Pride and persecution: The rise and fall of Hijra, the world's oldest transgender community

It's early afternoon in a dilapidated two-bedroom house in the old town of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Bengali music crackles out of an old speaker as members of the household practice their dance moves in the narrow street.

Others in the group laugh noisily as they exchange gossip, the sounds and smells of cooking wafting through the air.

Shanta meticulously applies chalk-white foundation to her cheeks and touches up the black eyeliner which frames her dark eyes. It’s a scene of everyday domesticity but Shanta and her friends are not ordinary young women - they are Hijra, born as male but now belonging to a third gender.

There are members of this group across South Asia but in Bangladesh alone there are thought to be between two and three million.

They are the oldest transgender community in the world, with records of their existence dating back to the two ancient Hindu texts of the Kama Sutra and Mahabharata, published in around 400BC.

Historically, the group were revered and occupied an almost mythical place in South Asian society. The Hijra belonged to their own holy caste and held a range of diverse and important ceremonial roles. The Mughal Empire that ruled over the majority of India during the 17th century – and built the Taj Mahal – owed much of their power to their feared Hijra bodyguards.

“In the 19th century Hijras’ forms of work included collecting badhai (congratulatory gifts) and performing, especially in households following births and at the time of weddings, as well as in public,” says Jessica Hinchy, an expert on the community at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The colonial government classified the Hijra as “eunuchs” and they were able to work in a variety of occupations including as farm and domestic labour.

But in recent years the Hijra have lost their status and are living on the outermost fringes of society.  One reason for this is Bangladesh’s increasingly hardline government, led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

In order to pander to rising Islamic fundamentalism and to preserve a fragile ruling coalition which includes Islamist parties, Hasina has turned a blind eye to both bigotry and violence towards the Hijra.

“Part of the reason the situation for Hijras in Bangladesh has deteriorated so precipitously in recent years is the government’s failure to take incidents of violence and discrimination seriously,” says Kyle Knight, a researcher in the LGBT rights programme at Human Rights Watch, which has been monitoring discrimination and abuse of Hijra.

“There has been a failure across the board to properly investigate incidents and protect survivors from further abuse. This signals strongly that those who mistreat Hijras will be able to do so with impunity,” he says.

Ananya Banik has long been the face of the Hijra community, leading its Pride events and producing Bangladesh’s first LGBT magazine, Rainbow, with her close friend Xulhaz Mannon. But in 2016, Xulhaz was hacked to death and eight militants who belong to the radical Islamic group Ansar al-Islam, which has links to al-Qaeda, were recently charged with his murder.

Ansar al-Islam has regularly published hit-lists of ‘enemies of Islam’, many of whom have since been murdered.  Ananya appeared on one such list.

“It is my right, it is my choice and my body,” she says, “but, when I talk about my right, everyone wants to kill me… cursing and beatings are very common.”

She started receiving death threats shortly after the murder of Xulhaz. Her fears were realised when four suspected Islamists arrived at her office – thankfully she was not there.

“They told my employees to tell me to straighten up my act or they would hack me to death,” Ananya says, “everything outside of the binary is not accepted.”

Despite reporting the incident to the authorities, the suspects are still at large and she has received more death threats.

“Religion is always standing with a machete,” she says.

For safety, they usually live in all-Hijra households led by a guru – a community Hijra leader who has some contacts in the local police. When they join the community they take on a new female first name and adopt the surname Hijra.  In return for protection they give the guru a share of their already meagre earnings.

Shanta lives in one such household in Noya Bazar with around 10 others. None of the Hijra have been able to obtain regular employment and instead are forced to support their household through begging and sex work. Around 11am each morning, one member of the household, Oporupa, visits nearby businesses and shops to ask for money.

It is thankless work and few people acknowledge that Oporupa is trying to survive. “People shout at me to get a real job but there are no opportunities for Hijra like us,” she says.

The Hijra are fiercely tribal – while Oporupa says that there is never rivalry within her own household, violence can break out if they try to collect money in an area which is considered to be under the ‘jurisdiction’ of another guru.

For Hijra working in the sex industry in the evenings, like Shanta, safety is a constant worry. Shanta used to work in a garage but lost her job after her identity was exposed. She was refused a job as a cleaner and has now been forced into doing sex work in Dhaka’s tumbledown and anarchic Old Town at night.

She earns around 1700 taka a week from selling her body - about £14. “My security concern is massive, I have been chased by cops or druggies with infected blades and syringes many times,” she says. “I have been beaten up quite a few times by the police.”

Conversely, the police also make up a core base of her clientele – as well as members of the Bangladeshi Parliament and its army. She hates the work but says she cannot find any alternative employment due to the stigma she faces for being Hijra.

“I have been forced to do a lot of things I would never do,” she says. “I was sexually abused by a police officer in a van. He asked for oral sex and I asked him to use a condom, but he refused.

“He forced me and said that if I got out of the vehicle then he would ensure I couldn’t work in this area again.”

While the Bangladeshi government has made several recent concessions to the Hijra – such as allowing them to register as third-gender in national elections – members of the community say these are arbitrary and have done nothing to improve their living conditions.

The Hijra have now been removed from a forthcoming bill intended to protect certain groups from discrimination, labelling them as ‘sexually disabled.’ Activists believe this type of language is encouraging violence against the Hijra from religious and conservative groups in Bangladesh.

Joya Sikder, president of Somporker Noya Setu, an NGO campaigning for Hijra rights in Bangladesh, estimates there are around 100,000 working in the Bangladeshi sex industry, an all-time high.  Many are forced into it because they cannot get regular employment.

Discrimination starts at a young age – many Hijra are unable to finish their schooling as they report both physical and verbal abuse from their classmates and school teachers.

Joya left school when she was just 12 after her school teachers beat her for displaying feminine characteristics. And at the age of 14 she left the family home in Chittagong and moved to Dhaka.

She initially found employment in a garment factory but lost the job after her boss discovered her identity as a Hijra. Penniless and on the streets of Dhaka she turned to selling sex to clients in the city’s wealthier neighbourhoods like Gulshan.

“It is a very risky job as you may be harassed by police officers or you may be mugged or raped by men,” she says.

After three years she left sex work, finding employment with an NGO supporting Hijra. Yet, if anything her public role promoting the rights of the community has placed her in even greater danger.

Joya says she regularly receives written death threats in the post and is sometimes even sent shrouds that are used to cover dead bodies as a warning for her activism.

In Old Dhaka the monsoon rain begins to fall. Shanta Hijra is getting ready for another perilous evening on the streets. She may sell her body to Bangladeshi politicians but it is unlikely they will ever help her get out of this work.

“I would like the government to help me get a job that I can do, something like being an assistant in an office,” she says. “I hope for many things but I know in my heart that I am going to have to spend my life doing this.”

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