Agency at the Margins: South Asian Gender Diverse Communities Negotiating Religion and Politics

Panel Convenor(s)

• DB

  Daniela Bevilacqua

  Centre for Research in Anthropology, Portugal
• AH

  Adnan Hossain

  University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

Panel Chair(s)

• DB

  Daniela Bevilacqua

  Centre for Research in Anthropology, Portugal

Presenter(s)

• DB

  Daniela Bevilacqua

  Centre for Research in Anthropology, Portugal
• AH

  Adnan Hossain

  University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
• CP

  Claire Pamment

  William & Mary, United States

South Asian and Indonesian cultures share the historical presence of various gender and sexually diverse communities that have played a religious role (and still do) in their societies. Affected by colonialism and its tendency to enact sex/gender binary through criminalisation, these communities suffered discrimination and marginalisation, a legacy that continues to haunt postcolonial South and SouthEast Asia today. This panel, however, will focus mainly on South Asia, a region that has witnessed a recent wave of legal recognition of gender diverse communities either as a  third gender or  as a  distinct sex/gender.  Although the demand for socio-legal recognition and rights provided a platform to demand equality, protection, and inclusion, various political and legal struggles for implementing these rights continue to unfold in the aftermath of these legislative changes. Importantly, these communities continue to remain on the margin of South Asian societies. In the South Asian context where religion and politics interact in complex ways, there is the added risk of these gender/sexually diverse communities becoming appropriated in both conservative and progressive political agendas.

This panel aims to untangle how gender diverse groups, rather than being mere instruments in such political projects, are active agents who negotiate and navigate both religion and politics, either in complicity with authoritarian nationalism or in tacit and at times direct forms of resistance to established ethno-religious and nationalist trends. With ethnographically grounded case studies drawn from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, the panel will unpack these complex entanglements of gender and sexuality with religion and politics, focusing on:

•  agency created at the religious and gender margins,


•  the nationalist politics of religion in relation to gender non-conforming people.

Presentations:

• 11:15 – 13:00 (GMT+7)

  From Hijra to Kinnar: A New Religious Identity for a New Status
  

  Presenter: Daniela Bevilacqua – Centre for Research in Anthropology
• 11:15 – 13:00 (GMT+7)

  A Variety of Islamic Discourses on Hijra Identities in Bangladesh: Community, Contestation and Context
  

  Presenter: Adnan Hossain – University of Glasgow
• 11:15 – 13:00 (GMT+7)

  Trans-Sufi Movements at the Edges of Pakistan's Transgender Rights Act
  

  Presenter: Claire Pamment – William & Mary