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Sulekha considers her own status to be so Iow that she is completely outside the so-cial order, a fact that gives her free rangę to defy the propriety associated with caste and class affiliation through her language use. Several anthropologists report simi-lar observations from hijras in other communities. G. Morris Carstairs, for in-stance, notes that the hijras in the community he studied “had the security ofknow-ing that they had no vestige of dignity or social position to maintain; and their shamelessness madę people reluctant to provoke their obscene retaliation in pub-lic” (1956: 60-61). Likewise, Nanda remarks that the hijras she worked with in South India, “as a group at the lowest end of the Indian social hierarchy, and hav-ing no ordinary social position to maintain within that hierarchy... are ‘freed firom the restraints of decency’ and they know that their shamelessness makes people— not all, but surely most—reluctant to provoke them in a public confrontation” (1990: 51).²⁵ Like the Hausa-speaking Muslim yan daudu studied by Rudolph Gaudio (this volume), who as “men who act like women” are said to be shameless in their employments of sacreligious proverbs, the hijras push their hearers to the ver-bal limit, leaving them with no other choice but to pay the requested alms.

The fear of hijra shamelessness is nicely articulated by the Hindi novelist Shani (1984) in his book Sarę Dukhiya Jamna Par. When describing his frustration with the city of Delhi, the narrator refers to an incident involving hijras, who ar-rive at his door unexpectedly and demand an inam ‘reward’. Although the narrator initially refuses to succumb to the hijras’ requests, their galiyó ki bauchar ‘shower of abuses’ is too much even for him. When they threaten to expose themselves in