Transgenders (Shandha)
The Sanskrit word shandha refers to men who behave like women or whose manhood is completely destroyed (the word shandhi similarly applies to women). This can refer to many types of third-gender people but is perhaps most commonly used to describe those with complete transgender identity. Such people do not identify with their physical sex but instead consider themselves and live their lives as members of the opposite sex. Male-to-female transgenders identify and live as women whereas female-to-male transgenders identify and live as men. They are also sometimes called transvestites or transsexuals and differ from gay males and lesbians in that they do not usually identify as homosexual and are less common.
It is possible that in ancient India, male-to-female transgenders may have sometimes castrated themselves in order to become feminized. More likely, however, since self-mutilation is greatly discouraged in Vedic culture, men of the third sex who identified as women would have tied their genitals up tightly against the groin with a kaupina, a practice that is still common in southern India and also found in various other world cultures. In a similar way, female-to-male transgenders would have strapped their breasts tightly against their torsos. Nowadays, however, such people often undergo hormone treatment and transsexual operations, especially in the West. Vedic culture allowed transgender people of the third sex to live openly according to their gender identity, and this is demonstrated in the Mahabharata story of Arjuna as Brihannala.
Castration was not a common or accepted practice of ancient India, and mutilation of the body is discouraged in Vedic texts and considered to be in the mode of darkness. Its current illegal practice in northern India among the hijra or eunuch class can be attributed to the former centuries of Muslim rule that once encouraged the practice among servants and slaves who were homosexual by nature. In South India, largely spared from Islamic rule and influence, there is a third-gender class similar to the hijra known as the jogappa, but they do not practice castration.
The abused hijra class of modern-day India is the sad result of cruel social policies directed against people of the third sex for almost a thousand years. Rejected by foreign overlords who ridiculed and condemned any form of gender-variant behavior as intrinsically evil and unnatural, these citizens were abandoned as social outcastes. Homosexual and transgender males could join the hijra class by castrating themselves but were otherwise forced to marry women and pretend to live as ordinary men. Unfortunately, this stifling social policy still remains dominant in India today and has become accepted by most modern-day Hindus.
