La La Maternité renversée : le rituel de dūdhpilānā dans la communauté hijrā indienne

Authors

  • Mathieu Boisvert Université du Québec à Montréal

Keywords:

hijrā, kinship, symbolic motherhood, transgender, India

Abstract

The primary goal of this article is to show that the dūdhpilānā (breastfeeding) ritual enables the creation of a symbolic kinship structure within the hijrā community and gives birth not to a daughter, but rather to a mother. Many hijrā rites of passage are appropriation of female rituality that allows women to officialise new kinship structures and, it the case of interest to us, of an inversed maternity, inversed in the sense that the ritual of dūdhpilānā not only allows an older hijrā to officialise her maternal relation with a younger hijrā, but also, and inversely, a younger to officialise her filial relation with an older, as if, within that ritual, the daughter were to give birth to the mother. To this end, it will be necessary to clarify how is simbolically declined, within this non-procreative hijrā community, the Indian kinship structures of māykā(biological family) and sasurāl (inlaws).

Author Biography

Mathieu Boisvert, Université du Québec à Montréal

Mathieu Boisvert has been a professor at l’Université du Québec à Montréal since 1992. He has completed a BA in Religious Studies at McGill University (1981-84), a diploma in Pali language at Siddharth College of Mumbai University (1984-85), master’s in South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto (1985-87) and a Doctorate in Pali and Sanskrit at McGill University (1987-91).

Given his initial training in languages and in ancient South Asian traditions, since his arrival at UQAM’s Department of Religious Studies, Mathieu Boisvert has shown particular interest in the interaction of South Asian religions with political and social spheres. He now works as the director of graduate programs in religious studies at UQAM.

Mathieu Boisvert has led numerous research projects in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal, and Bhutan, focusing on contemporary religious practices such as pilgrimage, asceticism and those of sexual minorities.

He is also one of the founders of GRIMER (Groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire sur le Montréal ethno-religieux), which showcased religion’s role in reconstructing the identities of people immigrating to Quebec. Mathieu Boisvert has worked extensively with Hindu communities of Tamil/Sri Lankan and Indian origins. He also worked with Bhutanese refugees who have lived in Quebec since 2009. Since 1998, Boisvert has headed many academic projects in South Asian territories and notably organized educational student trips spanning multiple weeks. He also founded the short graduate program “Études de terrain en Inde,” a nine-credit program wherein students stay in India for close to one month after having taken two 45-hour seminars in Montreal, one in autumn and the other the spring before departure.

Mathieu Boisvert is the founder of CERIAS.

Published

2023-11-07

How to Cite

Boisvert, M. (2023). La La Maternité renversée : le rituel de dūdhpilānā dans la communauté hijrā indienne. Interdisciplinary Journal on South Asia, 1(1), 72–85. Retrieved from https://edition.uqam.ca/rias/article/view/2028

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