A Study of Socio-Legal History of Transgenders in India

The community of people known as hijras has existed in India for a long time and is well known tostudents and observers of Indian society. These people are often described in various ways in bothscholarly and popular literature, including eunuchs, transvestites, homosexuals, bisexuals,hermaphrodites, and more. They are also referred to as being intersexed, emasculated, impotent,transgendered, castrated, effeminate, or somehow sexually abnormal or dysfunctional. Within thehijra community, there is a distinction between those who are born with ambiguous genitals andthose who are made such through castration, although other distinctions have been proposed. Arecent anthropological study, with the enticing title of "Neither Man nor Woman," supports the viewthat “hijras may reasonably be described as an institutionalized third gender.”1 Through this paperwe will look into the history of transgenders in India.