Institutionalizing an Ambiguous Category: “Khwaja Sira” Activism, the State, and Sex/Gender Regulation in Pakistan

Between 2009 and 2012, the Pakistani Supreme Court granted rights to a category of gender and sexually nonnormative citizens now commonly known as the khwaja sira (a title given to the chief eunuch of the Mughal seraglio in medieval South Asia). The activities surrounding the Court’s deliberations highlight the term’s complicated journey of being institutionalized for representation, legal, and regulatory purposes. By focusing on the appropriation of “khwaja sira” by activists and the state, this article deepens an understanding of the role of ambiguity in struggles for rights, recognition, and judicial policy-making. Examining the emergence of khwaja sira, I demonstrate that both activist organizations and state entities were involved in the generation of ambiguity. On the one hand, activists engaged in a politics of ambiguity by adopting and deploying the polysemous category “khwaja sira” to not only perpetuate uncertainties regarding the term’s meanings but also to utilize it as a mode of social respectability, national inclusion, and resistance. On the other hand, the actions of state institutions indicate a shift from wanting to eliminate the ambiguity associated with khwaja sira for regulatory purposes to simultaneously permitting its subtle propagation as a means to mitigate the repercussions of adjudicating on a contentious issue. Tracing the emergence and use of “khwaja sira” within social movement and state domains allows me to advance two key arguments: first, that the intentional production of ambiguity serves as a valuable mechanism for activism and governance, and second, that the potentiality of ambiguous constructs lies in their unfinalized form, which produces both fruitful and problematic possibilities as well as an orientation toward an open future.