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Yet Naqvi and Mujtaba’s desire to protect the ‘humanity’ of the hijras linguistically is not shared by many Indian authors writing in English, who use the masculine gender unyieldingly in reference to the hijras (e.g. Mehta 1945, Mukherjee 1980, Bobb and Patel 1982, Patel 1988) or, at the very best, a ąualified ‘she’ in ąuotation marks (e.g. Sinha 1967, Sethi 1970, Srinivas 1976), often in order to expose what they perceive to be a deviant or unacceptable lifestyle.⁶

These same authors freąuently ąuestion the hijras’ claims to fem-ininity by remarking on the inappropriateness of their vocal presentations. While a number of researchers have commented on the hijras’ ‘high-pitched’ voice (Rao 1955: 521, Mukherjee 1980: