registers were first introduced under an executive
order from the NWP government.21 Meanwhile, from the mid 1860s
‘Village Police’ (meaning chaukidar or gorait watchmen) and ‘Heads of
Mohullas’ (urban neighbourhoods) were expected to report to the local
thana on the movements of ‘eunuchs’, their ‘habits’ and the presence of
any children in their households.22 The system for policing ‘eunuchs’
thus attempted to integrate the existing rural watch and ward systems
that were under the control of landlords into colonial policing
structures.23 The colonial state, at least in the form of its Indian agents,
was experienced by ‘eunuchs’ as ‘close to the skin’.24 Registered peo-
ples’ interactions with subordinate Indian police and neighbourhood
and village watchmen were embedded in the power structures of local
communities.
When the CTA was first implemented in 1871–2, the officer in charge
of each thana was required to seek out the ‘eunuchs’ within his ‘police
circle’ and report on them to the District Superintendent. Local police
were supposed to monitor the movements of registered people and trace
18
NAI/HD/JB 03/1872 91: NWP Government, ‘Draft Rules’, circa February 1872.
19
BL/IOR/P/3382: Part B Proceedings, November, no. 20; UPSA/A/COA/18/5: Berril to
20
BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP IGP, 28 June 1876; BL/IOR/P/1138: Robertson to all
Oudh DC, 24 September 1878; BL/IOR/P/1281: Robertson to NWP&O IGP,
25 July 1879.
21
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Amson to Benares DC, 16 November 1872; UPSA/A/COV/119/
12: Annesley to Benares DC, 12 April 1873; UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short to
Muzaffarnagar DM, 3 December 1872.
22
23
On the broader context: Bayly, Empire and Information, 332 4; Giuliani, ‘Strangers in the
Village?’; Arnold, Police Power.
24
Aretxaga, ‘Maddening States’, 396.
those who had migrated or ‘disappeared’. In addition to keeping surveil-

lance over Hijras and others categorised as ‘eunuchs’, the Indian police
corps was also responsible for the day-to-day enforcement of section 26,
which prohibited registered people from dancing, playing music and
wearing female clothes or ornaments in public. It was also the local
Indian police who were charged with the task of finding male children
in the households of ‘eunuchs’.25
Yet the police’s powers to monitor and police registered people were
somewhat limited by the provisions of the law. First, although early drafts
of legislation targeting ‘eunuchs’ required traveling people to obtain
a pass from the police, Part II of the CTA did not contain a pass system
to restrict registered peoples’ movements. Moreover, the police could not
enforce a regular roll call of ‘eunuchs’ at the police station, as they did in
the regulation of the ‘criminal tribes’ under Part I of the CTA. The NWP
and Indian governments seem to have viewed such restrictions on mobi-
lity as unnecessary to achieve the aim of the law, the elimination of
eunuchs, and as altogether too much work. The NWP rules on the
registration of eunuchs stated that registered people were required to
inform the police of their movements, but under the 1871 law there
were no means to punish mobile people who failed to report to police.26
The only available legal mechanisms to contain the mobility of Hijras,
Zananas and other ‘eunuchs’ were the entry of their names on district
registers, ongoing police surveillance and communication about their
migrations between district Magistrates.27 Police thus had to rely on
local intelligence and reports from chaukidars to learn of registered peo-
ples’ movements. In fact, in this period in north India, police stations were
generally reliant on watch and ward systems for information and reports
of crime, particularly outside of cities.28 A second issue was that under
Part II of the CTA, the police did not have the power to search the homes
of registered ‘eunuchs’ without a warrant, as they did in the policing of the
‘criminal tribes’.29 The officers in charge of police stations periodically
sent out subordinates to inspect the dwellings of registered people and
monitor their numbers. However, updating the property register was the
only legal mechanism through which the households of registered indivi-
duals could be inspected, without obtaining a search warrant from the
Magistrate.
25
BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act No. XXVII of 1871. See also UPSA/L/J/C/111/772D: Winter,
‘Rules’, 2 April 1907.
26
NAI/HD/JB 03/1872 91: NWP, ‘Draft Rules’, circa February 1872.
27
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Webster to NWP Secretary, 13 March 1877; BL/IOR/P/1138:
Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 28 May 1878.
28
Bayly, Empire and Information, 332 4. 29 BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act No. XXVII of 1871.
Hijras and other registered ‘eunuchs’ appear to have encountered the

police in two main contexts in the course of their everyday lives. First,
they often met with the police in public spaces like streets, markets and
melas or religious fairs. In large part, the policing of ‘eunuchs’ was in
practice a sub-section of the broader colonial policing of public spaces
and ‘public nuisances’. Police were particularly successful in apprehend-
ing registered people for performance and cross-dressing in
melas. Unfortunately for Hijras – for whom performance and alms-
collection at melas was an important aspect of their social and cultural
lives – there was usually a strong police presence at religious fairs, which
the colonial government viewed as a multifaceted threat to public order.30
A second context in which many registered ‘eunuchs’ felt the brunt of law
enforcement was in their own homes, even though the CTA did not give
police the power to inspect their dwellings without a Magistrate’s war-
rant. In 1884, the NWP government reiterated that night-time searches of
registered people’s houses required a warrant. Nevertheless, this 1884
correspondence suggests that updating the property register probably
served as a sufficient pretext for daytime searches.31 The annual reports
also contain scattered references to illegal searches of registered peoples’
homes without a search warrant.32
In some districts, the scope of police surveillance extended beyond
registered people and also encompassed so-called ‘eunuchs’ who were
not registered under the CTA. These unregistered people probably
included those on the boundaries of the ‘suspect eunuch’ category,
most notably Zananas, but also Khwajasarais (eunuch-slaves employed
in elite households and courts), male performers who played female roles
and men who cross-dressed as a form of religious devotion like
Sakhis. In Bara Banki division in the early 1880s, for instance, the
authorities included both registered and unregistered ‘eunuchs’ in the
annual report and statistical table, suggesting that the Bara Banki police
were exercising considerable surveillance over people who had not been
formally registered under the CTA. The NWP government wrote that
including unregistered individuals in the annual report was unnecessary
30
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to Benares DC, 28 March 1873; BL/IOR/P/1467:
Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 31 May 1880; BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith to NWP&O
IGP, 6 July 1881; Kama Maclean, ‘Making the Colonial State Work for You:
The Modern Beginnings of the Ancient Kumbh Mela in Allahabad’, The Journal of
Asian Studies 62, no. 3 (August 2003): 893 4; Kama Maclean, Pilgrimage and Power:
The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765 1954 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
31
UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: J.O.M., Memorandum, 23 August 1884; UPSA/L/J/C/61/456:
Connell, Memorandum, 27 August 1884; BL/IOR/P/2208: Connell to NWP&O IGP,
23 September 1884.
32
E.g., BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881.
but advised that they ‘should be carefully watched’ nonetheless.33

Clearly, the enforcement of the CTA did not only impact upon the lives
of the registered ‘eunuchs’, but facilitated the surveillance and harass-
ment of various people whom colonial police thought resembled Hijras.
The surviving colonial records largely erase the coercive aspects of
encounters between Indian police and people criminalised as eunuchs.
There is only one explicit reference to the potentially threatening and
violent character of these interactions in the archives of the NWP.
In 1876, several District Superintendents complained that under the
CTA they no longer had ‘recourse to the summary but very efficient
procedure formerly much favoured’ in the policing of Hijras,
Zananas and male cross-dressers: ‘they would cut off their long hair,
strip off their female attire and ornaments, and selling them fit these
people out with a set of men’s clothes’. R. T. Hobart, the Deputy
Inspector-General of Police, stated that ‘as a rule’ these methods were
no longer used.34 However, the desire of some District Superintendents
for more coercive measures suggests that they may have turned a blind eye
to humiliating and violent behaviour towards people registered as
eunuchs under the CTA. Certainly, Hijras and others with non-binary
gender expression were frightened by the increased police presence in
their lives, even in districts where the police took a relatively sympathetic
view of local ‘eunuchs’. Although the Muzaffarnagar authorities argued
that nobody should be registered in the early 1870s, local Hijras were
nevertheless fearful of police interrogation. For example, police officer
Nurayan Singh reported that a forty-year-old named Pearee was ‘now
afraid owing to their being looked up’ by the police.35 These archival
fragments suggest that Hijras and other so-called ‘eunuchs’ experienced
police intimidation and coercion, though the patterns of police violence
are unclear.
The Uneven Pattern of Local Policing

From the early 1870s, the presence of police in the everyday lives of
registered ‘eunuchs’ differed from district to district. Nevertheless, in
the four decades that Part II of the CTA was enforced, there were some
province-wide peaks and troughs in local policing. For instance, the
attention of local authorities to the ‘eunuch problem’ seems to have
intensified across much of the NWP in the early 1880s, only to wane by
33
BL/IOR/P/1614: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 19 September 1881.
34
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Hobart to NWP&O IGP, 21 June 1876.
35
the early 1900s. Consequently, Hijras’ and other registered peoples’

experiences of criminalisation under colonial law fluctuated between
different geographic and temporal contexts.
The first few years that Part II of the CTA was enforced were marked by
significant variations in local surveillance and policing. The Inspector-
General of Police, his Deputy and the NWP Secretary all concluded that
law enforcement during 1874 had been patchy across the thirty-five
districts of the province. In fourteen districts, authorities had strictly
implemented the law. In Mathura district, the ‘eunuchs’ were ‘impatient
under the registration’, which the Inspector-General saw as a ‘good sign’
that the system of surveillance was effective.36 Yet in twenty-one districts,
the law was ‘virtually a dead letter’: in the case of fifteen districts, because
Part II of the CTA had not yet been introduced, and in the case of six
districts, because the registers were not ‘maintained with the care and
accuracy requisite to the proper working of the Act’. Meanwhile in two
additional districts, Agra and Benares, ‘the small number of registered
eunuchs (19 and 6 respectively) points to inadequate registration’.37
The following year, the law was still a ‘dead letter’ in twelve districts,
while the Deputy Inspector-General had serious doubts about enforce-
ment in another four districts. In nineteen districts, however, ‘the law
seems to have been carefully attended to’.38
During 1876, the NWP administration felt that law enforcement had
finally and markedly improved, so much so that E. Tyrwhitt, the
Inspector-General, claimed that ‘the gradual extirpation of the eunuch
class’ was imminent.39 The NWP Secretary was more cautious – noting
that ‘the object’ of the law had only been ‘partially accomplished’ – but
was also satisfied with the improvement in local law enforcement.40 Yet
this optimism that the extinction of eunuchs was fast approaching
dimmed in the late 1870s, as disparities in local policing persisted. For
the NWP government, the main problems with law enforcement were the
difficulty of tracing the migrations of registered people between districts,
inconsistent policies on performance and dress, the ‘hasty’ removal of
names from the registers, and poor record-keeping and enumeration.
Tyrwhitt reported that during 1877 the law was ‘carefully worked’ in
Meerut, Agra and Rohilkhand divisions. However, he singled out
36
37
BL/IOR/P/97: Hobart to NWP IGP, 4 May 1875; BL/IOR/P/97: Tyrwhitt to NWP
Secretary, 9 June 1875; BL/IOR/P/97: Colvin to NWP IGP, 12 August 1875.
38
BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP IGP, 28 June 1876.
39
BL/IOR/P/840: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 17 September 1877.
40
BL/IOR/P/840: Robertson to NWP IGP, 1 October 1877.
Benares, Allahabad and Jhansi divisions for unsatisfactory law

enforcement.41 In the report for 1878, Tyrwhitt opined that in most
districts, ‘the subject’ was ‘shown to receive proper attention’ and the
law had been ‘vigorously enforced’. Yet he was still dissatisfied with the
policing of eunuchs in Benares division, Jhansi division and Kanpur
district. Meanwhile, the introduction of the law into Oudh, which had
been absorbed into the NWP in 1877, had been an absolute failure, since
‘due attention [had] not been given to this subject’.42
A degree of variation in local policing continued in the following years,
though the NWP government was increasingly confident in the effective-
ness of law enforcement. The conclusion of C. Robertson, the NWP
Secretary, on the enforcement of Part II of the CTA during 1879 summed
up the view of the government throughout most of the early 1880s:
On the whole during the year greater interest seems to have been taken by district
officers in this important branch of their duties, and great energy displayed in
carrying out the orders of Government. In some districts however those orders
have been unaccountably neglected, and many omissions and inaccuracies have
been allowed to occur which a little care would have prevented.43
The annual reports for the early 1880s repeatedly singled out Benares,
Jhansi and Sitapur divisions for lax surveillance and failures to prosecute
lawbreaking ‘eunuchs’. In contrast, the law was reportedly ‘well worked’
in Meerut, Rohilkhand, Allahabad, Fyzabad and several other
divisions.44
By 1885, the NWP government was sufficiently satisfied with local law
enforcement to classify the annual report on Part II of the CTA as
a ‘matter of routine’ that did not need to be sent to London.45
Thereafter, the surviving records on the anti-Hijra campaign are relatively
meagre. Specific instructions to district authorities were not issued for
most of the annual reports of the late 1880s and 1890s, suggesting that the
provincial government was generally pleased with law enforcement.
Nevertheless, the provincial administration was periodically concerned
about lax surveillance in parts of the NWP. In 1889, for instance, the
Inspector-General reminded ‘all District Superintendents of Police . . . of
41
BL/IOR/P/1138: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 28 May 1878; BL/IOR/P/1138:
Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 17 June 1878.
42
43
44
BL/IOR/P/1467: Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 31 May 1880; BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith
to NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881; BL/IOR/P/1614: Robertson to NWP&O IGP,
19 September 1881; BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 15 May 1882; BL/IOR/
P/2208: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 26 June 1884.
45
BL/IOR/P/2460: Woodburn to NWP&O IGP, 1 July 1885.
their responsibility in the matter of (1) the yearly inspection of eunuchs;

(2) the registering of names of those eunuchs who formerly were too
hastily released from supervision; and (3) the careful examination of the
registers in detail’.46 As such, it is likely that the regulation of people
classified as ‘eunuchs’ continued to vary somewhat between districts,
despite the NWP government’s optimism that eunuchs were dying out
and would soon be suppressed.
The annual report for 1895 – the only full report which I have found for
the period after 1885 – gives a snapshot of law enforcement towards the
end of the nineteenth century. By this time, the number of ‘eunuchs’
registered in the NWP had declined to 594 from an original total of
around 1400 when Part II of the CTA was first introduced. This was
due to a number of factors, particularly changes in principles of classifica-
tion; migrations out of the NWP, significant numbers of ‘absentees’, and
the death of people registered as ‘eunuchs’. The NWP Secretary con-
cluded that the annual report was ‘on the whole satisfactory, and affords
indications of the gradual disuse of the practices which it is the object of
the law to repress’. However, twelve District Superintendents of Police
had not ‘adequately’ carried out the annual ‘inspection of eunuchs’, while
‘the registers do not appear to have everywhere been carefully
maintained’.47 Nevertheless, as the Deputy Inspector-General noted,
‘Most of the eunuchs were personally inspected by District
Superintendents in their cold weather tours of inspection’. In fact, the
1895 report showed a similar pattern of regional variation to the reports of
the 1870s and early 1880s: in Meerut and Allahabad divisions, for
instance, the registers were ‘maintained with care’ and surveillance was
satisfactory; whereas in Benares division – which seems to have been
a persistent cause of frustration – record-keeping and the surveillance of
migrations were reportedly inadequate.48
Why was the policing of ‘eunuchs’ uneven at the local level? One
significant factor was the varied attitudes of British district administrators
toward the policing of sexual morality. In 1870–1, not a single NWP
Magistrate or Superintendent of Police expressed opposition to ‘special
legislation’ to control ‘eunuchs’. From this time, many high- and lower-
ranking British officials continued to see Hijras as a moral affront and
a challenge to British rule. The continued anxiety at the district level was
evident in British officers’ occasional proposals for additional measures to
combat eunuchs, which the NWP government considered sweeping and
46
BL/IOR/P/3382: Part B Proceedings, November, no. 20.
47
48
UPSA/A/COA/18/5: Berril to NWP&O IGP, 1 May 1896.
unrealistic.49 However, some district administrators did not see the small
‘eunuch’ population as a threat to public morality. Some felt that the anti-
Hijra drive was a distraction from more important aspects of colonial
governance. Several NWP officials probably shared the frustration of an
anonymous ‘District Officer’ who wrote in The Pioneer in 1883 that there
was a ‘total disregard of the relative importance’ of district officers’
‘various duties’ in the NWP. In a broader article on district administra-
tion, the anonymous official noted in passing that the policing of morality
seemed to take precedence for the NWP government: ‘The ablest District
Officer is liable at any moment to be accused of gross neglect of duty if
a eunuch has disappeared from his district, or the infanticide cess falls into
arrears’.50
These mixed official attitudes towards the policing of ‘eunuchs’ – from
anxiety to ambivalence – certainly shaped the variegated pattern of local
law enforcement. This reflects the contingent character of the colonial
governance of sexuality, which was also evident in the hotly debated
Contagious Diseases Acts (CDAs) that were implemented in numerous
British colonies. While women campaigners and missionaries opposed
the CDAs as an endorsement of a sexual double standard and sexual vice
(respectively), in contrast, the army claimed such laws were necessary to
preserve military strength and many doctors welcomed this project of
medical regulation.51 In India, the notions of civilising duty expressed in
London and at the upper levels of the Indian administration were less
evident among British officials on the ground, some of whom took
a pragmatic, rather than a moralising view.52 Meanwhile, some colonies –
including most of British Africa – did not implement contagious disease
regulations at all, due to local social and political considerations.53
Similarly, the variations in the local policing of ‘eunuchs’ and the diver-
gent attitudes of British administrators throw into relief the highly con-
textual nature of the colonial regulation of sexuality.
Moreover, the local and regional differences in the policing of
‘eunuchs’ often reflected broader variations in law enforcement across
north India. This becomes apparent when the annual report on Part II of
the CTA is compared with the annual NWP police administration report.
Take, for example, the year 1877. As noted above, the annual report on
the registration of eunuchs had concluded that local policing was gener-
ally effective in Agra, Rohilkhand and Meerut divisions, but was
49
E.g., UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: J.O.M., Memorandum, 23 August 1884.
50
‘District Administration: A Protest’, The Pioneer, 1 August 1883, 1.
51
Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 2 3. 52 Tambe, Codes of Misconduct, xxiii.
53
The exceptions in Africa were the Cape Colony and Egypt. Phillips, ‘Heterogeneous
Imperialism’, 291 315.
unsatisfactory in Benares, Allahabad and Jhansi divisions. Likewise,

Robertson, the NWP Secretary, praised the general police administration
in all of the districts of Rohilkhand, with the exception of the mediocre
Bijnor district, and in all of Agra division, aside from Etah district. He also
gave satisfactory or mixed reviews to all of the districts of Meerut division.
That is, the parts of the NWP where ‘eunuchs’ were reportedly closely
monitored were, on the whole, those districts where the general police
administration was also satisfactory, according to the NWP government.
Conversely, while the Deputy Inspector-General had been deeply unsa-
tisfied with the policing of ‘eunuchs’ in Benares division, Robertson’s
review of general law enforcement in that division was also overwhel-
mingly negative and highlighted a lack of attention to serious crime.
The problems with the regulation of ‘eunuchs’ in Allahabad division
also echoed the generally lax policing in the district. Meanwhile, the
annual police report gave Jhansi division a mixed but mostly negative
review, as did the report on the policing of ‘eunuchs’.54
To be sure, the enforcement of Part II of the CTA did not exactly
mirror the general pattern of law enforcement in all instances. District
Superintendents who were charged with improving law enforcement in
problem districts sometimes deprioritised the regulation of ‘eunuchs’ in
the process of implementing their reforms. In 1878, the District
Superintendent of Kanpur was praised for his efforts in reforming various
aspects of local policing, but the enforcement of Part II of the CTA was
reportedly ‘discreditable’ to the police and ‘the subject [had] evidently
been neglected’.55 Conversely, the 1878 police administration report
noted problems with law enforcement in a few districts where the policing
of eunuchs was apparently efficient – as was the case in several districts of
Agra division.56
However, the district-level regulation of ‘eunuchs’ usually reflected
broader configurations of law enforcement. The patchwork of local poli-
cing and surveillance under Part II of the CTA is symptomatic of the
irregular pattern of policing in late nineteenth-century northern India.
Recall that in the years following 1857, a number of reforms to the
colonial system of policing were introduced. The police reforms of the
early 1860s aimed to make the force more efficient, but also to reduce
costs and to ensure that the colonial police did not intrude too heavily into
daily life, particularly in rural areas. As such, rural elites such as landlords
and village headmen were placed in charge of chaukidars and were
54
BL/IOR/V/24/3169: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 11 October 1878.
55
BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879. Another example is
Benares division. BL/IOR/V/24/3169: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 20 September 1879.
56
BL/IOR/V/24/3169: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 20 September 1879.
responsible for communicating the information these watchmen supplied

to the nearest police station. Some District Superintendents of Police
attempted to integrate the village watch-and-ward system more closely
with the colonial police force. Yet in general, the policing system
remained decentralised and disaggregated in late nineteenth-century
north India, particularly outside the larger towns.57 In sum, the colonial
police – and more broadly, the colonial state – was far from a monolith.
The policing of the criminal tribes under Part I of the CTA also helps to
contextualise the regulation of eunuchs under Part II of the law. Both
parts of the CTA were implemented unevenly, though in somewhat
different ways. To be sure, Part I of the CTA gave the police greater
powers to intervene in everyday life than Part II and its effects were more
intensified in those areas where it was applied. Yet Part I of the CTA was
enforced against the criminal tribes in a highly selective manner, while the
provisions of the law relating to ‘eunuchs’ were implemented in every
district of the NWP, with the exception of some districts in Kumaon
division.58 In many ways, the registration of ‘eunuchs’ was a more routine
and widespread part of local policing than the regulation of the criminal
tribes in the 1870s and 1880s.
The policing of the criminal tribes was localised and uneven in this
period. Out of the twenty-nine ‘criminal tribes’ that the NWP adminis-
tration had proposed to register in the late 1860s, only four communities
in three districts were notified under the CTA between 1871 and 1885.
This was because the Government of India was unconvinced that several
groups would have adequate means of livelihood if notified, since the
NWP refused to establish new ‘reformatory settlements’.59 The large
numbers of registered ‘criminal tribespeople’ who absconded in both
the NWP and neighbouring Punjab is evidence of the enormous trans-
formations in these communities’ everyday lives under the CTA, as they
were forced to report regularly to police stations and found their mobility
restricted. At the same time, this widespread absconding attests to weak
points in law enforcement that opened up opportunities for evasion and
resistance. In 1898, an amendment to the CTA aimed to deal with these
problems of registration and law enforcement.60 By 1904, however, the
NWP government had declared the policing of the criminal tribes
57
Bayly, Empire and Information, 333 4; Giuliani, ‘Strangers in the Village?’, 1378 1404.
See also Arnold, Police Power.
58
In 1895, the CTA was introduced in Kumaon division. UPSA/A/COA/18/5: Berrill to
59
NAI/HD/JB 04/1878 64 66: Daukes to NWP Secretary, 17 April 1878.
60
668 75.
a ‘failure’.61 It is clear that the pattern of policing under both Part I and
Part II of the CTA was varied and locally contextual.62
One factor in the variegated policing of ‘eunuchs’ that we have not
considered thus far was the agency of registered people in persistently
evading police and adopting strategies to cope with their criminalisation.
‘Eunuchs’ illegally performed and wore feminine dress in public places
and used their periodic migrations to gain respite from surveillance, or
simply ‘disappeared’. These strategies of evasion widened weak points in
police surveillance and shaped the pattern of local law enforcement.
The rest of this chapter delves in greater detail into the everyday lives of
registered people under the CTA and their strategies of evasion, resis-
tance and coping in three particular contexts: mobility and migration;
performance and dress; and Hijra communal structures.
Policing Mobile ‘Eunuchs’

The migration of people criminalised as ‘eunuchs’ was a persistent cause
of worry for the NWP government from the early 1870s. Recall that the
only ways to monitor the movements of ‘eunuchs’ were registration,
police surveillance and communication between districts. Registered
people were instructed to report any travels outside their district to the
police, but there were no means to punish them if they concealed their
mobility.63 As such, there were repeated calls from district officials for
some sort of pass system to restrict ‘eunuch’ mobility. In 1877, Hobart,
the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, drafted new rules under which
a registered person needed a pass from the lambardar (village head) to
leave their village; a pass from the head of the police station to leave the
‘police circle’; and a pass from the Magistrate to leave the limits of the
district.64 The NWP Lieutenant-Governor decided that ‘the proposed
rules carry surveillance and interference with the freedom of the
eunuchs too far’, though pragmatic considerations were probably
more pressing than any consideration of the ‘freedom’ of ‘eunuchs’.65
A pass system would have significantly increased the workload of the
police and the district Magistrates. Moreover, the NWP government did
not view all forms of mobility as a problem and did not want to prevent
the permanent migrations of registered people outside the province, since
61
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: C.J.J., Memorandum, 31 July 1908.
62
Major, ‘State and Criminal Tribes’, 672 4; Yang, ‘Dangerous Castes and Tribes’, 124;
Piliavsky, ‘The Moghia Menace’, 751, 773 7.
63
BL/IOR/P/93: Elliot to all NWP DM, DC and IGP, 8 July 1872.
64
BL/IOR/P/840: Hobart, ‘Draft rules’, 2 March 1877.
65
BL/IOR/P/840: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 3 April 1877.
the reduction and eventual elimination of the ‘eunuch’ population of the

NWP was the goal. Even permanent migration to other British terri-
tories did not perturb the NWP, revealing the province-centric view of
colonial administrators and the fractures between different provinces in
British India.66 It was the temporary movements of registered people
across borders that worried the NWP administration, since these short-
term migrations undermined efforts to govern, count and control the
NWP ‘eunuch’ population and thus cause it to die out.
As such, in the following years, the NWP government sought to
strengthen surveillance by mandating that: first, Magistrates should com-
municate with each other in English about registered peoples’
movements; second, migrating people should automatically be registered
in their new district;67 third, people who had migrated outside the NWP
or disappeared should be retained on a register of absent eunuchs for
seven years; and finally, temporary movements between the districts of
the NWP should be recorded on a ‘casual register’.68 But NWP officials
persistently complained about the police’s limited powers to monitor the
movements of people registered as eunuchs. For instance, in the early
1880s, O. L. Smith, the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, highlighted
the difficulties in controlling ‘persons who wander among [the forty-six]
districts [of the NWP] who are in no way obliged to report their move-
ments at the places whence they start or at those through which they pass,
and who . . . wander anywhere they please, their chief care being to avoid
the police’.69
At one time or another, most Hijras and other people registered as
‘eunuchs’ exploited the limited ability of the police to control their move-
ments and in the process, created and widened gaps in law enforcement.
Mobility was a means to shirk surveillance, break the law, and maintain
prohibited livelihoods, as well as a challenge to colonial norms of seden-
tary and ‘productive’ lifestyles. In short, mobile ‘eunuchs’ were ungo-
vernable ‘eunuchs’. While the impacts of Part II of the CTA propelled the
migration of registered people, aspects of the Hijra social role and com-
munal structures also acted as ‘push’ factors. In many cases, short-term
migration was probably a result of Hijras’ continuation of socio-cultural
practices that the colonial government defined as peripatetic and there-
fore criminal. As we saw in Chapter 6, nineteenth-century
66
UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: J.O.M., Memorandum, 19 September 1884; BL/IOR/P/2208:
Connell to NWP&O IGP, 23 September 1884.
67
68
UPSA/L/Police/64/529A: H.W.P., Memorandum, 4 November 1891; UPSA/L/Police/
64/529A: Benett to NWP&O IGP, 17 November 1891.
69
Hijras generally had a permanent place of residence but were mobile for
short periods to collect alms, perform and visit related Hijra households.
The distances which Hijras travelled varied. While some visited Indian-
ruled states and other British provinces, most only travelled through the
‘countryside’ surrounding the town or village in which they lived. Yet in
some instances, permanently leaving their place of residence may have
severed Hijras’ guru-chela relationships and necessitated finding a new
household in which to be initiated, possibly limiting some Hijras’ capa-
city to migrate to evade police.70 Anthropologists have noted that in
contemporary India, cutting the ties of Hijra discipleship involves the
ritual expulsion of the Hijra chela from her guru’s household.71
Although discipleship hierarchies may have sometimes constrained
Hijra evasion through mobility, registered people persistently moved
about under the CTA, weakening the police’s capacity to enforce the
law. It is impossible to form a reliable statistical picture of the number
of registered ‘eunuchs’ who migrated permanently or temporarily
under the CTA, because the government’s record-keeping practices
inflated the statistics of those under police surveillance, but colonial
archives contain numerous examples of resistance and evasion through
mobility.72
The most drastic response of registered people was to escape police
surveillance by permanently migrating from the NWP to another British
province or an Indian principality where Part II of the CTA was not
enforced. This was especially common in the many NWP districts that
bordered on other provinces and principalities. When the CTA was first
introduced to Benares district in 1872, two of the six ‘eunuchs’ originally
registered, Koosunee and her chela Sugoonah, left for Sasaram in modern
Bihar, where they had links to local Hijras.73 Sometimes, registered people
left the NWP in small groups of two or three for Indian-ruled states or other
provinces.74 Larger migrations also occurred, such as thirty-four people
who left Rohilkhand for Rampur state in 1881.75 A number of registered
people also went on pilgrimage to Mecca after 1871.76
70
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Mirzapur DM to Benares DC, 22 February 1873.
71
Saria, ‘Some Other Name’.
72
Absent people were often kept on the register for several years after they absconded. BL/
IOR/P/1614: Hobart to NWP&O Secretary, circa 1881; BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to
NWP&O IGP, 28 June 1876; UPSA/L/J/C/111/772D: Winter to all UP DC, DM and
IGP, ‘Rules’, 2 April 1907.
73
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Annesley to Benares DC, 12 April 1873.
74
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Castle to Ghazipur DM, 23 April 1878; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith,
75
76
BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith, ‘Statement’, 4 June 1883.
Second, many registered people simply ‘disappeared’ within the NWP

by evading the police. The colonial records provide numerous instances
of ‘eunuchs’ who went ‘away in a stealthy manner’ and could not be
traced.77 The threat of surveillance was sometimes enough to cause flight.
In 1871–2 in Mirzapur, eight of twelve registered people disappeared
immediately after inquiries were first made, while three people disap-
peared from Bareilly when the CTA was first introduced and ‘no trace
[could] be found of where they went to’.78 In several instances, people
registered as eunuchs managed to evade police for over a decade.79
Persons who were prosecuted under the CTA for performance, wearing
women’s clothing or residing with children sometimes subsequently
disappeared.80 District authorities insisted that ‘eunuchs’ report where
they were travelling to, but many migrating people simply gave a false
address of destination. Hobart outlined this problem in 1876:
Fifty six men [i.e., registered ‘eunuchs’] are said to have left their districts. . . .
Of these, 25 men left for districts in our own provinces; of these 25, 13 can
nowhere be found. In some of these cases they have [given] false addresses,
for . . . a careful search has been made for them ineffectually. In the case of the
other 30 men who declared their intention of going to other provinces, it is
impossible to say how many gave false addresses, and simply moved to another
district [in the NWP].81
Tracking down people who gave false addresses and disappeared in the
forty-six districts of the NWP was obviously difficult and time-
consuming. Whereas some registered people managed to escape the
police’s view altogether, others were eventually traced and re-
registered.82 The initial flight was simpler to achieve than ongoing avoid-
ance of the police.
Finally, many registered people regularly traversed political borders –
between the NWP and other British provinces or Indian-ruled territories,
as well as between the districts of the NWP – residing for short periods
where they were not registered. This opened up possibilities for
77
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Benares DC, ‘Abstract’, 23 November 1875. See also, BL/IOR/
P/1614: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881; BL/IOR/P/2208: Webster to NWP&O
Secretary, 15 July 1884.
78
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to Benares DC, 3 November 1872; BL/IOR/P/97:
Hobart to NWP IGP, 4 May 1875.
79
BL/IOR/P/2460: Part B Proceedings, January, no. 20; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith to
NWP&O IGP, 4 June 1883; UPSA/L/Police/64/529A: Tweedie, Memorandum,
25 September 1891.
80
BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881.
81
BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP&O IGP, 28 June 1876.
82
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Gardner to Benares DC, 28 April 1877; BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart
to NWP&O IGP, 28 June 1876; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 4 June 1883;
Hijras and others criminalised as ‘eunuchs’ to perform and wear feminine

clothes without the risk of prosecution. For example, temporary migra-
tion was particularly common in districts that bordered other provinces,
such as Punjab. In 1878, the Superintendent of Saharanpur complained
that the ‘eunuchs’ of his district frequently crossed into Punjab ‘with
impunity’, while Punjabi ‘eunuchs’ regularly visited the NWP for short
periods. Saharanpur ‘eunuchs’ could thus ‘practice their trade with
safety’ in Punjab. Meanwhile, Punjabi ‘eunuchs’ were not registered in
the NWP and could not be prosecuted for performing or wearing
women’s clothing there, undermining the provincial government’s efforts
to erase ‘obscenity’ from public space. Although these inter-province
visits were of short duration, the Superintendent complained that the
cross-border flows of registered people had resulted in a breakdown in
surveillance.83 In districts that bordered ‘native states’, people crimina-
lised as eunuchs also frequently crossed between British and Indian
territories for short periods and officials complained, ‘[n]othing can be
done to control these [people]’.84
By the mid 1880s, the NWP police were monitoring the migrations of
so-called eunuchs more closely. From 1882, the NWP government
required each district to annually report the number of registered people
who migrated into and out of the district. These statistics suggest that the
majority of those registered under Part II of the CTA travelled for part of
each year, despite police surveillance. The total number of ‘moves’ into
and out of each district of the NWP increased from 231 inward and 371
outward migrations in 1882; to 475 inward and 422 outward migrations
in 1883; to 616 inward and 577 outward migrations in 1884. Meanwhile,
from 1882 to 1884, the registered population decreased from 1006 to
788, as the number of reported ‘moves’ gradually increased.85 People
migrating across several districts were presumably counted in both the
inward and outward migration columns – and possibly several times in
each column – if surveillance was strict. Nevertheless, the tables of
‘moves’ suggest that many Hijras, Zananas and other ‘eunuchs’ were
highly mobile.
83
BL/IOR/P/1138: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 28 May 1878. On Benares: BL/IOR/P/
1281: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 25 July 1879.
84
BL/IOR/P/2460: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 27 April 1885. See also BL/IOR/P/839: Colvin
to NWP&O IGP, 25 August 1876; UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to Benares DC,
19 March 1873.
85
BL/IOR/P/2002: Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 22 June 1883; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith,
‘Memo of moves’, 4 June 1883; BL/IOR/P/2208: Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 15
July 1884; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith, ‘Memorandum of moves’, 26 June 1884; BL/IOR/P/
2460: Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 22 May 1885; BL/IOR/P/2460: Smith, ‘Number
of Eunuchs who have moved’, 27 April 1885.
However, the increase in reported migrations in the early 1880s was

probably due to an increase in surveillance, rather an increase in mobility.
Consequently, in the early-mid 1880s, people criminalised as ‘eunuchs’
were still travelling periodically, but this mobility was less likely to provide
a means of evading police, since it was more closely monitored.
Nevertheless, the NWP government’s renewed efforts to refine the rules
for the recording of ‘casual’ and permanent migrations in the early 1890s
suggest that police surveillance of registered peoples’ movements had
declined somewhat.86 The mobility of Hijras and other ‘eunuchs’ shaped
the contours of the policing and surveillance regime. Registered people’s
persistence in keeping on the move also significantly undermined the
NWP’s efforts to police the public presence of Hijras, Zananas and var-
ious people with non-binary gender embodiment.
Regulating Public Space

Throughout most of the late nineteenth century, the NWP government
reiterated that the prosecution of registered ‘eunuchs’ for dancing, playing
music and wearing female clothes and ‘ornaments’ under section 26 of the
1871 law was a key aspect of district administration. In 1876, the Inspector-
General of Police, Hobart, impressed upon district officials the importance of
punishment ‘liberally dealt out’, since ‘[i]t is not common sense to suppose
that eunuchs will, except with extreme difficulty, be forced to abandon
a means of living to which they have been accustomed all their lives’.87
Yet the prohibition of public performance and feminine gender expres-
sion did not have the immediate impact that the NWP government had
hoped for. In 1873, only two registered ‘eunuchs’ were ‘sent up’ for
infractions of section 26, one receiving thirty-two days imprisonment
while the other was acquitted because she/he was found not to be
a ‘eunuch’.88 The following year, there was an increase in the number
of prosecutions, with nine in total, but the provincial government
regarded this as ‘extremely few’ and a result of ‘laxity’ in enforcement.
Several British district officials noted that local ‘eunuchs’ danced and
sang for a living but had not been prosecuted, while in contrast, in other
districts registered people had been forced to give up performance and
feminine dress.89 Although the provincial government noticed ‘decided
86
UPSA/L/Police/64/529A: H.W.P., Memorandum, 4 November 1891; UPSA/L/Police/
64/529A: Benett to NWP&O IGP, 17 November 1891.
87
88
89
Ibid. See also BL/IOR/P/97: Hobart to NWP IGP, 4 May 1875; BL/IOR/P/97: Colvin to
NWP IGP, 12 August 1875.
improvement’ in the prosecution of performance and feminine clothing

from 1876, enforcement continued to differ between districts.90
In some parts of the NWP, district administrators strictly enforced
section 26, with devastating impacts upon Hijras who were barred from
their gender expression, important performative practices, key aspects of
their social role and a major source of income. Most non-Hijras on the
registers also felt the brunt of section 26: they had generally been regis-
tered precisely because of their gender presentation or their performative
traditions. The Magistrate of Hamirpur reported the distress of the
‘eunuchs’ in his district, writing that ‘in consequence of dancing and
singing having been forbidden . . . the creatures hardly know what to
do’.91 In 1876, Hobart reported that in fifteen districts, all the ‘eunuchs’
had ‘been forced to abandon their former calling and to pursue honest
and legitimate menial pursuits’.92 In 1881, only Sitapur and Basti dis-
tricts reported that registered people performed for a living. The NWP
Secretary, J. R. Reid, summed up the predicament of most registered
eunuchs as such:
The occupations of the registered eunuchs are reported to be generally harmless.
Dancing and singing, which were previously allowed in Muzaffarnagar, Kheri,
and elsewhere, have now been forbidden, and occupations are for the most part
begging, agriculture, service, or trade, most of the eunuchs being miserably
poor.93
Reid probably underestimated the extent to which registered people

continued to perform and wear feminine clothing while avoiding the
police. Moreover, prior to the CTA, most Hijras had varied and multiple
occupations in addition to performance, most notably in agriculture – this
was not a consequence of the CTA. Yet it is clear that singing, dancing
and wearing women’s dress in public spaces had become considerably
riskier by the early 1880s. This restricted the livelihoods of Hijras,
Zananas and other performers labelled ‘eunuchs’, most of whom already
had relatively limited economic means.
In several districts, the law was also applied illegally in ways that
exceeded the provisions of the CTA. The prohibition of performance
and women’s clothing under the CTA sometimes gave the impression
that police could also prosecute unregistered people who, in the eyes of
90
BL/IOR/P/840: Hobart to NWP&O IGP, 11 September 1877; BL/IOR/P/1281:
Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879.
91
92
Although in seven districts, ‘eunuchs’ still performed. BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP
IGP, 28 June 1876.
93
BL/IOR/P/1816: Reid to NWP&O IGP, 14 August 1882. See also BL/IOR/P/1816:
Smith to NWP&O IGP, 15 May 1882.
officials, resembled Hijras because they cross-dressed in daily life, thea-

trical contexts or ritual settings. In 1879, an unregistered male-bodied
person who was found wearing female clothing was ‘arrested, convicted,
and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment’. According to Robertson it
was ‘by no means clear that this conviction was legal’, since police had not
registered the person as a ‘suspect eunuch’ prior to the arrest. Judges
dismissed some such cases, as occurred in Lucknow in 1879.94 Yet
authorities in several districts, including Allahabad and Fyzabad, illegally
used the CTA to convict unregistered persons for public performance and
wearing women’s clothing.95 These unregistered people probably
included some Zananas; performers who sometimes played female roles
like Bhagatiyas and bhands; and Sakhi religious devotees. The CTA
painted all persons who troubled binary gender categories as an obscene
and deviant public presence and thus facilitated police harassment and
the use of illegal measures.96 Even in districts where illegal measures were
not used, male-bodied people who wore feminine clothing were forced to
adopt male dress in order to avoid registration under the CTA, since
cross-dressing was considered proof that an individual could be ‘reason-
ably suspected’ of sodomy, kidnapping and castration. The penal provi-
sions of the CTA thus had a wider-ranging impact in some areas than the
number of prosecutions would suggest.
By the late 1870s and early 1880s, the vast majority of districts reported
that registered people’s occupations included begging in male clothing,
vagrancy, ‘honest labour’, trade, shopkeeping, service, cultivation and
other forms of agricultural work, but not performance.97 In 1896, less
than ten per cent of registered ‘eunuchs’ had ‘some definite occupation
without resort to beggary’ and most had reportedly stopped
performing.98 Yet both police headquarters and the NWP government
repeatedly complained that there was ‘much laxity’ in enforcement since
the numbers of prosecutions were relatively small, generally under
a dozen per year. The upper echelons of the NWP government suspected
that some registered people still performed or cross-dressed, but had
escaped prosecution.99 For instance, in 1878 twenty-two ‘eunuchs’ in
Banda and fifteen in Unnao still reportedly performed for a living, but had
94
95
BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP IGP, 28 June 1876; BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith to
NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881.
96
97
E.g., BL/IOR/P/1467: Webster, ‘Statement’, 31 May 1880; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith,
98
99
BL/IOR/P/1614: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881; BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to
not been prosecuted.100 In 1880, ‘in Muzaffarnagar and Kheri the occu-
pation of some registered eunuchs [was] given as dancing and singing in
male attire, though such conduct [was] expressly made penal in the Act’.
In Unnao too, registered people ‘still dress[ed] as women’, while in
Hardoi ‘registered eunuchs play[ed] in public in male attire’.
The Secretary concluded that the ‘police, both in Hardoi and elsewhere,
appear[ed] inclined to wink at offences against the Act’.101 But British
district authorities protested that it was difficult to detect the illegal
performances and feminine dress of ‘eunuchs’. Officials also complained
that the legal powers and resources of the police were inadequate to the
task of closely watching the registered population.102
Another factor that limited law enforcement in some places was British
district officials’ deprioritisation of the prosecution of registered people
for performance if they wore male clothing. The vast majority of convic-
tions under the CTA were for wearing feminine clothing, rather than for
public performances in male clothing. For instance, in 1880 all thirteen
convictions were for ‘wearing female attire’ or ‘appearing as women’ in
public.103 Some British officials at the district level were clearly unper-
turbed by the bawdy content of Hijras’ and Zananas’ performances,
which they viewed as ‘harmless’.104 In 1875, a number of district officials
‘argued that it seems hard to lay down a rule that an impotent person who
dresses as a man, and earns his livelihood by singing, should be . . .
prohibited from singing’.105 In some cases, British officials gave regis-
tered people explicit permission to perform in public in male clothing. For
instance, in Mirzapur in 1881, the Superintendent of Police discovered
that the ‘eunuchs of some stations [were] allowed to dance and sing’
under a ‘vernacular proceeding issued by a Magistrate permitting it’.106
These district administrators either did not perceive Hijra and Zanana
performance as obscene or did not think it warranted regulation.
In contrast, the NWP government argued that the performances of
‘eunuchs’ were for a ‘criminal object’, by implication sex with men, and
100
101
BL/IOR/P/1614: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 19 September 1881. See also BL/IOR/P/
1816: Reid to NWP&O IGP, 14 August 1882; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith to NWP&O IGP,
4 June 1883.
102
BL/IOR/P/1138: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 17 June 1878.
103
104
BL/IOR/P/96: Tyrwhitt to NWP Secretary, 26 June 1874; BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to
NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/1467: Robertson to NWP&O IGP,
12 July 1880.
105
BL/IOR/P/97: Hobart to NWP IGP, 4 May 1875.
106
BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 15 May 1882. See also BL/IOR/P/1467:
Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 31 May 1880; BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to NWP&O
IGP, 15 May 1882; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 26 June 1884.
should be stamped out.107 Hence, there was ongoing disagreement

between officials at various levels of the provincial government over the
definition of obscenity.
Attitudes towards the policing of ‘eunuchs’ in public space also varied
among the judiciary. When registered people were brought before the
courts for feminine dress and performance, they received widely differing
sentences. In 1881, Robertson remarked that in Agra division the ‘differ-
ence in the punishments awarded’ was ‘striking’: five people had received
imprisonment for one month; two for four months; and two were sen-
tenced to the heavy penalty of one year of rigorous imprisonment.
Moreover, in Jhansi district a convicted ‘eunuch’ had received only
eight days of imprisonment, a punishment that Robertson deemed ‘very
inadequate’.108 In 1882, the punishments reported across the NWP
ranged from a fine of ten rupees to six months rigorous
imprisonment.109 The conviction of a person arrested under Part II of
the CTA was not assured and there were several unsuccessful prosecu-
tions every year. In districts where registered people had received rela-
tively light fines or short sentences, they were probably emboldened to
break the law. People registered as ‘eunuchs’ persistently carved out
spaces where they could perform and wear feminine clothing under the
CTA. Hence, the evasion, resistance and survival strategies of Hijras and
other so-called ‘eunuchs’ were an additional factor that created fissures in
the policing of public spaces.
One way that registered people attempted to circumvent section 26 was
to petition the colonial government to allow them a partial exemption so
that they could perform in male clothing. As we saw in Chapter 7,
a number of people petitioned the NWP administration to challenge
their registration under the CTA and contested their classification as
a ‘suspect eunuch’. However, the majority of petitions from registered
people sought to reverse the prohibition on performance as a strategy of
economic, as well as cultural, survival. People petitioned for the ‘right’ to
‘dance and play in public’ or to perform at religious fairs.110 Petitions
often emphasised the economic devastation caused by the prohibition on
performance. In the mid 1870s, for instance, the ‘eunuchs’ of Ghazipur
district complained to the Magistrate that they were ‘starving’.111
107
BL/IOR/P/97: Colvin to NWP IGP, 12 August 1875.
108
109
110
BL/IOR/P/2002: Part B Proceedings, December, no. 53; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith to
111
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Oldham to Benares DC, 6 February 1875.
Likewise, in 1882 several District Superintendents and Magistrates in

Fyzabad division highlighted the ‘miserable condition of the eunuchs’.
A number of the people registered in Fyzabad had, ‘in consequence of
their distress, complained’ to the Commissioner ‘of the rigid rules against
them’.112 These petitions were strategically crafted in several respects.
People criminalised as ‘eunuchs’ did not petition to wear feminine dress
in public and seem to have been aware that most NWP officials would
reject this out of hand. Instead, they framed their petitions to perform as
necessary for economic survival. Moreover, their petitions did not contain
a discourse of ‘customary’ rights to perform when collecting alms, but
rather highlighted economic impacts, a smart strategy, since the colonial
authorities considered many Hijra socio-cultural practices to be criminal
and deviant.
Nevertheless, registered people largely failed to mitigate the prohibi-
tion on performance through legal channels. The NWP government
rejected every petition it received.113 Hijras and others caught up in
Part II of the CTA sometimes had greater success if they petitioned
British district officials, though respite was usually short lived since divi-
sion- and provincial-level officials usually reversed the district officer’s
decision.114 The provincial government’s wholesale rejection of petitions
contributed to registered people’s use of other means of evasion and
coping in order to sing, dance, play music and choose their gender
embodiment.
First, some registered ‘eunuchs’ became adept at dodging police sur-
veillance. Intelligence in several districts suggested that registered people
wore female clothing or performed in public but had avoided detection.
For instance, in 1875, all the registered people in Etah district and the vast
majority in Agra district were ‘earning their bread by dancing and singing’
but had evaded police.115 In Banda district in the late 1870s, ‘eunuchs’
were reported to sing and dance for a living but ‘[t]he police . . . did not
succeed in detecting any of their malpractices’.116 Some registered people
were also known to wear feminine clothing in public and had escaped
punishment, although this was less common.117
112
113
BL/IOR/P/95: Part B Proceedings, January, no. 67; BL/IOR/P/95: Part B Proceedings,
March, no. 75; BL/IOR/P/95: Part B Proceedings, May, no. 55; BL/IOR/P/1614: Part
B Proceedings, January, no. 12.
114
115
BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP IGP, 28 June 1876. See also, BL/IOR/P/1138:
Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 28 May 1878; BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O
116
BL/IOR/P/1138: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 17 June 1878.
117
A second strategy was to strategically cooperate with normative mas-

culinity. Since people criminalised as ‘eunuchs’ were more likely to be
prosecuted if they wore female clothing, some took a creative approach to
their gendered appearance, mixing elements of male and female clothing
in order to superficially conform to masculinity, while simultaneously
hinting at their gender identity. In Hardoi, for instance, the
Superintendent of Police reported that ‘one lot’ of registered people
‘sail very close to the wind in the manner of dress’, incorporating elements
of feminine dress with male clothing to create, from the Superintendent’s
perspective, a confused gendered appearance. The Hardoi ‘eunuchs’
destabilised gender boundaries, while superficially conforming to mascu-
linity and avoiding prosecution.118
Third, the vast majority of registered people appear to have danced,
played music and embodied their gender identity in contexts defined as
‘private’ under the law, since these acts were only illegal in public spaces
and ‘public houses’ (brothels and drinking establishments). Colonial
officials suspected that ‘eunuchs’ covertly performed and wore women’s
clothing in both their own and other peoples’ houses, although their
occupations were ‘professedly . . . respectable’.119 The authorities in
Mainpuri reported that performances were rarely ‘done in public’ and
registered people secretly performed in unknown private locations.120
In Hardoi, the Superintendent illegally searched registered people’s
houses and found ‘all the appliances of their trade’ – that is, female
clothing and musical instruments – suggesting to the government that
many ‘eunuchs’ performed and wore female clothing in private.121
In 1883, Spedding, the Magistrate of Moradabad, obtained a warrant to
search registered people’s households after three Hijras were charged with
‘unnatural offences’ under section 377. Spedding thereby ‘proved that
some registered eunuchs do dress in women’s clothes in their own
houses’.122 Domestic space was therefore an important site where
Hijras and other criminalised people contested the colonial regulation of
their gender and cultural practices.
On several occasions, district authorities called for greater policing
powers to prevent performances and feminine dress in private. For
instance, in 1884 Spedding recommended that the possession of female
clothing and musical instruments should be prohibited and police should
be empowered to conduct night-time searches of registered people’s
118
119
120
121
122
BL/IOR/P/2208: Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 15 July 1884.
houses.123 The provincial government rejected Spedding’s proposals

because there was not a ‘sufficient case’ for interference in registered
people’s households, as the aim of the government was to police the public
presence of ‘eunuchs’. Moreover, Spedding’s scheme would create too
much police work, precisely because most registered people performed
and wore feminine clothing in ‘private’. The NWP Secretary remarked on
the proposal to criminalise the possession of female clothing and musical
instruments, ‘[t]he police would have a fine time if this were done’.124
High-ranking NWP officials were unwilling to further extend surveillance
and thereby add to the considerable number of man-hours already
devoted to policing ‘eunuchs’, particularly since they were primarily
concerned with cross-dressing and performance in public spaces.
The fourth strategy that Hijras used to cope with the colonial regulation
of obscenity was to continue to collect alms or badhai. The colonial
government did not attempt to make Hijras productive according to
colonial standards by preventing alms-collection – labelled ‘begging’ by
the British – although Hijras’ ‘vagrancy’ partly underlay their criminalisa-
tion. In this respect, the CTA worked to keep Hijras ‘criminal’. Yet while
alms-collection was legal under the CTA, public nuisance laws could still
be used against Hijra ‘begging’.125 Moreover, the prohibition on singing
and dancing probably weakened Hijras’ ability to collect badhai, since
alms-collection was closely intertwined with Hijra performance. Hence,
several Hijras petitioned to carry drums and other musical instruments
while ‘begging’, suggesting the importance of musical performance to
their requests for badhai.126 Nonetheless, alms-collection at households
and in public places continued to play an important role in the daily lives
of Hijras under the CTA. After 1871, in most districts the police still
permitted Hijras to ‘go on their rounds and collect their dues’, so long as
they did not perform or wear female clothing.127 Thus, Hijras continued
to assert their right to alms and daily enquire in their neighbourhoods
‘Hua Beta?’ (‘Has a child been born?’).128 Hijras still visited the country-
side to collect seed from cultivators at harvest time and demanded alms in
123
Ibid.; UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: J.O.M., Memorandum, 23 August 1884. See also BL/IOR/
P/1614: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 6 July 1881.
124
UPSA/L/J/C/61/456: Connell, Memorandum, 27 August 1884. See also BL/IOR/P/
2208: Connell to NWP&O IGP, 23 September 1884.
125
The prohibition of ‘public exhibitions’ under Part II of the CTA may have sometimes
been interpreted as outlawing ‘begging’, though I have not found evidence of this.
126
BL/IOR/P/2002: Part B Proceedings, December, no. 53; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith to
127
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Oldham to Benares DC, 6 February 1875.
128
Rose, ‘Muhammadan Birth Observances’, 243.
marketplaces. On a practical level, requesting alms was an important

strategy of everyday economic survival under the CTA.
Moreover, Hijras maintained their conspicuous and often bawdy pre-
sence in public space through alms-collection, undermining the NWP’s
efforts to erase Hijras as a visible social group and to cause their cultural
elimination. When collecting alms, Hijras continued to use bawdy talk
and actions.129 In 1889, Mahtab Rai, an Indian lawyer, reported on
Hijras’ ‘obscene’ speech and behaviour in Lucknow, where police had
enforced the CTA since the late 1870s:
They . . . are so voluble that it is hard and very difficult to bring them to bay in
conversation which is extremely obscene . . . [I]n Lucknow a Mela or fair takes
place among the class every year. The members of the class . . . divide themselves
into two groups and stand on the two sides of a river. There and then they utter
very obscene and filthy language, and abuse each other. In short, they accustom
themselves so much to immoral and indecent talk, that they become quite
immodest and are proud of their victory over others in such language.130
Hijra alms-collection also implied a threat of obscene gestures and

actions towards the potential alms-giver. Colonial commentators
found Hijras’ tendency to ‘strip themselves naked’ if refused alms parti-
cularly disturbing.131 In the context of the prohibition of feminine dress
under the CTA, such actions challenged colonial control over Hijra
bodies by making a spectacle of their bodily difference. Hijras’ bawdy
talk and behaviour also undermined colonial efforts to cleanse public
space of Hijra ‘obscenity’. Through continued participation in local
ritual economies Hijras also expressed their power to bless and curse
fertility as infertile persons and positioned themselves as spiritual asce-
tics, articulating an association between the Hijra community and par-
ticular deities. Alms-collection implicitly challenged the colonial
characterisation of Hijras as a criminal collective through these dis-
courses of spiritual power. Moreover, Hijra alms-collection undercut
the provincial government’s agenda of expunging Hijras as a distinct
socio-cultural category in public space. Hijras’ continued badhai collec-
tion, performance and feminine embodiment in large part accounts for
the survival of the Hijra social role in north India in the face of colonial
cultural elimination.
129
130
As explained above, Rai used the terms nakkal (actor, mimic) and bhandela (actor,
comic) rather than Hijra. NAI/HD/JB 02/1890 111: Rai to GGI, 1 November 1889.
131
Evading Colonial Record-Keeping and Domestic

Interventions
People registered as ‘eunuchs’ also sought to undermine the record-
keeping practices of the colonial state in order to limit police surveillance
of their domestic lives and discipleship networks. The NWP government
viewed the inscription of individual personal details on registers as essen-
tial to controlling ‘eunuchs’. In turn, registered people sought to subvert
colonial record-keeping in a number of ways. In particular, they appear to
have resented the documentation of their belongings on property regis-
ters. Under section 29 of Part II of the CTA, registered ‘eunuchs’ could
not make a will or gift property. In order to enforce this provision, section
30 required police to compile property registers and also compelled
registered people ‘to furnish information as to all property, whether
movable or immovable, of or to which he is possessed or entitled’.132
The registration of property and the banning of wills and gifts were a part
of the NWP’s broader project of eliminating Hijras/eunuchs. These parts
of the CTA aimed to prevent initiation by removing any possible financial
incentive to become a Hijra chela (disciple), thus reducing the Hijra
population.133 The prohibition on wills and gifts also allowed authorities
to intervene in succession practices, such as the ascension of a guru and
the passing on of a deceased guru’s property to their chelas. Conveniently
for the NWP government, the registration of property additionally pro-
vided a pretext for regular inspections of Hijra households and the sur-
veillance of domestic spaces. Yet government interference with Hijra
inheritance was limited in practice. Due to pragmatic considerations,
‘cracks’ in the surveillance and enumeration of property and Hijras’
evasion of registration, Hijra inter-generational succession and inheri-
tance patterns were by and large maintained and the record-keeping
practices of the colonial state were weakened.
After 1871, many district officials were convinced that registered
‘eunuchs’ were concealing property from authorities, rendering colonial
records inaccurate. In some cases, these claims may have been due to the
disparity between the seemingly humble means of many registered people
and some British officials’ assumptions that Hijras were relatively wealthy
due to income from prostitution and ‘begging’. Yet there is firm evidence
that Hijras did conceal property and prevent colonial interference with
inheritance. In Basti district, the Superintendent of Police was not satis-
fied with the correctness of the property register compiled in 1872 and
132
Those who did not could be punished under section 166 or 167 of the IPC. BL/IOR/V/8/
42: Act No. XXVII of 1871.
133
suggested that it did not reflect the full extent of the property of
‘eunuchs’.134 Almost ten years later, in 1881, the Superintendent of
Police in Gonda wrote that ‘it is of no use to register eunuch’s [sic]
property, as they sell it and purchase it with different names’.135
Numerous district officials echoed (almost word-for-word) the complaint
of the Hardoi authorities in 1883 that ‘all the eunuchs in the district’ were
‘attempting to conceal their means’.136
However, Hijras’ efforts to prevent the registration of their property are
somewhat perplexing, since their chelas were allowed to inherit under
NWP government policy. Although most British district officials initially
interpreted the CTA as mandating that a deceased ‘eunuch’s’ property
should escheat to government, the provincial administration held that the
CTA prohibited registered people from alienating their property by gift,
will or adoption, but ‘bar[red] no other mode of inheritance’. Thus,
property should only escheat to government when there were ‘absolutely
no heirs of any kind forthcoming’.137 In the context of the colonial legal
marginalisation of communities structured by discipleship and the pro-
motion of a conjugal model of succession,138 somewhat oddly, Hijra
chelas were recognised as ‘heirs’. The NWP administration allowed
chelas to inherit their deceased guru’s property if they were ‘eunuchs’
and lived ‘in common’ with the deceased. This was largely because the
value of the property was insignificant to the colonial government and the
policy saved administrative hassle.139
In light of the government position that chelas and ‘co-sharers’ could
inherit the property of registered people, why would Hijras have bothered
to prevent government interference in inheritance? Although there was
a small threat that district authorities would escheat diseased Hijras’
property to the NWP government, in the majority of cases Hijras’
chelas or ‘co-owners’ inherited property. For example, in 1880 Rs. 469
of deceased ‘eunuch’s’ property was escheated to the government, but
Rs. 2284 was inherited by other ‘eunuchs’.140 A more pressing motivation
behind Hijras’ evasion of property registration was the mitigation of
colonial intervention into discipleship structures. It is probable that the
colonial government’s mediation of inheritance and succession on the
134
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Webster to NWP Secretary, 13 March 1877.
135
136
BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 4 June 1883. See also BL/IOR/P/839: Colvin
to NWP IGP, 25 August 1876.
137
BL/IOR/P/839: Colvin to NWP IGP, 25 August 1876.
138
Chatterjee, ‘Monastic “Governmentality”’; Chatterjee, Forgotten Friends.
139
BL/IOR/P/1614: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 19 September 1881; BL/IOR/P/1816:
Reid to NWP&O IGP, 14 August 1882.
140
death of a guru was distasteful to Hijra communities. Colonial ethnolo-

gists reported that the succession of a guru was the occasion for a great
celebration, involving not only the immediate Hijra household, but also
Hijras from the surrounding region that were related by discipleship
lineage.141 Generational succession was clearly central to the social and
cultural life of the Hijra community. For this reason, Hijras may have
resisted the intervention of the colonial government following the death of
a guru, even if it was likely that property would be passed onto other
Hijras.
Considering that the government viewed the practice of registration as
the lynchpin of police surveillance, Hijras and other ‘eunuchs’ may have
also evaded the registration of their property because they recognised that
this was a means to keep watch over their households. Indeed, in practice
the main purpose of the property register was to allow the police to
periodically inspect registered peoples’ houses without a warrant, not to
prevent Hijra inheritance. Hijras who concealed property were actively
subverting the record-keeping practices of the colonial state and the
surveillance regime to which registration was linked. The resistance of
Hijras to property registration demonstrates how they sought to minimise
the presence of the colonial state in their daily lives, discipleship lineages
and homes.
... ... ...
By foregrounding local contexts and everyday interactions with colonial
officials, this chapter has provided a more detailed and nuanced picture of
the colonial policing of the Hijra community than the few existing scho-
larly and activist accounts, which mistake the letter of the law for its
enforcement.142 The pattern of policing across the province was varie-
gated for much of the late nineteenth century. Each annual report on the
enforcement of Part II of the CTA noted some districts where surveil-
lance, prosecutions and punishments were inadequate. At the same time,
in most annual reports, the NWP government praised several districts for
giving due attention to this ‘important branch’ of district
administration.143 Police in a number of districts kept a close watch on
the movements of registered people, while numerous district officials
reported that Hijras and other ‘eunuchs’ had been impoverished by the
prohibition on performance. Passing references to coercive policing
141
Rose, Glossary, 332.
142
Narrain, Queer, 57 60; Reddy, With Respect to Sex, 26 8. Gannon does not analyse the
impacts of the law on Hijras in detail. Gannon, ‘Translating the Hijra’, 302 64.
143
measures, illegal applications of the law and frightened ‘eunuchs’ hint at

police harassment and violence.
The differences in local law enforcement across the NWP highlight some
important broader aspects of the colonial state. First, the policing
of ‘eunuchs’ highlights once again the fractures within the colonial govern-
ance of sexuality. Varied levels of official commitment to moral regulation,
disagreements about policing priorities and conflicting administrative
agendas were typical of the colonial policing of sexual norms and
behaviours. Second, the uneven enforcement of Part II of the CTA was
indicative of broader configurations of policing in northern India during
these years. The colonial police remained somewhat fragmented at the
local level following the reforms of the 1860s, as watch and ward systems
were only partially incorporated into colonial policing structures.
The experiences of Hijras and other so-called ‘eunuchs’ thus reflects sev-
eral broader tensions of colonial governance in nineteenth-century India.
People criminalised as ‘eunuchs’ also produced and aggravated weak
points in police surveillance. The extensive records of registered people’s
efforts to cope with and challenge law enforcement point to the enormous
impacts of Part II of the CTA. At the same time, registered people
regularly moved about, managed to disappear from the police’s view,
performed in public, illegally wore female clothing and hid property
from the police, thereby shaping the uneven pattern of law enforcement.
Even those ‘eunuchs’ who did not break the law found ways to survive and
cope. Collecting badhai, for instance, provided much needed income and
allowed Hijras to continue important social and cultural practices.
‘Begging’ also undermined the colonial regulation of Hijra ‘obscenity’ in
public space. Hijras and other so-called ‘eunuchs’ doggedly resisted the
colonial anti-Hijra campaign and through their cultural and physical
survival, frustrated the NWP government’s goal of eliminating ‘eunuchs’.
9 Saving Children to Eliminate Hijras
Throughout the forty years that Part II of the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA)
was enforced, the explicit aim of the North-Western Province (NWP)
government remained the gradual ‘extinction’ of ‘eunuchs’, a programme
that was also variously phrased as one of ‘extinguishing’, ‘extirpation’,
‘extermination’ or ‘dying out’.1 In 1877, for instance, C. Robertson, the
NWP Secretary, wrote that the ‘main object of the Government’ was ‘the
gradual extirpation of the eunuch class by the operation of natural causes,
and the impossibility of adding to their numbers’.2 The NWP adminis-
tration’s elimination agenda was particularly evident in its repeated
demands that statistics on the population of registered ‘eunuchs’ needed
to be accurate, down to the last individual, to ensure that their number
was diminishing.3 Theoretically, knowing the precise registered popula-
tion would allow the prosecution or prevention of new cases of emascula-
tion and thus engender a decline in the number of ‘eunuchs’ from death.4
Correct statistics could also track the ‘real decrease by death’ in the
number of ‘eunuchs’, as the Inspector-General of Police, R. T. Hobart,
emphasised in 1881.5 The NWP government viewed significant numbers
of deaths as a good sign, while there was a note of regret when district
officials reported small numbers of deaths.6 Because enumeration was
necessary to determine the extent to which ‘eunuchs’ were dying out,
minuscule discrepancies in statistics took on enormous significance for
1
E.g., BL/IOR/P/1138: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 28 May 1878; BL/IOR/P/1816:
Hobart to NWP&O Secretary, circa 1882; UPSA/L/Police/93/308: Stuart to UP
2
3
BL/IOR/P/2460: Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 22 May 1885.
4
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Simson to GI Secretary, 9 June 1865; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Sapte to
NWP Secretary, 16 September 1865; BL/IOR/P/96: Tyrwhitt to NWP Secretary,
26 June 1874; BL/IOR/P/96: Elliot to NWP IGP, 21 July 1874.
5
BL/IOR/P/1816: Hobart to NWP&O Secretary, circa 1882.
6
BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/1467: Webster
to NWP&O Secretary, 31 May 1880.
226
Saving Children to Eliminate Hijras 227
the provincial administration.7 In the words of one Inspector-General of

Police, E. Tyrwhitt, such mistakes made it impossible to ‘conclusively’
demonstrate whether ‘the evil [of ‘eunuchs’] is dying out year by year’.8
In 1884, the NWP Secretary, J. Woodburn, outlined at length the various
mistakes in enumeration in the annual report, although they amounted to
a discrepancy of only two figures.9 During this period, the colonial gov-
ernment in India was characterised by an ‘enumerative habit’10 and was
especially concerned with counting criminalised and marginalised
populations.11 Yet statistics took on particular significance in the anti-
Hijra campaign because the administration viewed enumeration as fun-
damental to the project of ‘extinction’.
Statistical knowledge was not the only technique the NWP government
deployed to ensure that ‘eunuchs’ would become physically extinct from
‘natural causes’. Since colonial officials viewed castration as an unnatural
form of reproduction which propagated an ‘unnatural race’, they argued
that the elimination of the ‘eunuch’ population required the removal of
children from Hijra households to prevent their castration.12 In the words
of the Officiating Judge of Azamgarh, child removal was necessary to stop
the efforts of ‘eunuchs’ to ‘perpetuate their class’.13 To British officers, the
elimination of Hijras depended on controlling and monitoring the bodies of
male children, because Hijra initiation was equated with castration. While
the removal of children explicitly aimed to ‘extinguish’ the Hijra/eunuch
population, advocates for child removal also claimed that they were rescu-
ing boys from a life of crime and immorality. Colonial officials decried the
moral and sexual ‘corruption’ of kidnapped boys from respectable Indian
families, claiming that Hijras acted as the pimps of boys, teaching them
how to commit ‘unnatural offences’ and hiring them out to Indian men.
According to the NWP government, the kidnapping, castration and sexual
exploitation of boys called for their ‘rescue’ and ‘reform’.14 ‘Saving’ chil-
dren and ‘extinguishing’ the ‘eunuch’ population were intertwined pro-
jects. In fact, children were ‘rescued’ in order to eliminate Hijras.
Colonial officials removed children from Hijra households from 1865,
although the NWP Lieutenant-Governor privately admitted that this was
7
E.g., BL/IOR/P/1467: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 12 July 1880; BL/IOR/P/1816: Reid to
NWP&O IGP, 14 August 1882; BL/IOR/P/2460: Woodburn to NWP&O IGP, 1 July 1885.
8
9
BL/IOR/P/2460: Woodburn to NWP&O IGP, 1 July 1885.
10
Arjun Appadurai, ‘Number in the Colonial Imagination’, in Orientalism and the
Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, eds. Carol A. Breckenridge and
Peter van der Veer, 316 7 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).
11
Singha, ‘Colonial Law’, 92; Tambe, Codes of Misconduct, 65 4.
12
13
Azamgarh OJ quoted in BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot ‘Abstract’, 21 April 1871. 14 Ibid.
not ‘strictly legal’.15 From 1871, Part II of the CTA provided Magistrates
with powers to remove male children who were sixteen or under and
found living with registered ‘eunuchs’. These measures were explicitly
targeted at the Hijra community.16 Magistrates could return removed
children to their parents or guardians, or if they could not be found, make
arrangements ‘for the maintenance and education of such boy’.17
The system of policing under Part II of the CTA was thus fractured by
age. The regulation of adult ‘eunuchs’ was penal and did not include any
measures of ‘reform’, since Hijras were apparently lacking in the capacity
for moral improvement and could not be assimilated into society as
productive, respectable colonial subjects. According to the NWP govern-
ment, only children in Hijra communities were capable of being ‘civilised’
and integrated into mainstream society.
The removal of male-bodied children from Hijra households was pre-
mised on their victimisation, innocence and capacity for reform. Yet in
official discussions, the child-status of such children was always a matter
of uncertainty and the child ‘victim’ could easily become an agent of
contamination. For British officials, the boundaries of childhood shifted
depending on the perceived gender and sexual nature of the child. Many
NWP administrators believed that the reform of children ‘corrupted’ by
Hijras was impossible. The rhetoric of ‘saving’ Indian child ‘victims’ was
in tension with a language of contagion. Consequently, attempts to
‘civilise’ children removed from Hijra households were limited in prac-
tice. Although the NWP administration was successful in removing the
vast majority of male-bodied children in Hijra households in the 1870s,
the provincial government circumscribed official involvement in the edu-
cation and upbringing of children following their removal. Colonial inter-
vention into these children’s lives was limited to ongoing police
surveillance to prevent any contact with Hijras and stop their emascula-
tion. The surveillance of children and their new guardians was apparently
necessary because children might resist colonial intervention and wilfully
return to Hijras. The NWP administration deprioritised the agenda of
reform in order to ensure the gradual extinction of Hijras through the
policing of male children’s bodies. To be sure, the ‘moral improvement’
of the Indian population was an aspect of the colonial ‘civilising mission’
that was often sacrificed to pragmatic or political interests.18 However,
15
16
This was probably because many Zananas and other registered non Hijras had biological
offspring. See Chapter 7.
17
18
Michael Mann, ‘“Torchbearers Upon the Path of Progress”: Britain’s Ideology of
a “Moral and Material Progress” in India’, in Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural
the NWP government’s abandonment of the education and reform of

removed children was more specifically a consequence of the project of
elimination, which aimed to ‘extirpate’ Hijras/eunuchs.
Wherever possible, this chapter tells the history of child removal from
Hijra communities through the experiences and stories of removed chil-
dren. Historians of childhood in nineteenth-century India have primarily
focused on colonial and elite Indian discourses surrounding children and
efforts to transform them in desired directions, rather than their experi-
ences or everyday life.19 In examining criminalised and marginalised
children, this chapter builds on the work of Satadru Sen on juvenile
reformatories and orphanages. However, Sen aimed to examine colonial
and elite Indian discourses and projects, rather than children
themselves.20 In contrast, this chapter analyses both the conceptualisa-
tion of childhood and the experiences of children.21 Unfortunately, it is
impossible to unpack the gender subjectivities of the ‘boys’ who were
removed from Hijra households. Thus, when referring to individual
children, this chapter often uses the term ‘male-bodied children’ to high-
light that the emerging gender identities of these young people are
unknown.
Innocent Victims or Agents of Contamination?

The removal of children from Hijra households represented the British as
paternalist colonisers and thus reinforced the legitimacy of British rule
Ideology in British India, eds. Harald Fischer Tiné and Michael Mann, 17 (London:
Anthem Press, 2004).
19
See for instance, Ashwini Tambe, ‘The State as Surrogate Parent: Legislating
Nonmarital Sex in Colonial India, 1911 1929’, Journal of the History of Childhood and
Youth 2, no. 3 (2009): 393 427; Ishita Pande, ‘Coming of Age: Law, Sex and Childhood
in Late Colonial India’, Gender and History 24, no. 1 (2012): 205 30; Padma Anagol
McGinn, ‘The Age of Consent Act (1891) Reconsidered: Women’s Perspectives and
Participation in the Child Marriage Controversy in India’, South Asia Research 12, no. 2
(1992): 100 18; Tanika Sarkar, ‘Rhetoric Against the Age of Consent: Resisting
Colonial Reason and the Death of a Child Wife’, Economic and Political Weekly 28, no.
36 (1993): 1869 78; Satadru Sen, ‘The Orphaned Colony: Orphanage, Child and
Authority in British India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 44, no. 4 (2007):
463 88; Sudipa Topdar, ‘Duties of a “Good Citizen”: Colonial Secondary School
Textbook Policies in Late Nineteenth Century India’, South Asian History and Culture
6, no. 3 (2015): 417 39.
20
Sen, Colonial Childhoods.
21
Historians who have examined the experiences of children in India include: Karen
A. A. Vallgårda, ‘Adam’s Escape: Children and the Discordant Nature of Colonial
Conversions’, Childhood 18, no. 3 (2011): 298 315; Annie McCarthy, ‘Agency and
Salvation in Christian Child Rescue in Colonial India: Preena and Amy Carmichael’,
in Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific, eds. Hyaeweol Choi and
Margaret Jolly, 227 46 (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014).
over the subcontinent.22 In colonial accounts, the child Hijra initiate was
rescued not only from the clutches of the Hijra community, but more
broadly, from deviant aspects of Indian society, thereby establishing the
cultural and racial differences through which colonialism was justified.
The removal of children also demonstrated the incapacity of Indians for
self-rule. The inability of the Indian parent to adequately protect their
child implied their inability to govern not only their own families, but also
themselves. Images of child victims and colonial saviours permeated
colonial accounts of the ‘eunuch problem’. In 1870, J. F. Stephen claimed
that ‘the depositions of the children who had been kidnapped and muti-
lated [by ‘eunuchs’] were, perhaps, as frightful stories as were ever told in
the world’.23
The removal of children from Hijra communities was attempted in the
context of several government interventions into the lives of marginalised
Indian children in the 1860s and 1870s. At this historical moment, the
British were establishing the first orphanages and juvenile reformatories
for Indian children. Prior to the 1860s, the only government-run orpha-
nages were for the offspring of European men.24 Yet following the 1860–1
famine in the Upper Doab, the first government-administered orphanage
for Indian children was established at Sikandra in Punjab.25 In the 1860s,
there was still ‘considerable reluctance’ among British officials ‘to adopt
a . . . posture of the paternal state’.26 Yet by the 1870s, British officials saw
the ‘reform’ of Indian children as a moral imperative, at least in some
contexts. For instance, the government established reformatories for
juvenile prisoners under the Reformatory Schools Act in 1876.27 Thus,
the removal of children from Hijra households occurred in a period when
the model of the ‘state as surrogate parent’ had some appeal.28 A moral
rationale for child ‘rescue’ was particularly persuasive in the NWP gov-
ernment, within which the influence of evangelism was marked in the late
1860s and early 1870s.29 Subaltern children, like those in Hijra house-
holds, were also ‘relatively accessible’ to the colonisers, unlike middle-
22
By comparison: Jo Ann Wallace, ‘De Scribing The Water Babies: “The Child” in Post
Colonial Theory’, in De scribing Empire: Post Colonialism and Textuality, eds. Chris Tiffin
and Alan Lawson, 175 6 (London, Routledge, 1994).
23
BL/IOR/V/9/11: Stokes, CGGI Proceedings, 3 October 1870.
24
David Arnold, ‘European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the Nineteenth Century’,
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 7, no. 2 (1979): 104 27; Durba Ghosh, Sex
and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 206 45.
25
Sen, ‘The Orphaned Colony’, 465 8. This was a different institution than the Agra
Sikandra Orphanage (see below).
26
Sen, Colonial Childhoods, 34 5. 27 See Ibid.
28
Tambe, ‘State as Surrogate Parent’. 29 Powell, Scottish Orientalists, 91 2.
class Indian children. It was not until the twentieth century that Indian
nationalists would assert authority over marginalised Indian children.30
Yet colonial representations of male children in Hijra households as
‘victims’ were always in tension with the idea that they were a dangerous
source of sexual contagion. Racial difference disrupted Victorian ideals of
childhood innocence, resulting in the view that Indian children were
‘small, perverse adults’.31 For the British, childhood and adulthood
were inverted in India, with childhood a time of sexual excess and adult-
hood a stage of sexual exhaustion. The physician John Shortt viewed all
Indian boys as prematurely and unnaturally sexualised, to such a degree
that ‘upon the attainment of manhood they become regularly
impotent’.32 This stereotype served obvious ideological purposes, por-
traying Indian men as effeminate and Indian society as deviant. In the
colonial courts, British judges deemed Indian boys as young as twelve or
thirteen ‘willing and not unwilling instrument[s]’ in ‘satisfying’ men’s
‘lusts’ in cases of forced anal sex.33
Similarly, colonial administrators often viewed boys who resided with
Hijras as both victimised and corrupting. Children in Hijra households
were helpless children, as well as unnaturally premature adults, who were
both in need of protection and a threat. In the view of many British
officials, the prospects of such children for moral reform were dubious
because they would inevitably become deviant adults. Officials argued
this was due to the socialisation of children within the environment of the
Hijra household, which they saw as a sexually and morally corrupting
environment. Tyrwhitt, the Inspector-General of Police, reported in
1874: ‘[P]upils [or disciples] . . . were not at once emasculated, but were
taught to dance and sing and commit offences under Section 377 of [the]
Indian Penal Code’, the law that prohibited ‘unnatural’ intercourse.34
British accounts never described the exact content of the training that
children apparently received in Hijra households, leaving the precise
nature of this sexual education to the imagination.
In addition to this environmental explanation, colonial officials also
argued that the deviance of adult Hijras was in part, biologically deter-
mined. British administrators hypothesised that the biological transition
from childhood to adulthood rendered the moral corruption of male
children in Hijra households permanent. Britons in India viewed child-
hood as a malleable state, in which the individual could be socialised
30
Sen, ‘The Orphaned Colony’, 474. 31 Sen, Colonial Childhoods, 1, 69 71.
32
Shortt, ‘Medical Topography’, 177.
33
Case of Bidree and Others, 6. See also, Government v. Ramdial, 604 9; Case of Abdoolruzak,
465 6.
34
either positively or negatively. But this plasticity had limits. Past a certain
age, the child was no longer capable of positive influence.35 Prior to the
enactment of the CTA in 1871, British officials had disputed the peri-
meters of childhood. While Court, the Inspector-General of Police, pro-
posed twenty years as the boundary of youth-hood, A. O. Hume, the
Magistrate of Etawah, suggested that from their mid-teens, a child was no
longer capable of reform.36 Under the CTA, boys of sixteen or under were
to be removed from Hijra households. The law thus suggested that after
sixteen, the child’s nature congealed and could not be reformed.37
Interestingly, the CTA identified the age of adulthood as seventeen,
which was between the male age of sexual majority (sixteen) and intellec-
tual majority (eighteen), meaning that a male-bodied person could con-
sent to (heterosexual) sex younger than they could join a Hijra
community.38 In addition to age, colonial commentators also claimed
that the emasculation of children resulted in innate deviance. According
to W. G. Probyn, the Magistrate of Shahjahanpur, emasculation rendered
the individual a habitual criminal and it was inevitable that the child
victim of emasculation would become ‘addicted’ to kidnapping and
emasculating children in adulthood.39 In sum, for many colonial officials,
the ability of children in Hijra households to assimilate into respectable
Indian society was limited by socialisation, age and emasculation.
The extent to which children in Hijra households were capable of reform
emerged as a matter of official debate in the mid 1860s. In 1865, the NWP
government considered a proposal for a ‘reformatory asylum’ for the care of
children who were found with Hijras.40 The Commissioner of Meerut,
F. Williams, was optimistic that even emasculated boys could be ‘recov-
ered’ if an appropriate institution was established. Whether or not they
were emasculated, children in Hijra households
. . . may safely be reckoned as having become acquainted with the vicious habits of
the order into which they have been admitted; yet, as minors, there are hopes of
recovering them from the degrading prostitution to which they are sure to be
exposed in after years, and by teaching them some useful trade or occupation, the
means of livelihood will be secured to them . . . [I]t is incumbent upon [the
government] to separate the children thus found from persons who have no
35
Sen, Colonial Childhoods, 55.
36
Court and Hume quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866. See
also, BL/IOR/P/438/62: Robertson to NWP Secretary, 27 June 1866.
37
38
Pande, ‘Coming of Age’, 207 19; Tambe, ‘State as Surrogate Parent’, 402; BL/IOR/P/
92: Henderson to NWP Secretary, 26 March 1873.
39
40
Court quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866; BL/IOR/P/438/62:
Tyrell to NWP NA Register, 9 December 1865.
moral or legal claims to them, and place them in some establishment and under
surveillance where they [will] get to be ashamed of the lives they were being
brought up to. This duty seems the more imperative when it is considered that
the children have not voluntarily fallen into their present degradation, but have
been innocent victims of the vicious.41
According to Williams, male-bodied children in the Hijra community

were capable – ‘as minors’ and ‘innocent victims’ – of reform through
labour and moral inculcation, which would make these children
‘ashamed’ of their own deviance.
Court, the Inspector-General of Police, concurred with William’s pro-
posal for an asylum, but argued that emasculated children were agents of
contamination who needed to be spatially separated from unemasculated
children. Court proposed that
. . . reformatory asylums should be provided for all . . . [orphaned] children who

may be found with eunuchs. . . . [R]eformatory asylums, separate for eunuch
children and separate for ‘foundlings’, [unemasculated male children who resided
with ‘eunuchs’] are necessary to prevent the first from spreading and continuing
‘contamination’, and for the proper care of the last. Both classes might and should
be taught some trade, which would in the end make such institutions self
supporting; and whereas eunuchs should never be allowed to leave such asylum,
entire males might, when full of age, be apprenticed out, or, on means of liveli
hood being found, allowed liberty to depart.42
According to Court, emasculated children needed to be indefinitely

detained to prevent threats to public morality and stem the spread of
‘contamination’. They also needed to be quarantined from ‘entire males’
so as to not jeopardise the latter’s reform and assimilation.
Other NWP officials doubted that even unemasculated male children
in Hijra households could be morally improved. R. Drummond, the
Magistrate of Shahjahanpur, suggested that any efforts to reform
removed boys, emasculated or not, would be futile: ‘though perhaps
rescued for a time, they will eventually join the degraded class for which
they were intended’.43 The central government subsequently rejected the
proposed reformatory due to doubts on whether it was ‘necessary or
expedient’.44 Whether the sexual deviance of children in Hijra commu-
nities was innate had been a matter of debate, but doubts about the
41
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Williams to NWP Secretary, 20 November 1865.
42
43
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Drummond, ‘General Remarks’, circa 1865.
44
BL/IOR/P/438/62: Howell to NWP Secretary, 27 September 1866. Instead, the NWP
introduced reforms within prisons. BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson to GI Secretary,
8 April 1867.
capacity of such children to change ultimately won out. By and large, the
NWP government abandoned the agenda of reform.
Removed Children’s Stories

From 1865, prior to the implementation of the 1871 CTA, district
authorities removed several male-bodied children from Hijra households,
although their legal authority to do so was highly dubious.45 Child
removal was circumscribed in practice in the late 1860s due to the
reluctance of many British district officials to assume responsibility for
such children, given the unclear legal grounds for child removal and the
practical difficulties involved in finding new guardians. Police found
approximately sixty male-bodied children in Hijra households from
1865–71, yet dozens were allowed to continue living with
Hijras. Authorities often kept male-bodied children in Hijra households
under surveillance and required Hijras to sign agreements binding them
not to emasculate the child.46 In all, only fifteen children were removed
from Hijra households and temporarily came into state custody between
1865 and 1871.47
However, the records of individual cases are unusually detailed in this
early period, providing insights into the role of notions of culture, gender,
sexuality and the body in official decision-making. The authorities took
one of three actions when removing children between 1865 and 1871:
first, if the parents or relatives of the child could be found and were
deemed responsible, the child was restored to them; second, some chil-
dren were ‘made over to respectable people, who [would] watch over and
bring them up respectably’; finally, others were placed in the Sikandra
Orphanage at Agra, which was run by the Church Missionary Society
(CMS).48 Often, removed children were treated as unwanted burdens by
the colonial state, their parents and relatives, and other prospective
guardians. Concerns about the potential threat of moral and sexual con-
tagion from children in Hijra households were central to administrative
decisions about the appointment of guardians. Additionally, prospective
Indian guardians – including both removed children’s biological parents
45
46
BL/IOR/P/92: Elliot to Agra DC, 27 March 1871; BL/IOR/P/92: Carmichael to NWP
Secretary, 29 August 1871; BL/IOR/P/95: Part B Proceedings, July, no. 11; UPSA/A/
COV/119/12: Lumsden to Benares DC, 15 April 1873.
47
BL/IOR/P/92: Carmichael to NWP Secretary, 29 August 1871. On children not dis
cussed in this section: BL/IOR/P/438/61: Sapte to NWP Secretary, 16 September 1865;
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Forbes, ‘Register of Eunuchs’, Meerut, 5 December 1865; UPSA/A/
COM/9/2: Martin to Meerut DC, 15 July 1865.
48
and ‘respectable’ Indians – often stated that they were unwilling to take in
children from Hijra households due to the child’s perceived loss of caste.
The records on this early phase of child removal also illuminate chil-
dren’s experiences of removal and the ways that their biographies were
narrated in colonial archives. It is clear that the lives of removed children
were often characterised by multiple displacements and upheavals of
orphanhood, poverty, and/or enslavement and finally, of government
removal. Yet the official narratives of individual children’s histories reveal
the presences and silences of the colonial records. Only the statements of
kidnapped, emasculated or exploited children were preserved in the
colonial archives. Moreover, children frequently disappeared from the
records when they were no longer of interest to the colonial government,
frustrating attempts to tell their stories. Above all, colonial accounts
obscured the agency of children, who were portrayed as either innocent
victims or deviant agents of corruption.
The stories of two children in Etawah demonstrate two important
factors in British officials’ decision-making: first, the apparent morality
of the child’s new guardians; and second, whether the child could be kept
under surveillance. In 1865, two ‘eunuchs’ in Etawah district were sen-
tenced to twelve years imprisonment for the selling, buying and emascu-
lation of two male-bodied children, who were known as Choonee/Agbega
and Motee/Makhun. After a tip-off from a ‘eunuch’ in Mainpuri, police
found Agbega and Makhun with a group of ‘buggutteeas’ or Bhagatiyas,
who ‘taught boys to sing and dance’ and ‘represent[ed] Hindoo deities,
travelling about the district’ of Etawah. The Bhagatiyas had named the
children Choonee and Motee and had ‘concealed the fact [of the chil-
dren’s emasculation], because it would have spoilt their trade to have it
known that they were employing Eunuchs to represent Hindoo deities’.
NWP officials did not allege that the Hijras emasculated the children for
‘immoral purposes’ (that is, prostitution), but nonetheless called for their
removal.49
The oldest child, Agbega, was around twelve years old in 1865.
According to the colonial records, in 1857 two Chamar men kidnapped
Agbega while he was sleeping beside his mother and sold him to a Hijra
named Peer Buksh for ten rupees. The child was then sold to a fakir with
whom he lived for two years and subsequently sold to another Hijra,
Ameer Buksh, for twenty rupees. Agbega recalled that five or six days
after Ameer Buksh bought him, he was emasculated at midnight in the
presence of several Hijras. Agbega travelled with Ameer Buksh for a time,
before he was sent to the Bhagatiyas, who taught him to sing and dance,
49
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dalmahoy, ‘Report’, 9 December 1865.
and provided him with food and clothing.50 The younger boy, Makhun,
was thought to be six or seven in 1865 and told of the death of his parents
and his sale by a relative:
My father and mother died, and I then went to my mother’s brother in
Muddoopore. One day at noon my uncle’s son Murdan Singh fetched me . . . and
sold me to Ameera Eunuch for a handful of Rupees . . . The Eunuchs took me to
their village in Mynpoory and I was made a Eunuch there. Three or four days after
purchasing me, at night, Ameera and Zohura, after worshipping, castrated me . . .
I remained in the house until I was better, and then I was made over to the Bugguttea
Koondon, in Omereyree. The Bugguttea called me Motee, and said I was a Jat.51
The stories of Agbega and Makhun evidenced the enslavement and

forced emasculation of some children by Hijras within the wider slave
trade in north India52 and for this reason, these children’s words were
translated, circulated and eventually sent to London.
The Etawah authorities were also concerned about the morality of
Agbega and Makhun’s potential guardians, as well as the need for the
police to keep watch over the children. The mother of Agbega,
Musammat Mutheria, wanted to take her child back, although he was
‘put off all caste by being castrated’.53 The district authorities decided to
restore Mutheria’s authority over her child, because she had had no part
in his initiation into the Hijra community and had attempted to recover
him when he went missing. She was, in other words, thought to be
a decent mother. Makhun presented a more difficult problem for the
district authorities since his surviving uncle had refused to assume
guardianship.54 In any case, two characteristics disqualified the uncle
from being an appropriate guardian, according to the colonial authorities:
first, his son’s complicity in Makhun’s sale to a Hijra; and second, the
inability of the NWP police to keep the family, who lived in the princely
state of Gwalior, under adequate police surveillance. The need to ensure
the ongoing surveillance of removed children demonstrates British offi-
cials’ preoccupation with preventing any contact between children and
the sexually ‘corrupting’ Hijra community. This concern was implicitly
based on the possibility that children may seek to return to the Hijras with
whom they had lived. As such, Makhun was declared an orphan, opening
up the possibility of his placement in a missionary orphanage where he
would be watched and his movements controlled.55 District authorities
50
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dalmahoy, ‘Statement of Choonee’, circa 1865.
51
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dalmahoy, ‘Statement of Makhun’, circa 1865.
52
On this period: Chatterjee, ‘Abolition by Denial’.
53
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dalmahoy, ‘Statement of Mussumat Mutheria’, circa 1865.
54
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Dalmahoy, ‘Report’, 9 December 1865.
55
On ‘discursive orphaning’ of children: Sen, ‘The Orphaned Colony’, 465.
proposed to send Makhun to the Sikandra Orphanage at Agra, yet there is

no record of whether the orphanage accepted him.56 Makhun is one of
several children who disappear from the colonial record after their
removal and about his future we know nothing.
Several other removed children also posed a problem for the colonial
government because potential guardians were unwilling to take them in
due to concerns with their immorality or perceived loss of caste. In 1865,
authorities in Aligarh district decided an unnamed male-bodied child
who was around six should be removed from a Hijra household.
The colonial records state that the child had been ‘stolen’ two years
earlier, but his ‘father, on satisfying himself of his boy’s emasculation,
refus[ed] to have anything further to do with the boy’ because ‘his services
were lost forever to perpetuate the family name’57 and he was ‘out of
caste, and a disgrace’.58 After late 1865, there is no mention of the
unnamed child in colonial archives and it is unclear whether his parents
were persuaded to take him back.
In other cases, authorities could not find ‘respectable’ Indian guardians
to take responsibility for children in Hijra houses. For instance, Khyratee,
who was thought to be seven or eight in 1865, was unemasculated and
lived with ‘an old eunuch’ named Rae.59 Rae had ‘stated that, the boy was
given to him 5 or 6 years ago by a Soldier . . . belonging to some Infantry
Regiment which was marching through . . . [Aligarh] District’, possibly
during the 1860–1 Upper Doab famine.60 The colonial records do not
describe the relationship between the soldier and Khyratee and the police
were unable to find any of Khyratee’s relatives. Khyratee was deemed an
orphan and the Magistrate proposed that ‘some native . . . of respectabil-
ity’ should be his guardian.61 Yet over a month later, F. Williams, the
Commissioner of Meerut, reported that ‘no Native gentleman [had been]
found willing to take charge [of Khyratee], even as a temporary arrange-
ment’, since ‘the inference might be drawn by natives that . . . [he was]
taken for immoral purpose’.62 Having been rejected by the ‘respectable’
persons of Aligarh, the Sikandra Orphanage eventually admitted
Khyratee.
56
BL/IOR/P/438/61: Hume to Agra DC, 14 December 1865; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Batten to
NWP Secretary, 23 December 1865; BL/IOR/P/438/61: Sandford to NWP IGP,
13 January 1866.
57
58
Court quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
59
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Mellor to Meerut DC, 9 October 1865.
60
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Prinsep to Meerut DC, 10 November 1865.
61
UPSA/A/COM/9/2: Williams to Aligarh DM, 9 October 1865.
62
In addition to the respectability of potential guardians, colonial percep-

tions of the sexual character of the child and the appearance of their body
were also important factors in determining the removed child’s future.
The final child whose story will be told here, Moola, became a ‘specimen’
for the study of deviance and a site for the production of colonial knowl-
edge, like many Indian orphans in this period.63 Moola was around
fourteen in 1871 and had been adopted during the famine of 1860–1 by
a Hijra named Fyeman, who lived in Mathura district.64 From 1865 to
1871, district authorities allowed Moola to continue living with Fyeman,
since Moola was not emasculated and officials believed the orphaning of
children merely on the basis that they resided with a Hijra was unjustified.
Throughout the late 1860s, the local ‘magisterial authorities’ had not
‘consider[ed] interference justifiable under the present state of the law,
unless an attempt at emasculation could be proved’.65 However, in early
1871, just prior to the passage of the CTA, the Magistrate of Mathura
became concerned since ‘[e]nquiries proved that the boy sang and danced
in women’s clothes’ and ‘grave suspicion arose’ that he had been
emasculated.66
As such, the Agra Commissioner, F. M. Lind, called in two doctors to
examine Moola.67 In fact, Moola was not the only child who was subjected
to medical examination following their removal from a Hijra household,
since the child’s body was essential to decision-making about their guar-
dianship. The Civil Surgeon of Meerut district also examined two male-
bodied children named Chootun and Achpul in the mid 1860s.68
In Moola’s case, two doctors, Pain and Playfair, examined his body for
evidence of whether he had had anal sex and whether he was emasculated,
‘impotent’ or sexually ‘deformed’. On the first point, Moola admitted ‘with
great difficulty’ that ‘the offence’ of sodomy had been committed on him
twice, but the doctors concluded ‘the act must frequently have been
committed from the peculiar appearances of the part examined’.69 Moola
was therefore deemed morally and sexually contagious. On the matter of
Moola’s genitals, Dr. Pain concluded that ‘the boy [was] only backward in
development, but still uninjured’, that is, unemasculated. The Magistrate
expressed surprise, since Moola was fourteen and ‘[t]he boy certainly is
unusually backward’. Due to this uncertainty about Moola’s sexual
63
Sen, ‘The Orphaned Colony’, 464.
64
65
66
67
BL/IOR/P/92: Lind to NWP Secretary, 6 March 1871.
68
69
development, the Magistrate suggested Moola be sent to the Boys’

Reformatory at Agra for two years as an interim arrangement.
On discharge, he should be medically examined, ‘for if he is ever to have
sexual development, it will have taken place by that time, and all doubt will
be removed’.70 However, Lind argued that it was ‘inadvisable’ to send
Moola to the Reformatory, since it was located in Agra Jail.71 British
officials often saw jails and reformatories as sexually deviant environments
and complained that sodomy was rife even among juvenile prisoners.72
As such, Lind proposed that the CMS missionaries at Sikandra would be
suitable guardians.73
Although the Sikandra Orphanage was not British administrators’ first
choice for removed children, officials felt that two factors made mission-
aries appropriate guardians. First, the marginality of the removed chil-
dren and the unwillingness of elite Indians to become their surrogate
parents facilitated their placement in a Christian institution, which
would have been controversial in other circumstances. Second, removed
children’s placement in an orphanage would stem any potential threats of
moral contagion by facilitating their surveillance, permanently separating
them from the Hijra community and providing a moral education.74
What would the everyday lives of Khyratee, Moola and possibly
Makhun have been like at Sikandra? The missionary Rev. John Barton
described Sikandra (or ‘Secundra’) in the early 1860s as such:
All the children, boys and girls, were seated in long lines! such long lines in
front of the bungalow; the boys at one end, and the girls at the other. . . . [O]ne of
the boys . . . stepped forth into the midst, and asked God’s blessing, as they do
every day. Truly that is a happy child who has found its way to Secundra.75
Of course, Barton’s description of the orderly, devout and happy children

at Sikandra, which was intended for a metropolitan missionary audience,
likely deviated from the children’s experiences. Racial difference struc-
tured orphanages and missionary schools and corporal punishment was
reasonably common.76 Moreover, the daily routine of Indian mission
children had clear ideological purposes. Children worked long hours,
since ‘labour was considered to have an intrinsic value’ and had to wear
uniforms ‘to eliminate potential bodily signs of heathenism’, while boys
played sport to inculcate ‘real masculinity’.77
70
Italics in original. Ibid. 71 BL/IOR/P/92: Lind to NWP Secretary, 6 March 1871.
72
NAI/HD/JB 19/06/1869 14 5; NAI/HD/JB 24/07/1869 36 7; NAI/HD/JB 11/10/1865
35 6; NAI/HD/JB 11/05/1870 59 60; Sen, Colonial Childhoods, 69 70.
73
BL/IOR/P/92: Lind to NWP Secretary, 6 March 1871. 74 Ibid.
75
Italics added. Quoted in Mary Ann S. Barber, Sweet Childhood, and its Helpers in Heathen
Lands (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1864), 256.
76
Sen, ‘The Orphaned Colony’, 464. 77 Vallgårda, ‘Adam’s Escape’, 302 7, 311.
The Sikandra orphanage would have enforced an entirely new set of

norms of behaviour than the homes of the Hijras Rae and Fyeman.
Khyratee and Moola would have been subjected to the discipline and
surveillance of the missionaries and the orderly gender segregation of
pupils that was manifest in the spatial separation of boys and girls,
arranged in straight lines. The missionaries would have enforced strict
standards of masculine dress and normative gendered behaviour.
Moreover, Khyratee and Moola would have received a Christian educa-
tion, and may have subsequently converted. There is nonetheless the
possibility that like other children in mission schools and orphanages,
they resisted the missionary regime.78
These fragmentary narratives of the lives of children who were removed
from Hijra households between 1865 and 1871 demonstrate that judg-
ments about the bodies of children and their sexual morality were central
to colonial decision-making. Moreover, the perceived respectability and
morality of potential Indian guardians was a key official concern. Yet
NWP administrators were repeatedly frustrated in their attempts to find
Indian guardians, in part due to concerns about caste. As such, between
1865 and 1871, only fifteen children were removed from Hijra
households.
Children’s Experiences of Removal Under the CTA

After the CTA was enacted in 1871, the NWP government succeeded in
removing most of the male-bodied children in Hijra households, largely
because of the small number of children living with Hijras. Between 1874
and 1885, police found only thirty male children in the houses of regis-
tered ‘eunuchs’, only two of whom had been emasculated. Government
policy mandated ‘the removal of minors from the care of eunuchs under
any circumstances’.79 Police removed one fifteen-year-old male-bodied
child who had been taken in by a Hijra in Bara Banki during a recent
‘scarcity’,80 as well as a child in Sultanpur who was ‘friendless and
a leper’, even though the government suggested the motives of the
Hijras were charitable.81 The provincial government even ordered the
removal of children who, according to the assumptions of colonial dis-
course, could not have been acquired for ‘immoral’ purposes, such as girls
and married boys.82 Moreover, police removed children who resided with
78
Ibid. 79 Italics added. BL/IOR/P/1281: Tyrwhitt to NWP&O Secretary, 5 July 1879.
80
81
BL/IOR/P/1467: Webster to NWP&O Secretary, 31 May 1880.
82
BL/IOR/P/1281: Robertson to NWP&O IGP, 25 July 1879; BL/IOR/P/2002: Smith to
unregistered ‘eunuchs’, which was not legal under the CTA.83 Even
though the district authorities had categorised these unregistered people
as ‘harmless’ – not ‘suspect eunuchs’ – they viewed all contact between
children and ‘eunuchs’ as potentially dangerous.84
Yet there was some ambivalence among British district officials about
government interventions to ‘rescue’ children in Hijra households.
Robertson, the Magistrate of Mirzapur, and Amson, his counterpart in
Azamgarh, reported that the Hijras in their districts had not reared
children to a life of vice, as per the expectations of the NWP
government.85 Other British administrators seem to have viewed the
removal of children from Hijra households as more hassle than it was
worth. In Gorakhpur, Lumsden, the Magistrate, allowed fourteen boys to
remain with the Hijras who employed their parents as musicians.86
Similarly, two years after the CTA was introduced, authorities had not
removed any children in Basti.87 In 1879, the Bahraich authorities had
‘restored’ one child to a ‘eunuch’, ‘security [having been] taken that he
should not be emasculated’.88 Nonetheless, by the end of the 1870s,
district officials had removed the majority of male-bodied children who
resided with registered ‘eunuchs’ due to pressure from the NWP
government.
Under the CTA, there were proportionately fewer cases in which
Christian missionaries were appointed as the guardians of removed chil-
dren, revealing the limits of government-missionary co-operation.89
Despite the evangelical leanings of many NWP district administrators,
missionaries had never been a first choice as guardians since placing
children with missionaries stretched the limits of the official policy of
religious ‘neutrality’.90 A memo of ‘minors’ residing with ‘eunuchs’ in
Ghazipur district suggests that the first preference of district officials was
to appoint parents or relatives as the guardians of removed children or
failing this, to appoint a ‘respectable native’. Eleven male-bodied ‘minors’
were living with registered people in Ghazipur prior to 1871. By 1873,
83
BL/IOR/P/97: Colvin to NWP IGP, 12 August 1875; BL/IOR/P/1816: Smith to
84
BL/IOR/P/96: Elliot to NWP IGP, 21 July 1874.
85
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Robertson to Benares DC, 3 November 1872; UPSA/A/COV/
119/12: Amson to Benares DC, 16 November 1872.
86
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to Benares DC, 19 March 1873; UPSA/A/COV/119/12:
Lumsden to Benares DC, 15 April 1873.
87
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Wigram to Benares DC, 21 September 1872; UPSA/A/COV/
119/12: Waddington to NWP IGP, 15 February 1873; UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to
Benares DC, 19 May 1873.
88
89
90
Powell, Scottish Orientalists, 93, 119.
three had left the district: one became a coolie and was sent to Sylhet in
modern north-eastern Bangladesh; another had gone to Calcutta ‘in
service’; while a third had gone to Kashmir with his mother and a Hijra.
The district authorities appointed an ‘Akhund’ (Muslim cleric) as the
guardian of one child, while another was entrusted to a Christian
Reverend. Five minors were placed in the guardianship of one or both
of their parents and the remaining child was allowed to live with his
brother.91
This memo from Ghazipur is a rarity: there is generally a pervasive
silence in the colonial archive on the fate of removed children. For the
period after 1871, when the removal of children became more systematic,
little was reported about the histories of such children and even less about
their future. The moment of removal marks the disappearance of these
(usually unnamed) children from the colonial archive. Yet the silences of
the official records are revealing of government priorities. The provincial
government’s interest in removed children was largely confined to their
separation from Hijras by means of removal and surveillance. In contrast,
details of the child’s subsequent care were rarely mentioned in the records
and their reform was not a government concern in practice.
The CTA empowered Magistrates ‘to make such arrangements as may
be necessary for [children’s] education and maintenance’, implying that
the upbringing of children and their assimilation into broader society was
part of the child removal project. Yet officials assumed almost no respon-
sibility for the education or welfare of children following their removal.92
The presence of the colonial government in these children’s lives merely
took the form of police surveillance to ensure that ‘no young boys are ever
allowed to remain in the company of any Eunuch’.93 From the perspec-
tive of the NWP government, police surveillance was particularly neces-
sary since Indian parents and guardians were not trusted to prevent
contact between children and Hijras. Guardians were required to sign
agreements ‘expressing their willingness to receive and to maintain the
boys’ and to ensure the separation of the children from Hijras.94 In 1875,
one child’s uncle ‘formally took charge of him, to prevent him returning to
the Eunuchs’ and ‘filed an agreement . . . binding himself down not to let
the boy return to his old associates’.95 The NWP government prioritised
the agenda of extinction – which would be achieved through the
91
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: McMullin, ‘Memo regarding 11 Minors’, 5 May 1873.
92
BL/IOR/V/8/42: Act XXVII of 1871. For a rare exception see: BL/IOR/P/840: Hobart to
NWP&O IGP, 11 September 1877.
93
94
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Carmichael to NWP IGP, 7 April 1874.
95
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Carmichael to NWP IGP, 24 March 1875.
surveillance of children – over the agenda of reform. There was

a disjuncture between the paternalist ideal of the colonial state and the
priorities and capacities of the government on the ground.
The preoccupation with ensuring the spatial separation of Hijras and
children through surveillance is evidence of the threat of these children’s
agency. The colonial government was not only concerned that Hijras might
attempt to maintain their ties to children, but also that children might
return to Hijras of their own accord. Written agreements between the
government and new guardians acknowledged that the child in question
would need to be forcibly prevented from returning to Hijras by
a combination of parental and state power. Although colonial administra-
tors interpreted the wilfulness of removed children as evidence of such
children’s ‘corruption’ and the coercive power of the Hijra-child relation-
ship, this could be more sympathetically viewed as evidence of children’s
agency. The resistance of removed children threatened to undermine the
colonial project of the gradual extinction of the Hijra community.
As the CTA was implemented, several of the key concepts upon which
child removal was based were called into question and destabilised. One
of these concepts was the category of childhood. Although the CTA
defined a child as a person of sixteen or under, the boundaries of this
category were malleable and porous because colonial officials treated
emasculated children below the age of sixteen as quasi-adults, rather
than children per se. The position of child eunuchs on the boundary
between adulthood and childhood is suggested by their simultaneous
removal and registration under the CTA. Registration was a legal status
that entailed penalties and legally defined the child as a person suspected
of sodomy, kidnapping and/or emasculation, that is, as a habitual criminal
and sexual deviant. When the CTA was first enforced, the authorities in
Basti district removed a ten-year-old emasculated child named Dipia
from a Hijra household, therefore classifying Dipia as a child under the
CTA, but also entered Dipia on the district register of eunuchs, which
entailed a legal status as an adult.96 Similarly, the Commissioner of
Benares, H. B. Webster, simultaneously described child eunuchs as
children and quasi-adults.97 Local authorities in Gonda district even
registered a two-year-old ‘born eunuch’, although as the provincial gov-
ernment pointed out, ‘[t]his was premature, as the child could not as yet
be reasonably suspected of any of the offences mentioned in section 24’,
that is, sodomy, kidnapping and emasculation.98
96
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to Benares DC, 19 May 1873.
97
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Webster to NWP Secretary, 13 March 1877.
98
In contrast, British administrators often treated unemasculated youths

as children even after the age of sixteen, reflecting the anxieties provoked
by the perceived corruption of these possibly malleable individuals.
In 1879, the Magistrate of Azamgarh reported that an eighteen-year-old
‘youth’ would be removed, but as the Deputy Inspector-General of Police
noticed, the ‘law only extends to youths of age 16 and under’.99 Although
this decision was reversed, it is significant that the district authorities
defined an unemasculated eighteen-year-old as an orphan, though this
‘youth’ was legally an adult. The definition of ‘child’ depended crucially
on the child’s body and the boundaries of childhood were thus shifting
and malleable. Ishita Pande has noted a transition from a ‘biomedical’
understanding of childhood towards a ‘digital definition’ of childhood in
late nineteenth-century colonial India.100 However, at least in the context
of the anti-Hijra campaign, childhood was a moral, embodied and numer-
ical category for late nineteenth-century colonial officials.
The dominant colonial view of the Hijra household as a deviant form of
domesticity – as merely a ‘brothel’ that was structured by ‘criminal’
discipleship ties that were a product of kidnapping – was also undermined
when the colonial government found that a significant proportion of
children in Hijras’ houses lived with both Hijras and their parents.
These living arrangements undermined colonial officials’ assumptions
that such children were permanently cut-off from their families and
suggested that conjugal ties and biological kinship were sometimes
found in Hijra households. Several parents of children who lived with
Hijras were musicians who accompanied Hijras when they performed.
Yet British officials generally interpreted these domestic arrangements as
deviant.101 W. A. Forbes, the Magistrate of Meerut, argued that these
musicians were ‘no doubt the abettors and encouragers of the system of
castration and all uncleanness, and in all probability the greatest child-
stealers in the country’.102 Tiernan, a 2nd Grade Inspector of Police in
Gorakhpur, claimed the children of musicians were ‘used’ for ‘immoral
purposes’.103 Several cases also emerged in which Hijras had taken in
widows ‘in destitute circumstances’ along with their children.104 Take for
example, the stories of two children in Mirzapur, eleven-year-old Sultan
Dhunia and ten-year-old Mathuri Jalaha:
99
100
Pande, ‘Coming of Age’, 206.
101
102
Forbes quoted in BL/IOR/P/438/62: Simson, ‘Replies’, 20 April 1866.
103
BL/IOR/P/92: Tiernan to Gorakhpur DSI, 26 May 1871.
104
UPSA/A/COM/29/8: Short, ‘List of Eunuchs’, Muzaffarnagar, circa January 1873; BL/
IOR/P/839: to NWP IGP, 28 June 1876.
Sultan has a mother named Subhaji who, when she was in destitute circumstances
some years ago made the boy over to the Eunuchs Sunput and Salaru . . .
The other boy, Mathuri, has no surviving relatives traceable. He and his mother
were taken in and cared for by the Eunuch Phatingan. The mother afterwards
died.105
In cases involving widows’ children, British officials did not characterise

the motives of Hijras as ‘immoral’ or the means by which the children
were acquired as coercive.
From the perspective of the colonial government, cases of Hijra-child-
parent cohabitation complicated the question of parental rights. Was
a parent who permitted their child to live in a ‘deviant’ domestic environ-
ment like a Hijra household a responsible guardian? In the 1870s, the
provincial government demanded the removal of entire families from
Hijra households, including the removal of the offspring of widows, an
especially harsh policy in light of the marginalised position of widows in
north Indian society.106 According to British officials, such parents could
not be trusted. District officials limited the authority of widows over their
children through written agreements and ongoing surveillance.107
However, in the 1880s the NWP government relaxed its position, allow-
ing children who were not emasculated and lived with their biological
parents to be kept under surveillance, but not removed.108 This perhaps
represents an official concession that Hijra domestic arrangements were
more complex than the dominant colonial narrative of the Hijra house-
hold had suggested.
Ostensibly, child removal aimed to ‘rescue’ children from a ‘life of
infamy’.109 Yet even as British officials regarded children in Hijra house-
holds as victims who needed to be saved, they saw such children as agents
of contagion and a source of moral danger. Due to these doubts about the
capacity of removed children to morally improve, the government pro-
gramme of reform was in practice circumscribed. Moreover, child
removal was central to the NWP’s efforts to render Hijras extinct, mean-
ing that the emphasis was on the surveillance of children and their new
guardians to ensure their continued separation from Hijras and prevent
their emasculation. The NWP government made few efforts to provide
for the education or wellbeing of children removed from Hijra
105
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Benares DC, ‘Abstract’, 23 November 1875.
106
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Lumsden to Benares DC, 15 April 1873; UPSA/A/COV/119/
12: Shakespeare to NWP Secretary, circa 1873; UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Elliot to
Benares DC, 20 June 1873; BL/IOR/P/839: Hobart to NWP IGP, 28 June 1876.
107
UPSA/A/COV/119/12: Benares DC, ‘Abstract’, 23 November 1875.
108
BL/IOR/P/1816: Reid to NWP&O IGP, 14 August 1882; BL/IOR/P/2208: Smith to
NWP&O IGP, 26 June 1884; BL/IOR/P/2460: Smith to NWP&O IGP, 27 April 1885.
109
households. Ultimately, child removal was a project of extirpation, rather

than one of ‘reform’. Its success was thus judged on the prevention of
emasculation and the numerical decline in registered ‘eunuchs’.110
As early as the 1870s, the NWP government was convinced that Hijras/
eunuchs were rapidly becoming extinct.111
‘Eunuchs Must be Dying Out’

In 1908, the United Provinces (UP), as the NWP was by then known,
declared the policing of ‘eunuchs’ an unqualified success at precisely the
same time as it concluded that the registration of the ‘criminal tribes’ had
‘proved a failure’.112 To rectify this failure, the Government of India
proposed to enact a new version of the CTA that would allow the autho-
rities to police a wider population of ‘criminal tribes’ and allow for the
removal of ‘criminal tribe’ children.113 This raised the question of
whether the part of the CTA that applied to ‘eunuchs’ was still necessary.
Since Part II of the law had been ‘framed for the sole benefit of the United
Provinces’, whereas the new law would apply to all of British India, the
central government inquired whether the UP would consent to its
repeal.114
The subsequent discussion within the central and provincial govern-
ments hinged on whether the depopulation of ‘eunuchs’ had been sig-
nificant enough to warrant rescinding Part II.115 The population of
people registered as ‘eunuchs’ had declined significantly from a height
of 1400 in the 1870s to a total of 594 people in 1895,116 to only 207
people in 1908.117 One high-ranking UP official, C. H. B. Kendall,
opined that since ‘there had been a reduction in the [registered] number
since the framing of the Act . . . the number could still be further
reduced . . . It would therefore apparently be premature to withdraw
part II of the Act’.118 However, the consensus in the central and provin-
cial administrations was that the significant decline in the registered
population indicated the impending extinction of ‘eunuchs’. The Indian
government argued that the provisions of Part II had been ‘intended to
extinguish the class of persons against whom they were aimed’ – that is,
‘eunuchs’ – and ‘unless they have proven to be useless they have probably
110
111
112
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: C.J.J., Memorandum, 31 July 1908.
113
Major, ‘State and Criminal Tribes’, 674 5.
114
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: Stuart to UP Secretary, 18 July 1908.
115
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: Taylor to GI Secretary, 26 August 1908.
116
UPSA/A/COA/18/5: Berril to NWP&O IGP, 1 May 1896.
117 118
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: Kendall, Memorandum, 3 August 1908. Ibid.
effected their object by now’.119 UP official J. P. Hewett wrote, ‘Eunuchs

must be dying out, and I don’t suppose the law is ever now infringed by
the castration of boys’.120 Given the significant depletion of the registered
population, the Inspector-General of Police concluded that Part II of the
CTA had ‘been quite unnecessary for many years’.121 The NWP and
Indian administrations were in agreement: since ‘eunuchs’ were dying
out, Part II of the CTA could be ‘safely’ repealed.122 Thus, the 1911 CTA
would not include any provisions targeted at ‘eunuchs’, marking the end
of the NWP’s project to eliminate Hijras.
The records suggest that NWP officials were truly convinced that
Hijras were dying out. The inevitable extinction of certain indigenous
peoples under conditions of civilisation and progress was, of course, an
enormously powerful colonial narrative. Though the specific meanings of
human extirpation shifted depending on context, narratives of people
who were the last surviving member of their ‘race’ or ‘tribe’ continued
to circulate in the early 1900s. In the United States, the long tradition of
literature about fictional last surviving members of Indian tribes served as
a ‘form of catharsis’ into the twentieth century. These narratives of
idealised last Indians proliferated – even though it was clear that there
were surviving members of the mourned tribes – because last Indian
stories reassured Americans that indigenous depopulation was an inevi-
table result of progress, thereby naturalising the violence of
colonialism.123 The death in May 1876 of Truganini, who was reputed
to be the last ‘full-blood’ Aboriginal Tasmanian, and the display of her
remains in a Hobart museum from 1904 similarly allowed white
Australians to ‘indulge in sentimental regret’ for indigenous depopulation
‘without any concern about reparation’.124 At the turn of the twentieth
century, British officials in the Andaman Islands, India’s penal colony,
remained convinced that the Andamanese were a ‘dying race’.125
Accounts of extinction could soothe a variety of colonial anxieties while
reassuring the colonisers of the inevitable march of civilisation.126
Similarly, the idea of the rapid depopulation of the Hijra community
was a satisfying narrative for colonial officials in north India. To be
sure, the Hijra community was not idealised or mourned in the manner
119
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: Stuart to UP Secretary, 18 July 1908.
120
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: Hewett, Memorandum, 6 August 1908.
121
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: Brereton, Memorandum, 11 August 1908.
122
UPSA/L/Police/93/308: Taylor to GI Secretary, 26 August 1908.
123
Powell, Vanishing America, 121 5, 141 57.
124
Henry Reynolds quoted in Rebe Taylor, ‘Genocide, Extinction and Aboriginal
Self determination in Tasmanian Historiography’, History Compass 11, no. 6 (2013):
405 18.
125
Sen, ‘Savage Bodies’, 365. 126 Qureshi, ‘Dying Americans’, 268.
of the lone survivors of indigenous communities in settler colonies.

Moreover, in contrast to most colonial discussions of colonised peoples
who were ‘dying out’, the impacts of colonial governance were at the
centre of the official explanation of Hijras’ extinction. Yet the apparent
success of the colonial government in causing an ungovernable and
‘immoral’ class to die out suggested the expansive reach of colonial
governance into the furthest margins of Indian society, the omnipotence
of the colonial state.
This was a reassuring fiction in a period of escalating anti-imperial
agitation. By the early twentieth century, the UP (the former NWP) was
preoccupied with challenges to colonial rule posed by socio-religious and
nationalist movements. The 1890s had seen a burgeoning of voluntary
associations that blended social, political and religious agendas. The cow
protection movement exacerbated Hindu-Muslim tensions, which man-
ifested dramatically in riots in north India in 1893. In the late 1890s,
famine and plague in north India prompted protests against the colonial
government in rural areas, including the refusal to pay land taxes, as well
as a handful of assassinations of British officials. In 1905, the Government
of India’s proposal to partition the province of Bengal resulted in swadeshi
campaigns boycotting British goods, as well as terrorist actions by revolu-
tionary groups calling for an end to British rule. Political agitation against
the partition of Bengal also spread to other provinces, including the UP,
in the following years.127 In this context, the idea that colonialism had
caused the extinction of a deviant and disorderly population was
a comforting one.
Yet the Hijra community endured in northern India throughout the
twentieth century. Hijras retained their vibrant public presence and con-
tinued to initiate new Hijras. Why, then, was the UP government con-
vinced that Hijras were dying out, even as Hijra communities survived?
In addition to a good deal of colonial hubris, the answer lies in the
ambiguities of colonial classification practices, the disaggregated charac-
ter of local policing and the survival strategies of people classified as
‘eunuchs’.
The registered ‘eunuch’ population was in decline partly due to shifts in
official categories. Between 1871 and 1911, the boundaries of the eunuch
category continually fluctuated, but the long-term trend was a narrowing
towards those who were castrated. From the 1890s, the provisional
government mandated that ‘men . . . who dressed in women’s clothes
127
For a brief overview of this period see Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf,
A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012),
150 62.
and assumed the appearance of [a] eunuch though they were virile’
should be regulated under public nuisance laws, rather than the
CTA.128 This resulted in a reduction in the registered population as
uncastrated Hijras, Zananas and men who cross-dressed in theatrical
and ritual contexts were deregistered. Meanwhile, some districts removed
elderly people from the registers, since they were assumed to no longer be
sexually ‘immoral’. Other districts had deregistered ‘eunuchs’ who had
adopted ‘harmful’ and ‘respectable’ occupations such as agriculture,
which had in fact been an important form of Hijra work prior to the
CTA.129 Thus, due to changing classifications at the provincial and
district level, the registered ‘eunuch’ population had gradually
contracted.
An equally important factor was that Hijras and other ‘eunuchs’ had
adopted various strategies to make themselves less visible to the colonial
state, resulting in a decline in the number on the registers.
The uncontrolled mobility of people classified as ‘eunuchs’ had slowly
reduced the registered population, since after three years such ‘absent’
people were removed from the district register. Many registered people
thus managed to ‘disappear’.130 Hijras and other registered people per-
sistently evaded the record-keeping practices of the colonial government.
While the state ‘saw’ fewer ‘eunuchs’, Hijras remained a part of local
ritual economies and popular culture (even as they were often forced to
make their gender appearance masculine). New Hijra initiates also used
various strategies to avoid the CTA regime, including not undergoing the
castration operation to avoid classification as a ‘eunuch’ and eschewing
female clothing in public to prevent registration.131 In the early 1900s, the
NWP government believed that the Hijra community in north India was
becoming elderly and rapidly dying out. Rather, Hijras had become
proficient in the arts of police evasion.
128
BL/IOR/P/4306: Part B Proceedings, March, no. 2. See also, BL/IOR/P/4919: Part
B Proceedings, December, no. 6.
129
BL/IOR/P/2902: Part B Proceedings, July, no. 38.
130
UPSA/L/J/C/111/772D: Winter to all UP DC, DM and IGP, ‘Rules’, 2 April 1907.
131
Conclusion
The colonial government in nineteenth-century India envisaged

a controllable and knowable colonised population in highly gendered
ways. Matters of gender, intimacy and the body were at the heart of
colonial concepts of political authority and moral visions of colonial
governance. Moreover, the colonial management of population
depended on the regulation of households, sexual practices and forms
of gender expression. ‘Perverse’ or excessive sexuality thus signalled
political and social disorder. In this context, Hijras appeared to be simply
ungovernable to colonial officials in north India. The British often
described Hijras through a language of dirt and disease because they
were seen as ‘matter out of place’, a threat to the colonial order. In fact,
the disorderliness of Hijras had multiple dimensions, in the colonial view.
Hijras’ sexual practices, gender expression, cultural practices in public
space, short-distance mobility, household forms and discipleship hierar-
chies were seen as an interlocking set of sexual, moral, social and political
dangers.
The ‘eunuch problem’ was a conduit for diverse colonial anxieties and
preoccupations, including local, metropolitan and trans-imperial projects
and discussions. Yet the colonial panic about Hijras was concentrated in
northern India and circulated through the letter-writing practices that
undergirded the colonial administration, reminding us of the tendency of
localised networks of colonial officials to experience intensified anxiety
about indigenous peoples and practices within the context of
a widespread sense of colonial insecurity. At the same time, the British
preoccupation with Hijras in northern India resonated with middle-class
Indian gender politics. While Hijras were not the subject of significant
panic in the north Indian public sphere, Indian middle-class commenta-
tors supported strong government action against the community.
Hijras, as ungovernable people, needed to be controlled, but this would
not be achieved by assimilating Hijras into ‘respectable’ Indian society.
Colonial understandings of Hijra gender and sexuality precluded the
250
Conclusion 251
transformation of Hijras into self-disciplining, normative colonial sub-

jects. In other settings, most notably the policing of the criminal tribes,
the British aimed to reform ‘criminals’ through ‘industrious’ physical
labour. Yet British administrators viewed Hijras as failed men who were
physically effeminate, incapable of strenuous labour and had no capacity
for moral improvement. As a consequence, the North-Western Provinces
(NWP) government aimed to solve the eunuch problem by causing the
‘gradual extinction’ of the Hijra/eunuch population. This was a somewhat
unusual mode of colonial governance in the context of British India.
Colonial projects of elimination that were underlined by a conviction
that indigenous peoples would or should die out were much more typical
of settler colonies. Nevertheless, the anti-Hijra campaign suggests a need
to investigate elimination schemes in non-settler colonies. Part II of the
1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) included overlapping strategies of both
cultural and physical elimination. Meanwhile, the anti-Hijra campaign
was fractured by age. Adult Hijras were targeted with a regime of cultural
elimination, policing and surveillance that aimed to erase their public
presence and control their ‘criminal’ activities in anticipation of their
impending deaths. Meanwhile, children would be removed from Hijra
households and ‘saved’ from initiation and castration, thereby facilitating
both the ‘extirpation’ of ‘eunuchs’ as well as the assimilation of removed
children into respectable society.
In the official view, the first step in eliminating Hijras was compiling
authoritative information on the community, in particular, drawing up
‘registers of eunuchs’ that would facilitate the prosecution of castration
and enumerate the (hopefully declining) ‘eunuch’ population.
The project of elimination thus underlined the colonial Hijra archive.
Yet while historians such as Anjali Arondekar have suggested that colo-
nial archives produced a ‘seamless narrative’ of indigenous sexual ‘per-
versity’, this book has shown that numerous narratives about Hijra-hood
circulated within official archives.1 Colonial knowledge of Hijras was
a product of interactions between British administrators, Indian police
and various north Indians, including ‘respectable’ people such as rural
landlords, urban raises (patrons) and middle class professionals, as well as
people of relatively low social status, like village watchmen and
Hijras themselves. Indian police and British district officials framed the
knowledge of local people in varied, sometimes distorting ways. Official
archival practices were intended to weed out unreliable information that
did not accord to colonial assumptions. Yet at the ‘margins’ of the official
archives, accounts that reproduced the dominant eunuch stereotype were
1
Arondekar, For the Record, 10 11.
252 Conclusion
interspersed with plural, often contradictory reports. Moreover, archived

life histories of Hijras highlighted that collectivising colonial and middle-
class Indian accounts obscured important aspects of Hijras’ lives, includ-
ing their various forms of work and domestic arrangements and the
diverse circumstances in which Hijras were initiated.
The colonial state in India, like other kinds of states, was
a disaggregated ‘assemblage’ of practices and discourses, rather than
a unified, monolithic institution.2 The tensions of the colonial govern-
ance of gender and sexuality particularly became apparent in the local
enforcement of Part II of the CTA. The colonial category of ‘eunuch’ was
highly nebulous and its boundaries narrowed and widened repeatedly
between 1871 and 1911. There was considerable official uncertainty over
the position of the Hijra community in relation to other indigenous
groups in the ethnographic landscape of Indian gender and sexual ‘per-
versity’. The NWP administration intended the legal category of eunuch/
impotent man to serve as an umbrella term that could cover numerous
forms of non-normative gender expression. Meanwhile, the government
attempted to render the bodies of ‘eunuchs’ legible by using bodily labour
(performance) and gender embodiment (women’s dress and ‘orna-
ments’) to establish an individual’s criminality and sexuality.
Eventually, the seeming illegibility of the ‘eunuch’ body led the NWP
government to call upon medical expertise to determine impotence, yet
physicians would play a much more limited role in the regulation of
Hijras than in the contemporaneous regulation of female prostitution.
At the district level, administrators delineated the boundaries of the
‘eunuch’ class in varied and sometimes idiosyncratic ways. Again and
again, district authorities registered and deregistered Hijras and other
north Indians with non-binary gender expression as local principles of
classification changed. The diverse people who found themselves labelled
‘eunuchs’ attempted to contest their classification, though often with little
success.
Once a person’s name was entered on a register of eunuchs, they were
prohibited from performing and wearing feminine clothing and ‘orna-
ments’ in public spaces, and also barred from cohabitating with a male
child under seventeen. Their property was registered (which in practice
was largely a means of domestic surveillance) and they were required to
report their movements to the police (though a ‘pass system’ and roll calls
were not imposed). However, the disaggregated nature of local colonial
governance produced variations in the experiences of people classified as
‘eunuchs’. The uneven pattern of local regulation reflected the
2
See Comaroff, ‘Colonialism’.
Conclusion 253
fragmented character of the police administration in north India, despite

the police reforms of the 1860s. It was the Indian police that Hijras and
other ‘eunuchs’ encountered on a daily basis and these interactions were
enmeshed within local social relations. Moreover, British district officials’
attitudes towards the colonial policing of sexual morality were reasonably
varied, producing divergent local policies towards ‘eunuchs’. In many
districts, the 1871 law intensified coercive relationships with the local
police, as registered people found their everyday lives scrutinised and
regulated in numerous ways. The law was also illegally enforced beyond
its scope in some places, becoming a de facto law against male cross-
dressing, as it was applied to people who were not registered as ‘eunuchs’
under the law. Yet elsewhere, registered people were able to exploit weak
points in surveillance to reduce the presence of the police in their everyday
lives.
Thus, a third factor that shaped the variegated governance of ‘eunuchs’
was the survival and evasion strategies of people who were registered
under the CTA. Whereas the NWP government viewed Hijras as ungo-
vernable in multiple ways, ‘disorderliness’ was also a resource for people
who found themselves criminalised as ‘eunuchs’. Hijras and other regis-
tered people created significant weak points in the colonial surveillance
and policing apparatus. They became skilful at law breaking, evading the
police and keeping on the move. Meanwhile, Hijras kept their cultural
practices alive within Hijra communities and in public places. For
instance, alms-collection, though legal under the CTA, maintained the
place of Hijras in local ritual economies, while also challenging colonial
control over Hijras’ bodies and forms of cultural expression in public
space.
The CTA regime of surveillance and prosecution was designed to
control adult ‘eunuchs’, while the community slowly ‘died out’. In the
official view, the elimination of Hijras also required state control over the
bodies of male children in Hijra households, as well as children’s spatial
separation from Hijras, in order to prevent the ‘creation’ of new
‘eunuchs’. Thus, the removal of children was central to the anti-Hijra
drive. Colonial administrators often framed child removal as child ‘res-
cue’, a civilising project of reform. But few Magistrates made arrange-
ments for the ‘education and maintenance’ of removed children, although
the CTA empowered them to do so. Moreover, in practice, officials
rarely, if ever, contemplated measures of ‘reform’ targeting children.
Rather, the NWP government was primarily concerned with keeping
removed children under police surveillance to ensure that they did not
wilfully maintain their ties to Hijras. Hence, most archived life histories of
removed children end at the moment of their removal. By 1908, NWP
254 Conclusion
officials were convinced that child removal, along with the regulation of
adult Hijras, had caused the almost complete extinction of the ‘eunuch’
population. However, changing practices of categorisation, fissured local
governance and criminalised peoples’ persistent and effective evasion of
the authorities undermined the NWP’s scheme to cause the ‘extinction’
of ‘eunuchs’. The Hijra social role and Hijra discipleship lineages
endured, ultimately rendering the colonial project to eliminate Hijras a
failure.
Postscript: Hijras and the State in Postcolonial
South Asia
In June 2011, the legislature of Karnataka, a state in southern India,

passed an amendment to the state’s Police Act to include a new provision:
‘Section 36A Power to Regulate Eunuchs’. Section 36A allows police to
register ‘eunuchs’ who are ‘reasonably suspected’ of kidnapping, castra-
tion and ‘unnatural offences’. It also prohibits registered people from any
act deemed ‘undesirable’, without actually defining what might constitute
an undesirable activity.1 As transgender activist Akkai Padmashali high-
lighted, section 36A has ‘its roots in the colonial-era Criminal Tribes
Act’.2 Section 36A was in fact derived from the Hyderabad Eunuch Act of
1919 – a law of the princely state of Hyderabad that had apparently fallen
out of use after Independence3 – which was itself based on Part II of the
1871 Criminal Tribes Act. These reiterations of the 1871 ‘Act for the
Registration of Eunuchs’ in the decades following its repeal in 1911 raise
several questions. In what circumstances have colonial and postcolonial
South Asian states identified Hijras as a problem population?4 How have
strategies of governance shifted over time? And how have Hijras inter-
acted with the state in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? This
Postscript provides some preliminary answers to these questions, focus-
ing on India, and reflects on the contemporary relevance of the colonial
governance of gender and sexuality.
In present-day India, Hijras interact with the state from three subject
positions: first, as a ‘criminal’ community that apparently needs to be
1
Government of Karnataka, ‘The Karnataka Police Act, 1963’, http://dpal.kar.nic.in/4%
20of%201964%20(E).pdf (accessed 8 December 2016).
2
Niranjan Kaggere, ‘Continuous Monitoring is the New Mantra’, Times of India, 15 July
2016, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Layout/Includes/MIRRORNEW/ArtWin
.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=MIRRORNEW&BaseHref=BGMIR%2F201
2%2F07%2F15&ViewMode=HTML&EntityId=Ar00100&AppName=1 (accessed 8
December 2016).
3
‘Enactments Repealed’, Times of India, 4 April 1963, 6.
4
The term ‘Hijra’ is widely used across India today, but many Hijras prefer ‘Kinnar’. Saria,
‘Some Other Name’. In Pakistan, the term Khwajasara is preferred by Hijra communities
(in this chapter, I follow the modern Urdu transliteration rather than the Persianate
Khwajasarai). Khan, ‘What is in a Name?’, 226.
255
256 Postscript
policed; second, as a ‘third’ gender and, therefore, a separate category of

legal personhood; and third, as a disadvantaged or ‘backward’ commu-
nity that is entitled to ‘reservations’ or affirmative action policies. The
representation of Hijras as a criminal population has had a long history,
but the framing of Hijras as citizens entitled to rights, legal recognition of
their gender identity and welfare measures is a very recent development.
To be sure, historically some Indian polities gave Hijras small grants of
tax-free land and money, but these earlier practices were not premised on
contemporary discourses of constitutional rights and affirmative action.5
At first glance, there appear to be both continuities and significant diver-
gences between the colonial and contemporary policing of Hijras.
Certainly, we cannot draw a straight line between the colonial and the
postcolonial in explaining recent government programmes of policing,
categorisation and welfare. In order to understand the ‘postcolonial con-
dition’ we need to unpack the nuances and tensions of colonialism –
something this book has aimed to do – rather than make simplistic claims
about colonial ‘legacies’.6 More studies are also needed of the period
immediately preceding and following Independence, though unfortu-
nately there are comparatively few accounts of Hijras in twentieth-century
state archives and newspapers prior to the late 1990s.7 Nevertheless,
looking at present-day India, the colonial regulation of ‘eunuchs’ has
numerous echoes – some strong, others faint or muted. In part, these
echoes are audible because of the use of colonial-era laws and the endur-
ance of late nineteenth-century colonial and middle-class Indian dis-
courses of criminality. Shahnaz Khan highlights a similar situation in
contemporary Pakistan, where ‘modernist elites’ have ‘inherited many
of the prejudices and much of the legal code and institutional apparatus of
the colonial state’.8 But the resonance of the colonial policing of Hijras in
contemporary South Asia is not simply a matter of a colonial ‘legacy’ or
‘inheritance’. These echoes between the colonial and postcolonial reflect
the tendency of modern states to view non-normative gender, sexuality
and intimacy as disorderly – and therefore, as a threat to visions of the
state as the guarantor of social order.9 Hijras continue to be viewed as
ungovernable people due to their social marginality, perceived criminal-
ity, sexuality and the various ways that they affront notions of
5
Washbrook, ‘South India’, 499 505; Wilson, India Conquered, 231 2; Preston, ‘A Right to
Exist’.
6
Stoler and Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony’, 33 4.
7
I have drawn extensively on the Mumbai based Times of India, which (unlike other news
papers) has been digitised for the entire twentieth century.
8
Khan, ‘What is in a Name?’, 237.
9
Puri makes a similar point about section 377: Puri, Sexual States, 124.
Postscript 257
respectability. This governmental imperative to control interlinked sexual

and social disorder is even evident in some recent attempts to recognise
the rights of Hijras as citizens and to implement affirmative action policies
to redress discrimination.
‘They Are Criminals’

In contemporary India, the police, the bureaucracy and the media often
view Hijras as criminal in multiple, intersecting ways. When a researcher
asked Delhi police about the Hijra community in the early 2000s, they
responded with comments such as, ‘They are criminals’; ‘They have sex
in public places’; ‘They rob and steal from their clients’; ‘They do wrong.
They solicit sex’.10 The perceived criminality of Hijras encompasses a
broad range of acts, including begging, ‘extortion’, stealing and gender
and sexual practices. Take for example a 1998 letter to the editor of the
Times of India: the author decried the ‘menace of Hijras’ in Mumbai and
argued that due to poverty, ‘many of them are forced to take to begging
and crime’.11 The Hijra kidnapper, castrator and child abuser is a stereo-
type that circulates widely in contemporary India. Indian newspapers and
news sites have repeatedly reported that only one per cent of Hijras are
‘born that way’ and ‘the rest either pretend to be hijras (eunuch) [sic] or
have been forced to join the community by abduction and castration’.12
Several traditions of representation intersect in these present-day
accounts of the manifold criminality of Hijras. The idea of habitual
criminality draws on a long history of elite and upper-caste Indian writing
about ‘robber castes’, as well as colonial representations of culturally
specific forms of collective crime in India, like the criminal tribes.13 As
this study has shown, middle-class Indian men have associated Hijras
with sexual immorality, obscenity and criminality (particularly slavery)
since at least the mid-nineteenth century, and have defined their own
respectability in contrast to such marginalised figures.14 Colonial repre-
sentations of Hijras as sodomites, cross-dressers, beggars, kidnappers and
10
Ibid., 92. 11 R. Sheshadrai, ‘Hijra Viewpoint’, Times of India, 7 August 1998, 12.
12
Tarique Anwar, ‘The Truth About How Hijras are Made in India Because They’re Not
Always Born that Way’, India Times, 6 July 2016, www.indiatimes.com/news/lgbtq the
truth about how hijras are made in india because they re not always born that way 2
57525.html (accessed 23 December 2016). See also Shveta Bhagat, ‘Eunuchs Not
Always Born but Made’, Times of India, 5 September 2005, http://timesofindia.india
times.com/city/delhi/Eunuchs not always born but made/articleshow/1219979.cms
(accessed 23 December 2016).
13
Piliavsky, ‘The “Criminal Tribe”’.
14
E.g., ‘Nagpore’, 4; ‘Address of Lalla Badri Pershad’, 3; NAI/HD/JB 02/1890 110 112:
Rai to GGI, 1 November 1889.
258 Postscript
castrators are also echoed in present-day denunciations of Hijra crimin-

ality. However, representations of Hijras as inherently criminal people sit
uncomfortably alongside increasing depictions of the community as
rights-bearing subjects. For instance, in 2011 a senior advocate of the
Karnataka High Court named Nagendra Naik simultaneously portrayed
Hijras as a ‘sexual minority’ deserving of ‘human rights and privacy’ and
as criminals who ‘forcibly extort money from people’.15
In India today, a web of laws and policing practices facilitate the prose-
cution and punishment – and more commonly, the arrest, bribing and
harassment – of the Hijra community. In public discussion, the most
prominent of these laws has been section 377 of the 1860 Indian Penal
Code, which criminalises ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature.’16
In September 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the application
of section 377 to cases of consensual adult sex violated the right to privacy,
‘individual choice and autonomy’, freedom of expression and equality
before the law, while noting the criminalising impact of the law on LGBT
people, including Hijras.17 However, few Hijras were formally charged
under section 377 prior to its repeal.18 The vast majority of ‘First
Incident Reports’ (FIR’s) of section 377 offences, and most cases that
have reached the courts, have been instances of child sexual abuse (to
which section 377 still applies). In this context, offences under section
377 are understood not as ‘unnatural’ sexual acts as such, but rather as
qalat kam (‘wrongful acts’), with connotations of ‘injustice and injury’.19
Nevertheless, section 377 has created a space for extralegal policing mea-
sures against people whom police consider sexually deviant, including
15
Quoted in Kaggere, ‘Continuous Monitoring’.
16
Government of India, The Indian Penal Code. Act XLV of 1860 (Madras: Srinivasa,
Varadachari & Co, 1893), 332.
17
‘Section 377 Verdict: Here are the Highlights’, The Indian Express, 6 September 2018, https://
indianexpress.com/article/india/section 377 supreme court verdict gay lgbtq 5343225/
(accessed 8 September 2018); ‘Dhara 377: Kyon iska Samapt hona Zyada Tarksangat he’,
Satyagrah, 7 September 2018, https://satyagrah.scroll.in/article/119865/supreme court con
stitution bench section 377 decision analysis (accessed 8 September 2018); Nandita Saikia,
‘Section 377: Decriminalising Homosexuality is Great, but the Fight for True Equality is not
Yet Over’, Scroll.in, 7 September 2018, https://scroll.in/article/893478/section 377 decrimi
nalising homosexuality is great but the fight for true equality is not over yet (accessed 8
September 2018); ‘Section 377: Impact Will be Felt Beyond India’, Times of India, 7
September 2018, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/section 377 impact will be felt
beyond india/articleshow/65712471.cms (accessed 8 September 2018).
18
Puri, Sexual States, 102; Gee Imaan Semmalar, ‘Unpacking Solidarities of the
Oppressed: Notes on Trans Struggles in India’, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 42,
no. 3 4 (2014): 289.
19
Puri, Sexual States, 41, 65 9. See also Bhaskaran, ‘Politics of Penetration’, 22 6; Gupta,
‘Section 377’, 4817 8. It is unclear if the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual
Offences Act has changed the makeup of section 377 FIRs.
Postscript 259
Hijras. The ‘enforcement’ of section 377 against Hijras has usually taken
the form of so-called ‘preventative’ measures such as stopping Hijras in the
street, keeping Hijras under surveillance, arbitrarily arresting Hijras on the
pretence of a section 377 offence and raids of Hijras’ houses.20 Such
‘preventative’ policing has often involved violence. A detailed 2003 report
by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) noted that the ‘powers of
the police’ under section 377 were ‘minimally checked in public places’,
but ‘the various legal norms which govern the behaviour of police [were]
completely disregarded in the police stations’. Numerous NGO reports
have evidenced that police often entrap Hijras in order to extract bribes
from them, while arrested Hijras commonly experience beatings, physical
torture, forcible stripping and rape in police stations and jails.21 Jyoti Puri
found that Delhi police ‘openly and unapologetically endorsed’ police
violence against Hijras in discussions about the enforcement of section
377 in the early 2000s.22 Whether the 2018 ‘reading down’ of section
377 will alter Hijras’ quotidian interactions with the police is, as yet,
unclear.
However, Hijras’ experiences of everyday police harassment have not
been a product of section 377 alone. Hijras are frequently arrested under
the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA) of 1956, the primary legal
instrument for the policing of prostitution in India, which since 1986 has
applied to sex workers regardless of gender. The ITPA is ostensibly aimed
at trafficking, brothel keeping and pimping, but sections 7 and 8 of the law
provide police with extensive powers to arrest people suspected of enga-
ging in sex work. In practice, the ITPA has the effect of criminalising ‘the
figure of the sex worker’ and, consequently, people like Hijras who are
widely assumed to engage in prostitution. Police frequently make arrests
merely on the basis of a suspicion that a Hijra is a sex worker, or use the
ITPA to retrospectively justify arbitrary arrests of Hijras.23 Given the
concern with erasing Hijras from public space in the nineteenth century,
it is unsurprising that Hijras also continue to be arrested under section
294 of the Penal Code, which criminalises ‘obscene’ acts that ‘cause
annoyance to others’, and section 268, which prohibits ‘public
nuisances’.24 There are also documented cases of Hijras arrested (and
20
21
PUCL, ‘Human Rights Violations’. See also International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans
and Intersex Association, ‘Ongoing Police Violence against Hijras in India’, http://ilga
.org/ilga/en/article/233 (accessed 24 August 2012); Human Rights Watch, ‘India:
Enforce Ruling Protecting Transgender People’, www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/05/india
enforce ruling protecting transgender people (accessed 11 March 2015).
22
Puri, Sexual States, 92. 23 PUCL, ‘Human Rights Violations’, 29, 48 50.
24
Dhamini Ratnam, ‘Ground Report: Crime and Punishment’, Livemint, 5 December
2014, www.livemint.com/Leisure/5XCUSYRBJYDccUROFjs4bM/Ground Report
260 Postscript
often beaten) on false charges of kidnapping.25 Thus, a nexus of laws and

policing practices regulate the everyday lives of Hijras in India today.
Elsewhere in South Asia, Hijras have also experienced harassment, sexual
abuse and physical violence in their encounters with police. In Pakistan in
2015 and 2016, there were numerous cases of police rape and torture of
Khwajasaras – as contemporary Pakistani Hijras prefer to be called – parti-
cularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. There was a pattern to these
incidents of police abuse: Khwajasaras were arrested by police and taken to
police stations, where they were forced to remove their clothing and to dance
naked, and when they refused, were beaten and in several cases raped.26
Hence, the policing of Hijras and Khwajasaras in South Asia often occurs at
the fringes of the law. Laws like section 377 (which is still in force in
Pakistan) and the Indian ITPA are deployed in flexible ways and are
enforced through various extra-legal measures – including harassment, arbi-
trary arrest and beatings – which are represented as ‘preventative’ policing.27
The extent to which this represents a continuation of older, colonial patterns
of policing is unclear, since police violence against Hijras has only been
documented in detail by NGOs since the early 2000s. However, as this
book has shown, there are hints in colonial archives that nineteenth-century
Hijras were caught in coercive and violent relationships with police.
Just as Part II of the CTA was a provincial experiment in regulating
gender and sexuality, in postcolonial India, regional policing campaigns
have also periodically targeted the Hijra community. Such localised pro-
jects of governance highlight that Hijras’ interactions with state institu-
tions and officials have varied over time and between different local
contexts. This raises the question of why public and state attention
towards the Hijra community has waxed and waned over the course of
Crime and punishment.html (accessed 13 December 2016); Semmalar, ‘Unpacking

Solidarities’, 289.
25
Ratnam, ‘Ground Report’.
26
Human Rights Watch, ‘Pakistan: Attacks on Transgender Women Surge’, 22 August
2016, www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/22/pakistan attacks transgender women surge
(accessed 23 December 2016); Asian Human Rights Commission, ‘Pakistan:
Prosecute Police Officers that Raped Seven Transgender Citizens in Illegal Detention’,
19 July 2016, www.humanrights.asia/news/urgent appeals/AHRC UAC 092 2016/?sea
rchterm=pakistan%20transgender%20police (accessed 23 December 2016); Asian
Human Rights Commission, ‘Pakistan: Nowshera Police Order Transgender to Vacate
the District’, 29 July 2016, www.humanrights.asia/news/ahrc news/AHRC STM 111
2016/?searchterm=pakistan%20transgender%20police (accessed 23 December 2016);
Asian Human Rights Commission, ‘Pakistan: Transgender Activists Continue to Face
Police Abuse and Discrimination’, 18 May 2016, www.humanrights.asia/news/ahrc ne
ws/AHRC STM 077 2016/?searchterm=pakistan%20transgender%20police (accessed
23 December 2016).
27
Additionally, the Hadood Ordinance criminalises non heterosexual and non marital sex
in Pakistan. Khan, ‘What is in a Name?’, 229.
Postscript 261
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A 1998 campaign in Mumbai to

arrest Hijras begging at traffic lights suggests that shifts in the political
environment have shaped Hijras’ relationship to the state at the local
level. On 15 February 1998, the Times of India implored the public,
‘Next time a hijra accosts you at a traffic junction, lodge a complaint
with the police’. The paper quoted a number of Mumbai motorists who
complained that Hijras ‘begging’ at traffic lights were ‘no longer content
with … loose change’ and were demanding ever-greater sums. Hijras’
‘new weapon’ was apparently spitting in the face of people who refused to
give money. The newspaper opined that such tactics were ‘surely closer to
extortion than begging’.28 By August that year, Pramod Navalkar, the
Minister for Cultural Affairs in Maharashtra’s Shiv Sena-led state gov-
ernment, had ordered the Police Commissioner to ‘clear the signals of
beggars, eunuchs, hawkers and lepers’. Navalkar stated that he had
received numerous complaints from the public, as well as the ‘diplomatic
community’, and accused Hijras of physically assaulting and robbing
motorists and taxi passengers. This was part of Navalkar’s broader project
to eliminate ‘the slightest vestige of moral or civic laxity’ from Mumbai, as
the Times of India put it. This campaign had earlier targeted ‘kissing
couples and pop concerts’ and was shaped by the extreme Hindu nation-
alist ideology of the Shiv Sena.29 Hence, a localised campaign to ‘clean’
public space in line with a particular political ideology resulted in efforts
to ensure the stricter implementation of public nuisance laws against
Hijras in late-1990s Mumbai.
A similar city-level project occurred in Bangalore between 2008 and
2012, as high-ranking Bangalore police officials used campaigns against
Hijras to shore up their public legitimacy and ‘show the public they mean
business’ upon assuming office.30 In these so-called ‘anti-eunuch drives’,
the police and other government officials represented the Hijra commu-
nity as beggars, extortionists, prostitutes, pimps and the kidnappers and
abusers of children – clearly echoing late nineteenth-century colonial and
middle-class Indian discourses. On 20 October 2008, the Deputy
28
‘Threats, abuse? Don’t succumb’, Times of India, 15 February 1998, 20. The paper also
ran an article by an administrator from Humsafar Trust, which characterised Hijras as
‘gays from the poorer classes’. Ramesh Menon, ‘Who are the Hijras?’, Times of India, 15
February 1998, 20. See also ‘The Times Question: Twilight Zone’, Times of India, 15
February 1998, 32.
29
‘Now, Navalkar targets eunuchs and beggars’, Times of India, 3 August 1998, 3. See also
‘Police are Told to Control ‘Nuisance’ of Beggars’, Times of India, 28 August 1998, 3.
30
‘A Month after Mirji’s Three day Deadline, Eunuchs Back at it’, Bangalore Mirror, 23 June
2011, http://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/cover story/A month after Mirjis t
hree day deadline eunuchs back at it/articleshow/21573986.cms (accessed 14 December
2016).
262 Postscript
Commissioner of Police for South Bangalore called for a ‘drive against the
city’s eunuch menace’, resulting in the arrest of several Hijras who were
charged with ‘extortion’ and were also beaten and sexually abused by
police. On 8 November, the Bangalore police claimed to have uncovered
a ‘gang’ of Hijras that forced kidnapped children to undergo ‘sex change’
operations and engage in sex work. The following day, the police
announced that Hijras were conducting ‘immoral activities’ in their
houses and issued notices to around forty landlords in the Dasarahalli
neighbourhood, where many Hijras reside, ordering the landlords to evict
all their Hijra tenants within three hours. Consequently, over 100 Hijras
were evicted.31 The Bangalore police also began a census to ‘count … the
number of children’ residing with ‘transgenders’, mirroring the efforts of
colonial officials to enumerate children in Hijra households in north India
in the 1860s and 1870s.32 In 2010, the campaign against Hijras picked up
again and this time, was focused on Hijra ‘begging’.33 As in Mumbai in
the late 1990s, street junctions emerged as spaces in which Hijras were
criminalised. Shankar M. Birdari, the City Police Commissioner,
announced that the police would take action against ‘Eunuchs, transsex-
uals, transgender community and others [who] are pestering motorists for
money at traffic junctions and indulging in illegal activities’.34 One of the
first acts of Birdari’s successor, Jyotiprakash Mirji, on assuming the posi-
tion of City Police Commissioner in June 2011 was to announce a drive to
arrest ‘eunuchs’ creating ‘public nuisance’.35
In March 2011, in the midst of these efforts to combat Hijra ‘begging’
and ‘extortion’ in the state capital of Bangalore, the Karnataka legislature
passed an amendment to the Karnataka Police Act of 1963 that provided
police with extensive powers to regulate Hijras’ everyday lives. The
amendment incorporated the 1919 Hyderabad Eunuch Act – which had
been modelled on Part II of the 1871 CTA – into the Police Act as section
36A. In the early 1960s, some Indian states that had absorbed former
parts of Hyderabad, such as Maharashtra, had repealed the 1919 law
because it had ‘remained inoperative for the past several years’.36 Yet in
31
Human Rights Watch, ‘India: Stop “Social Cleansing” in Bangalore’, 18 November
2008, www.hrw.org/print/234729 (accessed 14 December 2016).
32
‘Conflicts Surface Over Sex Change Racket’, Times of India, 12 November 2008, http://
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Conflicts surface over sex change racket/a
rticleshow/3701104.cms (accessed 14 December 2016).
33
Sunitha Rao, ‘Eunuchs Resist Being Branded as Beggars’, Daily News and Analysis, 23
February 2010, www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report eunuchs resist being branded as
beggars 1351472 (accessed 14 December 2016).
34
‘Police to Stem Aggressive Begging by Hijras’, The Hindu, 14 December 2010, www.th
ehindu.com/todays paper/tp national/tp karnataka/Police to stem aggressive begging
by hijras/article15592068.ece (accessed 14 December 2016).
35
‘Mirji’s Three day Deadline’. 36 ‘Enactments Repealed’, 6.
Postscript 263
the context of renewed anxiety about the Hijra community in Bangalore,

this decades-old law was revived. This was part of a broader process to
repeal laws from the former princely states and to retain those laws – like
the Hyderabad Eunuchs Act – that were still considered ‘useful’.37
Section 36A allows local Police Commissioners to register any ‘eunuchs’
who are ‘reasonably suspected of kidnapping or emasculating boys or of
committing unnatural offences’ – wording that was borrowed from the
1871 CTA – and to prohibit registered people from any acts deemed
‘undesirable’, simply through a notification in the Government Gazette
specifying those acts.38 Activists protested that section 36A was ‘based on
the strange belief that certain people, including transgenders, are predis-
posed to criminality’.39 In 2016, the Karnataka High Court ruled that the
word ‘eunuch’, which Hijras find offensive, had to be removed from
section 36A, though its replacement with ‘person’ has made the potential
scope of the law even wider.40 The Karnataka anti-Hijra law is still in
force.41 Moreover, the 1919 Hyderabad law also remains on the books in
neighbouring Telangana, though in September 2018 the Hyderabad
High Court issued a temporary order to the Telangana government to
stop registering cases under the law.42
37
‘Age old laws get democratic burial’, Times of India, 10 March 2011, http://timesofindia
.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Age old laws get democratic burial/articleshow/76670
18.cms (accessed 12 December 2016); Kaggere, ‘Continuous Monitoring’; Vaishalli
Chandra, ‘New Law to Hit Sexual Minorities as Gays Set to Celebrate July 2’, Daily
News and Analysis, 1 July 2011, www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report new law to hit se
xual minorities as gays set to celebrate july 2 1561073 (accessed 12 December 2016);
Government of Karnataka, ‘Karnataka Act No. 26 of 2011’, www.lawsofindia.org/pdf/
karnataka/2011/2011KR26.pdf (accessed 12 December 2016).
38
Government of Karnataka, ‘The Karnataka Police Act’.
39
‘Demand after “Eunuch” Order’, Telegraph, 14 January 2016, www.telegraphindia.com/
1160114/jsp/nation/story 63827.jsp#.WEkf1tyEz3U (accessed 12 December 2016).
40
‘Sec 36A of Police Act Violates Eunuchs’ Rights, Says Forum’, Times of India, 3 November
2015, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Sec 36A of Police Act violates eu
nuchs rights says forum/articleshow/49638174.cms (accessed 12 December 2016); ‘In
High Court Govt Agrees to Remove “Eunuch” from Police Act’, Times of India, 13
January 2016, http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31806&articlexml=IN
HIGH COURT Govt agrees to remove eunuch 13012016002020 (accessed 12
December 2016); Krishnaprasad, ‘Will Delete Word “Eunuchs” from Police Act: State’,
The Hindu, 13 January 2016, www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/Will delete word %
E2%80%98eunuchs%E2%80%99 from police Act State/article13996218.ece (accessed
12 December 2016).
41
Even though the 2017 Karnataka ‘State Policy on Transgenders’ called for the modifica
tion of section 36A: ‘Reservation Mandated in All Karnataka Based Education Institutes
for Transgenders’, Times of India, 26 October 2017, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
home/education/news/reservation mandated in all karnataka based education insti
tutes for transgenders/articleshow/61249613.cms (accessed 10 July 2018).
42
Kalpana Kannabiran, ‘It’s Time to Scrap the Eunuchs Act’, The Hindu, 28 September
2017, www.thehindu.com/opinion/op ed/its time to scrap the eunuchs act/arti
cle19763976.ece (accessed 10 July 2018); ‘Law Targeting Transgender Persons in
264 Postscript
Section 36A of the Karnataka Police Act, like Part II of the 1871 CTA
before it, is a regional experiment in regulating gender and sexual mor-
ality. Such intensified episodes of moral anxiety highlight that Hijras’
interactions with the state have historically been geographically varied
and contingent on particular social and political circumstances. Anti-
Hijra drives in particular cities and regions – in both the colonial and
postcolonial periods – also remind us of the disaggregated nature of ‘the
state’. Present-day projects to police Hijras evidence that state authorities
continue to view people with non-normative gender embodiment, sexu-
ality and intimate relationships as ungovernable people. Controlling
Hijras reaffirms an imagining of the state as a bastion for the maintenance
of gender and sexual order. In this respect, there is a clear continuity with
the colonial government’s view of Hijras as a disorderly and unknowable
population. Nevertheless, the NWP’s anti-Hijra campaign between 1871
and 1911 may be historically unique in explicitly aiming to eliminate
Hijras by causing them to become ‘extinct’.
Hijras as Rights-Bearing Citizens

In recent years, state institutions in India have increasingly come to view
Hijras as people deserving the full rights of citizenship, whose gender
identities should be legally recognised. In 2014, the Indian Supreme
Court’s ‘NALSA’43 decision established the right to self-determination
of gender and thus mandated the legal recognition of a ‘third/transgender
identity’. The Supreme Court also ruled that discrimination against
people on the basis of their gender identity violated several articles of
the Indian Constitution.44 Today in India, the idea that Hijras are habi-
tually criminal people (against whom different policing and legal practices
are warranted) is in tension with the idea that Hijras are rights-bearing
citizens.
An important part of the backdrop to this recognition of the right to
gender self-determination is the long history of Hijra protest against their
categorisation as ‘male’ and the use of the male names they were given at
birth, rather than their female names, in government records and
Telangana Read Down Temporarily’, The News Minute, 20 September 2018, www.the
newsminute.com/article/law targeting transgender persons telangana read down tem
porarily 88662 (accessed 21 September 2018).
43
The writ petition was filed by the National Legal Services Authority.
44
Articles 14, 15, 16, 19 and 21. Aniruddha Dutta, ‘Contradictory Tendencies: The
Supreme Court’s NALSA Judgement on Transgender Recognition and Rights’,
Journal of Indian Law and Society 5 (2014): 230 1; Supreme Court of India, ‘National
Legal Services Authority vs. Union of India and Others’, 15 August 2014, http://supre
mecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/wc40012.pdf (accessed 12 December 2016).
Postscript 265
identification documents. Such protests have occurred both in the con-

text of Hijra community organising – such as at periodic ‘all-Indian Hijra
conferences’ that were held from the late 1940s, if not earlier – and in
Hijras’ everyday encounters with state bureaucracies.45 For example, in
the 1971 elections there were reports of Hijras who ‘refused to exercise
their franchise, resenting the “injustice” done to them by the election
office by classifying them as males in the electoral roles’.46 Thus, the
NALSA decision is partly a consequence of the persistent efforts of Hijras
and other LGBT activists to redefine exclusionary notions of citizenship.
The Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling also emerged out of government and
NGO categorisations of gender and sexuality in the context of HIV/AIDS
programmes. The HIV/AIDS epidemic engendered communities of
‘expertise’ that produced knowledge through the mapping of sexual
practices and identities. HIV/AIDS prevention programmes classified
various ‘local’ and ‘vernacular’ identities in relation to ‘global’ gender/
sexual categories with assumed universal applicability, such as transgen-
der, gay and MSM (‘men who have sex with men’).47 In the process, state
and NGO-led HIV/AIDS programmes in India recognised the need to
establish a third gender category in law and bureaucracy.48 In some early
instances, the term ‘eunuch’ was used, such as on passports from 2005,
reflecting the endurance in Indian bureaucratic lexicon of this colonial
term for Hijras.49 However, as a result of the influence of activist dis-
course and HIV/AIDS prevention programmes, ‘transgender’ has
become the dominant rubric under which the state has recognised people
with non-binary gender identities.
Yet there are numerous contradictions between and within the various
judicial and state definitions of transgender that have been articulated in
recent years. The 2014 NALSA judgement, for instance, uses ‘transgen-
der’ as an ‘umbrella term’ for people whose gender identity or expression
45
‘Unique Conference of Eunuchs’, Times of India, 25 February 1969, 13; Sharad Pandit,
‘“Hijras” of India, Unite!’, Times of India, 16 May 1971, A7.
46
‘Indira’s “Absence” from Ballot Paper Stops Voter’, Times of India, 4 March 1971, 8. See
also ‘Voting as Important as Marrying’, Times of India, 2 March 1971, 13.
47
Tom Boellstorff, ‘But Do Not Identify as Gay: A Proleptic Genealogy of the MSM
Category’, Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 2 (2011): 287 312; Akshay Khanna, ‘Taming
the Shrewd Meyeli Chhele: A Political Economy of Development’s Sexual Subject’,
Development 52, no. 1 (2009): 43 51; Paul Boyce and Akshay Khanna, ‘Rights and
Representations: Querying the Male to Male Sexual Subject in India’, Culture, Health
and Sexuality 13, no. 1 (2011): 89 100; Paul Boyce, ‘“Conceiving Kothis”: Men Who
Have Sex with Men in India and the Cultural Subject of HIV Prevention’, Medical
Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness 26, no. 2 (2007): 175 203.
48
Dutta, ‘Contradictory Tendencies’, 226.
49
Jennifer Rellis, ‘“Please Write ‘E’ in this Box”: Toward Self Identification and
Recognition of a Third Gender: Approaches in the United States and India’, Michigan
Journal of Gender and Law 14, no. 2 (2008): 233 4.
266 Postscript
does not accord to their biological sex. However, throughout the judge-
ment there is a contradiction between the right to self-determination of
gender and recommendations for the ‘bureaucratic adjudication’ of gen-
der identity through biologically determinist practices of certification
(such as evidence of ‘sex reassignment’ or ‘gender confirmation’ surgery).
Moreover, the definition of transgender as a broad umbrella term is
contradicted by the equation of ‘transgender’ with ‘Hijra’ in many parts
of the judgement, which marginalises various gender identities, particu-
larly those of masculine-identified trans people.50 These contradictions
are even more apparent in the Transgender Persons (Protection of
Rights) (TPPR) Bill, which was tabled in the Parliament of India in
August 2016. The 2016 TPPR Bill implied that ‘transgender’ was a
physical condition and confused ‘intersex’ with ‘transgender’, introdu-
cing a definition that would exclude many people who identify as
transgender.51 In late 2016, Indian newspapers extensively covered the
protests of trans people against this definition of transgender identity.52
The tensions in recent state definitions of ‘transgender’ parallel the
repeated debates in nineteenth-century north India over who counted as a
‘eunuch’/‘impotent man’. In both cases, classificatory confusion has
rested on the question of how the Hijra community relates to other people
in Indian society whose gender expression does not fit a binary under-
standing of gender. Since the nineteenth century, diverse forms of gender
embodiment and identities have troubled South Asian states’ efforts to
classify gender and sexuality. Hence, governments have often sought to
map gender and sexual difference by reducing identity to medicalised
understandings of the body. Although the colonial administration in
north India had initially privileged ethnographic understandings of
50
Dutta, ‘Contradictory Tendencies’, 229 34. See also Gee Imaan Semmalar, ‘Gender
Outlawed: The Supreme Court Judgment on Third Gender and its Implications’, Round
Table India, 19 April 2014, http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com content&
view=article&id=7377:because we have a voice too the supreme court judgment on thi
rd gender and its implications&catid=120&Itemid=133 (accessed 12 December 2016).
51
Nirangal et al., ‘The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016’, 5 August
2016, http://orinam.net/resources for/law and enforcement/trans persons protection ri
ghts bill 2016/ (accessed 15 December 2016); Aniruddha Dutta, ‘Gatekeeping
Transgender’, RAIOT, 4 October 2016, http://raiot.in/gatekeeping transgender/
(accessed 15 December 2016).
52
Dhrubo Jyoti, ‘Activists Seek MP’s Support to Oppose Govt’s Bill on Transgenders’,
Hindustan Times, 16 November 2016, www.hindustantimes.com/india news/activists se
ek mps support to oppose govt s bill on transgenders/story 0tNbHx5IoEUpiIwnt3
z72M.html (accessed 15 December 2016); Durga M. Sengupta, ‘Not My Bill: Indian
Hijra Community Rejects Current Transgender Rights Bill’, Catchnews.org, 17
November 2016, www.catchnews.com/gender and sex/not my bill indian hijra com
munity rejects current transgender rights bill 1479402163.html (accessed 15
December 2016).
Postscript 267
gender and sexuality, it eventually called upon doctors to provide bodily

‘proof’ of whether individuals were ‘impotent’ and were therefore
‘eunuchs’ under law. Similarly, in 2016, the Indian Parliament effectively
abandoned the idea of self-determination of gender identity in favour of the
medical ‘certification’ of transgender identity. The 2016 TPPR Bill man-
dated that recognition of an individual’s transgender identity would be
decided by a ‘District Steering Committee’ (DSC) comprised of three
bureaucrats including the Chief Medical Officer of the district, one psy-
chiatrist and one transgender person.53 In December 2018, the lower
house of Parliament passed a cosmetically amended TPPR Bill which
included a partially clarified definition of ‘transgender’, but required
DSC approval for certification as transgender and additionally necessitated
sex reassignment surgery for certification as ‘male’ or ‘female’. At the time
of writing, the TPPR Bill was pending consideration by the upper house.54
DSC certification would not only police the boundaries of the transgender
category but would also privilege medicalised and psychiatric understand-
ings of sex and gender over individuals’ own identities.
The multiple contradictions in recent bureaucratic definitions of
‘transgender’ in India have material impacts on Hijras’ and other trans
peoples’ everyday lives, affecting their interactions with the state and their
entitlement to state welfare. Since Independence, the Indian state has
implemented affirmative action policies known as ‘reservations’ or ara-
kshan in parliamentary representation, education and employment for
marginalised communities, generally on the basis of caste. For at least the
last two decades, Hijras have called for similar government measures to
redress the social disadvantage of the community. In 1997, for instance,
Hijras demanded that ‘government recognise our plight by providing
us with ration cards and a place to stay’.55 In 2014, the NALSA ruling
‘direct[ed] the Centre and the State Governments to take steps to treat
them [‘transgenders’] as socially and educationally backward classes of
citizens and extend all kinds of reservation in cases of admission in
educational institutions and for public appointments’.56 This call for
reservations was widely interpreted as a proposal for trans people to be
53
Nirangal et al., ‘Transgender Persons Bill 2016’.
54
‘Editorial: Where the Transgender Bill Fails’, Economic and Political Weekly 53, no. 35
(2018): www.epw.in/journal/2018/35/editorials/where transgender bill fails.html; Sanyukta
Dharmadhikari and Sharanya Gopinathan, ‘“Equal to Killing Us”: Why India’s
Transgender Community is Rejecting the Trans Bill’, The News Minute, 18 December
2018, www.thenewsminute.com/article/equal killing us why indias transgender commu
nity rejecting trans bill 93579 (accessed 19 December 2018); Shreya Ila Anasuya, ‘Why
the Transgender Community is Angry Over a Bill Meant to Protect Their Rights’, The Wire,
19 December 2018, www.thewire.in/lgbtqia/why the transgender community is angry ove
r a bill meant to protect their rights (accessed 19 December 2018).
55
Sandeep Bhatnagar, ‘Living in the Twilight Zone’, Times of India, 4 March 1997, A5.
56
Supreme Court, NALSA vs. Union of India, 109 10.
268 Postscript
defined as one of the ‘Other Backward Classes’, a designation for socially

disadvantaged communities that is usually caste-based.57 A number of
state governments, notably Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, have
introduced specific welfare programmes for ‘transgenders’, including pen-
sions, housing schemes, financial assistance and educational scholarships
and loans.58 While Hijras’ access to welfare and affirmative action is highly
uneven in practice, a number of Indian states now define Hijras as margin-
alised peoples whose discrimination needs to be redressed.59 Thus, some
state governments are attempting to assimilate Hijras into ‘mainstream
society’. As we have seen throughout this book, neither the colonial gov-
ernment nor middle-class Indians were interested in ‘reforming’ or ‘civilis-
ing’ Hijras in the nineteenth century. In the last decade, however, state
government welfare measures have aimed to bring transgender people
‘back [in]to the mainstream of the society’.60 While welfare programmes
are essential to remedying discrimination, underlying some of these pro-
jects is an agenda of assimilation that endeavours to ‘rehabilitate’ transgen-
der people according to dominant social and gender norms.61
Moreover, state welfare measures have in some cases been intertwined
with the renewed criminalisation of Hijras and the view that they are ungo-
vernable people. For instance, the TPPR Bill criminalises Hijras, while
ostensibly aiming to ‘protect’ them. Most notably, the 2018 TPPR legisla-
tion provided that ‘whoever compels or entices a transgender person to
indulge in the act of begging’ could be imprisoned for between six months
and two years, effectively criminalising Hijra badhai.62 The 2016 version also
57
Dutta, ‘Contradictory Tendencies’, 234 6.
58
Zubeda Hamid, ‘TN’s Transgender Welfare Board in Limbo’, The Hindu, 15 October
2015, www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/transgender welfare board in limbo/arti
cle7764631.ece (accessed 15 December 2016); Apoorva Mandhani, ‘Transgender
Welfare Boards, 24x7 Helpline, Monthly Pension, Self Employment Grants: Kerala
Govt. Releases Historic Transgender Policy’, LiveLaw.In, 14 November 2015, www.liv
elaw.in/transgender welfare boards 24x7 helpline monthly pension self employment g
rants kerala govt releases historic transgender policy/ (accessed 15 December 2016);
‘Karnataka: Different Welfare Schemes to be Launched for Transgenders’, The Hindu,
18 March 2015, www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/different welfare scheme
s to be launched for transgenders/article7007511.ece (accessed 15 December 2016).
59
Nirangal et al., ‘Transgender Persons Bill 2016’; Jahnavi Reddy, ‘Why Akkai
Padmashali, Face of Trans Welfare in K’taka, is Forced to Crowdfund a House’, The
News Minute, 6 April 2018, www.thenewsminute.com/article/why akkai padmashali fa
ce trans welfare k taka forced crowdfund house 79120 (accessed 10 July 2018).
60
‘Different Welfare Schemes’.
61
Ajita Banerjie, ‘How the Transgender Bill Discriminates Against the Very People it
Claims to Protect’, Caravan Magazine, 18 August 2016, www.caravanmagazine.in/van
tage/transgender bill discriminates people claims protect (accessed 15 December
2016).
62
The 2018 Bill did not include reservations in education or employment. Dharmadhikari
and Gopinathan, ‘“Equal to Killing Us”’; Anasuya, ‘Why the Transgender Community
is Angry’.
Postscript 269
made it an offence to separate a transgender person (regardless of age) from

their ‘parents or immediate families’, but did not recognise Hijra kinship and
discipleship relationships, meaning that Hijra initiation could be policed
through the prosecution of gurus and other senior Hijras.63 Whether these
provisions will be passed into law is yet to be seen, but the TPPR Bill is a
reminder that the criminalisation of Hijras, the legal recognition of trans-
gender identity and the provision of welfare measures are not necessarily
conflicting forms of governance. Projects to police, classify and alleviate the
social disadvantage of Hijras all attempt, in varying ways, to contain and
control the social and sexual disorder that Hijras are seen to embody.
In Pakistan, the recognition of non-binary gender categories has also
been intertwined with the mapping and management of gender and
sexual diversity and the state’s imperative to ‘mainstream’ Hijras or
Khwajasaras. A series of Supreme Court rulings between 2009 and
2012 established a number of rights and entitlements for ‘eunuchs’ in
Pakistan including: national ID cards with a distinct identity for
‘eunuchs’; inclusion on the electoral roll; inheritance from biological
relatives; the right to adopt any profession; jobs provided by government;
free healthcare and education; and protection from harassment by
police.64 Paralleling developments in India, the decisions of the
Pakistan Supreme Court medicalised Khwajasaras as people suffering
from a gender disorder and stipulated that an unspecified medical test
should prove eunuch-hood.65 However, in May 2018, following consul-
tations with transgender representatives from all provinces, the Pakistan
Parliament passed a Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act,
which legalised self-determination of gender identity on official docu-
ments. Trans people can identify as male Khwajasara, female
Khwajasara, and khunsa-e-mushkil (a person with indeterminate genitals).
The 2018 Act also prohibits discrimination in schools, workplaces, hos-
pitals and other spaces; enshrines the right to vote, run for office and
inherit property (according to self-identified gender); and obliges govern-
ment to establish transgender ‘Protection Centres’. Though penalties for
discrimination are not included in the Act, activists generally welcomed it
63
Nirangal et al., ‘Transgender Persons Bill 2016’; Dutta, ‘Gatekeeping Transgender’.
64
International Commission of Jurists, Khaki v. Rawalpindi, Supreme Court of Pakistan (12
December 2009), www.icj.org/sogicasebook/khaki v rawalpindi supreme court of paki
stan 12 december 2009/ (accessed 23 December 2016); Qamar Zaman, ‘Ensuring
Equality: Transgenders Equal Citizens of Pakistan, Rules SC’, The Express Tribune, 26
September 2012, http://tribune.com.pk/story/442516/ensuring equality transgenders e
qual citizens of pakistan rules sc/ (accessed 23 December 2016).
65
Khan, ‘What is in a Name?’, 229 30, 233 4, 238; Faris A. Khan, ‘Khwaja Sira Activism:
The Politics of Gender Ambiguity in Pakistan’, Transgender Studies Quarterly 3, no. 1 2
(2016): 159.
270 Postscript
as a significant advance in transgender rights. However, it is too soon to

say how – and if – the 2018 Act will be enforced.66
Moreover, in Pakistan, as in India, the recognition of Khwajasara rights
has often involved an agenda of assimilation. The Pakistani judiciary and
government have sought to ‘mainstream’ Khwajasaras and make them
‘decent’ citizens. Consequently, for Khwajasara activists, their identity
hinges on their ‘respectability’.67 For instance, patriarchal legal and social
structures have pushed Khwajasaras towards maleness in their interac-
tions with the state. The Supreme Court rulings recognised the right of
‘eunuchs’ to inherit property from biological relatives, but ignored
Khwajasara patterns of inheritance and succession, meaning that the
biological relatives of deceased gurus have claims on their property. This
ruling, along with the provision under Sharia-based law of two shares of
inherited property to male offspring (as opposed to one share for female
offspring), has motivated most Khwajasaras to choose the male
Khwajasara category.68 Moreover, the Supreme Court has directed cen-
tral and provincial governments to prepare Khwajasara for ‘respectable
regular employment’ to bring them into the mainstream of society.69
The recent recognition of Hijra and Khwajasara rights has been interlaced
with efforts to assimilate them into the dominant social and sexual order
in both Pakistan and India.
Thus, Hijras continue to be constructed as ungovernable people in
discourses and practices of governance in South Asia. The echoes
between the colonial and postcolonial regulation of the Hijra community
illustrate that modern governments are acutely concerned with non-nor-
mative forms of gender and sexuality that are viewed not only as immoral,
but also as ungovernable. Modern states in South Asia have been heavily
invested in the regulation of intimate lives, sexual practices and gender
expression as a part of broader projects to manage populations. State
66
Xari Jalil, ‘Pakistan’s Transgender Rights Bill is a Small Step Towards a Big Leap’,
TheWire.In, 18 May 2018, https://thewire.in/lgbtqia/pakistans transgender rights bill is
a small step towards a big leap (accessed 11 September 2018); Nadir Guramani,
‘National Assembly Passes Bill Seeking Protection of Transgender Rights’, Dawn, 8
May 2018, www.dawn.com/news/print/1406400 (accessed 11 September 2018);
Memphis Barker, ‘Once Ostracised, Now Pakistani Transgender People are Running
for Parliament’, Guardian, 23 July 2018, www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/23/pakis
tani transgender people office election (accessed 11 September 2018); Shehzad
Yousafzai, ‘A Scant Number of 66 Issued With Trans Cards’, Daily Times, 6
September 2018, https://dailytimes.com.pk/293582/a scant number of 66 issued with
trans cards/(accessed 7 September 2018).
67
Khan, ‘What is in a Name?’, 237; Faris A. Khan, ‘Khwaja Sira: Transgender Activism
and Transnationality in Pakistan’, in South Asia in the World: An Introduction, ed. Susan
Snow Wadley, 179 80, 182 (Armonk: Routledge, 2014).
68
Khan, ‘What is in a Name?’, 232, 235. 69 ICJ, Khaki v. Rawalpindi.
Postscript 271
strategies have shifted and varied over time, ranging from the efforts of the
colonial government in north India to ‘gradually exterminate’ the Hijra
community, to more recent attempts to assimilate and mainstream Hijras
through welfare measures. Nevertheless, modern South Asian states have
repeatedly defined Hijras as deviant and disorderly people. And yet,
Hijras remain a visible presence in public space, popular culture, activism
and politics in South Asia. The story of Hijras’ interactions with the state
since the nineteenth century is ultimately a story of material and cultural
survival.
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Index
Aboriginal Australians, 103, 112, 247 bad character legislation, 102, 104
Abu’l Fazl Ibn Mubarak, 159 badhai. See alms collection
affirmative action, 256, 257 Bahuchara Mata, goddess, 146
Agra, 105, 133, 161, 189, 202, 206, 217, Ballia, 191 192
218, 238 Banda, 215, 218
Agra Boys’ Reformatory, 239 Bangalore, 261 263
Agra Jail, 239 Banjaras, 74, 158
agricultural work, 14, 69, 98, 140, 142, Bara Banki, 200, 240
148 150, 163, 175, 214, 215, 220, 249 Bareilly, 96, 211
Ali Buksh. See Government v. Ali Buksh Barton, Rev. John, 239
Aligarh Muslim University, 126 Bashford, Alison, 49
Allahabad, 41, 131, 134, 180, 189, 191, Bayley, E. C., 72, 75
206, 215 Bayly, Christopher, 3, 8, 37
alms collection, 105, 147 begging, 147. See also alms collection
and mobility, 145, 210 at traffic junctions, 261
and resistance, 18, 220 221, 225, Benares, 130 131, 141, 151, 152 153, 174,
253 202, 204, 206, 210
badhai, 1, 14, 21, 62 63, 140, 143, Bengal, 59, 66, 248
145, 269 Bhagatiyas, 185, 192, 215, 235
begging tours, 67 Bhavani, goddess, 69
refusal of alms, 146 147 Bhoorah. See Government v. Ali Buksh
right to collect, 32, 108, 144, 146, 218 Bird, Robert, 39
territories, 21, 144, 155 Birdari, Shankar M., 262
Amson, James, 133, 171, 241 bodily labour. See performance practices
Anagol, Padma, 6 Bombay, 31 33, 177
Andaman Islands, 77, 113, 247 Bombay Presidency, 31 33
Anderson, Clare, 6, 139, 168 Boulton, Ernest (Stella), 60, 178
Annesley, R., 130 131, 170 Bow, Dr J. C., 57, 97
anti joya campaign, 111 112 British soldiers, 54, 77
anti thuggee campaigns, 69, 123 buggery, 52
archival practices. See colonial archives Bulandshahr, 71, 123
Arnold, David, 42 Burill, District Superintendent of
Arondekar, Anjali, 4, 14 15, 119 120, Police, 191
137, 251 Burton, Richard, 77
assimilation, 98, 103, 112, 228,
268, 270 California, 111 112
Australian physicians, 178 camps, 97
Awadh, 24 Cantonment Act, 1864, 53, 177
ayurveda literature, 151, 183 Casper, J. L., 177 178
Azamgarh, 58, 130, 133, 156, 171, castration, 22, 55, 87, 99, 124, 125,
241, 244 130
297
298 Index
castration (cont.) identification of sodomites, 176 181

as reproduction, 100, 106, 113, 227 occupation test, 173
children, 87, 232, 235 236, 237, 238 petitions, 190 192, 193
court cases, 35 36, 162 signs of the suspect eunuch, 169 176
emasculation operation, 130, 151 152, Cocks, H. G., 52
181, 249 Code of Criminal Procedure, 1861,
prevention, 94, 100 102, 107, 125 104 105
censuses, 41, 57, 67, 146, 262 Cohen, Lawrence, 147
Chamars, 150, 235 colonial archives, 135 138, 252
Chatterjee, Indrani, 140, 154 collection practices, 120 131
chaukidars, 121, 127, 142, 158, 198, contested narratives, 131 135
199, 206 credibility, 13, 117, 118
chelas (disciples), 1, 21, 108, 134, 140, 150, Hijra archive, 117 138
151 152, 156, 159 160, 210, 222 224 historical methodology, 13, 119 120
Chevers, Norman, 55, 57, 179, 182 information panics, 27 28, 37 38, 119
child sexual abuse, 45, 75, 76 78, 258 multivocal, 13 15, 117 119, 131 135,
children, 226 249, See also orphanages, 137 138
reformatories record types, 120, 131 135
childhood, 157, 231 232, 243 244 colonial panics. See panics
experiences of removal, 240 246 colonial state, 7, 38 39, 44 45, 94
guardians, 228, 234, 235, 236 237, 239, affective, 28
240, 241, 242 and postcolonialism, 256 257
in Hijra households, 37, 73, 156 157, disaggregated, 15, 16, 67, 195, 225, 252
161, 199 paternal, 230, 243
initiation, 140, 160, 161, 163 patronage politics, 39 40
kidnapping/emasculation, 35 36, 44, Comaroff, John, 16
71 75, 85 87, 101, 128, 132 133, Connell, C. J., 180
160, 227, 232, 235 236, 237, 238 contagion, 93, 231
medical examinations, 238 239 by children, 76, 231, 234, 239, 245
parental rights, 245 language of, 8, 33, 44, 46 50, 63, 71,
reform, 146 147, 228 229, 245, 253 78, 228
removal, 76, 94, 99, 102 103, 108, 109, Contagious Diseases Acts (CDAs), 6, 17,
228, 232, 240 246, 251, 253 54, 79, 123, 169, 177, 193, 205
removal options, 234 235 Council of the Governor General, 73
removals in Australia, 103 Court, Inspector General of Police, 96, 99,
removed children’s stories, 234 240 102, 154, 232, 233 234
sexualisation, 45, 74 79, 90 91, 231, 238 courtesans, 91
surveillance, 92, 228, 234, 235, 236, 239, tawa’if, 81, 84 85
242 243, 245, 253 254 cow protection movement, 248
victims or agents of contamination, criminal tribes, 2, 35, 69 71, 74, 108 109
229 234 Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, 2 3
Chiragh Ali, 86 annual reports, 120, 138, 224 225
Christianity, 34, 40, 239, 240, 241 implementation, 106 109, 167
Chunder, Inspector Bhow, 130 131 parts, 70
Church Missionary Society, 234 petitions, 190 191
citizenship rights, 264 271 postcolonial reiterations, 255
classification, 167 193 proposed new version, 246 247
administrative variations, 169 176 section, 26, 63, 199, 213, 214, 217
ambiguous categories, 168 169, 171, section, 29, 222
174 176, 188 190, 193, 248 249, 252 criminal tribeswomen, 71
and medical expertise, 168 169, criminality, 105 106, 170
176 181, 192, 266, 269 and language of euphemism, 52 53
determining impotence, 181 188 and mobility, 9, 44, 67 71, 74, 78
dress/performance tests, 168, 172, and occupation, 150, 174, 220, 251
173 174, 180, 181, 192 criminal collectives, 95 97
Index 299
dress/performance, 168 elimination projects, 2, 100 109, 251, 264

postcolonial Hijras, 257 264, 268 anti joya campaign, 111 112
proposed special legislation, 95 97 Australian Aborigines, 112
stereotypes, 42, 44, 125, 130 colonial projects, 109 114
surviving criminalisation, 52 53 cultural elimination, 104 106
cross dressing, 123 depopulation numbers issue, 246 249
and sexual perversity, 57, 58 59, 90 dying race discourse, 112 114, 247
and sodomy, 57, 58 61, 105, 172 genocidal, 94 95
attitudes, 45 46, 217 gradual extinction, 93 114, 117, 167,
evasion strategies, 214, 218, 219, 249 226 227
in Britain, 60 61 rationale, 93 94, 95 100, 113 114
prohibition, 104, 105 106, 108, 199, resistance, 52 53
200, 213, 214, 215, 253 special legislation, 95 96, 106 109
ritual contexts, 23, 59, 134, 143 strategies, 12 13, 93, 94 95, 105, 106,
suspect eunuch test, 168, 173 108, 110
theatrical transvestism, 23, 59 60, 128, prevention of castration, 94, 100 102,
143, 171, 215, 249 107, 125
Crozier, Ivan, 178 removal of children, 94, 99, 102 103,
108, 109, 227, 228, 245, 251, 254
dacoits, 68 Elliot, F. E., 171
Daniell, Clairmont, 74, 97, 98 99 Elliot, NWP Secretary, 184
Delhi, 24, 48, 159, 257, 259 Enthoven, R. E., 63, 151
Delhi Sultanate, 81 Etah, 218
dirt and filth, 47, 49 50 Etawah, 58, 160, 162, 232, 235, 236
discipleship lineages, 24, 94, 140, 143 ethnographic photography, 65 67, 173
and slavery, 140, 159 160 ethnography, 30, 40, 66, 144, 181
as political authority, 34, 154 155 ethnology, 19, 21, 23, 30, 40 41, 59, 81,
criminalisation, 9, 71, 269 130, 140, 146, 181, 224
household structure, 152, 155, 210 eunuchs
life histories, 150 155 term, 19 24, 124, 142, 181
medical practice, 151 152 evangelism, 39 40, 230, 241
monastic, 23, 140, 153, 160, 163 Evans, Raymond, 110
other forms of knowledge, 151 152 evasion. See resistance
performance practices, 150
territories, 21, 144 145 famines, 158, 230, 248
disease Farrukhabad, 74, 87, 88, 97, 98, 99
dirt and filth, 46 Fatehpur, 189
language of, 47 49 Featherstone, Lisa, 178
metaphorical, 47 49 female clothing. See cross dressing
miasma v. germ theory, 47 female impersonators, 23
pollution and contagion, 46 50, 71, 78 feminine language, 21
district registers. See registers fertility, 21, 146, 221
diwani (revenue raising rights), 29 Fischer Tiné, Harald, 43
domestic lives, 134, 155 157, 245 Forbes, James, 29 30
domestic space, 219 Forbes, W. A, 59, 76, 123, 244
Douglas, Mary, 49 Forth, Aidan, 97
Drummond, 72 Foucault, Michel, 9 10, 99
Drummond, Edmund, 39 40, 101, 104 frontier violence, 110, 111
Drummond, R., 36, 46, 54, 71, 76, 96, 101, Fuller, C. J., 15
103 104, 162, 233 Furruckabad, 154
East India Company, 10, 24, 28 29, 31 33, gardening state, 97

34, 52, 68 69, 73, 97, 190 gender disorder, 54 61
Edmonstone, G. F., 39, 40 genocide, 94 95, 110
Edwards, R. M., 96 germ theory, 47
300 Index
Ghazipur, 174, 217, 241 Indian middle class. See middle class
Glossaries of Castes and Tribes, 40 Indians
Gorakhpur, 191, 241, 244 Indian Penal Code (IPC), 64, 95, 96, 101,
gosains, 160 125, 186
Government of India, 38, 43, 77, 107, 121, section 377, 3, 10, 52 53, 58, 76, 107,
207, 248, 266 179, 180, 219, 231, 258 260
Government v. Ali Buksh, 1 2, 33 34, 35, Indian Police Act, 1861, 64
38, 42, 46, 50, 55, 97, 152, 154, 157 Indian Rebellion, 1857, 34, 35, 39, 42, 45,
Government v. Munsa, 35, 38, 72 48, 52, 56, 64, 102, 120, 121, 126, 196
governmentality, 99 Indian Reform League, 85, 86, 89, 92, 100
Griffin, L. H., 58 indigenous peoples, 94
gurus, 1, 21, 108, 127, 140, 150 152, 156, informers/approvers, 122
159, 160, 210, 222, 223, 224, 269, 270 inheritance. See succession and inheritance
practices
Hall, Kira, 4, 21 initiation, 222
Hamirpur, 214 and enslavement, 22, 157 160
Harris, John, 15 children, 140, 160, 161, 163
Harvey, Robert, 179 life histories, 157 163
Heath, Deana, 48 intelligence collection
hermaphrodites, xvii, 29 30, 66, 87, by police, 129 131
162 collection practices, 121
Hewett, J.P., 247 credibility, 118, 131
Hijras, 1 elite Indians, 126 127
early encounters with Hijras, 28 30 information panics, 27 28, 37 38, 119,
term, 81, 143 135 138
Hinduism, 57, 146, 150, 261 local intelligence, 120 131, 142,
Hindu Muslim tensions, 248 170, 171
Hindus, 83, 146 sources, 118 119, 122, 138
HIV/AIDS programmes, 265 watch and ward systems, 121, 127, 198,
Hobart, R. T., 128, 130, 136 137, 199, 207, 225
185 186, 201, 211, 213 214, 226 Islam, 52, 57, 81, 86, 126
Home Department, Government of
India, 191 jails. See prisons
homosexuality Jaunpur, 62, 64, 105
in Britain, 53, 61, 182 Johnstone, Dr J. Wilson, 179
term, 51, 52, 128 joyas, 111 112
Hooker, Claire, 49
Hossain, Adnan, 4 Kanjars, 74, 86
Hume, A. O., 58, 162, 232 Kanpur, 206
Hunt, Alan, 28 Karnataka, 262 264
Hyderabad, 262, 263 Karnataka Police Act, 255, 262 264
Hyderabad Eunuchs Act, 1919, 255, Kendall, C. H. B., 246
262, 263 Khan, Murdan Ali, 86, 88, 90, 91
Khan, Shahnaz, 196, 256
Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA), Khan, Syed Ahmad, 86, 90, 92, 126 127,
1956, 259, 260 182, 183
impotence Kheri, 175, 194, 216
and sodomy, 182 183 Khwajasarais, xviii, 23 24, 28, 82, 87, 121,
determining, 181 188 126, 127, 148, 156, 167, 200, 260,
medical expertise, 182, 183, 184, 269 270
186 188, 252 kidnapping, 9, 22, 44, 71 75, 78, 85 87,
Zananas, 181 183, 185 187 101, 128, 132 133, 136, 160, 227, 235
impurity, 49 Kidwai, Saleem, 10
inams (rent free lands), 32, 153 Kirparam, Bhimbhai, 40, 63, 151
Index 301
Koch, Robert, 47 Hijra work, 143

Kolsky, Elizabeth, 16 methodology, 14, 139
religious practices, 145 146
labour, 174, 239, See also performance Lind, F. M., 132 133, 238 239
practices Lindsay, C. R., 62, 102
agricultural work, 14, 69, 98, 140, 142, Lock Hospitals, 54
148 150, 163, 175, 214, 215, 220, 249 Lok Sabha, 266
Hijra labour, 11, 94, 98 99, 111, Low, G. J., 187
149, 251 Lucknow, 48, 84, 151, 187, 188, 221
Hijra occupations, 14, 21, 41, 140, 141, Lumsden, J. J. F., 170, 191, 241
147 148, 163, 214, 215, 249
life histories, 143 150 Madras, 39
Lahiri Choudhury, Dhriti K., 43 Magistrates, 126, 128, 190, 218
Lal, Ruby, 119 powers, 104, 107, 131, 197 198, 209,
land, 110, 114 216, 228, 242, 253
land grants, 32 33, 153 154, 155, 256 Maharashtra, 261, 262
law enforcement, 194 225 Mainpuri, 33, 154, 158, 219, 235
colonial officials, 197 201 Maratha confederacy, 29, 31, 32, 153
criminal tribes, 207 208 marriage practices, 21, 71, 73, 84, 91,
illegal measures, 195, 214 215 98, 155
in homes, 200 wedding performances, 22, 88 89, 144
local policing, 198 208, 252 Martin, S. N., 72, 100, 128, 131 132
mobile eunuchs, 199, 208 213 masculinity, 18, 23, 55, 59, 82, 182, 219
performance practices, 200, 213 221 Mathura, 130, 160, 238
postcolonial practices, 259 260 medical profession, 17, 55, 57, 130,
public space, 200, 213 221 151 152, 205
resistance, 196 197, 208, 222 225 and classification, 168 169, 176 181,
uneven patterns, 18, 195 196, 192, 266, 269
201 208, 224 and colonial knowledge, 29 30
warrants, 108, 199, 200, 219, 224 and prostitution, 177, 193
legislation determining impotence, 168 169,
Cantonment Act, 1863, 177 184, 252
Contagious Diseases Acts (CDAs), 6, 17, early Hijra debates, 29 30
54, 79, 169, 177, 193, 205 examination of children, 238 239
Hyderabad Eunuchs Act, 1919, 255, identification of sodomites, 176 181
262, 263 Meerut, 59, 76, 123, 124, 128, 131, 141,
Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA), 142, 145, 149, 170, 171, 186, 206,
259, 260 232, 237, 238, 244
Indian Penal Code (IPC), 3, 10, 52, 53, Megpunnaism, 74
58, 64, 76, 95, 96, 101, 107, 125, 179, miasma theory, 47
180, 186, 219, 231, 258, 260 microhistory, 139
Indian Police Act, 1861, 64, 262 middle class Indians
Karnataka Police Act, 255, 262 accounts of Hijras, 11, 85 91, 250
Reformatory Schools Act, 1876, 230 as intelligence sources, 126 127
Telangana Eunuchs Act, 263 Hijra sexual practices, 89 91
Transgender Persons (Protection of Hijras and middle class morality, 80 92
Rights) Act, 269 Hijras in public space, 88 89
Transgender Persons (Protection of issues of children, 87, 90 91
Rights) Bill, 266, 268 middle class politics, 11, 82 85
letter writing, 42, 43, 250 pre nineteenth century elite accounts,
liberal reform discourse, 31 32 81 82
life histories, 139 163 respectability, 80, 83, 89
archived life histories, 141 143 slavery issue, 80, 85 87, 91
discipleship lineages, 150 155 women, 83 85
Hijra initiation, 157 migrations. See mobility
302 Index
military cantonments, 87, 97, 177 O’Donovan, Veronica, 21

Mill, John Stuart, 107 obscenity, 48, 61, 62, 65, 66, 105, 212,
Miranda, Deborah A., 111 217, 220
Mirji, Jyotiprakash, 262 occupation. See labour
Mirzapur, 62, 170, 184, 211, 216, 241, 244 old age, 175, 188
missionaries, 34, 39, 111, 205, 239, Oldham, W., 174
240, 241 orphanages, 230, 236
Mobeen, Moulvie Mahommed, 129 Sikandra Orphanage, 230, 234, 237,
mobility, 87, 209, 210 213, 249 239 240
alms collection, 145, 210 Other Backward Classes, 268
and criminality, 9, 44, 67 71, 74, 78 Oudh, 107, 203
and kidnapping, 71 75
and sexual contagion, 71 Padmashali, Akkai, 255
enforcement powers, 199, 207, 209 Pain, Dr, 238
evasion strategies, 18, 208 213, 225 Pakistan, 256, 260, 269 270
pass systems, 70, 108 109, 199, 208, 252 Palmer, G., 142
patterns, 145 Pamment, Claire, 4
permanent migration, 209, 210 Pande, Ishita, 244
policing, 208 213 panics
surveillance, 209 211, 212, 213 1857 rebellion, 34
temporary, 9, 145, 209, 211 212 anxieties about colonial knowledge,
modernity, 83, 86 135 138
Molly houses, 60 court cases, 27 28, 33 38
monastic government, 23, 140, 153, episodes v. structural anxiety, 27 28,
154 155, 160, 163 119, 135, 250
Moradabad, 62, 102, 180, 219 Hijra panic, 7 8, 27 43
moral panics. See panics early encounters with Hijras, 28 30
Morgensen, Scott Lauria, 111 in north India, 27, 33 43
Moses, A. Dirk, 110 in western India, 31 33
Mughal Empire, 81, 159 postcolonial anxieties, 263, 264
mui tsais, 74 role of press, 41 42, 80
Muir, William, 39 40 parental rights, 245
mukhannas, 19, 81 Park, Fredrick (Fanny), 60, 178
Mumbai, 256, 257, 261, 262 pass systems, 70, 108 109, 199, 208, 252
Munsa. See Government v. Munsa patronage politics, 39 40
musicians, 46, 157, 244 Peckham, Robert, 8, 43, 47
Muslim alliance, 126 127 Pelling, Margaret, 49
Muslims, 83, 85, 126, 128, 146 penal colonies, 11, 77, 98, 113, 168, 247
Muttra, 124, 202 People’s Union for Civil Liberties
Muzaffarnagar, 72, 75, 100, 124 125, 127, (PUCL), 259
128, 129, 131, 142, 143, 147, 150, performance practices, xv, xvi, 16, 62, 144,
152, 153, 155, 156, 157 159, 161, See also cross dressing
162, 188, 201, 214, 216 and discipleship lineages, 150
evasion strategies, 218, 219 220
Naik, Nagendra, 258 Hijra work, 14, 16, 17, 65, 140, 143, 215
naming practices, 21, 111, 264 in male clothing, 216 217, 219
National Legal Services Authority law enforcement, 213 221
(NALSA), 264 266, 267 petitions, 217 218
nationalist movements, 231, 248, 261 prohibition, 88, 105 106, 195, 199, 200,
Navalkar, Pramod, 261 213 218, 224, 252
newspapers, 51, 61, 73, 80, 83, 86 89, 90, Pershad, Lalla Badri, 86, 89, 92
92, 257 Persian and Urdu texts, 81 82, 90 91
role in panics, 41 42, 43, 80 petitions, 17, 190 192, 193, 217 218
NGOs, 259, 260, 265 Pinney, Christopher, 66
Nizamat Adalat, 33, 35, 46, 104, 105, 179 The Pioneer, 41, 70, 86, 205
Index 303
Playfair, Dr, 238 public/private spheres, 50, 62, 89,

poetry, 82, 90 91 219 220
police. See also law enforcement regulating, 213 221
1865 investigation of Hijras, 36 urban governance, 63 65
1865 order, 103, 122, 198 Punjab, 38, 58, 69, 70, 81, 98, 107, 144,
coercion, 195, 201, 215, 225 207, 212
ethnological reports, 130 Punjabis, 59
intelligence collection, 121, 126, 128, Puri, Jyoti, 259
129 131
monitoring powers, 199 Queen Empress v. Khairati, 180
policing of eunuchs, 198 201, 206, 253
policing of prostitution, 177 R. v. Boulton and Park, 178
postcolonial campaigns, 260 261, Raghunathrav, 29
262 264 Rai, Mahtab, 88, 90 91, 151, 221
postcolonial practices, 258 264 Raikes, Charles, 34, 35, 154
preventative policing, 259, 260 Ram, 23
ranks, 129 Ramanandi monastic order, 23
reforms, 121, 206 Rammohun Roy, Raja, 32
registers, 131, 198, 204 Rangin Sa’adat Yar Khan, 82
Superintendents, 197 Rawat, Ramnarayan, 150
violence, 124, 258 260 Rawdon Hastings, Francis, xv, 65
Police Commission, 1860, 121 record keeping, 133, 202, 204, 210,
political borders, 67, 209, 210, 211 212 222 225, 249
pollution, 33, 46 50, 61, 78 Reddy, Gayatri, 4, 63
Pomfret, David M., 48 reformatories, 46, 77, 97, 228 229,
postcolonial India, 255 271 232 234, 239
and colonialism, 256 257, 264 Reformatory Schools Act, 1876, 230
anti Hijra campaigns, 260 261 registers, 2, 108, 120, 123, 141, 142, 198,
anti Hijra laws, 255, 257 260, 262 264 251, 252. See also classification
Hijra criminality, 257 264, 268 children, 243
Hijra rights, 256, 258, 264 271 content, 14, 141
policing campaigns, 262 264 deregistration, 169, 175, 185 186,
policing practices, 259 260 190, 249
welfare programmes, 267 269 eunuchs, 101 102, 107, 123, 131, 207
power relations, 197 evasion, 222 225
Preston, Laurence, 4, 29, 32 33, 153 mobility, 70, 209
prisons, 77, 98, 168, 173, 176, 239, 259 numbers, 137, 174, 175, 188 189, 204,
Probyn, W. G., 36 38, 59, 76, 232 212, 248 249
property registers, 108, 141, 148 149, 154, postcolonial, 263
198, 199, 200, 222 225 property registers, 108, 141, 148 149,
prosopography, 139 154, 198, 199, 200, 222 225
prostitution, 77, 133, 252, 259 unregistered people, 200 201
and collection of intelligence, 123 Reid, J. R., 214
and venereal disease, 53, 54, 169, religion, 145 146
177, 181 resistance
child, 74 78 agency and power, 125, 196 197, 235
role of medical profession, 177 alms collection, 220 221, 253
public health campaigns, 46 49, 53, and regulation of public space, 217 221
64, 265 contesting categories, 190 192
public nuisance laws, 64 65, 96, 200, 220, direct and everyday, 196 197
249, 259, 261, 262 evasion strategies, 208 213,
public space, 44, 45, 88 89, 105, 108, 200, 222 225, 253
261. See also performance practices mobility, 18, 208 213, 225, 249
Hjira visibility, 61 67, 78 of children, 235, 243
public order, 8 9, 61 67, 78, 200 performance and dress, 219 220
304 Index
resistance (cont.) slavery, 22 24, 73, 140, 163, 236

petitions, 190 192, 193, 217 218 and initiation, 157 160
postcolonial, 264 265 middle class Indian issue, 80, 85 87, 91
record keeping and domestic Sleeman, William, 74
interventions, 222 225, 249 Smith, O. L., 58, 134, 209
respectability, 17, 80, 83 85, 89, 192, 270 sodomy, 71, 76
rights and cross dressing, 57, 58 61, 105, 172
alms collection, 32, 108, 144, 146, 218 and impotence, 182 183
gender self determination, 264 267 role of medical profession, 176 181, 192
land grants, 32 33, 153, 155, 256 Solvyns, Balthazar, 29, 50, 61 62, 63
parental, 245 South Asia, 101, 255 271
postcolonial, 256, 258, 264 271 sovereignty, 9, 31, 99, 100
robber castes, 70 Spankie, R., 62, 64, 105
robber police, 69 Spedding, Magistrate of Moradabad, 180,
Robertson, C., 130, 170, 174, 184 185, 219 220
203, 206, 215, 217, 226, 241 statistics, 137
Robertson, Commissioner of censuses, 41, 57, 67, 262
Allahabad, 102 Stephen, James Fitzjames, 73,
Rose, H. A., 144, 147, 153, 156 106 107, 230
Russell, R. V., 40, 62 63, 146 stereotypes
and gaps in intelligence, 135 136
Saha, Jonathan, 16 and panics, 37 38, 41
Saharanpur, 124, 212 colonial, 9, 40, 44 45, 73, 79, 117, 161,
sakhi bhav, 23 170, 231
Sakhis, 23, 59, 83, 134, 143, 171, 182, criminal tribes, 69 71
191 193, 200, 215 Indian, 11, 80, 85
Sapte, B., 105, 133 judicial, 33 34, 38
Sarkar, Nilanjan, 81 occupational, 150
sati (widow burning), 32 postcolonial, 257
Scott, James C., 196 Stevenson, Thomas, 178
search warrants, 199, 200, 219, 224 Stoler, Ann Laura, 14, 28, 43, 119
Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers subaltern children, 230
(SVN), 80 Subaltern Studies, 196 197
Sen, Satadru, 6, 229 succession and inheritance practices, 8, 12,
sepoys, 34 50, 103 104, 106, 108, 155, 194,
service communities, 83 222 224, 270. See also discipleship
settler colonies, 12, 13, 93, 109 114, lineages
178 179, 248, 251 surveillance, 17 18, 169, 173, 194 195,
sex workers, 50, 259 202, 218, 222 225
sexuality, 62, 119, 265 and mobility, 209 211, 213
corruption of children, 75 79, 90 91 children, 228, 234, 235, 236, 239,
language of euphemism, 51 242 243, 245, 253 254
sexual disorder, 50 54, 57 59, 89 91 eunuchs, 108 109, 142, 167, 198 199,
Shahjahanpur, 36, 59, 72, 76, 162, 232, 233 200, 203, 208
Sharma, Pandey Bechan, 91 swadeshi campaigns, 248
Shiv Sena, 261
Short, W. A., 55 56, 142 Tambe, Ashwini, 177
Shortt, John, 55 56, 62, 231 Tardieu, Ambroise Auguste, 177
Sikandra Orphanage, 230, 234, 237, tattoos, 173
239 240 tawa’if, 81, 84 85
Simson, R., 101, 129 Taylor, Alfred S., 178
Singh, Hardyal, 144 Telangana Eunuchs Act, 263
Singh, Nurayan, 129, 142, 201 theatrical transvestism, 23, 59 60, 128,
Singha, Radhika, 102 143, 171, 215, 249
Sita, 23 Thomason, James, 39
Index 305
Thorpe, Bill, 110 violence, 110, 111, 124, 201, 225, 247,
thug approvers, 122 259 260
Thuggee and Dacoity (T&D) visual representation, 29, 65 67
Department, 96
thuggees, 69, 74, 97, 123 Waddington, R., 171
Tiernan, Inspector of Police in Gorakhpur, Wagner, Kim, 8, 43
144 145, 244 watch and ward systems, 121, 127, 198,
traffic junctions, 261, 262 199, 207, 225
transgender identity, 8, 264 269 Webster, H. B., 170, 243
Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) welfare programmes, 256, 267 269
Act, 269 widows, 32, 157, 245
Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Wilde, Oscar, 61
Bill, 266 267, 268 Williams, F., 232 233, 237
transgender protection centres, 269 Willock, H. D., 128, 170
travel literature, 28 29 Wilson, Jon, 31
Truganini, 247 Wilson, Kathleen, 10
Tyrwhitt, E., Inspector General of Police, Wolfe, Patrick, 95, 110 111
58, 136, 194, 195, 202 203, 227, 231 women, 28, 32, 98, 149, 205. See also
prostitution
unani medicine, 151, 183 women’s question, 81, 83 85, 91
ungovernability, 8 10, 78, 209, 250, 256 Woodburn, J., 227
United Nations Convention on Genocide, work. See labour
1948, 94 95 Wright, Dr, 55
United Provinces, 246
United States, 110, 111, 247 Young, R. J., 174
unnatural offences, 51 53, 90, 180, 263
Unwin, Judge, 33, 35, 97 zanana (female quarters), 28, 121
urban governance, 63 65 Zananas, 22 23, 58, 126, 128, 136, 171,
183, 191 193, 216
Vanita, Ruth, 10, 82 impotence, 181 183, 185 187
venereal disease, 17, 53, 54, 169, 177, 181 registration, 193, 199, 200, 215, 249

Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India The Hijra, c.1850-1900 by Jessica Hinchy

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Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India The Hijra, c.1850-1900 by Jessica Hinchy

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Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India

Jessica Hinchy is Assistant Professor in History at Nanyang

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Jessica Hinchy is Assistant Professor in History at Nanyang

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Jessica Hinchy is Assistant Professor in History at Nanyang

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

List of Illustrations page ix

Part 1 Solving the ‘Eunuch Problem’ 25

Part 2 Multiple Narratives of Hijra-hood 115

Part 3 Surviving Criminalisation and Elimination 165

9 Saving Children to Eliminate Hijras 226

1 Balthazar Solvyns, ‘Hidjera’, from Les Hindoos, vol. 2 (Paris:

ashraf People of aristocratic or eminent families.

majira Also manjira, a pair of small cymbals.

BL/IOR British Library, India Ofﬁce Records (London)

Figure 1 In his 1808 etching of a ‘Hidjera’, Anglophone Flemish artist

Figure 2 ‘Eunuchs Dancing’, by an anonymous Indian artist from Patna

Figure 3 As these Hijras danced in 1860, the colonial government in

Figure 4 ‘Gurmah, Khunsa, or Hijra, reputed hermaphrodite, Eastern

Figure 5 Khwajasarais were eunuch slaves who were employed in elite

‘habitual sodomites’, beggars, an obscene presence in public space and

length history of the Hijra community. Moreover, the small existing

imperial projects are historically signiﬁcant, this focus risks ignoring

Solving the ‘Eunuch Problem’

The preoccupation with Hijras in the NWP reﬂected several

descent and heterosexual conjugality.31 The Hijra community appeared

population, the improvement of its condition, the increase of its wealth,

and its colonies.38 Moreover, the anti-Hijra campaign was shaped by

colonisers that racialised Indians were incapable of disciplining them-

colonies such as British India, where the colonisers aimed to appropriate

Multiple Narratives of Hijra-hood

archival practices, while also examining ‘cracks’ in the dominant colonial

‘fact-ﬁnding’ for ‘fact-reading’.48 While I endeavor to heed this warning,

Surviving Criminalisation and Elimination

a ‘suspect eunuch’, while feminine gender presentation also signalled

allowed Hijras to undermine and survive the NWP’s scheme of

roughly meaning a ‘passive sodomite’.70 Nonetheless, there were evi-

Hijras’ feminine gender embodiment was expressed through women’s

lineages, Hijras sometimes disparaged Zananas as ‘prostitutes’ in their

Hijras. The Khwajasarai contingents of rulers and nobles were structured

Solving the ‘Eunuch Problem’

While Europeans in India had represented Hijras as an immoral people

of the diwani (revenue raising rights) in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in

physicians privately circulated opinions about Hijras and other people

Hijras and the State in Western India

attempted with elite Indian support.21 The 1829 prohibition of sati

Panic in North India

characterised Hijra discipleship lineages as an alternative political structure

undermine colonial efforts to know and govern the Indian population.

There was a repetitive pattern to this series of criminal cases involving

When faced with uncertain knowledge, colonial administrators shaped

colonial administration and fostered ofﬁcial beliefs of provincial particu-

even included a commentary on the history of homosexuality at the end of

recycling and reinvention of anxious narratives. The repeated rediscovery

The colonial stereotype of the Hijra that solidiﬁed in the mid-nineteenth

knowable, and therefore subjectable to colonial control.2 These efforts

to constraints of space, this chapter particularly compares British India

Pollution and Contagion

colonial accounts. This echoed the language of disgust at the colonised

with and a product of’ sanitation projects.27 The representation of Hijras

Euphemistic vocabularies for discussing ‘unnatural’ sex thus circulated in

explicitly criminalising male homosexual desire in Britain.50