The year is 1852. It is high noon of British rule in India. The East India Company has a chokehold over Bengal and is creeping up the Gangetic heartland — its mercantile impulses honed sharper by the tacit backing of the crown. The sepoy revolution is five years away.

That year, a Hijra named Bhoorah was found dead, her head nearly severed clean off her body, in the streets of a Mainpuri town. A guru within the intricate discipleship lineage of the Hijra community, Bhoorah lived with her two chelas, Dullah and Mathee. Like many other people from her community, Bhoorah performed and asked for badhai, a congratulatory gift following the birth of a child.

For two years, Bhoorah had lived with her lover, Ali Buksh, but shortly before she was murdered, she left him for another man. On August 17, 1852, Ali Buksh forced Bhoorah to return to him. Neighbours saw the couple arguing in the street before entering their house. Later, Bhoorah’s disciple Dullah ran out into the street, shouting that Ali Buksh had murdered Bhoorah. The Mainpuri Sessions Court, and subsequently the Nizamat Adalat — the highest provincial court at the time — considered two suspects: Ali Buksh and Dullah. In the end, the British judges were convinced that Ali Buksh had killed Bhoorah due to the “severance” of their “infamous connexion”. He was convicted of murder. The case, formally recorded as Government v. Ali Buksh in the erstwhile North Western Province (NWP), appeared, on the surface, settled.

In reality, it was anything but. As Jessica Hinchy noted in Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India, the judges were alarmed at the presence of transgender people, variously describing them as “beggars” and “unnatural prostitutes”, seen as an “opprobrium” and a........

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