Rituals of Harm: Castration and Genealogies of Sacred Wound Cultures in the Hijra Communities of India

Existing within hierarchical kinship networks, requiring patronage of gurus, hijras, a 'third' gender community, undergo mandatory apprenticeship to a commune life through a discipleship-lineage system where castration is seen as a necessary truth and final rite of passage to achieve a virtuous hijra identity. This article examines the subjectivities of hijras from working-class backgrounds and narrows its focus to analyse how individual hijras develop an understanding of themselves from their occupied subject positions in the larger hijra community shaped by internal hijra cultural traditions (parampara) manifested through rituals of harm. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork of 10 years in New Delhi and its neighbouring states, this article discusses the genealogies of wound cultures through castration in the hijra community acquired through their experiential and vernacular knowledge systems of self-flagellation as a practice of ethical self-making for their sacred rebirth in a nirvana (a state of freedom from all suffering) body.