Exploring Resistance, Resilience, and Refusal amongst Khawaja Sara and Hijra Communities in Postcolonial Pakistan

Abstract

Khawaja Sara and Hijra people in Pakistan often experience their subject position within their families of origin as violent and oppressive. This is because of socio-cultural understandings of Khawaja Sara and Hijra (re)produce discourses of normal and abnormal, honor, power and domination that set the stage for violence and physical oppression that marginalize and put Khawaja Sara and Hijra at-risk. But despite all these challenges, their resilience and resistance open up new spaces to express their gender identities and explore their sexuality with a sense of joy, happiness and fulfillment. This research examines the ways in which members of Khawaja Sara and Hijra communities refuse their families of origin and move out from their parental houses to join their families of choice known as guru-cheela houses in Peshawar. Our discussion examines how Khawaja Sara and Hijra develop families of choice after moving away from their parental houses, moves that offer spaces to breathe within precarious lives. Drawing on Ahmed’s (2010) concept of the ‘promise of happiness’ we analyze how, in these families of choice, Khawaja Sara and Hijra are able to find spaces to breathe, and to negotiate and enact their preferred gender and sexualities in ways that demonstrate their resistance and resilience against oppressive and often dangerous heteropatriarchal relations.

Keywords:

• Transgender studies
• families of choice
• queer theory
• postcolonialism

Disclosure statement

We declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

1 Guru-cheela houses is a place where the newly joined members (cheela) live with their senior member (guru) after being displaced from their parental houses in Peshawar.

2 Details on the methodology that informed this story are provided in a later section. At this point it should be noted that the first author of this paper is a Pakistani male, who has extensive policy and practice experience working with Khawaja Sara and Hijra communities.

3 Section-377 states that “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years and liable to fine” (Gupta, 2006; Han and O’Mahoney, 2014; ­Sanders, 2009).

4 The Hudood Ordinance produced by Zia ul Haq a military dictator in 1979 in Pakistan that criminalised Zina (adultery) with the punishment of stoning to death (Khan, 2017).

5 The qualitative research methodology used in this project is approved by the Human Research and Ethics committee (HREC).

6 Pashto is a local language that is spoken in Peshawar city.

7 These are the Pashto language terms that are used for honour and respect.

8 Guru-cheela houses are often known as guru deras in Peshawar. In this article we represent “Dera” as a family of choice that not only provides spaces to Khawaja Sara and Hijra for living, but also as imposing certain rules, regulations, limitations, punishments and rewards.