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Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance across Borders in South Asia by Adnan Hossain, Claire Pamment and Jeff Roy (review)

2024; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 36; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ff.2024.a928336

2151-7371

Dharmakrishna Dharma Leria Mirza,

South Asian Cinema and Culture

Reviewed by: Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance across Borders in South Asiaby Adnan Hossain, Claire Pamment and Jeff Roy Dharmakrishna/Dharma Leria Mirza (bio) Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance across Borders in South Asiaby Adnan Hossain, Claire Pamment, and Jeff Roy. Forms of Drama. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 2022, 189 pp., $81.00 hardcover, $64.80 ebook. There is no experience that can compare to bearing witness to the power of a Hijra or Khwaja Sira demanding her acknowledgement. Yet, as one explores the burgeoning field of South Asian gender, queer, and trans studies, or more specifically Hijraand Khwaja Sirastudies, this power is diminished. We are often relegated to footnotes, short references that collapse our existence and lifeways into the narrow scope of western and contemporary transness. Aiding in this erasure is the minimization of the complex social, spiritual, and artistic traditions that have emerged from our communities. A defining feature of gender diverse communities in South Asia and the diaspora are the long-standing traditions of ceremonial/ritual performance unique to our communities. This practice is often referred to as badhaior vadhai. Hijras/Khwaja Siras are known for our use of dance to conduct ceremonial rites whereby we bestow blessings upon folks via performances that range from technical ceremonial rites to the vulgar and absurd. This ceremonial display, often performed by a combination of Hijra singers, dancers, and instrumentalists, has developed over thousands of years, and has over time incorporated elements of traditional South Asian religious practices and contemporary inspirations. This practice is an established tradition, and its form follows a protocol, often passed down generation to generation from mother Guru(a traditional term for Khwaja-Sira Hijra commune leaders) to chela(disciples of Hijra Gurus). Despite this richness and being conducted for over 2000 years, badhai is often not considered as an art form worthy of scholarly inquiry in performance studies. [End Page 130] In Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance across Borders in South Asia, Adnan Hossain, Clair Pamment, and Jeff Roy foreground this issue pointing to the wider academic disengagement from the study of aesthetic performance, cultural/ritual performance, and embodiment. The study of these types of performances remains marginalized in mainstream performance studies, ethnomusicology, queer/gender studies, anthropology, and colonial studies. Hossain, Pamment, and Roy seek to address this marginalization by centering this inquiry and locating it within the embodied practices of Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans (HKST) communities. The authors attend to the perceived division between performance and the performative, or between "high-art" and" "low-brow" cultural performance. This contrast is magnified in the view of western academics that privilege western forms of ceremony/folk art but disparage the focus on the "exoticized" other. Most western research and analysis of badhai (and HKST practices more widely) fails to take a nuanced approach to understanding the practice as a ritualized performance worth exploring. Hossain, Pamment, and Roy's careful exploration of badhai elucidates the intentionality, protocol, and forms of practice that underlie it. Significantly, through this dynamic they also bring the elements of badhai into a wider contextual analysis that spans (and acknowledges) the complexities of Hijra performance technique and meaning making. Badhaiis one of the foremost works examining our community and the authors' efforts serve not only to create a singular work, but also form a genealogy and archive by which readers interested in HKST studies can begin to learn about important texts and authors in the field. The references alone constitute an important curation that will be useful for many researchers and scholars, as well as those generally interested in our community. Hossain, Pamment, and Roy collaborate in this text, and include three independently authored chapters that take various approaches to the study of HKST performance. They place the work into conversation with the field of HKST studies in an interesting way. Many readers might come to this work from a performance studies background, rather than located in Desi gender/(post) colonial studies. For such readers, missing context may make the text feel like an onslaught of references without a lot of background information, making some parts difficult to follow, even for folks...