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Whose Right is it Anyway? By - Ranjita Biswas Ranjita Biswas is a Freelance writer from Kolkata, Bengal. She promotes education, specially for girl child through her writings and social activity.

The topic of legalizing commercial sex work, some still prefer to use the familiar word, ‘prostitution’, has been raging in India for quite sometime now. The country’s law is ambivalent on the rights of sex workers. A sex worker cannot be penalized for her work within the premises of her house, but can be arrested for ‘soliciting’ clients. In between these lines of what is legal and what is illegal, there are lots of grey areas. It is an open secret that policemen often take advantage of these undefined areas and arrest women at will to throw them into jail- only to release them after paying a hefty fine. The sex workers of Sonagachi, the largest red light area in Kolkata in eastern India, have been doggedly campaigning for recognition of their work under the labour law. Their representative organization Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) is by now well-known at home and abroad for its pro-active role, whether by establishing their own co-operative or spearheading a campaign for safe sex through condom use.

The demand for recognition of their work as ‘work’ has literally stirred a hornet’s nest. The nay-sayers opine that this move will only encourage more women into the trade encouraged by legal sanction and that trafficking in women and minors will increase.

The sex workers pooh-pooh the idea. They claim that they would themselves monitor and prevent induction of minors through their governing body. Besides, though hundreds of girls are rescued from brothels there is no viable rehabilitation package for the ‘victims’ and the women re-enter the profession, unable to make a living, or at best go ‘underground’ making them more vulnerable.

Besides, they ask, who says they want to be ‘rescued’? Many feel they are much better off today than when they were raped/beaten up by husbands/ starved, et al. When you listen to them, you feel that there is another voice, a voice that the so-called genteel society does not, or deliberately does not, want to listen. Meena Seshu, whose organization Sangram has been working with prostitutes from Sangli on the border of Maharashtra and Karnataka state for many years, lashes out at the ‘prostitution-bashing’ that has been staple of certain factions. “Not all prostitutes are ‘victims.’ They also need a space to talk about their space which is denied to them. Even from the point of human rights they are de-humanized, beaten up, evicted from their colonies thus robbing them of their livelihood, while the state or anyone else does not take the responsibility of feeding them or the families they support. One must recognise the difference between trafficking and prostitution per se. ”

Internationally too, a debate has long been going on about the difference between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ prostitution. The abolitionists see all prostitutes as ‘victims’. But the growing realization, thanks to activists, that there are also those who practise it by ‘choice’ has made international bodies re-think and articulate on the sex workers’ rights.

But for the prostitutes of Sangli, these debates are at an esoteric level. Most of them do not even know there are heated arguments over what ‘should be’ and what ‘should not be’ regarding their work. Many of them belong to the traditional devadasi (women dedicated to the deity) families practicing sex work for generations. In a video film “Benaquab” produced by Sangram, when the women dance and laugh, and also talk about how independent they feel having their own income, you are compelled to look at the issue from the other side of the fence.

“Tales of the Night Fairies” a prize-winning documentary by Shohini Ghosh who teaches mass communication at Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, catches the women of Sonagachi in the same kind of self-assured mood. Shohini spent months conversing with the women to get their real stories. And surely, they talk - of their pain at the betrayals and traumas, but also of happiness at finding a new life, new love, and their hopes and bonding with other women. There’s a certain chutzpah at the way they talk and sing as if trying to say, ‘We are doing okay, let us be, we’re like you, we are also a part of the society.’

Somehow, during these moments, the polemics over the welfare and victim hood of prostitution seem far away from the lanes of Sonagachi or Sangli. In their own way, the women seem to search for a place in the sun.

Photo Credits
Penny Bauer for CREA (New Delhi) & POINT of VIEW (Mumbai)

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