Un avertissement de l'intérieur de la dera — Culture desi des khwaja sira
par Khajistan
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Archive Forensics: Part of an Ongoing Series
In Archive Forensics, we pull one object out of Khajistan's archive and read it closely. This week: a two-minute-fifty phone video from the Khwaja Sira Desi Culture collection. Shahana Abbas Shani, a khwaja sira elder in Pakistani Punjab, sits close to the camera and speaks straight into it. No music, no performance. She has an announcement, and she orders that it be spread.
The address is a refusal. An organized group, she says, a mafia seated in Islamabad with a branch in Lahore, is moving dera to dera with an offer of jobs, free medical tests, and registration. She tells her community what to do when it arrives. Give them tea, send them walking, film nothing, and spread this video.
Shahana Abbas Shani is a community office-holder. She is a former president of the Punjab Transgender Association, a founder of the Shemale Association and the Pakistan Khawaja Sira Association, a circus performer of some twelve years, and a victim-support officer at a police protection center. This is guidance from a seat of authority inside the community, addressed to the community, in Punjabi.
The Address
Shahana Abbas Shani · Punjabi with Urdu · 2 min 50 sec. Audio only; faces are withheld across this collection.
Download the audio (mp3, 2 min 50 sec).
Read the full bilingual transcript (Punjabi/Urdu with English, timestamped) — tap to expand or collapse
Transcribed from the recording and checked by hand. Speech is carried as spoken, in the community's own register. Bracketed marks note uncertain readings.
| t | پنجابی / اردو | English |
| 1s | بسم اللہ الرحمٰن الرحیم | In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. |
| 3s | اسلام علیکم | Peace be upon you (Assalamu alaikum). |
| 4s | تمام خواجہ سرا برادری، پیرِ فقیری آ [؟] | To the entire khwaja sira brotherhood -- the faqeeri greeting/salutation |
| 6s | مدد علی، سلام [؟] | Madad Ali, salaam. [traditional faqeer/dervish greeting formula, cf. "Ya Ali Madad" -- exact wording uncertain] |
| 7s | تمام زادیاں مائیں، میں تہاڈی اپنی شہانہ عباس | To all my sisters/daughters -- I am your own Shahana Abbas. |
| 10s | آج ایک بہت تہاڈے واسطے خاص ضروری گل لے کے آئی ہاں | Today I have brought a very special, necessary matter for you all. |
| 13s | تہاڈیاں، ہوشیار باش | All of you -- be alert! (hoshiyar baash) |
| 15s | تہاڈیاں، ایک ٹولہ ہے گا | There is a gang (tola) |
| 17s | جو اسلام آباد بہت بڑا مافیا بیٹھا ہے | which sits as a very big mafia in Islamabad, |
| 20s | تہاڈی شاخ لاہور [؟] | their branch [is in] Lahore |
| 21s | اجے مختلف شہراں دے وچ وی گیا ہے | and it has also spread into various other cities. |
| 23s | انہوں نے ایک بڑی بڑی میٹنگ ہوئی ہے، ایک میٹنگ ہوئی ہے، انہوں نے پہلے | They've held big meetings -- a meeting was held. At first, they... |
| 28s | تو یہ گل پھیل آئی ہوئی سی کہ اسی نوکریاں کرنا چاہنے ہیں، جاب کرنا | ...spread the story that 'we [khwaja siras] want jobs, we want employment.' |
| 32s | چاہنے ہیں، تو انہوں نے سانوں ٹارگٹ بنایا فقیرانوں کہ اک وہ لوگ | So they made us faqeers their target -- [claiming] that those people... |
| 36s | نے جہڑے وی اک مانگ دینے تو مانگواندے وی نئیں، ٹھیک ہے نا [؟] | ...whoever makes a demand/request, [these people] don't even grant it -- right? |
| 41s | تے ساڈے تاں کوئی ایسا سسٹم نئیں ہے، اسی تہانوں بل بنا کے لے کے آنے ہاں [؟] | "You [faqeers] have no such system of your own; we'll bring you [registration/benefits]." [claim being quoted, meaning uncertain] |
| 43s | اوہ ساڈے کلچر دے دشمن نے اک میٹنگ کیتی ہے | Those enemies of our culture held a meeting. |
| 46s | اوہ در، انہوں نے یہ طے کیتا ہے کہ ہر ڈیرے تے جانگے | In it, they decided that they will go to every dera. |
| 49s | ڈیرے تے جانگے، اُتھے میٹنگاں کرنگے | They'll go to the dera, and hold meetings there. |
| 51s | اندر باہر دا سارا کجھ بایو ڈیٹا لے کے اُتھے شیئر کرنگے | They'll take everyone's household bio-data and share it up the chain. |
| 54s | سب توں پہلے منگی ہے، اس طرح انہوں نے لوگ جو انہوں نے بی-کارڈ کرو [؟] | First of all they demand [it], telling people 'get [your people] B-Carded' [i.e. registered on a NADRA-style card] |
| 58s | انہوں نے مختلف ٹیسٹ، بیماری اندر جانے میں [؟] | They [offer] various [medical] tests, for illnesses |
| 60s | تہاڈے ٹیسٹ کرنے فری، تہانوں ٹیکہ لانے۔ اوہ بالکل نہیں جانا کیونکہ | [They say] 'we'll do your tests for free, we'll give you the injection.' Don't go at all -- because |
| 63s | گورنمنٹ دے ہسپتال موجود ہیں، جنہاں (نے) کوئی دُکھ تکلیف اے، اُتھے جانا | government hospitals already exist -- whoever has any ailment, go there. |
| 67s | کافی جگہ دے فری علاج وی ہو رہی اے۔ ٹھیک ہے نا۔ اوہ لوگ نے جڑے | Free treatment is already being provided in plenty of places. Right? Those people who |
| 71s | برائی نوں ودھا رہے نے، سیکس ورکنگ نوں ودھا رہے نے، آہ گندہ کم | are spreading vice -- increasing sex work, increasing this filthy work -- |
| 74s | نوں ودھا رہے نے | are increasing it. |
| 75s | اے اوہ لوگ نے جنہیں اٹھائی ہزار مرداں دے شناختی کارڈ عورتاں دے بنوا دِتے، تے عورتاں دے شناختی کارڈ مرداں دے بنوا دِتے | These are the very people who converted roughly twenty-eight thousand men's CNIC national identity cards (shanakhti card) into women's cards, and women's CNICs into men's cards. |
| 82s | تو الزام کیوں ٹھہرایا؟ خواجہ سرا دی آڑ دے جا | So why was the blame placed [on us]? Under the cover/pretext of khwaja siras -- |
| 85s | خواجہ سرا یہ جو کم نہیں کردے، خواجہ سرا آپ جنس چینج نہیں کردے، اسی خواجہ سرا ہوندے ہاں، مرݨ دم تک خواجہ سرا رہندے ہاں۔ ٹھیک ہے نا؟ | [saying] khwaja siras don't do proper work, that khwaja siras do not undergo gender change at all. [But] we are born khwaja siras, and we remain khwaja siras until our dying breath. Right? |
| 91s | اوہ تہاڈے چیلے وی ہونگے، تہانوں پیسے دینے دا لالچ وی دینگے: 'بیلو، دس ہزار رکھ لو، پنج ہزار رکھ لو، تے اِنج کر دو، اِنج کرو۔' انہاں نوں بالکل چاہ پانی پلا کے تُردا کرو۔ کوئی مووی نہیں بنانی، کوئی ویڈیو نہیں کرانا۔ اسی ایہناں لوکاں دا بلکل حصہ نہیں بننا۔ اسی فقیر ہاں، اسی اپنی فقیری نوں پرموٹ کردے ہاں، اپنی فقیری دی عزت کردے ہاں۔ | They'll approach your chelas too, and tempt them with money: 'Billo, keep ten thousand, keep five thousand, and just do it this way, do it this way.' Just give them tea and water and send them off. Don't let anyone shoot a film, don't let any video be made. We will be absolutely no part of these people. We are faqeers -- we promote our faqeeri, we honor our faqeeri. |
| 108s | میں ہمیشہ تہاڈی رہنمائی کردی ہاں، موقع پر موقع مینوں پتا لگ گیا ہے کہ اس طرح | I always guide you; time and again I've found out that things are like this -- |
| 113s | دا ہے گا۔ ٹھیک ہے نا، لیکن میرے لئی یہ سارے لوگ ساری نمائندگی نہیں [کردے] | that's how it is. Right, but to me, all these [outside] people don't represent everyone. |
| 117s | کردے۔ یہ سارے کوئی سجن نہیں ہیں کہ اسی اپنی نمائندگی فقیر آپ کردے ہاں | These are not [worthy/decent] people -- we faqeers do our own representation ourselves, |
| 121s | جنہیں تہاڈے فقیر ہے گے، جنہیں زیادہ نے فقیر ہے گے، اسی اپنا | whoever your [senior] faqeers are, whoever the more [senior] faqeers are -- we [decide] our own |
| 125s | چناؤ آپ کریں گے، اپنے لوگ رائٹس واسطے آپ لڑنگے۔ یہ کوئی نہیں | choices ourselves; our own people will fight for [our] rights ourselves. These are no one -- |
| 128s | نا، اے فقیر نئیں نا، اے زنانے نئیں | not [worthy], not faqeers, not [our own] zananas. |
| 131s | ساڈے زنانے پر وی ہوشیار رہیو | Be alert about our zananas too. |
| 133s | ٹھیک ہے نا، اے لوگاں نوں مِس گائیڈ کر رہے ہیں | Right? These people are misguiding [our] people, |
| 135s | صرف اپنا ٹھیہ بنانے میں [؟] | only to build up their own turf/stall (theyh) |
| 136s | اپنا منہ دا لالچ کرن واسطے نا | just to feed their own greed. |
| 139s | یہ غلط استعمال کر رہے ہیں | They are misusing [this]. |
| 140s | مائیو، میں تہانوں آگاہ کر دیندی ہاں | My people, I am warning/informing you. |
| 141s | اے بڑی بڑی سازش اے۔ انہاں باہر جا کے ویڈیو کھینچدے نے | This is a big conspiracy. They go out [to the deras] and shoot video, |
| 144s | تصویراں کھینچدے نے | they take photos, |
| 145s | ساڈے کلچر نوں غلط ثابت کر دیندے نے | and use it to portray our culture as wrong, |
| 147s | کہ انہوں نے پڑھاؤ، لکھاؤ، جاب کرنا، نوکری کرنا، فلاں کرنا | [saying] they should be schooled, get educated, take a job, work a job, and so on -- |
| 150s | ہم ایجوکیٹڈ ہیں، ساڈے جو پڑھے لکھے ہیں، دینی تعلیم نال وی | [but] we ARE educated -- those of us who are literate, including with religious education too, |
| 154s | ہم اپنی شرعی حیثیت وی جانندے ہاں | and we also know our own shar'i (Islamic religious-legal) status. |
| 156s | ہُن مائیو، تہاڈی اپنی مرضی ہے کہ میں تہانوں آگاہ کر دیندی ہاں | Now, my people, it's your own choice -- I am just letting you know. |
| 159s | ایسے کسے وی حصے نہ بنو، انہاں نوں کہو 'چلو بھائی' | Don't become part of any such thing -- tell them, 'move along, brother.' |
| 162s | اپنی ویڈیو زیادہ زیادہ اگے پھیلاؤ | Spread this video of mine more and more, forward it on, |
| 164s | تاکہ سب لوگاں نوں پتا چلے | so that everyone gets to know. |
| 166s | اسی برائی دے نئیں، اسی اچھائی دے ساتھ ہاں | We are not with evil; we stand with good. |
| 168s | اسلام علیکم | Assalamu alaikum. |
Archival Fact Sheet for this Issue
Object Metadata
| Object type | Spoken-word video address, direct to camera |
| Speaker | Shahana Abbas Shani, khwaja sira community leader |
| Language | Punjabi with Urdu |
| Duration | 2 min 50 sec |
| Collection | Khwaja Sira Desi Culture |
| Source | A YouTube channel that no longer exists |
| Transcription | Transcribed from the recording and checked by hand; uncertain readings marked. The full bilingual transcript is on this page, below the audio. |
| Handling | Audio published, faces withheld; her words carried whole; her allegations carried as hers; no person or organization named |
Farsi Chand and Community Lexicon (for the Street Dictionary)
| faqeeri / فقیری | The mendicant calling. In her usage, a complete way of life with its own economy, hierarchy and honor. "We promote our faqeeri, we honor our faqeeri." |
| dera / ڈیرہ | The guru's household and commune. The unit the visitors want to enter, survey and photograph. |
| guru / chela / گرو، چیلا | The adoptive lineage of teacher and disciple. The bribe figures she cites for chelas: ten thousand, five thousand. |
| zanana / زنانہ | Feminine in-group category. In her ranking of standing, the outsiders are not faqeers and not even zananas. |
| shar'i haisiyat / شرعی حیثیت | One's standing in Islamic law. "We know our shar'i status." |
| deeni taleem / دینی تعلیم | Religious education. The schooling she cites. |
| gand kamai / گند کمائی | "Filthy earning," sex work. She accuses the visitors of increasing it. |
| shanakhti card / شناختی کارڈ | The CNIC national identity card, the paper at the center of the 28,000 line. |
| aar / آڑ | Cover, pretext. Her word in the line about blame: "why was the blame placed under the khwaja sira's aar?" |
| theyh / ٹھیہ | A stall, a turf. Her word for what the visitors are building. |
| hoshiyar baash / ہوشیار باش | Be alert. Her opening instruction. |
| khwaja sira / khusra / hijra | The register of respect: khwaja sira revived as a term of dignity rooted in the Mughal court, against the harsher Punjabi khusra and the stigmatized hijra. |
Enemies of our culture
Her term for the group is saaday culture de dushman, enemies of our culture. The wording is exact. The target she describes is faqeeri itself, and in the program she lays out, the people would remain while the institution would end.
She describes the operation in stages. A story spread in advance, that "we want jobs, we want employment." Enrollment: bio-data collected household by household, dera by dera, and shared up the chain, with free medical tests and an injection as the intake point. Documentation: video and photographs taken inside the deras. Then the conclusion the material is used for, in her words: "they use it to portray our culture as wrong, that they should be schooled, get educated, take a job, work a job." Each stage arrives as help. Together they are an assimilation program, described from the receiving end.
She gives the bribe figures for chelas, ten thousand and five thousand rupees, for passing information and allowing the filming. She names the motive with a market word: the visitors are building their own theyh, their own stall. The community is the material it is built from.
The 28,000 cards
The 28,000 line is a defense. Her sequence: those people converted some twenty-eight thousand men's identity cards into women's and women's into men's. Then her question: so why was the blame placed under the khwaja sira's aar, the khwaja sira's cover? Khwaja siras do not change gender. We are born khwaja sira and we remain khwaja sira until the dying breath.
The accusation she is answering was actually made. Between 2020 and 2023 a political campaign claimed that tens of thousands of Pakistani men were legally changing sex to commit fraud and enter women's spaces. The number attached to that campaign traces to a real statistic, the Interior Ministry's report of 28,723 gender modifications in NADRA records between July 2018 and June 2021, which reflects registrations under the 2018 law rather than any documented fraud, as Geo's fact-check laid out. The campaign attached her community's name to the number. Her answer rests on the definition: the category that does not change cannot be the category that changed the cards.
We know our standing in Sharia
Her reply to "they should be schooled" is that the community is already educated. We are educated, she says, with deeni taleem too, and we know our shar'i haisiyat, our standing in Islamic law.
The claim has a record behind it. Islamic jurisprudence has reasoned about the khunsa, the intersex person, since the classical period, on inheritance shares, prayer rows, and legal capacity. The khwaja sira held offices at the Mughal court and holds roles at Sufi shrines now. She invokes that record and claims the competence to read it herself, without certification from the NGO and without permission from the cleric. Pakistan's recent legal history sits on the same line: the Federal Shariat Court's 2023 judgment struck down self-declared gender change while affirming the khwaja sira and intersex category as Islamically valid, the distinction she draws in this video as identity.
On medicine she redirects rather than refuses. Government hospitals already exist and treat people free, she says, so go there. She declines the apparatus that arrives with a form and claims the ordinary provision every citizen uses.
Who increases gand kamai
She says the visitors are increasing vice, increasing sex work, increasing gand kamai. Taken as a claim about incentives, the line describes an economy. The programs that reach her community are funded as HIV and key-population interventions, and a community is legible to that funding to the degree that it is classified as sex workers and patients. The classification brings the money and the money needs the classification. Scholars of NGO-ization in Pakistan, Claire Pamment and Faris A. Khan among them, document the same machinery: a developmental rubric that ties khwaja siras to disease and criminality while sidelining the performers and faqeers it cannot categorize.
No independent reporting identifies the group she describes. She names no one, and neither do we; her allegation is carried here as hers. The documented context: donor-funded surveillance data collection on this community is real and ongoing; a viral video of a private trans gathering in Lahore led to arrests in 2025 before a magistrate dismissed the case as forged; a transwoman seeking ID registration was examined in front of forty medical students without her consent at a Lahore hospital.
Tea, and send them walking
Her instruction for the encounter: chah pani pila ke turda karo. Give them tea and water and send them walking. Courtesy, and no cooperation. Nothing signed, nothing filmed, and the visitors leave with their forms empty.
On representation: no movie, no video. These people do not represent us, we faqeers represent ourselves, the elders will make our choices, our own people will fight for our rights our own way. By her taxonomy the outsiders hold no rank: they are not faqeers, they are not even zananas. She adds a caution about the inside, be alert about our own zananas too, since the operation recruits from within. She closes by leaving the decision with her listeners. It is your own choice, I have informed you. Spread this video far and wide. We are not with evil, we stand with good. Assalamu alaikum.
Why this belongs in the archive
Nearly everything written about Pakistan's trans-rights fight is in English and speaks from the activist's side or the court's. This is the position those accounts write over: the traditionalist khwaja sira argument, made in Punjabi, by an elder, to her own people, on a channel that has since vanished. A political statement delivered in under three minutes from a tiled room.
An archive has to be honest about its own position here. Her warning is about people who arrive with cameras and databases and good intentions, and an archive is that kind of actor unless it behaves differently. The difference is what she herself asked for. She made this address to be circulated and she closes it with the instruction to spread it. Khajistan carries her words whole, withholds every face in this collection, adds context around her speech rather than speaking over it, and keeps the private footage of this corpus, the rituals and the disputes, locked. Her address travels because she ordered it to travel. The rest stays home.
Connected across the archive
Watch Showgirls of Pakistan in the Khajistan Screening Room (Saad Khan, 2020). The same Punjab, the same performers' economy of stage, stigma and survival, following Afreen Khan, Uzma Khan and Reema Jaan through the mujra world. The film refuses the victim narrative the same way this address does, in its own voice. A limited-edition DVD with hi-res digital file is in the Bazaar.
Alongside it: the Bigo Live essay on the livestream economy where this community broadcast itself and earned; the Khajistan reading of Joyland and its khwaja sira dancer Beeba; and the book Khwaja Sira: Culture, Identity Politics and Transgender Activism in the archive. The lexicon above now lives in the Street Dictionary of the Middle World's Khawaja Sira Farsi Chand set.
From the archive, in the Bazaar
This address is part of Khajistan's Khwaja Sira Desi Culture collection, recovered from a YouTube channel that no longer exists. The speaker made it to be circulated and closed it by asking that it be spread widely; Khajistan publishes the audio and the full transcript, withholds every face in this collection, and keeps the corpus's private footage locked. Her account of the group she describes is carried as her account. No person or organization is named.
Sources: Geo Fact Check on the Interior Ministry's 28,723 NADRA figure (July 2018 to June 2021) and the fraud framing built on it; the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 and the Federal Shariat Court judgment of 19 May 2023 (JURIST, Amnesty International, Oxford Human Rights Hub); Dawn and Pakistan Today on the 2025 Lahore case and its dismissal as forged, the hospital examination without consent, and the Sindh job quota's medical-verification stall; UNDP Pakistan on the Global Fund HIV programme's surveillance component; Faris A. Khan, Claire Pamment, Amen Jaffer and Hossain, Pamment & Roy's Badhai on faqeeri, the guru-chela system and NGO-ization; Community Sentinel on the speaker's offices; Foreign Policy and Rest of World on Showgirls of Pakistan and Bigo Live.