Private Story
NIRVAN
“There once was a king who asked a hijra to show him her power.
The hijra clapped her hands three times,
and immediately the door of the king’s palace opened automatically,
without anyone touching it.
Then the king said, “show me your power in some other way”.
By the side of the road, there was a thorny cactus.
The hijra just took the thorn of the cactus and emasculated himself.
The hijra stood there with the blood oozing out and raised his hand with his penis in it.
Then the king realized the power of the hijras”.
—Kamladevi.
Nirvan is a continuously evolving visual ethnography, where the real and the supernatural interconnect to illustrate the extraordinary condition of the hijras of India. Hijras are recognized as a third gender, beyond the male-female binary, and have their own language, traditions, rituals, and codes of conduct. They were assigned male or intersex at birth, but identify as women, and undergo castration through a ritual called Nirvan. Through this ceremony, they acquire the divine power to officiate rituals and make blessings on the fertility of the rest of society. The power of hijras as an ambiguous gender can only be understood within the religious context of Hinduism, and the connection to the deities worshiped therein. Androgyny and the holding of both masculine and feminine power frequently take a significant role in Hindu Mythology. Despite the apparent acceptance society has towards them, due to their connection to Hindu deities, hijras are actually surrounded by an aura of fear. They are the victims of prejudice and are accused of witchcraft. This has forced them into the role of outcasts who live the margins of society.
I draw my inspiration from the sacred texts of Maharabata and from the mythological stories of Hinduism which feature androgynous protagonists Shiva, Krishna, Bauchara Mata, Arjuna or Aravan. I journeyed 5000 miles through India with Swathi, a young trans woman I met at the Hijra Festival of Koovagam in April 2017 with the aim of understanding and reinterpreting the sacred nature of Hijra community. This initiatory journey gives us a glimpse of the popular consciousness of the Hijras by featuring both the community’s religious and social landscapes, as well as day to day life. Through the juxtaposition of medium-format analog photography with digital photographs, archive images, interviews, film, and other documents, I present a multidisciplinary project with the intention of narrating a contemporary story about one of the most ancient transgender identities in India, with an original and unprecedented outlook. Nirvan is a long term body of work initiated in 2016 and that I aim to finish by the end of 2019.
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