Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance across Borders in South Asia

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This is the first full-length book to provide an introduction to badhai performances throughout South Asia, examining their characteristics and relationships to differing contexts in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Badhais repertoires of songs, dances, prayers, and comic repartee are performed by socially marginalised hijra, khwaja sira, and trans communities. They commemorate weddings, births and other celebratory heteronormative events. The form is improvisational and responds to particular contexts, but also moves across borders, including those of nation, religion, genre, and identity. This collaboratively authored book draws from anthropology, theatre and performance studies, music and sound studies, ethnomusicology, queer and transgender studies, and sustained ethnographic fieldwork to examine badhais place-based dynamics, transcultural features, and communications across the hijrascape. This vital study explores the forms changing status and analyses these performances layered, scalar, and sensorial practices, to extend ways of understanding hijra-khwaja sira-trans performance.

Author Bio

Adnan Hossain is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Claire Pamment is Associate Professor of World Theatre and Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, William & Mary, USA. Jeff Roy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Liberal Studies, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, USA.