This thesis explores the construction and use of the hijra figure in fictional literature. It argues that hijras are utilised as both symbols of deviance and central points around which wider anti-sociality circulates. In order to contextualise these characters and offer a deeper understanding of the constructed nature of their representations, this thesis works with four frames of reference. It draws respectively on Hindu mythology (chapter one), the Mughal empire and its use of eunuchs, which the authors of fiction use to extend their representations of hijras (chapter two), British colonialism in India and its ideological frameworks which held gender deviance to be a marker of under-civilisation (chapter three) and the postcolonial period, in which hijras continue to fight for their rights whilst attempting to survive in an increasingly marginal social position (chapter four). Examining the literary material through the lens of these four frameworks shows, historically, the movement of the hijras in the public imaginary away from being symbols of the sacred to symbols of sexuality and charts the concurrent shift in their level of social acceptance. In terms of their literary representations, it is seen that authors draw upon material informed by each of the four frameworks, but never in simple terms. Rather, they work imaginatively but often restrictively to produce an injurious or detrimental image of the hijras, and they apply multiple historical frameworks to the same narratives and individual characters, with the result of marking them as timeless figures of eternal otherness. The image of hijras as sacred beings in Hindu mythology is recast as them being terrifying figures who are liable to curse binary-gendered citizens if their extortionate demands are not met (chapter one). The political prominence of Mughal eunuchs and their position as guardians of sexual boundaries and purity become treasonous political manipulation through the enactment of secret plots, often involving sexual violence, to impact on political events (chapters two and three). The criminalisation of hijras as a means of pushing them out of public visibility becomes naturalised anti-sociality and a shadowy existence at the social margins (chapter three). Finally, in a public environment which has both seen a major increase in campaigns for hijra rights and acceptance, but which has met with fierce opposition, the hijras are overburdened with associations which render them as hyperbolic and ultimately unsustainable figures (chapter four). Ultimately, these constructions facilitate sensationalised storylines set in the criminal underworld. Whilst the thrilling nature of these stories has the potential to capture a readership, this comes at the expense of the hijra characters, who are rendered as inherent criminals, sexual aggressors and wilfully anti-social. Campaigns to protect hijras as a third-gender category, guarantee their legal rights and end their criminalisation for the first time since 1860 have been publicly prominent since 2001; these campaigns are now coming before parliament and formal decisions are expected imminently. Examining understandings of hijras outside of their communities is thus politically timely and necessary for disrupting the cycle of overburdening them as society's gendered scapegoats, contributing to a project of more nuanced understandings necessary for their social integration.

Over the course of history, many cross-cultural efforts have been made to understand better the form and function of male same-sex behaviour. Initial naming exercises evaluated the sexual actions taken, and categorized these behaviours as expressions of crime, sin and disease. Various historical accounts note that it was in fin-de-siècle Germany and England, however, that several concepts were developed for the first time to encapsulate male same-sex behaviour, and to identify the type of men engaging in such conduct, in a more tolerant way. Operating within the taxonomic impulse of the eighteenth century, sexology — the scientific study of sexualities and sexual preferences that were considered to be unusual, rare, or marginalized — spurred the development of these new concepts. In the aim of better understanding humans through scientifically evaluating, quantifying, and labelling their sexual form and function, sexology moved male same-sex behaviour beyond the notions of crime, sin and disease. This thesis argues that the key works of sexologists Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), Károly Mária Kertbeny (1824-1882), Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) and Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) were instrumental to the theoretical endeavour of reclassifying male same-sex behaviour. These four sexologists operated within the parameters of what Foucault calls scientia sexualis: the machinery needed for producing the truth of sex via confessional testimony. Through their own confessional testimony, and testimony collected from other men with same-sex behaviour, Ulrichs, Kertbeny, Ellis and Hirschfeld deemed same-sex behaviour to be a phenomenon based on congenital conditions and one which manifested itself in the form of an inherent sex/gender misalignment. While this behaviour was uncommon, it was not abnormal due to its biological origin. Same-sex behaviour was simply an anomaly of sorts — one specific and rare form of attraction on a spectrum of possibilities. This rationalization of same-sex behaviour differed greatly from the work of other sexologists of the time who evaluated same-sex behaviour to be symptomatic of crime, sin and disease like degeneration theorist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In arguing that same-sex behaviour developed naturally prior to birth, Ulrichs, Kertbeny, Ellis and Hirschfeld empowered men with same-sex behaviour to negotiate new identities for themselves outside of crime, sin and disease. This discursive rebranding of same-sex behaviour is an example of what feminist postructuralism labels as reverse discourse. In order to negotiate new identities for themselves and others with congenital same-sex behaviour, Ulrichs, Kertbeny, Ellis and Hirschfeld developed four specific concepts. These terms are: Urning (1865), homosexualität (1869), sexual inversion (1897), and third sex (1914). While these examples of reverse discourse were operationalized within restrictive conceptualizations of gender expression, they moved away from classifying same-sex behaviour as temporary acts to classifying those engaging in this behaviour as a specific species of people. This transition from sexual act to personage has been elaborated upon most famously by Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 (1978/1990).