Eunuchs, Khwaja Sara or Zankha: They're Also Humans

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 3 April 2025 A few months ago, an Urdu daily carried a poignant piece on its edit page that a 20-something biker met with an accident on his way to Bijnor in UP. He was lying on the road profusely bleeding and no one stopped to attend to him, until a group of eunuchs (Khwaja Sara or Zankha in Urdu) saw him and took him to a nearby hospital. The boy required blood and his blood group was AB negative. One of the eunuchs having the same blood group volunteered to donate his/her blood to save the boy's life, but the relatives, including the parents of the boy, had some reservations regarding a eunuch donating blood to bring their son back from the jaws of certain death. Fortunately, doctors told the relatives and the parents that it would make no difference if their son received blood from a eunuch. The boy got a new lease of life, thanks to a eunuch's noble gesture. Eunuchs pose for photographs before participating in Miss Koovagam, a beauty contests among the Eunuchs at Vilupuram, around 115 kilometers (72 miles) south of Chennai, India, Photo: AP ----- This incident shows our deep-seated prejudice against this ill-fated community as well as ignorance about them that even if one receives the blood from a eunuch, one could be like that! We've Women's International Day and so many useless Days, but society, especially Indian society, is so casual and indifferent to the plight of eunuchs. Until recently, they weren't put in any category in government's directives and census reports. Now they can at least call themselves belonging to the 'other' category. Why do we ill-treat these people and never consider them to be a part of mainstream society? Is it their fault to be born as a eunuch? European societies have a much more tolerant attitude towards eunuchs and they are not socially discriminated against the way we treat them in India. Countries like Sweden and Finland even appoint them as medicos and engineers. Agreed, most of the countries don't include them in their armed forces for obvious reasons, but eunuchs were and are still working in police forces in many advanced countries. Zen masters of Chinese and Japanese martial arts used to be eunuchs. It's ironic that ancient India never looked down upon them. The Indologist Arthur Llewellyn Basham analysed and enumerated the existence of eunuchs with the help of the character of Brihannala, Arjun. It's worthwhile to mention that Arjun had to spend a year in the garb of a eunuch, Brihannala, and he taught dance and music in that role. Never did he feel to be at the receiving end of taunts and jeers. Shikhandi even fought against the Kauravas and was instrumental in Bhishma's death. Alexander had a few eunuchs as soldiers in his army. In fact, the notion of the unmanly eunuch in antiquity was reinforced by Orientalist literature, which imagined ancient eunuchs in charge of something akin to a Turkish sultan’s harem. Unable to procreate, the eunuch is paradoxically surrounded by beautiful women, his in-between-ness granting him access to the psychological makeup of both genders. Orientalism drew inspiration from historical accounts written after the Greco-Persian wars, which the Greeks won in 449 BCE. These accounts were written in the shadow of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Near East (including areas such as modern-day Iraq, Iran and Syria), which was followed by the Roman hegemony. Instead of critically evaluating the sources, colonial writers and their readers indulged in a world of fantasy where eunuchs offered a sensualised peek into the “secrets of the harem”. In fact, a deeper look at the historical record reveals that eunuchs often occupied positions of great military power and civil authority. The Greek historian Herodotus also reports that eunuch-bodyguards tried to protect, albeit unsuccessfully, the man on the Persian throne just before Darius the Great took power in 522 BCE (Darius contended that this man was not a real king but an imposter). The historical record also mentions a Persian eunuch being in charge of a garrison at Gaza around 332 BCE. The Egyptian pharaoh Amasis, who reigned in the sixth century BCE, also relied on eunuchs to recover fugitive slaves. Eunuchs appeared in the courts of the Hittites and Assyrians (civilisations in modern-day Turkey and Iraq respectively) from the 13th century BCE. Assyrian kings often appointed eunuchs as provincial governors. The Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad V (who ruled Assyria 824–811 BCE) praised his chief eunuch Mutarris-Ashur as “clever and experienced in battle”. Mutarris-Ashur led the Assyrian army on a military campaign to the Nairi lands in the Armenian Highlands. Jesus mentions "eunuchs" in Matthew 19:12, stating that some are born that way, some are made eunuchs by others, and some choose to live as eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. By the way, some eunuch individuals have made significant contributions to Urdu literature, including poetry. For example, Lutfun-Nisa. She wrote under the male-sounding pen name of Imtiyaz, and her poetry is considered a feminine voice in Urdu. There were a couple of Mukhannas (eunuch) Persian poets in the Bijapur Sultanate who also wrote in Dakhani and archaic/early Urdu. Bazafi, a Hindu who embraced Islam and lived in Aurangabad and Ahmednagar circa 1720 CE, wrote poetry in Dakhani, though there's no mention of his name and poetry on the internet. In short, eunuchs are not to be looked down upon. Even calling them nature's freaks is effrontery and insolence. They are also humans. ----- Every year, March 31 is celebrated as the International Transgender Day of Visibility. ... A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/eunuchs-khwaja-sara-zankha-humans/d/135044 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism