This essay is concerned with issues arising out of an intersection of several academic debates which have followed more or less independent trajectories in the past, but have now begun to be seen in relation with each other. I attempt a parallel examination of the debates around the sex-gender distinction, the anthropologists' discovery of multiple gender systems, and the gendered dimensions of colonialism in the Indian context. One of the common grounds for these debates is the hijra community of India. I concentrate here on the colonial and anthropological accounts of this community in order to arrive at a meaningful understanding of gender.

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This article attempts to further the argument that caste hierarchies are subject to creative manipulation by those who inhabit the supposedly fixed slots. I provide detailed ethno graphic data on the Bedias of North India, a 'denotified' community which lives off the prostitution of its own women. The engagement in this occupation renders the Bedias very 'low' in general opinion. But the data regarding the beliefs and practices of the Bedias shows that the community redefines the non-marital relations of the women with men belonging to higher-ranking castes through recourse to upper-caste norms of patriliny and hypergamy in order to claim upper-caste origin and affiliation. In doing so the community rejects the social position which the broader society accords it.

This article argues that there is a need to address how policy measures, such as, gendered segregation of space in public transport, reconfigure gender relations in such spaces. On the basis of a small survey, personal observations and blogs published online, it is suggested that new areas of gendered confusions and exclusions in the use of the Delhi Metro are sharply emerging in response to reservation of a coach for women. These confusions and exclusions are giving rise to notions of legitimate and non-legitimate gendering of spaces, which allow men to make new claims on public space. Notions such as these derive from entrenched ideas about overcrowding and differential needs. Such contestations deny women an unambiguous right to the reserved space and also undermine their capacity for negotiating for such rights. It is argued that these are emerging concerns that need to be addressed in a more proactive manner.