A Blessing With the Power to Turn Into a Curse

Hijras form a recognised third gender community across South Asia, understood within Hindu and Muslim popular tradition alike to hold a particular ritual power to bless, especially at births and weddings, an appearance known as badhai in which hijras sing, dance and confer blessings on a household in exchange for gifts or payment. The same tradition holds that a hijra denied proper payment or respect can withdraw that blessing or actively curse a household instead, which gives the community a form of social leverage that has helped sustain its economic role across many centuries even as hijras have often faced serious marginalisation in other areas of life.

Nanda's and Reddy's ethnographic studies both describe hijra communities as organised into structured households called gharana, each led by a guru who trains and takes responsibility for a group of chelas, disciples, a hierarchical social structure that functions as an alternative kinship system for people frequently rejected by their birth families. The badhai appearance follows a recognisable pattern, singing and dancing performed at the threshold of a household rather than inside it, a boundary position that mirrors the community's wider social standing, present at the most significant family occasions yet kept at the edge of ordinary domestic life.