South Asia’s non-binary communities worry about losing their identity

IN MARCH, WHEN Tashnuva Anan Shishir appeared on Bangladeshi television screens, she created history as the country’s first transgender news anchor. A few weeks later a madrassa exclusively for khwaja saras opened in Pakistan. In India “Phirki”, a television show that ran for 225 episodes last year, portrayed in unprecedented detail the lives of hijras.

South Asia has a plethora of terms for people who identify neither as male nor female. Apart from hijra (which is the best known) and khwaja sara (which is mostly used in Pakistan), they include aravani, kinnar, kothi and shiv-shakthi. Many advocacy groups and NGOs favour “transgender”, while governments prefer “third gender”. Estimates of the number of non-binary people in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan run from 500,000 to several million.

Since 2014 all three countries have recognised third gender as a legal category. In 2016 a small group of Muslim clerics in Pakistan set a precedent by ruling that hijras can marry and be buried with other Muslims. By 2019 India and Pakistan had both passed transgender protection acts. Bangladesh...