Epistemological Subversion and Identity Construction through Language: A look at Ulti, a secret transgender language

Abstract (English)

Ulti is a secret language spoken by the transfeminine hijra-koti community in West Bengal, India. It has been developed within hijra gharanas (households) over centuries by hijras who wanted to give voice to their non-normative gender expressions, sexual desires, and non-traditional lifestyles. Gradually, the language was shared with the kotis as well, who are a spectrum of transfeminine persons who are not formally part of any hijra gharana.

This paper discusses the role of language in enabling the hijra-koti community to encode their gender and sexual identity and organise their sociocultural position as a marginalized subculture with an alternative kinship system and rules, customs, and rituals unique to their community. Such languages have existed in South Asia for a few centuries, and are primarily spoken by people who come from lower class, lower caste people living in sub-urban or rural spaces. Thus, they have developed epistemologies of sexuality and gender that predate and resist western queer hegemonic terminology and discourse, even as the community gains exposure to the same and is beginning to accommodate them in their discourse. Thus we have a language developed by the hijra-koti community that functions simultaneously on the principles of subversion and accommodation, giving rise to a conceptual and material universe that thrives in its expression of plurality, ambiguity, and sometimes contradictory subaltern subjectivities.