Gender Diversity and the Law in Pakistan: A Critical Review of Criminalization and Social Exclusion of Khawaja Sira/Hijra/Gender X

ABSTRACT This review article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine how Khawaja Sira, Hijra, and other gender‐diverse communities in Pakistan navigate law, criminalization, and punishment. While Socio‐Legal Studies and Criminology provides the main framework, it also draws from history, anthropology, public health, and gender studies to illustrate the complexity of gender variance and state regulation in South Asian. Using a Postcolonial approach, this review article makes the case for the urgent need for deeper, critical engagement with Khawaja Sira’s experiences with Law, Criminalization, and Punishment in Pakistan, as the current field remains significantly underdeveloped. Too often, studies replicate harmful stereotypes or reinscribe the very structures of oppression they aim to critique. A sustained gender studies perspective, I argue, is essential to avoid such pitfalls. The literature review maps out the history of colonial violence to criminalize gender diverse identities through law and considers how legal violence continues to function today. Law in Pakistan remains contested, resisted, and reified by the state, lobbyists, and activists. Yet, the criminalization of gender diverse identities persists through social stigma, which continues to permeate society and impacts the everyday lives of Khawaja Sira, Hijras, and other gender diverse folks. The recent changes in laws, such as the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act, have done little to address the centuries of legal and social violence and abuse against them. The article also situates these struggles in Pakistan’s specific context, where religion continues to shape social norms and political debate.