TY - BOOK AU - Hinchy,Jessica. AU - Jessica Hinchy TI - Governing gender and sexuality in colonial India : : the Hijra, c.1850-1900 SN - 9781009010177 U1 - 306.76 HIN PY - 2019/// CY - , Cambridge, United Kingdom PB - : Cambridge University Press KW - Social conditions KW - India Politics and government KW - Transgender people KW - Transgender people Legal status, laws, etc KW - History N1 - The Hijra panic An ungovernable population Hijras and Indian middle class morality The 'gradual extirpation' of the Hijra The Hijra archive Hijra life histories Classifying illegible bodies, contesting colonial categories Policing, evading, surviving Saving children to eliminate Hijras Conclusion Postscript : Hijras and the state in postcolonial South Asia N2 - In 1865, the British rulers of north India resolved to bring about the gradual 'extinction' of transgender Hijras. This book, the first in-depth history of the Hijra community, illuminates the colonial and postcolonial governance of gender and sexuality and the production of colonial knowledge. From the 1850s, colonial officials and middle class Indians increasingly expressed moral outrage at Hijras' feminine gender expression, sexuality, bodies and public performances. To the British, Hijras were an ungovernable population that posed a danger to colonial rule. In 1871, the colonial government passed a law that criminalised Hijras, with the explicit aim of causing Hijras' 'extermination'. But Hijras evaded police, kept on the move, broke the law and kept their cultural traditions alive. Based on extensive archival work in India and the UK, Jessica Hinchy argues that Hijras were criminalised not simply because of imported British norms, but due to a complex set of local factors, including elite Indian attitudes ER -