The Revered, the Marginalised, the Hijras

In India, the Hijras are a transgender community who are very religious with strong connections to the Hindu Mother Goddess known as Bahuchara Mataji, the Goddess of fertility. Hijras are neither male nor female but identify as women. However, deepl rooted within history, the Hijra identity is often misunderstood. During Britian’s colonisation of India, the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act caused the Hijras to be disenfranchised from society and gradually ostracised. This chapter looks at the representation of the Hijras in Gujarat using the case study of my award-winning documentary ‘Transindia: The Story of India’s Hijras’ (2015) to discuss observations, experiences and discoveries. This chapter addresses the negative representations in mainstream media, often depicted as ‘villain’ characters, musical dance scenes in Bollywood and typically “men dressed in sarees” which contributes to stereotypes and their marginalisation. Using a practice-based research approach, the chapter draws on cinéma vérité documentary practice techniques including rapport building, filming techniques and framing for authenticity alongside theoretical perspectives on gender performativity and ethnographic filmmaking. The findings demonstrate that observational documentary practices create more accurate representations of hijras due to its form, style and relationship with the subject. The chapter concludes that although these techniques play a crucial role in constructing and deconstructing representation, it highlights the challenges of subjectivity and intersectional complexities.