India’s Eunuchs Get Enfranchised

Nov. 30 -- At 23, Pummy Sharma deserted his young wife, parents and siblings and ran away from his New Delhi home to a life of ill-repute.

Sharma was tired of leading a double life — working in his brother’s garment factory by day and performing female roles in traditional mythological plays at night.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” he told ABCNEWS.com in a telephone interview from New Delhi. “I wanted to be a part of the hijra family. I had an attraction to men. I wanted to celebrate my sexuality.”

But the life he ran to, was far from celebratory. Re-christened “Pooja,” Sharma joined a “house” of hijras, a group India’s English language press calls eunuchs but which includes males born with deformed genitalia, hermaphrodites, eunuchs and homosexual cross-dressers.

A highly secretive sub-culture, hijras have existed on the fringes of Indian society since ancient times, but there are varying estimates of the number of hijras in India. Unofficial figures range from 500,000 to 2 million.

Considering themselves neither men nor women, members of this so-called “third sex” generally adopt feminine names and dress and are traditionally referred to as “she.”

Faced with lives of isolation, poverty and public ridicule, hijras often resort to prostitution for economic survival.

But this week, history was made when the people of Gorakhpur, a town in northern India, elected a hijra to the post of mayor of the town.

Asha Devi, an independent candidate, won the election by a decisive majority — she polled 1,09,849 out of a total 2,31,240 votes — a blow to the major parties.

Devi’s election victory is not the first in the hijra community. Earlier this year, another independent candidate Shabnam Mausi — or “aunt” Shabnam — was elected to the legislative assembly in a neighboring state.

Many observers believe the new trend of electing civic-minded hijras into public office is the beginning of a new chapter of enfranchisement in the history of India’s eunuchs.