Hijras, lovers, brothers : surviving sex and poverty in rural India

Vaibhav Saria

Hijras, one of India's third gendered or trans populations, have been an enduring presence in the South Asian imagination--in myth, in ritual, and in everyday life, often associated in stigmatized forms with begging and sex work. In more recent years hijras have seen a degree of political emergence as a moral presence in Indian electoral politics, and with heightened vulnerability within global health terms as a high-risk population caught within the AIDS epidemic.