Shifting Religious Sacredness to Forced Prostitution. The Deconstruction of Hijras from Without and Within

Antonia Helesic

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Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Ethnology / Cultural Anthropology, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (Institut fü...

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Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Ethnology / Cultural Anthropology, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (Institut für Ethnologie), course: Regionale Ethnologie: Südasien, language: English, abstract: In this paper, I want to explore why and how Hijras are driven from their existence as religious sacred beings to sex-workers and how this leads to even more stigmatizing and exclusion, as well as a loss of agency to escape this mechanism. In the first chapter, I explain what a Hijra is and show that defining Hijras is difficult due to their diverse (self-)perceptions. Furthermore, I give more information on the way Hijras live in communities, and their religious meaning and practices. The second chapter elaborates on their exclusion from social, cultural and economic life and health care systems. The third chapter explains how this exclusion forces many Hijras into prostitution and how this affects their image and (mental) health on the one hand, and how this leads them into a vicious circle of stigmatization on the other hand, in which they have no agency. The conclusion summarizes how all this comes together to deconstruct Hijras from within and without. Most of this paper will be based on Nanda's work since she was one of the first to research and write about this topic. Her work is thorough and much of newer literature regarding this topic is based on Nanda's work. This also makes it difficult to find literature that offers new information, and monographies on social exclusion and the health of Hijras are yet to be written. The social exclusion and its effects on Hijras still seem an important topic to me. Therefore, I decided to face the challenge and work with many shorter scientific articles and bring their content into a context with Nanda's and similar work.