Transgressing Religious and Gender Binaries: Amar Ayyar's Polysemous Identity in Tilism-e-Hoshruba

ABSTRACT Tilism-e-Hoshruba is a part of Dastan-e-Amir Hamza, which has entertained audiences in different parts of South Asia for many centuries. Despite its transregional appeal, Tilism-e-Hoshruba is little known in the West. The first English translation appeared as late as 2009, introducing it to the English-speaking world. However, Tilism-e-Hoshruba's new found accessibility does not recompense the lack of scholarly research on it. Most discussions about it have focused exclusively on its genre, ignoring the complex interplay of gender and religion that it offers. To curtail this surprising lack of attention, this paper focuses on the text's religious and gender binary by interrogating the symbolic status and narrative function of Amar Ayyar, an ayyar who deconstructs religious ideas in the guise of humor and playful performativity. Through the figure of Amar Ayyar, this paper contests the stereotypical assumptions (both Eastern and Western) about the fixity of religious and gender boundaries in Indo-Islamicate cultures in addition to challenging the hegemonic appropriation of Islamic discourse by religio-patriarchal structures in the modern era. By constantly questioning, de-centering, and challenging religious and gender values, this paper highlights the ways in which Amar opens interesting spaces for subversion.