Hijra Quotes

The word Hijra, she said, meant a Body in which a Holy Soul lives.

You taught me to think, and you put ideas in my head. People read to forget. Books don't change the world, ji. You didn't tell me that. You talked of the dignity of the human spirit to a hijra.

Whatever else it may be, the Qur’an is no work of history. Startlingly, were it not for all the commentaries elucidating its mysteries, all the biographies of the Prophet, and all the sprawling collections of hadiths—none of which, in the form we have them, pre-dates the beginning of the third century after the hijra—we would have only the barest reason to associate it with a man named

Khush hotey hain par vasal mein yun mar nahin jaatey, Aaee shab-e hijra ki tamanna mere aagey. [Vasal: union, shab-e hijra : night of separation] The intense desire to die that I had in the night of separation has been fulfilled today by the intense bliss of union.

A bride had been violated on that most sacred of nights. But what about ordinary women on ordinary nights? Or indecent women, perhaps, like sex workers? Or hijras? What happened when less-than-ordinary souls got violated? Why not create a furor then? Why let their pain slide away like rainwater into a gutter?

D’you know why God made Hijras? It was an experiment. He decided to create something, a living creature that is incapable of happiness. So he made us.

Men and even women stared at us and laughed, and heckled us. I realized what a burden a hijra's daily life is. Do people harass those who are men and women when they go outwith their families? Why, a crippled person, a blind person -- even they attract pity and people help them. If someone has experienced physical hurt, they are cared for both by the family and by outsiders who come to know of it. But we -- we are not considered human.

Independence changed everything. Independence changed nothing. Eight years after the British left, we now had free government schools, running water and paved roads. But Jaipur still felt the same to me as it had ten years ago, the first time I stepped foot on its dusty soil. On the way to our first appointment of the morning, Malik and I nearly collided with a man carrying cement bags on his head when a bicycle cut between us. The cyclist, hugging a six-foot ladder under his arm, caused a horse carriage to sideswipe a pig, who ran squealing into a narrow alley. At one point, we stepped aside and waited for a raucous band of hijras to pass. The sari-clad, lipstick-wearing men were singing and dancing in front of a house to bless the birth of a baby boy. So accustomed were we to the odors of the city—cow dung, cooking fires, coconut hair oil, sandalwood incense and urine—that we barely noticed them.

All over the world in many cultures you’ll find gender non-conforming people – those who are traditionally third gender or gender-fluid or even agender. In some of these cultures, they are not only recognized, but also revered and honored, or treated as spiritual beings. In Hawaii, one can find the mahu, those who are biologically male or female, but having a gender identity between or encompassing both masculine and feminine, and whose social role is sacred. Some Native American people are two-spirit, while South Asia has their third gender called the hijra. Other cultures recognizing a third gender are Nigeria (yan daudu) , Samoa (fa’afafine), Thailand (kathoey), Mexico (muxe), and Tonga (fakaleiti). In yet other cultures, it is socially acceptable that some third genders are those who were assigned male, but live and behave as feminine and those who were born assigned female but live and behave as masculine.

Chef Kishen dazzled the table. I, on the other hand, transport people to dazzling places. But I have never been able to cook like him. His touch was precise. As if music. He appraised fruits, vegetables, meats, with astonishment, and grasped them with humility, with reverence, very carefully as if they were the most fragile objects in the world. Before cooking he would ask: Fish, what would you like to become? Basil, where did you lose your heart? Lemon: It is not who you touch, but how you touch. Learn from big elaichi. There, there. Karayla, meri jaan, why are you so prudish? ... Cinnamon was 'hot', cumin 'cold', nutmeg caused good erections. Exactly: 32 kinds of tarkas. 'Garlic is a woman, Kip. Avocado, a man. Coconut, a hijra... Chilies are South American. Coffee, Arabian. "Curry powder" is a British invention. There is no such thing as Indian food, Kip. But there are Indian methods (Punjabi-Kashmiri-Tamil-Goan-Bengali-Hyderabadi). Allow a dialogue between our methods and the ingredients from the rest of the world. Japan, Italy, Afghanistan. Make something new. Channa goes well with artichokes. Rajmah with brie and parsley. Don't get stuck inside nationalities.

To breach, like a shock of improperly dyed hair roped into a braid. To announce, like the glare of marigolds on a hijra. To talk, like foaming gutter water escaping into the open. To disclose, like the driver’s seat hot from a stalling engine

A swath of jihadist groups with alleged ties to al-Qaeda (among them Takfir wal-Hijra, Salafia El Jihadiya, Tawhid wal-Jihad, and Shura Mojahadin) likewise made a comeback

The hijra, or emigration of Mohammed and his followers to Medina in 622, is celebrated as the founding of Islam.

While for some, womanhood, may have been bestowed upon them by birth, it was shoved upon me by society in the most brutish way possible as I was an effeminate boy. I have been conscious of my femininity just as life within my being but social construct did not allow for it. So as I navigated life in my natural and fabulous femininity as a naive boy in the way I spoke, walked, and lived, I was made aware of the woman in me through degrading foul language that parents pass on to their children. This language is used as an assertion of contempt towards effeminate men in Goa, words like: bile, bizuaon huicho, baizon, hijra, chakka, ladies, and fifty-fifty.

The Biblical prophecy and the Muslim prediction each forecasting that the final end times leader will change the laws and the times, is telling. Muslims have their Hijra calendar, based on the career of Muhammad, which has twelve purely lunar months with Friday being its sacred day of prayer and a day for sermons at the mosque. Muslims believe that the Hijra calendar is mandatory for all to observe.

Jews and Hindus have their own calendar, but have never shown any inclination to impose their calendar on others. A Muslim Antichrist will demand that each nation, coming under Islam, must adopt the Hijra calendar. Thus, the Muslim Mahdi will have a reason to do what the Bible says the Antichrist will do—change the times.

The stories in this book are like the hijra’s clap, a call to do darshan, look at all things discovered and invented, question all that makes us uncomfortable, question who decides what a symbol should or should not be, and hopefully make the journey towards joy.

Grateful for their generosity, Muhammad orders the land to be leveled, the graves dug up, and the palm trees cut down for timber to build a modest home. He envisions a courtyard roofed in palm leaves, with living quarters made of wood and mud lining the walls. But this will be more than a home. This converted drying-ground and cemetery will serve as the first masjid, or mosque, of a new kind of community, one so revolutionary that many years later, when Muslim scholars seek to establish a distinctly Islamic calendar, they will begin not with the birth of the Prophet, nor with the onset of Revelation, but with the year Muhammad and his band of Emigrants came to this small federation of villages to start a new society. That year, 622 C.E., will forever be known as Year 1 A.H. (After Hijra); and the oasis that for centuries had been called Yathrib will henceforth be celebrated as Medinat an-Nabi: “The City of the Prophet,” or more simply, Medina. There

The emergence of trans-exclusionary radical feminism [TERF] in the 1970s, with its own version of trans panic, is only one of many trans-misogynistic echoes in recent history. TERFs... didn't invent trans misogyny, nor did they put a particularly novel spin in it...portrayal of trans femininity as violent and depressed could have been lifted from the British denunciation of hijras in the 1870s, or from Nazi propaganda about transvestites in the 1930s... Recent work by historians has cat doubt in his popular TERF beliefs ever were outside a few loud agitators... If anything, TERFs, whether in the 1970s or in their contemporary "gender-critical" guise, are better understood as conventional boosters of statist and racist political institutions... TERFs, like the right-wing evangelicals or white supremacists who agree with them politically, are not the lynchpin to trans misogyny; rather, they are at best one of its latest manifestations.

In India there are the Hijras – a class of intersex and transvestite – knowledge and acceptance of whom dates back centuries. In Thailand the Kathoey is a type of effeminate male who is widely accepted to be neither male nor female. And on the island of Samoa there are fa’afafine, men who live and dress as women.

it is hard to think of a culture in the world that does not include – and allow for – some variety of gender-ambiguity. It is not an invention of late modernity. As we have seen, Ovid wrote of a shifter between the sexes in the story of Tiresias. In India there are the Hijras – a class of intersex and transvestite – knowledge and acceptance of whom dates back centuries. In Thailand the Kathoey is a type of effeminate male who is widely accepted to be neither male nor female. And on the island of Samoa there are fa’afafine, men who live and dress as women.

Sex work was considered a crime, which is why if a rowdy grabbed one of us in the streets, or bundled us into an auto, there was no one to take our side. In fact, from our perspective, there was no difference between a police and a rowdy. They both behaved in a similar way.

Some people have culturally specific gender categories, such as the Two Spirit people in many Native American tribes, the fa’afafine of Samoa, the hijra of India, the sekrata of Madagascar, and the muxes of Mexico. These cultures recognize more than two genders, and often people in these additional gender categories were historically held in high esteem or considered spiritually powerful in some way.