Word.ws English Dictionary

khwaja sira

khwaja sira noun: a member of a traditional transfeminine third gender in Pakistan and India since Mughal times.

Noun

khwaja sira (plural khwaja siras)

  1. A member of a traditional transfeminine third gender in Pakistan and India since Mughal times.
    • That the discussion kept focusing on the sexual behavior of khwaja siras agitated a number of transgender activists, who were uncomfortable that these issues were being discussed in the presence of people who were not khwaja siras. […] Beena's response demonstrates the tendency of khwaja sira...2014 December 18, Susan S Wadley, South Asia in the World: An Introduction: An Introduction, Routledge, →ISBN, pages 182–183
    • Funding that is targeting the Khwaja Sira community ought to go through Khwaja Sira organisations, she says, insisting on being more than a token for international NGOs that have little or no knowledge about the local conditions.2018 June 12, Lena Martinsson, Diana Mulinari, Dreaming Global Change, Doing Local Feminisms: Visions of Feminism. Global North/Global South Encounters, Conversations and Disagreements, Routledge...

Forms of khwaja sira

pluralkhwaja siras

Origin of khwaja sira

Borrowed from Hindustani ख़्वाजा सिरा (xvājā sirā) / خواجہ سرا (xvāja sirā), ultimately partly from Classical Persian. Emphasizing the mismatch between their visible bodies (hazir) and the invisible soul (ruh), they presented the khwaja sira as a feminine soul that was stuck in a masculine body. In presenting this definition of their gender and seeking legitimacy for it, khwaja siras seek to define the distinctiveness of their soul. It is not just any feminine soul but one endowed with certain spiritual qualities.1

Questions about khwaja sira

What does khwaja sira mean?
Khwaja sira means a member of a traditional transfeminine third gender in Pakistan and India since Mughal times.
What part of speech is khwaja sira?
Khwaja sira is a noun.
What is the plural of khwaja sira?
The plural of khwaja sira is khwaja siras.

Words near khwaja sira in the dictionary

  1. Khwae Yai
  2. Khwai
  3. Khwairakpam
  4. Khwairampam
  5. Khwaja
  6. khwaja sira
  7. khwaja siras
  8. Khwajas
  9. Khwarazm
  10. Khwarazmian
  11. Khwarazmians

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: khwaja sira (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “khwaja sira.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/khwaja_sira. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.