Hijra are members of a longstanding gender-diverse community in South Asia whose identity sits outside the male-female binary. Found primarily in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, hijra have occupied a recognized cultural niche for centuries, with roles in blessing ceremonies, spiritual practices, and kinship networks that predate colonial rule. The community includes people assigned male at birth who identify as feminine, intersex, or as a distinct third gender, though the boundaries of the category vary by region and individual. Despite recent legal gains, the daily reality for most hijra remains shaped by economic exclusion, healthcare barriers, and social stigma that formal recognition has only begun to address.
The Gharana System and Chosen Kinship
One of the most distinctive features of hijra life is the gharana, a hierarchical household and lineage system that functions as an alternative family. Because many hijra are rejected by or leave their birth families, the gharana fills that gap with a structured network of relationships built around a guru (elder or teacher) and chelas (disciples or students). The guru-chela bond carries real obligations: the guru provides shelter, livelihood connections, and social standing, while the chela contributes economically and defers to the guru’s authority. These arrangements are organized, with rights granted to community members and lineage passed down through lines of discipleship rather than biology.
The gharana system is multi-layered and extends well beyond a single household. Broader networks link individual households into regional lineages, and belonging to a particular gharana carries social weight within the community. Seniority and power flow through these lineage ties, creating a governance structure that regulates everything from territory for earning to dispute resolution. The system has persisted largely through oral tradition, with rules and histories transmitted by word of mouth rather than written codes.1South India Journal of Social Sciences. Navigating Kinship and Discipleship: The Gharana System in Laxminarayan Tripathi’s Narrative Me Hijra, Me Laxmi For many hijra, the gharana is not a substitute for family but is their actual family, complete with affection, loyalty, internal politics, and generational continuity.
Farsi Chant and the Language of Belonging
Across parts of South Asia, hijra and related communities such as Pakistan’s Khawaja Sira use a distinctive speech practice often called Farsi Chant, Hijra Farsi, or Koti Farsi. Outside observers frequently describe it as a “secret language,” but that framing is too narrow. While the language does function to communicate privately in public settings, it also serves as a marker of identity, a vehicle for transmitting community knowledge, and a tool for managing risk in hostile environments.
Research on Khawaja Sira language practices in Pakistan argues that treating Farsi Chant as merely an exotic code misses its deeper social function. The language sustains belonging within the community, helps members navigate vulnerability in interactions with outsiders, and carries cultural memory forward across generations. It is less a cipher and more a socially embedded practice woven into how community members relate to each other and protect themselves.2Qlantic Journal of Social Sciences. Speaking Identity: The Role of Farsi Chant in Identity Construction and Community Belonging Among Pakistan’s Khawaja Sira Reducing it to a vocabulary list, as popular media sometimes does, strips away the relational fabric that gives the language its meaning.
Legal Recognition in India
India’s legal landscape for hijra shifted dramatically in 2014 when the Supreme Court delivered the NALSA v. Union of India judgment. The ruling legally recognized transgender individuals as a “third gender” and affirmed their rights to equality, dignity, freedom of expression, and protection from discrimination under the Constitution. It also directed the central and state governments to take concrete steps toward social and economic uplift, including reservations in education and employment, access to healthcare, and legal protections against discrimination.3Minnesota Journal of Business Law and Entrepreneurship. Socio-Legal Impact of the NALSA Judgment on the Third Gender Community
The NALSA decision and the subsequent Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, passed by the Lok Sabha in 2016, kept questions of gender identity and citizenship at the forefront of Indian legal discourse.4Feminist Review. Transgender Identity, Sexual versus Gender ‘Rights’ and the Tools of the Indian State The bill was revised and finally enacted in 2019, covering constitutional rights, gender identity recognition, and non-discrimination provisions across family, workplace, education, and healthcare settings. However, critics within the transgender community have pointed out that the Act discusses legal rights in isolation from actual structural support and lacks the implementation guidelines needed to make those rights real in practice.5PubMed Central. ‘Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act’ of India: An Analysis of Substantive Access to Rights of a Transgender Community The gap between what the law promises and what hijra experience on the ground remains wide.
Legal Recognition in Pakistan and Bangladesh
Pakistan and Bangladesh have followed broadly similar trajectories of formal recognition coupled with limited material change. Pakistan passed its own Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, but a critical review of the legal landscape finds that recent legislative changes have done little to address centuries of legal and social violence against Khawaja Sira and hijra communities.6Sociology Compass. Gender Diversity and the Law in Pakistan: A Critical Review of Criminalization and Social Exclusion of Khawaja Sira/Hijra/Gender X The laws exist on paper, but enforcement is inconsistent and social attitudes lag far behind the statutes.
Bangladesh granted legal recognition to hijra as a third gender in 2013, and the government has taken steps to promote integration. These include tax incentives for businesses that employ third-gender individuals, identity cards, scholarships for hijra students, and training programs aimed at economic self-sufficiency.7Heliyon. Social exclusion and socio-economic condition of the third-gender population (Hijra) in Bangladesh: A systematic review A government initiative called the Livelihood Development Program for the Hijra Community provides education, vocational training, and social security for elderly hijra members.8Heliyon. Impact of legal recognition on the lives of the third gender: A study in Khulna district of Bangladesh
Yet research on the ground tells a more sobering story. A study in Bangladesh’s Khulna district found that while legal recognition has had some positive effects on social visibility, it has not actually changed the economic situation of most hijra.9PubMed Central. Impact of legal recognition on the lives of the third gender: A study in Khulna district of Bangladesh The pattern across all three countries is consistent: formal recognition establishes a legal floor, but without sustained implementation, funding, and shifts in public attitudes, the law alone does not deliver equality.
Social Exclusion and Family Rejection
For many hijra, exclusion begins at home. Children who display gender non-conformity face bullying from classmates and neglect from teachers, leading many to drop out before finishing primary school. Some hijra leave their birth families voluntarily to escape ongoing stigma; others are pushed out by relatives who object to their identity. This early severance from family and formal education creates cascading disadvantages. Without educational credentials, hijra are largely shut out of the formal labor market and are more likely to end up living in informal settlements.10Heliyon. Discrimination and social exclusion of third-gender population (Hijra) in Bangladesh: A brief review
This is where the gharana system’s importance becomes clearest. When mainstream society and natal families fail hijra, the guru-chela household offers an alternative path to shelter, income, and social identity. But the reliance on the gharana also concentrates power in the hands of gurus and can limit individual autonomy. The system is simultaneously a lifeline and a structure that reflects the constrained choices available to a deeply marginalized group.
Traditional livelihoods reinforce this marginality. Hijra have historically earned money through badhai, the practice of singing and dancing at births and weddings in exchange for payment. Others work as sex workers, beg, or collect tolls in markets and at traffic intersections. While these occupations are culturally legible within South Asian societies, they offer little economic security and carry their own risks of exploitation and violence.
Healthcare Barriers
Getting competent, respectful medical care is a persistent struggle for hijra across the region. A study in Bangladesh found that over half of hijra respondents faced at least one of four major barriers when trying to access healthcare: harassment by providers, discrimination by providers, financial difficulties, and lack of appropriate facilities. Of these, discrimination by healthcare staff was the single most significant barrier, followed by harassment and infrastructure gaps.11PLOS One. Structural equation modeling for exploring the barriers to accessing healthcare among hijra in Bangladesh
Qualitative research in Rajshahi, Bangladesh, paints a vivid picture of what these barriers look like in practice. Public hospitals provide only male- and female-designated facilities with no separate arrangements for hijra patients. Many hijra reported verbal harassment from staff, being blamed for their own illnesses, and receiving unequal treatment. Healthcare providers themselves often lacked basic awareness of hijra identity and culture, making clinical encounters alienating or even hostile.12INTERDISIPLIN: Journal of Qualitative and Quantitative Research. Experiences and Challenges of Hijra (Transgender) People in Accessing Healthcare Services: A Qualitative Study in Rajshahi City Corporation
A broader study in India developed a multidimensional healthcare access index for hijra, kothi, and transgender individuals and found that access varied sharply by education level and gender identity. Hijra with no formal education had the worst healthcare access scores.13PubMed Central. MAHI: A multidimensional access to healthcare index for hijra, kothi, and transgender individuals The finding underscores how early educational exclusion compounds later health disadvantage. When you leave school at age ten because of bullying, you are not only locked out of formal employment decades later but also less equipped to navigate complex healthcare systems.
HIV Prevention and Public Health
Hijra have received particular attention from public health programs because of their elevated vulnerability to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. In Pakistan, research has highlighted that the communal living arrangements and wider sexual networks characteristic of hijra life give the community a potentially central role in the country’s HIV epidemic, making targeted outreach essential.14PubMed. Correlates and prevalence of HIV and sexually transmitted infections among Hijras (male transgenders) in Pakistan
India’s National AIDS Control Program has run targeted interventions among hijra and transgender populations, and evidence suggests these programs work when properly resourced. A study using India’s national surveillance data found that hijra and transgender participants who received condoms from peer educators or outreach workers were roughly 74 percent more likely to use a condom during their last sexual encounter compared to those who did not receive condoms through the program. Consistent condom use over the previous month also rose among program recipients.15PubMed. Effectiveness of targeted intervention program under the national AIDS control program among Hijra and transgender population: Evidence from Integrated Biological and Behavioral Surveillance, 2014-15 The peer-based model, where community members themselves deliver prevention tools and education, appears to be key to overcoming the distrust that hijra often feel toward mainstream health institutions.
These findings carry practical lessons that extend beyond HIV. Any public health effort targeting hijra populations is more likely to succeed if it works through existing community structures rather than around them. Clinics staffed by or affiliated with hijra peer workers, outreach embedded within gharana networks, and services designed with input from the community itself can bridge the trust gap that makes standard healthcare delivery fall short.
Hijra in Disaster Risk Contexts
An emerging area of research examines how gender-diverse groups, including hijra, experience natural disasters. Global disaster risk frameworks like the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction tend to treat gender as binary, which can render hijra invisible in emergency planning and relief distribution. When disaster strikes, hijra face compounded vulnerabilities: they may be excluded from shelters organized by sex, cut off from government relief programs that require identity documents they do not have, and unable to access medical care in overwhelmed systems that already mistreat them under normal conditions.
Research exploring hijra experiences during disasters in India has argued that global frameworks need to move beyond the male-female binary to account for the specific vulnerabilities and capacities of gender-diverse communities. Hijra are not simply passive victims. Through gharana networks, they possess social infrastructure that can be mobilized for mutual aid. But that capacity goes unrecognized when disaster planners do not even have a category for them.16International Journal of Disaster Risk Science. Re-Gendering the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction: Experiences of Gender Diverse Groups from India and the Philippines The point is not just about inclusion for its own sake but about making emergency response more effective by accounting for how people actually live.
Why Legal Recognition Alone Falls Short
Across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the same pattern recurs: landmark legal recognition followed by disappointingly slow material change. The reasons are interconnected. Laws that grant rights without specifying enforcement mechanisms or budgets leave implementation to local bureaucracies that may lack the will or knowledge to act. Social stigma does not evaporate because a court issues a ruling. And the structural disadvantages that hijra carry, particularly low education levels and exclusion from formal employment, cannot be reversed by a single legislative act.
Bangladesh’s experience is instructive. The government has gone further than most in creating specific programs: tax breaks for employers, vocational training, identity cards, scholarships. Yet field research consistently finds that these programs have not meaningfully shifted the economic reality for most hijra.17PubMed Central. Impact of legal recognition on the lives of the third gender: A study in Khulna district of Bangladesh In India, the 2019 Transgender Persons Act has been criticized for discussing rights without providing the structural support and guidelines needed to make them accessible.18PubMed Central. ‘Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act’ of India: An Analysis of Substantive Access to Rights of a Transgender Community Pakistan’s legal protections remain largely symbolic against a backdrop of entrenched social violence.19Sociology Compass. Gender Diversity and the Law in Pakistan: A Critical Review of Criminalization and Social Exclusion of Khawaja Sira/Hijra/Gender X
Researchers studying these outcomes tend to recommend a combination of awareness campaigns to reduce stigma, vocational training to build financial independence, and enforceable anti-discrimination protections. None of these are novel ideas, and the difficulty lies not in knowing what to do but in sustaining political and social will to do it. The gharana system, community language practices, and peer-based health interventions all demonstrate that hijra communities have their own resilience and organizational capacity. The question is whether the broader society will meet that capacity with genuine structural support or continue offering legal recognition as a substitute for it.