The Khwajasara and the Malang: Gender, desire, and the path to God in modern Pakistan

In Pakistan the shared imaginal world of khwajasaras and malangs has been fractured by the divergent ways that each has been taken up in legal and religious discourse within the modern state. Tracing the development of the khwajasara as a secular, transgender subject and the marginalization of the antinomian Sufi malang through efforts to purify Islam, we examine the effects of this evolving public discourse on the persisting imaginal world of Faqiri that is shared by both khwajasaras and malangs. We argue that Faqiri offers articulations of gender and desire (ishq) that remain illegible to hegemonic state discourses while also offering an abundant site for rethinking religiously gendered selves, sexual difference and desire.

Duke Scholars

Author Katherine P. Ewing Cultural Anthropology