Presenter
Branagan Lesley - Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies, Hamburg University, Hamburg, GermanyPanel
63 – Gender and Sexual Diversity in South Asia: Cultural Connections in Contemporary Practice, Activism, and AttitudesAbstract
In the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the annual Aravan festival serves as a compelling ritual for the trans women community, affirming their gender identity through a reenactment of a myth from the Mahabharata. In this myth, the deity Krishna transforms into a female form to marry the warrior god Aravan. By aligning themselves with this celestial transformation, transgender participants reclaim the festival as a symbolic space for asserting the sacred legitimacy of their gender identity within both Hindu ritual and broader societal contexts. Seen as akin to goddesses during the two-day festival—an inversion of their everyday marginalization—the festival enables them to articulate desires surrounding beauty, femininity, love, marriage and spiritual devotion. Alongside traditional performative expressions, contemporary notions of identity are iterated in a beauty contest which marks the apex of a transformative process in which participants embody the idealized form of an adored woman. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork including participant observation and video documentation, this paper interprets the ways in which the festival’s many registers elicit specific resonances for trans women, while its themes and practices are concurrently taken up to different ends by other actors, such as NGOs, activists, curious men, the broader public and state agents.
