Tracing Hijra Ethnicity in Indian Transgender Autobiographies: Revisiting the Erased Hijra Legacy through Trans Self-memory

Abstract

Transgender people in India are categorized under various regional and culturally bound terms. Hijras is one such transgender category indigenous to the religious and cultural history of the land. They are considered ethnic clans because of their self-identification with Hijra legacy. This article critically explicates Indian transgender autobiographies as narrative accounts of the collective experiences of transgender communities, transgressing the borders of self-memory to collective memory and consciousness. Transgenders experiencing trauma from victimization are bereft of agency and autonomy to assert their epistemic value in the discursive process. Heteronormative narrative discourses subvert transgender subjectivity, perpetuating normative modalities that result in epistemic amnesia regarding transgender concerns. Individual transgender autobiographical narratives become the assertion of epistemic agency rooted in trans subjectivity, representing the collective legacy of the hijra clan. Hijra autobiographies are the panacea for the collective amnesia of normative society that obliterates the hijra cultural legacy. The authorial narrative diegesis evidences the replication of customs and rituals of the hijra heritage in modern milieu.