India-Rights/Gender/Lifestyle/Culture
By Madhusree
Chatterjee
New Delhi
New Delhi
Seema and
Meena, two young women in their early twenties from Araria district in Bihar, refuse
to follow in their mother’s footsteps in prostitution. The women, who belong to
the nomadic Nat tribe spread the Gangetic lowlands, go to college everyday for
a bachelors’ degree in science and humanities respectively. They want to teach
in primary schools in the district. Nat — an ancient nomadic tribe of
entertainers labelled as “criminals” by the British — still supply a large
number of women to brothels in Mumbai and the rest of northern and eastern India
because of a strange ethnic more. A majority of their women from the impoverished
ranks in the remote villages, are prostitutes
by tradition — practicing inter-generational sex trade to eke out a living.
It is
difficult for the women to move out of their traditional livelihood owing to
peer resistance and societal resentment— though the ethnic norms are gradually
easing with inroads of education and interventions by advocacy groups.
A large number
ethnic communities living on the margins of the Indian society resort to desperate
measures to eke out livelihoods in the face of social oppression, development
imbalance and dragon legislations that discriminates between ethnic groups— prompting
persecution in access to economic benefits .
Flesh trade,
one of the most ancient professions in the civilized history of the country, is
a generational practice among several denotified ethnic groups in India, who
were branded “thuggee” or criminal tribes pre-independent India for their lives
on the underside. Like the Roma Gypsies community
in Europe who were hounded and abused by the white men, in India, the erstwhile
British colonial rulers had cracked down on several communities of itinerant nomads
for their wayward lifestyles.
In 1871, the former British imperial government
in India enforced the Criminal Tribes Act in northern India and later to Bengal
and Madras presidencies that imposed curbs on the movements and penal measures
on the movement and activity of the several itinerant tribes who were described
as “addicted to the systematic commission to non-bailable offences” (such as
thefts) and “were systematically registered by the government”. The movements of
the members of the tribals, known as “habitual offenders” were reported to the
local police station every week. Historical
records cite that one of the largest criminal tribes, the thugs (who worshipped
Kali) looted and killed more than one million people between 1750-1840 — paving
the need for the legislation. The law was abolished in 1949 and nearly 127 communities
de-notified in 1952.
Some of
these groups include Baghir, Baloch, Banjara, Nat, Kanjars, Bedia, Bachara,
Lambada, Lodha, Pardhi, Shabar, Sansi, Kurava and several others spread across
the country.
Statistics available
estimates that the country is home to 313 nomadic tribes and 198 de-notified tribes
currently – (nearly 60 million people), who are still haunted by the stigmas attached
to their low status in the social heap and the livelihoods they were pushed to because
of administrative action, suspicion and surveillance by the police and endemic penury.
The
sustained crackdown by the police led to loss of traditional trades like
ironsmithy, acrobatics, herbal healing and craftsmanship. Relegated to the social
and economic fringe, de-notified and nomadic groups like Bedia, Bachara, Nat, Sansi
and Khanjar were forced to ply their
daughters to flesh trade.
“Not many
people know about their plight because the tradition of inter-generational
prostitution among several denotified tribes and low caste communities in
modern day India in invisible - but a thriving reality under cover. It thrives
of the absence of rehabilitation, awareness and effective advocacy,” says Ruchira
Gupta, founder president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a non-profit women’s organization
which is working among 16 denotified tribes to “offer alternative livelihoods”
to the women who are sex-slaves by tradition down the generations, passed down
from the mother to the daughter.
The project, “Preventing Inter-Generational
Prostitution among Low Caste Communities” in India” is trying to end traditional
sex trade among the women of the communities by connecting them to education, vocational
training, savings, self-help cooperatives and employment with periodic health
checks to integrate them to the mainstream.
Apne Aap is
engaging with the denotified ethnic groups in 10 states of the country — like
Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh
and New Delhi — together with the Indian Council of Social Scientific Research.
The pilot phase of research and rehabilitation for the project has begun in seven
“sites” in three states of Bihar, West Bengal and Delhi, Gupta said.
The phase entails
“documentation of the groups, their lives, economic plights, problems and
recommended rehabilitation measures together with preliminary relief on the
ground”. Gupta’s team has “already touched the lives of
800 women in three states”.
“The British
colonialists declared them criminals because they refused to give up their nomadic
ways and settle down. They continued with their plunder and intimidation of
common people — and in ironic way defied the British. The police routinely
picked them up and locked them in jails,” Gupta said. They were forced to take
up “forbidden” professions to live. The women became the breadwinners while the
fathers, sons, brothers and husbands became pimps.
In Delhi,
Gupta and her crew has brought 400 women in the Dharampura and Premnagar
localities in Najafgarh, a suburb in west Delhi inhabited by sporadic groups of
low caste sex workers along the highway, catering to the needs of truckers and
transporters. Married women here are encouraged
to become sex workers few years after the first child is born.
“The rite of
passage in the low caste inter-generational sex workers in northern India
serves two purposes. It helps the community preserve their bloodlines and give
the women protection against harassment by police and goons because of their
married status,” Gupta said. Married women are usually left alone in the semi-urban
settlements in India, still now, she hinted.
The low
caste sex workers in Delhi’s Najargarh neighbourhood belong to the “sapera and the peran”
communities of snake charmers and acrobats . In Bengal and Bihar, where Gupta’s
group is working in five specific sites, the practice differs among the tribes. The
eldest daughter of a Bachara tribal home is initiated into prostitution to
carry on the tradition while the rest are married off. A section of women among
the Bedia and the Nat groups are sent to trade flesh and the rest are allowed
to grow up normally. Rehabilitation is a challenge because of social resistance
and the stigmas attached to the communities – and their generational trade.
“Many
of these communities cannot take their women out of the family trade because
neighbours and the police say that prostitution is the destiny of the women of
the denotified tribes,” Gupta said.
Citing an instance of social resistance against
the “rehabilitation” of low caste traditional sex workers, Gupta said “nine
years ago, a group of mothers in the Kabarjan village in Bihar’s Araria
district decided to end the rite of prostitution”. “Their lodged their daughters instead in a
women’s hostel by Apne Aap to study and become self-employed. “The mother’s association
pooled savings and opened a tea store where the girls could earn a living,” she
said.
The organization
“got the mothers to convene tribunals and convince the district administration to
allot them land for a hostel under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan at the Kasturba Gandhi
Balika Vidyalaya, Gupta recalled.
But the local
residents opposed the project. A group of upper caste men heard about it and broke
into the hostel one night. They kidnapped one of the girls and help her hostage
for 23 days, during which she was gang-raped repeatedly, Gupta said. The men and
the upper caste residents of the village contended that “these girls should be available to
entertain men of the upper castes according to their traditions”. Intimidated
by the incident, the mothers said “they would not completely give up the trade”.
“Some of their women would always be available
to tend to the men of the upper castes”.
One of the problems
in preventing inter-generational sex trade among low caste traditional
courtesans’ communities is the nexus of pimps, who are not confined to the home
alone. Pimps, touts and traffickers from across the country flock to these
groups to “pick up women” because of slack policing and absence of legal
backlash. The pimps control organized networks.
However, the
measure of success, though marginal, has been heartening for the organization. “Twenty-three
girls from communities of traditional prostitutes in Bihar go to school and
four are in junior college in Patna, the capital of the state,” Gupta said.
The work has
wide scope and complicated intervention processes. “Tackling mindsets and breaking
social barriers are two of the primary challenges. We are now trying to link
them to savings, education and housing so that they can become sustainable,” Gupta
said.
A stringent legislation against prostitution,
pimping and trafficking of women— with strong emphasis on girls from the low
caste communities — can end generational prostitution. The organization has
lobbied with the Verma Commission — a committee
led by former chief justice of Supreme Court J.S. Verma (which submitted its
report in January 2013) to suggest measures for speedy justice for offenders
and victims of gender crimes and assault on women — to uphold the clause that “commercial
rape is the same as non-commercial rape and the perpetrators (in both cases) have
to be punished.”
The
commission upheld the verdict April 3 this year. “Now, the challenge ahead is
to get some clients arrested under the new law — otherwise neither the police, nor
the client or the sex workers will know if it. The verdict will act as a
deterrent once some people are arrested,” Gupta said.
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