Hindu Moral Mess-Message-Age: Sid Harth

[cogitoergosum]

Hindu Moral Mess-Message-Age: Sid Harth

Indian Morality Meltdown: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/37334fb34fbe6d7c/d8b818f4833e131e?q=Indian+Morality+Meltdown%3A+Sid+Harth&lnk=ol&
Sex and CD Scandal: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/3f5e2a3be4798e7d/d07894e22ef23690?lnk=gst&q=sex+and+cd+scandal#d07894e22ef23690
Child Labor in India: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/2549df32f41afcce/611166c361f27724?lnk=gst&q=child+labor+in+india#611166c361f27724
Of God, Godmen and Good men: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/beee6405766fa364/9da06195753e584a?lnk=gst&q=of+god%2C+godmen+and+good+men#9da06195753e584a
Human Trafficking in India: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/55d1782ed4144490/23de5a277a4b6730?lnk=gst&q=human+trafficking+in+india#23de5a277a4b6730
Kill Bill: Sid Harth
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian.marathi/browse_thread/thread/f7b4e319f7a4fa28/ad4a6038f51d0cba?lnk=gst&q=kill+bill#ad4a6038f51d0cba

2.8 mn sex workers in India, 36 pc children
STAFF WRITER 19:26 HRS IST

New Delhi, Apr 19 (PTI) There are about 2.8 million prostitutes in
India out of which 36 per cent are children, the Rajya Sabha was
informed today.

The common factors for entry into prostitution have been economic
distress, growing consumerism, illiteracy, lack of vocational skills,
migration, ill-treatment by parents and desertion by spouse, according
to a study on girls and women in prostitution conducted between
2002-2004 by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

The village panchayats have not been assigned any direct role in
prevention of trafficking, but under a special scheme called
'Ujjwala', financial assistance is provided for formation of community
vigilance groups for its prevention, Minister of State for Women and
Child Development Krishna Tirath said in replying to a written
question.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/616763_2-8-mn-sex-workers-in-India--36-pc-children

Rapes on minors outnumber those on women in Mumbai
STAFF WRITER 12:18 HRS IST

Mumbai, Apr 18 (PTI) Rapes on minors have outnumbered those on women
in the city, making the former more vulnerable and soft targets of the
crime.

Till February this year, the city police has registered 36 rape cases
out of which 23 are of rapes on minors.

In 2009, a total of 182 rape cases were registered out of which 128
belong to cases of rapes on minors. In 2008, a total of 216 cases were
registered in the city in which 147 belong to cases of rapes on
minors.

Joint Police Commissioner Rajnish Seth (Law and Order) says such cases
are more as the culprits feel they could easily overpower the minor
girls and after committing crimes, they could easily escape.

"In many cases, the culprit either is a relative, neighbour or someone
living in the same locality where the girl stays.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/614706_Rapes-on-minors-outnumber-those-on-women-in-Mumbai

Meira Kumar says caste divisions sadden her
STAFF WRITER 21:33 HRS IST

New Delhi, Apr 17 (PTI) Maintaining that religious harmony was
essential for creating a better India, Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar
today said she is saddened by the fact that the country is divided on
the lines of caste and creed.

"Ours is a country with a rich history and heritage, we have people of
different religions and communities but it saddens me that we have
divided ourselves in the name of caste and creed", said Kumar in her
address at the national convention of 'Sanatan Dharma' here.

"It is our duty to respect other religions and only then can we have a
united and better India," she said.

She also said that she was amazed by the sheer number of people at the
convention and that such attempts to unite the country should be
applauded.

http://www.ptinews.com/news/614371_Meira-Kumar-says-caste-divisions-sadden-her

Prostitution in India.

Article 6: States Parties shall take all appropriate measures,
including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in women and
exploitation of prostitution of women in India. According to a 1994
report in Asian Age there are at least 70,000 women sex workers in
Delhi, Madras, Calcutta, Bangalore and Hyderbad. 30% of these women
are under 20 years of age. 40% are 20-30 years of age, and
approximately 15% of them became prostitutes as children under the age
of 12.
In India, many innocent victims are forced into prostitution by their
husbands or relatives. Some are tricked or enticed into prostitution.

Links :

Apne-aap The coalition to end sex trafficking and organize
marginalized women and girls

Women traffic The bondage of cross-border sex-workers to India.

Hrw.org- India Trafficking of Nepali Girls and Women to India's
Brothels

Escape from Prostitution Apne Aap turns destroyed lives around in
Kamathipura

Asiasource Trafficking of Children for Prostitution and the UNICEF
response

The National Commission For Women - A must visit site. Organisation
for helping and protecting women in India. Help for dowry issues,
female foeticide, child marriage, sexual harassment, and legal advice.

http://www.indianchild.com/prostitution_in_india.htm

Sexual Harassment, abuse, rape, pornography in India.

As in other countries throughout the world, rape is common in India.
Rape is a social disease. Hardly a day passes without a case of rape
being reported in Indian newspapers and media. Women belonging to low
castes, and tribal women are more at risk. What is sad about rape in
India is the lack of seriousness with which the crime is often
treated.Statistics from 2000 showed that on average a woman is raped
every hour in India.
Women's groups attest that the strict and conservative attitudes about
sex and family privacy contribute to ineffectiveness of India's rape
laws. Victims are often reluctant to report rape. In an open court
victims must prove that the rapist sexually penetrated them in order
to get a conviction. This can be especially damaging. After proving
that she has been raped, a victim is often ostracized from her family
and community. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that rape laws
are inadequate and definitions so narrow that prosecution is made
difficult.

Rape is a Crime

If you are raped do not bathe, shower, or change clothes. This is
important to preserve any evidence of the rape. Go to a friend, well
known social worker or to a place where you know someone can help you.
Report the rape to the authorities. Seek counseling; this can help you
deal with the issues you might face after the attack.

What is Pornography?

Pornography is a systematic practice of exploitation and subordination
based on sex that differentially harms and disadvantages women through
dehumanization. Pornography diminishes the worth and civil status of
women and damage mutual respect between the sexes.

Can Pornography Cause Violence Against Women?

If you have ever viewed pornographic material, it is clear that not
only does pornography cause violence against women, but the material
itself is violence against women, the women in the pornographic
material.

Pornography also sends out the message to men that women enjoy being
beaten, abused and raped. It is unfortunate, but over the last few
years the violence portrayed in pornographic material has increased
greatly.

The material also tries to send the message that women secretly enjoy
the abuse. Many studies have proven that pornography can lead to
violence.

Some links :-

Molestation - site offers Information on molestation including useful
contact details.

The National Commission For Women - A must visit site. Organisation
for helping and protecting women in India. Help for dowry issues,
female foeticide, child marriage, sexual harassment, and legal advice.

Domestic violence - Indian site on domestic violence

Types Of Sexual Harassment - India

Death penalty for rapists.

Effects Of Harassment On Women

http://netsafety.nic.in/ Official Government of India site to fight
online Pornography.

Internet pornography, Cyber Laws, Tools to combat Cyber - Porn, Whom
to Report in India

http://www.asianlaws.org/fact/index.htm - To tackle the abuse of
children through the misuse of modern technology, Asian School of
Cyber Laws (India) has launched FACT (Freedom from Abuse of Children
through Technology). FACT is a five-pronged programme that includes
Educating the children, Educating the parents, Schools awareness
program, Creating Media awareness, and Establishing a FACT Help Line.

http://www.indianchild.com/sexual_harassment_india.htm

Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation

India
Trafficking

As of February 1998, there were 200 Bangladeshi children and women
awaiting repatriation in different Indian shelters. ("Boys, rescued in
India while being smuggled to become jockeys in camel races," www.elsiglo.com,
19 February 1998)

India, along with Thailand and the Philippines, has 1.3 million
children in its sex-trade centers. The children come from relatively
poorer areas and are trafficked to relatively richer ones. (Soma
Wadhwa, "For sale childhood," Outlook, 1998)

In cross border trafficking, India is a sending, receiving and transit
nation. Receiving children from Bangladesh and Nepal and sending women
and children to Middle Eastern nations is a daily occurrence.
(Executive Director of SANLAAP, Indrani Sinha, Paper on Globaliation
and Human Rights"

India and Paksitan are the main destinations for children under 16 who
are trafficked in south Asia. (Masako Iijima, "S. Asia urged to unite
against child prostitution," Reuters, 19 June 1998)

More than 40% of 484 prostituted girls rescued during major raids of
brothels in Bombay in 1996 were from Nepal. (Masako Iijima, "S. Asia
urged to unite against child prostitution," Reuters, 19 June 1998)

In India, Karnataka, Andha Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu are
considered "high supply zones" for women in prostitution. Bijapur,
Belgaum and Kolhapur are common districts from which women migrate to
the big cities, as part of an organised trafficking network. (Central
Welfare Board, Meena Menon, "The Unknown Faces")

Districts bordering Maharashtra and Karnataka, known as the "devadasi
belt," have trafficking structures operating at various levels. The
women here are in prostitution either because their husbands deserted
them, or they are trafficked through coercion and deception Many are
devadasi dedicated into prostitution for the goddess Yellamma. In one
Karnataka brothel, all 15 girls are devadasi. (Meena Menon, "The
Unknown Faces")

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Bangladeshi women and children are held
in foreign prisons, jails, shelters and detention centers awaiting
repatriation. Many have been held for years. In India, 26 women, 27
girls, 71 boys and 13 children of unknown gender are held in Lilua
Shelter, Calcutta; Sheha Shelter, Calcutta; Anando Ashram, Calcutta;
Alipur Children's Home, Delhi; Nirmal Chaya Children's Home, Delhi;
Prayas Observation House for Boys; Delhi; Tihar Jail, Delhi; Udavam
Kalanger, Bangalore; Umar Khadi, Bangaore; Kishalay, West Bengal;
Kuehbihar, West Bengal and Baharampur, West Bengal. (Fawzia Karim
Firoze and Salma Ali of the Bangladesh National Women Layer
Association," Bangladesh Country Paper: Law and Legislation")

Women and children from India are sent to nations of the Middle East
daily. Girls in prostitution and domestic service in India, Pakistan
and the Middle East are tortured, held in virtual imprisonment,
sexually abused, and raped. (Indrani Sinha, SANLAAP India, "Paper on
Globalization and Human Rights")

In Bombay, children as young as 9 are bought for up to 60,000 rupees,
or US$2,000, at auctions where Arabs bid against Indian men who
believe sleeping with a virgin cures gonorrhea and syphilis. (Robert
I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption
Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

160,000 Nepalese women are held in India's brothels. (Executive
Director of SANLAAP, Indrani Sinha, Paper on Globalization and Human
Rights")

Approximately 50,000, or half of the women in prostitution in Bombay,
are trafficked from Nepal. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual
Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe,"
The Nation, 8 April 1996)

The brothels of India hold between 100,000 and 160,000 Nepalese women
and girls, 35 percent were taken on the false pretext of marriage or a
good job. (Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Special Report on Violence Against
Women, Gustavo Capdevila, IPS, 2 April 1997)

About 5,000-7,000 Nepalese girls are trafficked to India every day.
100,000-160,000 Nepalese girls are prostituted in brothels in India.
About 45,000 Nepalese girls are in the brothels of Bombay and 40,000
in Calcutta. (Women’s groups in Nepal, ‘Trafficking in Women and
Children: The Cases of Bangladesh, pp.8 & 9, UBINIG, 1995)

Calcutta is one of the important transit points for the traffickers
for Bombay and to Pakistan. 99% women are trafficked out of Bangladesh
through land routes along the border areas of Bangladesh and India,
such as Jessore, Satkhira, and Rajshahi. (Trafficking in Women and
Children: The Cases of Bangladesh, pp.18 & 19, UBINIG, 1995)

In shelters in India, there are 200 Bangladeshi women and children who
have been trafficked awaiting repatriation. (http://www.webpage.com/
hindu/daily/980220/03/03200004.htm, 19 February 1998)

Of the 5,000-7,000 Nepalese girls trafficked into India yearly, the
average age over the past decade has fallen from 14-16 years old to
10-14 years old. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and
Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)

In Bombay, one brothel has only Nepalese women, who men buy because of
their golden skin and docile personalities. (Robert I. Freidman,
"India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to
An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

2.5% of prostitutes in India are Nepalese, and 2.7% are Bangladeshi.
("Devadasi System Continues to Legitimise Prostitution: The Devadasi
Tradition and Prostitution," TOI, 4 December 1997)

Some Indian men believe that it is good luck to have sex with scalp-
eczema afflicted prostitutes. Infants with the condition, called "pus
babies," are sold by their parents to brothels for a premium. (Robert
I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption
Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

70% of students surveyed at a wealthy high school seek a career in
organized crime, citing their reasoning as "good money and good
fun." (surveyed student, [Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual
Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe,"
The Nation, 8 April 1996]

Methods and Techniques of Traffickers

Every year between 5,000 and 7,000 Nepalese girls are trafficked into
the red light districts in Indian cities. Many of the girls are barely
9 or 10 years old. 200,000 to over 250,000 Nepalese women and girls
are already in Indian brothels. The girls are sold by poor parents,
tricked into fraudulent marriages, or promised employment in towns
only to find themselves in Hindustan's brothels. They're locked up for
days, starved, beaten, and burned with cigarettes until they learn how
to service up to 25 clients a day. Some girls go through 'training'
before being initiated into prostitution, which can include constant
exposure to pornographic films, tutorials in how to 'please'
customers, repeated rapes. (Soma Wadhwa, "For sale childhood,"
Outlook, 1998)

Trafficking in women and girls is easy along the 1,740 mile-long open
border between India and Nepal. Trafficking in Nepalese women and
girls is less risky than smuggling narcotics and electronic equipment
into India. Traffickers ferry large groups of girls at a time without
the hassle of paperwork or threats of police checks. The procurer-pimp-
police network makes the process even smoother. Bought for as little
as Rs (Nepalese) 1,000, girls have been known to fetch up to Rs 30,000
in later transactions. Police are paid by brothel owners to ignore the
situation. Girls may not leave the brothels until they have repaid
their debt, at which time they are sick, with HIV and/or tuberculosis,
and often have children of their own. (Soma Wadhwa, "For sale
childhood," Outlook, 1998)

The areas used by traffickers to procure women and girls are the
isolated districts of Sindhupalchow, Makwanpur, Dhading and Khavre,
Nepal where the population is largely illiterate. (Soma Wadhwa, "For
sale childhood," Outlook, 1998)

Health and Well-being

Of the 218 Nepalese girls rescued in February 1996 from a Bombay
police raid, 60-70% of them were HIV positive. (Tim McGirk "Nepal's
Lost Daughters, 'India's soiled goods," Nepal/India News, 27 January
1997)

Cases

Activists discovered inter-state trafficking in teenaged girls from
poor families in 24 Parganas North districts. More than 300 teenagers
from Deganga, Harwa and Bashirhat may have been lured by false
marriages to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab. 32 victims from six
villages have been identified. After the girl was taken from her home
village she would be sold for Rs 2,500 to Rs 10,000, depending on the
number of middlemen involved. Those who escaped said the girls were
watched all the time and not allowed to speak to anyone outside their
room. Any attempt to resist resulted in brutal torture. All their
"earnings" was taken away by the so-called husbands or mistresses. The
"husbands" would occasionally write from fake addresses to their
parents to avoid arousing any suspicion. Women organized a rally to
protest the inaction of police, who they suspect knew about the
trafficking. (Mumtaz Khatun, Kolsur Nari Vikas Kendra, Cente of
Communication and Development, Madhyamgram, The Times of India News
Service, 1 October 1997)

A twenty year old Bangladeshi woman escaped prostitution in Calcutta.
A year before she had been sold for Rs. 10,000 to men who forced her
into prostitution and tortured her. She later escaped to become a
maid, then escaped from that to seek help from police. Along with
others, her husband was arrested by police. She informed police that
she knew a lot of Bangladeshi girls in Calcutta who were being
prostituted. (Ittefak report, 8 March 1993, Trafficking in Women and
Children: The Cases of Bangladesh, pp. 29 & 30, Ittefak, 5 March 1993,
UBINIG, 1995)

13-year-old Mira of Nepal was offered a job as a domestic worker in
Bombay, India. She arrived at a brothel on Bombay’s Falkland Road,
where tens of thousands of young women are displayed in row after row
of zoo-like animal cages. Her father had been duped into giving her to
a trafficker. When she refused to have sex, she was dragged into a
torture chamber in a dark alley used for ‘breaking in’ new girls. She
was locked in a narrow, windowless room without food or water. On the
fourth day, one of the madam’s thugs goonda wrestled her to the floor
and banged her head against the concrete until she passed out. When
she awoke, she was naked; a rattan cane smeared with pureed red chili
peppers shoved into her vagina. Later she was raped by the goonda.
Afterwards, she complied with their demands. The madam told Mira that
she had been sold to the brothel for 50,000 rupees (about US$1,700),
that she had to work until she paid off her debt. Mira was sold to a
client who then became her pimp. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame:
Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS
Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

In 1982, 13 year old Tulasa was abducted from a village near Kathmandu
in Nepal and sold to a brothel in Bombay. She was dressed in European-
style clothes and taken to luxury hotels to serve mostly Arab clients
until a hotel manager called the police. Hospitalized, Tulasa was
found to be suffering from three types of venereal disease and
tuberculosis. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and
Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation,
8 April 1996)

Policy and Law

The UN Convention of the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the
Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949), and the
supplementary convention on the abolition of slavery, the slave trade
and institutions and practices of slavery have been signed by most of
the SAARC countries, including Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka. (Trafficking in Women and Children: The Cases of Bangladesh, p.
9, UBINIG, 1995)

In 1992, Bombay, India, police intercepted the traffic of 25
Bangladeshi children, 5 to 8 years old. The children and trafficker
were held in the same jail. Three years later, 12 of the children were
returned to their homes. (Fawzia Karim Firoze & Salma Ali of the
Bangladesh National Women Layer Association," Bangladesh Country
Paper: Law and Legislation")

Actions of NGOs

A major trafficking network was discovered by the Karnataka State
Commission for Women (KSCW), smuggling 12-18-year-old girls from
various impoverished districts to contractors who run brothels in Goa.
The contractors pay the parents for their girl children under false
pretenses. (Seethalakshmi S., "Karnataka girls being sold to Goa
breothels," Time of India, 28 May 1998)

The exploitation of Nepalese women and girls may never end. "[F]or
some there is too much easy money in it, for others there's nothing to
be gained by lobbying for its abolition. But surely, for now, it can
be monitored. Its magnitude can be lessened," says Durga Ghimire,
chairperson of a 98-NGO-strong pressure group National Network Groups
Against Trafficking. She feels that the alarmingly low rates of female
literacy, coupled with the traditionally low status of the girl-child
in Nepal have to be addressed to tackle the problem. Gauri Pradhan of
Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN) emphasizes the need for
collaboration by the two governments on this issue. (Soma Wadhwa, "For
sale childhood," Outlook, 1998)

There are several shelters run by various Katmandu-based NGOs working
against trafficking and towards rehabilitation of girls who manage to
escape or are rescued from Indian brothels. This is not easy work.
Relatives of the rescued girls generally don't want them back and
Nepal's government is worried about the spread of HIV, as many of the
trafficked girls have contracted HIV while enslaved in India. (Soma
Wadhwa, "For sale childhood," Outlook, 1998)

Official Response and Action

139 prostituted Nepalese girls were rescued through a police raid in
Kamatipura, India and were then repatriated to Katmandu. (Soma Wadhwa,
"For sale childhood," Outlook, 1998)

Rehabilitation of trafficked women and children forced into
prostitution in Indian brothels is hampered by lack of Indian
government support and agenda for their rehabilitation. The sending
country may not come forward to claim them and younger children may
not know where they originally came from. (Soma Wadhwa, "For sale
childhood," Outlook, 1998)

Prostitution

There are approximately 10 million prostitutes in India. (Human Rights
Watch, Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and
Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation,
8 April 1996)

There are more than 100,000 women in prostitution in Bombay, Asia’s
largest sex industry center. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame:
Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS
Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

At least 2,000 women are in prostitution along the Baina beachfront in
Goa. (Frederick Moronha, India Abroad News Service, 9 August 1997)

There are 300,000-500,000 children in prostitution in India. (Rahul
Bedi, "Bid To Protect Children As Sex Tourism Spreads,"London’s Daily
Telegraph, 23 August, 1997)

Men who believe that AIDS and other STDs can be cured by having sex
with a virgin, are forcing young girls into the sex industry; seven
year old girls are neither uncommon nor the youngest. (Tim McGirk
"Nepal's Lost Daughters, 'India's soiled goods,"Nepal/India News, 27
January 1997)

Approximately 20,000 or 20% of women in prostitution in Bombay are
under 18. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and
Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation,
8 April 1996)

Every day, about 200 girls and women in India enter prostitution, 80%
of them against their will. (Centre for Development and Population
Activities (CEDPA) and Planning Rural-Uraban Intergrated Development
through Education (PRIDE), "Devadasi System Continues to Legitimise
Prostitution: The Devadasi Tradition and Prostitution," TOI, 4
December 1997)

Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil, Nadu and Uttar Pradesh
are the high-supply zones for women in prostitution. Belgaum, Bijapur,
and Kolhapur are some common districts from which women migrate to
cities either through an organized trafficking network, or due to
socioeconomic forces (Central Social Welfare Board, Meena Menon,
"Women in India’s Trafficking Belt", 30 March 1998)

Bangalore is one of the five major cities in India which together
account for 80 percent of child prostitutes in the country.
(Seethalakshmi S., "Karnataka girls being sold to Goa breothels," Time
Of India, 28 May 1998)

90% of the 100,000 women in prostitution in Bombay are indentured
slaves. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and
Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation,
8 April 1996)

Prostitution is increasing in India where there have been fears over
the spread of AIDS and reports of young girls being abducted and
forced into prostitution. ("Asian prostitutes meet to demand legal
status," Reuters, 29 July 1998)

It takes up to fifteen years for girls held in prostitution via debt-
bondage to purchase their freedom. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s
Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS
Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

Children of prostituted women are victims of sexual abuse as well.
Children are forced to perform dances and songs for male buyers, and
some are forced to sexually service the males. (Activists, Meena
Menon, "Tourism and Prostitution," 1997)

Of 1,000 red light districts all over India, cage prostitutes are
mostly minors, often from Nepal and Bangladesh. (CATW - Asia Pacific,
Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)

In Bombay, 95% of the children of prostituted women become
prostitutes. One child, who had repeatedly been sodomized by the men
who bought his mother, decided to become a eunuch. He was ritually
castrated. (Sheela Remedios program director of Project Child, Robert
I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption
Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

There are three routes into prostitution for most women in India. 1)
Deception; 2) Devadasi dedication and 3) Bad marriages or families.
For some women their marriages were so violent they preferred
prostitution. Husbands or families introduced some women to
prostitution. Many families knew what the women had to do, but ignored
it as long as they got the benefits from it. (Malini Karkal "Down
Memory Lane," (interview, The Maharashtra Times, 19 November 1997)

The red light district in Bombay generates at least $400 million a
year in revenue, with 100,000 prostitutes servicing men 365 days a
year, averaging 6 customers a day, at $2 each. (Robert I. Freidman,
"India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to
An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

The largest red light district in India, perhaps in the world, is the
Falkland Road Kamatipura area of Bombay. (film,"The Selling of
Innocents" 1997)

In Kamathipura brothel district in Bombay more than 70,000 prostituted
women and girls are bought by three men a day. Condoms are seldom
used. Escape is rare. (Tim McGirk "Nepal's Lost Daughters, 'India's
soiled goods,'" 27 January 1997)

There are many dhabhas, or small-scale brothels, along the Solapur-
Hyderabad highway, which provide women as an "additional service" to
truck drivers and motorists. One woman who runs a dhabha had
previously been in prostitution. Now, with a shed, two cots and a few
girls from nearby villages, she owns the brothel. "I rented this place
for Rs 1000 a month and take Rs 20 per man from the girls. (Meena
Menon "The Twilight Zone," The Hindu, 27 July 1997)

A brothel owner along the Solapur-Hyderabad highway reported that he
has two women. He takes a Rs 15 commission for each man. Since this is
illegal, he pays the nearest police station Rs 1,000 a month as hafta,
or bribe. If a girl is beautiful, she will be bought by five to ten
men a day. The owner’s monthly earnings can reach Rs 4,000 to 5,000 a
month. (Meena Menon "The Twilight Zone," The Hindu, 27 July 1997)

A brothel owner along the Solapur-Hyderabad highway reported that
prostituting women is good a business. He had ten to 12 girls. He paid
the police Rs 6,000 as a monthly bribe. He goes to Bombay to bring
women and girls, implying he was part of a bigger network. (Meena
Menon, "The Twilight Zone," The Hindu, 27 July 1997)

The women and girls in the dhabhas, or brothels, along the Solapur-
Hyderabad highway, are threatened, harassed, forced to service men, or
goondas, freely and beaten by men and police. Local farmers abuse them
also. Police do not register any complaints of assault. In one cases,
a woman who was running over unfamiliar fields to escape the police in
pitch darkness; she stumbled into a well and was killed. Sometimes,
bodies of women are found on the fields, half eaten by animals.
Another woman had her ears cut off, was robbed and left unconscious on
the road. (Meena Menon, "The Twilight Zone," The Hindu, 27 July 1997)

Eunuch Lane in Bombay has more than 2,000 eunuchs in prostitution. The
eunuchs, or hijras, have deep religious roots in Hinduism. As young
boys they are abandoned or sold by their families to a sex ring and
taken into the jungle, where a priest cuts off their genitals in a
ceremony called nirvana. The priest then folds back a strip of flesh
to create an artificial vagina. Eunuchs are generally more available
to perform high-risk sex than female prostitutes, and some Indian men
believe they can’t contact HIV from them. (Robert I. Freidman,
"India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to
An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

A survey of prostituted women in India reveals their reasoning for
staying in prostitution (in descending order of significance):
poverty/ unemployment; lack of proper reintegration services, lack of
options; stigma and adverse social attitudes; family expectations and
pressure; resignation and acclimation to the lifestyle. (CATW - Asia
Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)

Health and Well-being

Madams take sick women to one of the red light districts 200
unlicensed doctors, who give the women mood elevators, IV drips of
colored water or medicinal herbs. The women must pay for this
"treatment" with cash from moneylenders, and the Mafia collects a
percentage from the "doctors." (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame:
Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS
Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

60% of prostituted women in Bombay's red-light district areas are
infected with STDs and AIDS. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in
Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)

More than half of Bombay’s 100,000 prostitutes are infected with HIV.
A magazine publisher in Bombay said AIDS will benefit the country
because it will depopulate the vast underclass. (Robert I. Freidman,
"India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to
An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

In July 1990, mob bosses permitted Savahdan, a charity group, to
repatriate 700 South Indian prostitutes to Madras, most of whom were
HIV positive. It was perceived as a cheap way of getting rid of HIV
infected girls. Many women, too sick to prostitute are thrown onto the
street. Government hospitals won’t treat prostitutes who are HIV
positive, or are developing symptoms of AIDS. In Bombay’s J.J.
Hospital an HIV infected woman was refused treatment, though she was
bleeding and her condition was life threatening. She delivered a baby
in the brothel. [government report, Robert I. Freidman, "India’s
Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS
Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996]

In Bombay, on average the girls are bought by six men a day, who pay US
$1.10 - 2 per sex act, the madam gets the money up front. To pay for
movies, clothes, make-up and extra food to supplement a diet of rice
and dal, the girls have to borrow from moneylenders at an interest
rate of up to 500%. They are perpetually in debt. (Robert I. Freidman,
"India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to
An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

In 1991, Bombay’s 100,000 prostituted women averaged 600,000 sexual
contacts a day. At the time 30% were HIV positive, the chance of
transmission was 0.1%. On that basis, 200 clients were being infected
with HIV everyday, 6,000 each month. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s
Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS
Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

Prostitution Tourism

Foreign tourists are frequenting India because of its relaxed laws,
abundant child prostitutes and the false idea that there is a lower
incidence of AIDS. (Rahul Bedi, "Bid To Protect Chedren As Sex Tourism
Spreads," 1997)

India is one of the favored destinations of paedophile sex tourists
from Europe and the United States. ("Global law to punish sex tourists
sought by Britain and EU," The Indian Express, 21 November 1997

Multinational tour operators, hotel companies, airlines and travel
agencies are setting up the tourism agenda for Goa, India and the
world over. However, they ignore the host community. (Roland Martins,
Jagrut Goenkaranchi Fauz, "While the Locals Visit the Temple to Pray,
You Will Have Bikini-Clad Women Moving Around," Herald, 4 October
1997)

Cases

December 1997, a nine-year-old girl from Pune was found living with a
54- year- old Swiss national in a Goa hotel for over nine months. A
local NGO filed a complaint with the police and the girl was sent to
an observation home. When contacted, her father said she was there
with his consent. The man was released following an investigation.
Inspector General, Goa Police, Mr. P.R.S. Brar said "paedophilia is a
myth, it just does not exist." Ms. Mohini Giri, chair of the National
Commision for Women met with the girl and said she had admitted to
being sexually abused. (Meena Menon, "Tourism and Prostitution," The
Hindu, 14 February, 1998)

In 1990 an orphanage owner in Goa was arrested for allegedly supplying
children to British, French, German, Swiss and Scandinavian
prostitution tourists. He was freed on bail and the case has still not
gone to court. (Rahul Bedi, "Bid To Protect Children As Sex Tourism
Spreads,"London’s Daily Telegraph, 1997)

The main frequenters of prostitutes in Goa are tourists, local men and
college boys. United States "seamen" ask locals in Goa which bars to
find prostitutes in. Taxi drivers take tourists from Delhi, Gurjarat,
Bangalore, Bombay and Punjab to brothels in Baina. Some men have taxi
drivers bring prostituted girls from Baina back to their hotels in
Panjim. The next morning, the taxi drivers rape the girls before
taking them home. (taxi driver, Meena Menon, "Tourism and
Prostitution,"The Hindu 1997)

Policy and Law

Although prostitution is legal in India, brothel keeping, living off
the earnings of a prostitute, soliciting or seducing for the purposes
of prostitution are all punishable offenses. There are severe
penalties for child prostitution and trafficking of women. (Robert I.
Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are
Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

Since mid-1997 the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustment
policy for India has given rise to the economic and sexual
exploitation of women in export processing zones, where 70-80% of
workers are young women. (Sujatha Fernandes, "Growing Women’s Movement
in India," Green Left Weekly, 20 July 1997)

The devadasi tradition, still prevalent in many parts of India,
continues to legitimise child prostitution. A devadasi is a woman
married to a god and thus sadasuhagan or married, and hence at all
times blessed. As such, she becomes the wife of the powerful in the
community. Devadasi is known by different names in different states.
In the Vijapur district of Karnataka, girls are given to the Monkey
God (Hanuman, Maruti), and known as Basvi. In Goa, a devadasi is
called Bhavin (the one with devotion), In the Shimoga District of
Karnataka, the girls are handed over to the goddess Renuka Devi, and
in Hospet, to the goddess Hulganga Devi. The tradition lives on in
other states in South India. Girls end up as prostitutes in Bombay and
Pune. The Banchara and Bedia peoples of Madhya Pradesh also practice
"traditional" prostitution. (Farida Lambey, vice-principal of the
Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work, "Devadasi System Continues to
Legitimise Prostitution: The Devadasi Tradition and Prostitution,"
TOI, 4 December 1997)

Official Response and Action

After raiding Kamathipura, Mumbai's largest red district, Mumbai
police 160 women were sent to the St Catherines Rescue Home. Many
women were HIV positive and a large number were pregnant or already
had children. (Sister Shiela, Mitu Varma, "India: Children of a Lesser
God," InterPress Services, 27 October 1997)

In Goa, India there are at least 400 children in prostitution. After
Ms. Mohini Giri, chair of the National Commission for women, visited
and declared there to be rampant child prostitution in the area,
police have conducted some raids in order to find prostituted
children. Although police conduct raids, brothels recieve tip-offs and
hide the minors before raids are conducted. (Meena Menon, "Tourism and
Prostitution," 1997)

Official Corruption and Collaboration

In Bombay, top politicians and police officials are in league with the
mafia who control the sex industry, exchanging protection for cash
payoffs and donations to campaign war chests. Corruption reaches all
levels of the ruling Congress Party in New Delhi. Many politicians
view prostitutes as an expendable commodity. (Robert I. Freidman,
"India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to
An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

The mafia kidnapped a Dutch doctor compiling an ethnographic study for
the World Health Organization. He was released three days later and
warned to stop probing the links among politicians, the mob and
prostitution. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and
Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation,
8 April 1996)

Underage girls are rarely found in brothels because the pimps and
owners receive tip offs from police about impending raids. (Meena
Menon, "Tourism and Prostitution," The Hindu, 14 February,1998)

In one brothel in Bombay, the police receive weekly bribes called
haftas from the madams. Cops harass the girls, take their money, and
demand free sexual services. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame:
Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS
Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

South Central Bombay is home to the biggest organized crime family in
Asia, run by Dawood Ibrahim. In 1992, 40 candidates in Bombay’s
municipal elections, and 180 of 425 legislators in Uttar Pradesh had
criminal records. Shantabai, Bombay’s most powerful madam controlled
as many as 10,000 pimps and prostitutes’ votes in a 1985 election.
Bombay’s sex industry has evolved into a highly efficient business. It
is controlled by four separate crime groups: One in charge of police
payoffs, another controlling money laundering, a third maintaining
internal law and order, and the fourth procures women through a vast
network streching from South India to the Himalayas. Of the four mafia
groups in Bombay, the most powerful is Mehboob Thasildar, the procurer
of women. Thasildar opened a restaurant on the ground floor of a two-
story, blocklong brothel he also owned, one of the biggest in Bombay,
with more than 50 prostituted women. (Indian government sources,
Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political
Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April
1996)

Action of NGOs

As of mid-1998, Sanlaap shelter in Sneha, India has 25 to 30 rescued
prostituted children. 60% of the children rescued from prostitution
are HIV positive. (Indrani Sinha, SANLAAP India, "Paper on
Globalization & Human Rights")

NGO workers, who urge prostitutes to use condoms, have to get the
Mafia's consent, and promise to ignore the child prostitution.
(Shilpa, a 30-year-old social worker who has spent five years in the
red-light district, Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery
and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The
Nation, 8 April 1996)

Pornography

Most of phone sex numbers called from India are phone sex businesses
run in the United States, Hong Kong and Australia. ("India cuts access
to phone sex numbers," Reuters, 20 August 1998)

Official Response and Action

India has blocked access to international numbers used for phone sex.
"These services are obscene...they are against the moral fibre of the
country and a drain on foreign exchange," said Communications Minister
Sushma Swaraj. She said the government had directed state-run monopoly
international carrier, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) to cut off the
calls. The minister said many Indian government phones were being
misused to make calls to sex lines. Swaraj said that she hoped there
would soon be technology to stop people accessing Internet
pornography. ("India cuts access to phone sex numbers," Reuters, 20
August 1998)

Organized and Institutionalized Sexual Exploitation and Violence

50 million girls and women are missing from India's population, the
result of systematic sex discrimination, such as abortion of female
fetuses, which is officially banned. (United Nations report, Sonali
Verma, "Indian women still awaiting independence," Human Rights
Information Network: Indi News Network Digest, Volume2, Issue1648, 16
August 1997)

In 1990, more than 50 widows were burnt alive when their husbands'
bodies were cremated in a ritual known as "sati," based on the belief
that a Hindu woman has no existence independent of her husband.
(Sonali Verma, "Indian women still awaiting independence," Human
Rights Information Network: Indi News Network Digest, Volume2,
Issue1648, 16 August 1997)

Although dowry is legally banned, at least 5,000 women are victims of
"dowry murders," in which they are killed by their husband or his
family because of "insufficient" dowries. At least 12 women "die"
every day from bazzier kitchen fires, which are typically concealed
dowry murders. The dowry system has also led to an inflating female
infanticide. especially among very poor families. Few of these cases
are ever even brought to trial. (UNICEF, United Press International,
23 July 1997)

A very large percentage of marriages are arranged. "The custom of
arranged marriage is a legitimized institution. In a majority of cases
the bride has little or no say. She and the bridegroom are virtual
strangers. In many rural communities the bridegroom does not even
attend his own wedding. The sex act (between the two) is nothing but a
rape. The Indian woman’s acceptance of the inevitable has, sanctified
this abhorrent practice, and, subsequently legitimized it." (Sudhir
Vaishnav, "Legal Indian Rape: The new bride can be an unsuspecting
victim of a legal rape," Femina, 17 September 1997)

More than 5,000 women are murdered each year as the result of dowry
killings in India. (Mindelle Jacobs, "Abuse of Women is Sadly Common,"
Edmonton Sun, 11 July 1998)

In 1993, in-laws killed about 16 women every day for dowry, although
the government declared accepting dowry illegal in 1961. Women's
groups say the number of cases reported is a fraction of the real
figure. (Sonali Verma, "Indian women still awaiting independence,"
Human Rights Information Network: Indi News Network Digest, Volume2,
Issue1648, 16 August 1997)

During the armed conflict in Kashmir, Punjab and other Northeastern
states women are victimized, raped, tortured, sexually abused and
violated by military personnel, militants or insurgents, para-military
units, rebel groups, religious sects, fundamentalist armed groups,
warlords, state security forces, armed opposition groups, or
terrorists and peace-keeping forces. (Indrani Sinha, executive
director, "Paper on Globalization and Human Rights," SANLAAP)

In 1997, there were reports of Indian armed forces arresting,
torturing and molesting women and girls in Kashmir. Every day the
local newspapers report such incidences. (KASHNet, Human Rights
Information Network, 14 August 1997)

Women and girls have been systematically brutalized and raped by
Indian forces in house to house searches in Kashmir between October
1996 and December 1997. ("Rape and Molestation: A Weapon of War in
Kashmir," The Institute of Kashmir Studies," 1998)

Official Response and Action

To halt child marriages, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)
in India has recommended compulsory registration of marriages to be
added as an amendment to the Child Marriage (Restraint) Act. ("NHRC
for amendments to Child Marriage Act," Hindu Daily, 17 August 1998)

A considerable number of child marriages, performed on April 29, 1998
(Akshay Thithiya day), were witnessed and took place without any
obstruction from the authorities or members of the public in Bikaner
and Jodhpur, India. (Senior Superintendent of Police, National Human
Rights Commission’s (NHRC) Investigation Division, "NHRC for
amendments to Child Marriage Act," Hindu Daily, 17 August 1998)

The National Girl Child Week began in India on 23 September 1998 as
part of a regional celebration of the rights of the girl child in
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka to reaffirm
commitment to the SAARC Decade of the Girl Child. The UNICEF India
Country Office has identified high maternal mortality, low birth
weight babies and discriminatory post-natal attention to boys in India
as some of the major reasons for disparity in male-female child ratio.
The week will highlight governmental, inter-governmental, and non-
governmental efforts to end this disparity. ("Steps to strengthen
rights of the girl child," Hindu Daily, 23 September 1998)

Cases

In September 1987, 18-year-old Roop Kanwar was forced to commit
suttee. Cans of ghee cooking butter were poured on her as she burnt to
death on her husband's funeral pyre. Conch shells were blown like
horns after she died. And a trishul was left as a symbol of the faith
of the sati, or "true wife" in Sanskrit. In October 1996, all 38
defendants in the Kanwar cases were acquitted. Following this, more
than 1,000 devotees staged a major festival at the Rani Sati temple in
Jhunjhunu, in contravention of the 1988 Act, which prohibits
glorification of suttee. The court refused to stop the nine-day event
in late November and early December, but ruled there must be no direct
reference to suttee, and that the rituals must be held outside rather
than within the temple. Protesters violated this order, and filed a
contempt petition. (Muku; Sharma, "Women Fight New Threats of Widow
Sacrifice," 7 February 1997)

Indian armed forces stormed into the house of Kamal Dar, in Padshahi
Bagh area and locked his daughter Madeeha in a separate room where she
was subjected to severe torture for many hours. Kamal Dar said the
person gave electric shocks to his 18-year-old daughter and molested
her. The armed personnel also treated in a similar way another woman,
wife of one Bashir Amad and mother of five children. They also
molested two girls in Pahalgam. A group of security forces men in the
village of Dehar Muna raided the house of Ghulam Muhammad and abducted
her daughter, Raja Bano, at gunpoint. The girl was taken to a security
camp. After her release she explains that she was interrogated for
whole night and kept naked throughout the night. She also showed
torture marks on her body. She was taken to hospital for medical
examination. (police sources, KASHNet, Human Rights Information
Network, 14 August 1997)

Maimun, 19 was gang-raped and attempts made to murder her following
her love marriage to Idris, 28. A team from the National Commission
for Women to investigate the torture of the young woman was attacked
by nearly 1,000 villagers. Maumun’s cousin had cut Maimun’s abdomen
and neck with a butcher knife, leaving her to bleed to death. (Piyush
Mathur, "NCW members probing rape of girl attacked," Times of India,
16 August 1997)

http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/india.htm

PUCL Bulletin, August 1987

Child prostitution in India
-- By Sarika Misha

I. Introduction

Child labour is not a new phenomenon. It has existed in one form or
the other in all historical periods. What is new, however, it its
perception as a social problem and its being a matter of social
concern.

In older days the child was viewed with a tender feeling and treated
with warmth, mercy, and compassion. But the fund of knowledge about
the psychophysical needs and the environmental influence impinging on
his growth and development was rather meager. The mechanics and
dynamics of child development were not adequately and scientifically
understood. Today on scientific grounds it can be asserted that work
as a direct fulfilment of child's natural abilities and creative
potentialities is always conducive to healthy growth but work when
taken up as a means for fulfilment of some other needs becomes
enslaving in character of a social problem in as much as it hinders,
arrests, or distorts the natural growth processes and prevents the
child from attaining full blown personality.

The lions share of the value generated by it is appropriated by some
one else and the child is left with a fraction that can not meet
comfortably even the survival needs.

Child labour is thus defined as work performed by children that either
endangers their health or safety, interferes with or prevents
education or keeps them from play and other activity important to
their development. Child labour of this kind is considered a social
evil.

The problem of child labour is a multi-dimensional one as the children
from a large segment of the total population. Child prostitution
involving both boys and girls is very common today but female child
prostitution is more common than male child prostitution.

Termed as the oldest profession, prostitution has become an integral
part of 'all sorts' that make the world. Women who resort to this
rarely get a sympathetic word from the society and their life is
wasted away selling momentary pleasures for a meal and existence in
cubby holes called 'cages'. If their plight is pathetic, worse still
is that of the child prostitutes.

Today there is existence of 'kid porn' where children and not adults
are chosen for sexual exploitation.

Ironically child prostitution is a special category of rigorous case
of child labour and it raises more troubling ethical problems than
child labour in general.

II. Extent

Many surveys have been conducted to find out the extent of child
prostitution. Dr. Gilada's paper on perspectives and positional
problems of social intervention" shows that,
"70% of women are forced into prostitution and 20% of these are child
prostitutes."

Statistics of the survey done show:-

City Population Prostitute Population

Bombay 10 million 100,000

Calcutta 9 million 100,000

Delhi 7 million 40,000

Agra 3 million 40,000

A survey conducted by Indian Health Organization of a red light area
of Bombay shows:-

1. 20% of the one lakh prostitutes are children.
2. 25% of the child prostitutes had been abducted and sold.
3. 6% had been raped and sold.
4. 8% had been sold by their fathers after forcing them into
incestuous relationships.
5. 2 lakh minor girls between ages 9yrs-20yrs were brought every year
from Nepal to India and 20,000 of them are in Bombay brothels.
6. 15% to 18% are adolescents between 13 yrs and 18 yrs.
7. 15% of the women in prostitution have been sold by their husbands
8. Of 200m suffering from sexually transmitted diseases in the world
50m alone were in India.
9. 15% of them are devdasis.

III. Cases

There are several causes of child prostitution but some of the most
important ones are as follows:

1. Devdasi system:- many of the devdasis are the girls who were
dedicated to the Goddess Yellamma by their parents at a very young
age. They are the servants of God as they are married to the Goddess.
This ceremony takes place twice a year. The main one is during the
second fortnight of January at Karnatakas Saudatti village in South
West of Miraj. Once the girl is married to a Goddess she cannot marry
a mortal.

The procurers frequent the place inorder to get the fresh supplies of
girls as 4000 to 5000 girls are dedicated every year to the Goddess.

Attaining puberty is a secondary thing as there is a ceremony known as
heath Lawni (or touching ceremony) whereby the girl is made over to
the highest bidder.

A study revealed that one third, of which three fourth are under
fourteen years, are in Bombay's cheapest brothels. They belong to the
low castes like Mahars, Matangs, etc. who give low priority to
education. They are so poverty stricken that Fathers, brothers and
husbands do not hesitate to sell their daughters, sisters and wives.

Prevention of devdasis Act has been in the statute book since 1935 and
amended recently but the system continues even today despite
governmental ban, Still the girls are dedicated to the Goddess and
forced into virtual prostitution and made to entertain males in order
to invoke the blessings of the deity.

It was estimated that in Delhi 50% of the prostitutes are devdasis and
in Bombay, Pune, Solapur and Sangli. 15% of them are devdasis,

(2) It is also noticed that young and old men prefer young and new
girls.

(3) Growing poverty, increasing urbanization, and industrialization,
migration, and widespread unemployment, breaking up of joint family
system etc. are also responsible for the prevalence and perpetuation
of the child prostitution.

(4) The influx of the affluent and not so affluent people from Gulf
countries in India has boosted the flesh trade in cities like Bombay,
Hyderabad etc. The parents are forced to part with their daughters for
as little as 2 rupees tow two thousand in the fond hope that they
would get two square meals in the moneyed new world.

(5) Quick marriages without proper knowledge of the bridegroom's
family background leading to a divorce initiates the gravitation of
girls to the red light area.

(6) Another inaction is after rape. A fifteen years old girl was
brought to Dr, Gildas Clinic as she was suffering from the symptoms of
an STD she had been raped and sold by a self styled social worker. The
poor girl was forced into silence by the threats of dire
consequences.

(7) The children are not lured into it but are thrust into it. There
was a case of a sixteen years old girl who was sold to a brothel owner
by her father following incest. 8% of these girls are victims of
incest because of the myth-that one of the causes for an STD is
intercourse with a virgin.

(8) Many a times when a child who has lost both his parents is looked
after by the relatives and these relatives too force the child into
prostitution.

(9) Child marriages are a common phenomenon even today and the bride
is very much younger to the bridegroom so the husband drives the
innocent wife into prostitution. There is a case where a girl of 13
was married off to a man of thrice her age three months later he
abandoned her and married another girl. She returned to her poor
parents and three months later a man promised her a good job and took
her to Bombay from where he went and sold her to a middle aged woman
at Kamatipura for rupees ten thousand and did not come back to take
her.

(10) Some of them are lured to Bombay the tinsel town. They dream of
stellar roles in films and mostly end up as prostitutes in the cages.

IV. Who are these girls, where then they procured from? How and why?

Tribal Kolta women and girls from Garhwal hills are compelled to
become prostitutes to rescue their family from debt bondage. Poverty
stricken young girls from Bengal and Nepal are lured with promises of
attractive jobs and marriage. The agents came to know about the
existing condition in the areas of U. P. Tehri Garhwal. Dehradun etc.
The local Rajputs used to keep the men as animals and exploit their
wives, sisters and daughters too. The agents were successful in
convincing these women well and hence brought them to Delhi and Agra
and sold them to the brothels there.

The phenomenon of commercialized trafficking of their girls found an
easy acceptability among kollas as Nadeem Hasnain, an anthropologist
researched the Socio-economic and cultural variables responsible for
the bondage. In his book Bonded for ever (1982) says. "… Centuries of
exploitation and extreme degrees of material and non material
deprivation and the resultant wretchedness have taken the fight out of
them and they can hardly resist the temptation of getting some hundred
rupees even at the cost of selling their offsprings and wives. It is
an economic battle for life".

Nearly 5000 teenagers and women in a Tehsil of sangli district in
South Maharastra wait for the month of June when the Arabs come and
the year long poverty and hunger of these women, children, and babies
is dispelled over night. The flesh trade flourishes from June to
September and makes all the people connected with it happy.

In Rajashtan teenage prostitution is catching up as men sit and smoke
hukkas while women fix bargains years after passing of the suppression
of immoral traffic of women and children act. The children of the age
group between 12 yrs to 20 yrs practice prostitution after school
hours. Most of these children are later sold to the brothels of Agra
and Delhi.

In big cities women procures are on a lookout for girls and they get
girls from Basti, Gonda, Gorakhpur, Shahjahanpur, which are
particularly notorious areas. Trilokpur police said that in a period
of a year one thousand girls were sold in Doomariyaganj tahsil alone.

Nepal has a very large female population and majority of them are
illiterate and are very gullible and can be lured under any pretext.
They are very religious and succumb to the promises of being taken to
temples in India. They are fair skinned and attractive and a promise
to get them into films tempts them. There is widespread unemployment
in Nepal and the girls are totally unexposed to the outer world.

About 40% of these girls are habitual bidi smokers so a little bit of
the soporific can be mixed in the cigarettes for e.g. Ganja, Charas
before abducting them. The Govt. of Nepal plans to ban smoking for
women for this reason. The procurers find new ways of abducting them.
One of the ways is giving them the 'magic paan' (betel) which is
cocaine mixed, as most of the girls are abdicts of paan and beedi fall
an easy prey to the cocaine intoxication.

Another bait is that of dowry which exists in reverse from in Nepal. A
man can buy a bride and then he brings her to Bombay or anywhere and
sells her at a brothel. Bombay seems to be an end of the rainbow when
the daughters disappeared, the parents did not try to find out because
they neither had the resources nor the ability to do so. They are
assured that each girl can look after herself and if she does not
reach so far. But when the girls started disappearing more frequently
the rumours filtered back to the villages the neighbours were told
that she was working in Bombay.

The parents do not accept the girls back but the money they send to
them 80% of the girls crossing the Indo-Nepal border fall victims to
racketeers who include Government officials of the two countries.

Girls are also brought from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh
and are assaulted and raped till they submit to this shameful life.

V. Conditions

In the seamy and sordid world where each painted faced hides its own
talk of abduction coercion an submission the 'gharwali' or the
'madani' rules by force and is helped by 'Goondas'. The prostitute is
deprived of her earnings till the price which was paid to buy her is
procured. If she utters a word of dissatisfaction she is whipped. They
are kept in sophisticated cages by their owners. The child prostitutes
who are minors and virgins are kept under strict vigil in reserve as
they are in great demand. The Arabs and Koreans are used to paying
thousands for these girls. The girls are never lodged at the same
place permanently and they are shifted occasionally to a dozen of
brothels owned by the procuress of their own country to avoid
familiarity with the customers or police detection.

The procurer first rechristens the girl and the cautions them against
revealing their real names and also disclosing there true addresses to
the customers. Thereafter they are trained on the ethics of flesh
trade never to turn away any customer, to treat all customers well
equally courteously and superficially and never to discuss personal
matters and keep themselves clean. They are also given one weekly
holiday. The brothels where minor girls are kept, have two entries so
as to escape during the sudden raids.

The girls have to live in a really unhygenic condition with very
little food. A dozen girls have to live in a 10 x 10 room and that too
without any medical check ups. These girls are forced to work round
the clock. They are excused only when they are physically very weak.

Madams have quacks to treat them who dispense debilitating remedies
and also use dangerous and unhygenic methods of abortion. The quacks
inject coloured liquid in the infected areas as the treatment for
various sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, scabies,
venereal wart etc. making the children never totally cured thus
extending their hold on them. The girls are seldom taken for treatment
as sex with a minor girl is a crime so the madams are scared of the
criminal proceedings.

For decades the most important red light areas have been enjoying the
police protection. The policemen themselves go to the brothels for tea
snacks and girls. They inform the brothel keepers in advance about the
raids which are scheduled to take place.

The police, the brothel keeper, and pimps share the major part of the
earnings of the prostitutes and the rest of it that percolates down to
the prostitutes is a mere pittance. It is alleged that the police and
abet the running of the brothels. They accept the hospitability, money
and free use of the girls. The police helps the brothel keeper even by
bringing back the ones who have run away. In a case where a girl named
Geeta who was ten years old was rescued by a hawker after many
attempts was returned back to the brothel keeper by the inspector
himself on the same day.

The escapes by the victims and recovery by the police are rare. The
recoveries do not account for even 2% of the actual number of girls
procured it different places.

Child prostitution does not exists only in India but also in other
parts of the world.

"60 sex salves all from impoverished Dominican republic were found
hidden in sealed containers unloaded at the port St. Thomas in U. S.
Virgin Islands. 28 of these died and survivors were weak with no
identity papers. They work for 18 hrs in a day and get only 20 dollars
per client."

"Millions of third worlds young women and children are sold. Sexual
slavery is becoming increasingly international and industrial
incharacter".

An organization of Manila which exports girls had 18 girls between the
ages of 10 yrs to 17 yrs ready to be exported with same sign tattooed
on the right thigh.

In Thailand child prostitution is relatively discrete and tolerated by
police.

VI. Effects

Practice of child prostitution is economically unsound,
psychologically disastrous, and morally dangerous and harmful on even
and individual child. One can hardly imagine the extreme trauma that a
child under goes. There is a case of a child prostitute who lost her
speech after being raped by one who had hired her. She is now placed
in a deaf mute school for speech recovery.

The case of Tulsa a Nepali girl is more pathetic. Since the age of 13
she was sold and brought by many people and shifted from brothel to
brothel and was forced by five to seven men every day. In this process
she ended up with many diseases. She was taken to J. J. Hospital at
Bombay. She was said to be suffering from meningitis, tuberculosis of
brain, bone and chest and had an STD in advanced stage. The police
took over sixteen months a file a charge sheet. Finally she was
repatriated to Nepal. The culprits in the Himalayan. Kingdom were
tried and imprisoned for 20 years.

Child prostitutes become ready recruits for flesh trade for they are
rendered unfit for any other trade or calling not being educated or
having any knowledge of any other trade.

Child prostitution itself is a criminal activity and serves as a
catalyst for further criminal association in other fields. The
helpless children are turned into mere pawns in the criminal
syndicates which lead to a steady deterioration of morals.

50m of the worlds 200m prostitutes who suffer from STD are in India
and they are mostly found to be affected by tuberculosis, meningitis
scabies, chronic pelvic injections anaemia, syphilis, chaneroid.
Tineacrutis, vevercal war etc. This was the scars that the child
prostitution leaves on the child prostitutes can not be erased but to
a certain extent can be minimised by the medical help.

VII. Law and child prostitution

The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act passed by both houses of
parliament last August come into force from Monday 26th January 1987.

Under the amended act detention of a woman for purposes of
prostitution is punishable with a minimum of seven years of
imprisonment and maximum of life imprisonment Equally Stringent
punishment will be awarded to those procuring children for
prostitution.
Earlier, the act was known as suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women
and Girls Act (SITA). The name of the act has been changed and it has
been made more effective and stringent. The definition of prostitute
itself has been changed to include persons of both sexes. Earlier it
included girls and women only. The amendment takes into account the
growing menace of male prostitution especially that involving young
boys.

Under the new act there are three categories of victims-children,
minors and majors. The children are those upto 16 years and minors are
those between 16 to 18yrs and majors are those above 18 yrs. The
earlier act recognized only women and girls - a women being one who
has completed 21 years. Punishment for offences committed against
these categories differ in severity Offences Committed against
children and minors will be dealt with more severely than those
against majors.

The new act provides for the appointment of a special police officer
for investigating offences with inter-state ramifications the women
who are resended by the police during raids will be questioned only by
women police officers and if none is available they can be
interrogated only in the presence of a female representative of a
recognised welfare institution or organisation. To make a search or
conduct a raid too the police officer has to be accompanied by at
least two police women.

VIII. Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation of the prostitutes is a big problem because people
donate for different causes like handicapped people, blind etc but
when it cames to helping these girls not many are willing. There is a
stigma attached to this profession once rescued the girls are sent to
the Remand houses or the protective houses which are overcrowded,
mismanaged, without facilities or vocational training and living
conditions threadbare. The Government gives an aid of just Rs. 75/-
per girl per month. So the girl realises that the life before was
better and so when the pimp comes to claim them as a brother or a
sister she readily goes with him or her to the old life.

IX. Conclusion

Our society has not only turned a blind eye to minor girls being
enticed into prostitution but also is directly responsible for the
continuance in growth of child prostitution. First the demand for
virgin prostitutes, and secondly it abets child prostitution by
failing to provide adequate facilities for orphan and destitute
children. Unless so called respectable sections of the society rise in
revolt against exploitation the future of younger generation looks
bleak. We have to forget the idea of once a prostitute for ever a
prostitute and think how can a child help what has been done her by an
unthinking adult? We have to overlook their past and rehabilitate them
as one of the agencies in Bombay called Savadhan headed by Mr. Gupta
is doing. They have got 30 of prostitutes who were rescued married to
respectable people of the society. The IHO has been clamoring for
women police to patrol red light area because policemen themselves
exploit the inhabitant of the Red light area. The Government should
divert more funds for rehabilitation and private charitable
institutions should also contribute what we achieve in science and
technology will be negated if we cannot protect our minor girls who
are being exploited. The Government should severely punish the people
connected with this inhuman practice should be totally banned for the
good of the future citizens of our country.

X. Bibliography

1. Child Prostitution: SC notice to state 15th February 1984, Indian
Express (Bombay).

2. Forum against child prostitution formed 3rd August 1985, The Times
of India (Bombay).

3. Women in Bondage, Prashant Kumar, 11th November 1984, Sunday
Observer.

4. A doctors crusade against child Prostitution by Chaya Srivastava.
18th June1986, Deccan Herals (Bangalore)

5. Rescue, Protect, Destroy: Sheela Barse, 10th February 1985,
Statesman.

6. Miraj's monsoon harvest, Anand Agashe, 8th May 1986, Indian Express
(Bombay).

7. From Nepal without Love, Shashi Menon, 7th April 1985, Indian
Express.

8. Profile of sexually transmitted diseases in child prostitutes in
the Red light areas of Bombay, V. R. Bhalerao.

9. Courtesans in the house of God, 8th September 1985. Free Press
Journal.

10. Child Prostitution, 3rd August 1985. Times of India.

11. 60 Girls as Cargo to Virgin Ils, 21st April 1985, Indian Express.

12. Teenage Prostitution up in Rajasthan, 28th December 1984, The
Daily.

13. 20% of the Prostitutes are minors. V Mathews, 11th August 1985,
The Daily

14. Encyclopedia Americana

15. Urbanization a hell for poor kids, 2nd November 1986, The Times of
India, Bombay.

16. New act to curb, child Prostitution, 24th January 1987, Times of
India (Bombay).

17. Prostitution Thrives in Bombay, 7th April 1987, Times of India,
(Bombay).

http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/Child/prostitution.htm

Prostitution in India
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In India, prostitution (exchanging sex for money) is legal, but
related activities such as soliciting sex, operating brothels and
pimping are illegal.[1].

Prostitution is currently a contentious issue in India. In 2007, the
Ministry of Women and Child Development reported the presence of 2.8
million sex workers in India, with 35.47 percent of them entering the
trade before the age of 18 years. [2][3]. The number of prostitutes
has also doubled in the last decade. [4].

According to a Human Rights Watch report, Indian anti-trafficking laws
are designed to combat commercialized vice; prostitution, as such, is
not illegal. A sex worker can be punished for soliciting or seducing
in public, while clients can be punished for sexual activity in
proximity to a public place, and the organization puts the figure of
sex workers in India at around 15 million, with Mumbai alone being
home to one hundred thousand sex workers, the largest sex industry
centre in Asia [5]. Over the years, India has seen a growing mandate
to legalize prostitution, to avoid exploitation of sex workers and
their children by middlemen and in the wake of growing HIV/AIDS menace
[6]

Normally, girl prostitutes as categorised as common prostitutes,
singers and dancers, call girls, religious prostitutes (or devdasi),
and caged brothel prostitutes. Districts bordering Maharashtra and
Karnataka, known as the ‘devadasi belt’, have trafficking structures
operating at various levels [5]. Brothels are illegal de jure but in
practice are restricted in location to certain areas of any given
town. Though the profession does not have official sanction, little
effort is made to eradicate or impede it.

Sonagachi in Kolkata, Kamathipura in Mumbai, G. B. Road in New Delhi,
Reshampura in Gwalior and Budhwar Peth in Pune host thousands of sex
workers. They are famous red light centres in India. Earlier, there
were other centres such as Dal Mandi in Varanasi, Naqqasa Bazaar in
Saharanpur, Mali Sahi in Bhubaneshwar, Chaturbhuj Sthan in
Muzaffarpur, Peddapuram and Gudivada in Andhra Pradesh.

History

In ancient India, there is a practice of having Nagarvadhus, "brides
of the town". Famous examples include Amrapali, state courtesan and
Buddhist disciple, described in Vaishali Ki Nagarvadhu by Acharya
Chatursen and Vasantasena, a character in the classic Sanskrit story
of Mricchakatika, written in 2nd century BC by Sudraka. The Devadasis,
who performed in temples, were described as "temple prostitutes".
Kanhopatra is venerated as a saint in the Varkari sect of Hinduism,
despite spending most of her life as a courtesan. Binodini Dasi
started her career as a courtesan, later to become a Bengali theatre
actress.

In Goa, a Portuguese colony in India, during the late 16th and 17th
centuries, there was a community of Japanese slaves, who were usually
young Japanese women and girls brought or captured as sexual slaves by
Portuguese traders and their South Asian lascar crewmembers from Japan.
[7]

During the British East India Company's rule in India in the late 18th
and early 19th centuries, it was initially fairly common for British
soldiers to frequently visit local Indian nautch dancers. Likewise,
Indian lascar seamen taken to the United Kingdom also frequently
visited the local British prostitutes there.[8][9] In the 19th and
early 20th centuries, thousands of women and girls from continental
Europe and Japan were also trafficked into British India, where they
worked as prostitutes servicing both British soldiers and local Indian
men.[10][11][12]

Legal status

The primary law dealing with the status of sex workers is the 1956 law
referred to as the The Immoral Traffic (Suppression) Act (SITA).
According to this law, prostitutes can practice their trade privately
but cannot legally solicit customers in public. Organized prostitution
(brothels, prostitution rings, pimping etc) is illegal. As long as it
is done individually and voluntarily, a woman (male prostitution is
not recognized in the Indian constitution) can use her body's
attributes in exchange for material benefit. In particular, the law
forbids a sex worker to carry on her profession within 200 yards of a
public place. Unlike as is the case with other professions, sex
workers are not protected under normal labour laws, but they possess
the right to rescue and rehabilitation if they desire and possess all
the rights of other citizens.

In practice SITA is not commonly used. The Indian Penal Code (IPC)
which predates the SITA is often used to charge sex workers with vague
crimes such as "public indecency" or being a "public nuisance" without
explicitly defining what these consist of. Recently the old law has
been amended as The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act or PITA. Attempts
to amend this to criminalise clients [13] have been opposed by the
Health Ministry, [14] and has encountered considerable opposition.
[15] In an interesting and positive development in the improvement of
the lives of female sex workers in Calcutta, state owned insurance
company has provided life insurance to 250 individuals.[16]

Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act

The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act or PITA is a 1986 amendment of
legislation passed in 1956 as a result of the signing by India of the
United Nations' declaration in 1950 in New York on the suppression of
trafficking.[17] The act was then called the All India Suppression of
Immoral Traffic Act (SITA), was amended to the current law. The laws
were intended as a means of limiting and eventually abolishing
prostitution in India by gradually criminalizing various aspects of
sex work. The main points of the PITA are as follows: [18]

Sex Workers
A prostitute who seduces or solicits shall be prosecuted. Similarly,
call girls can not publish phone numbers to the public. (imprisonment
up to 6 months with fine, point 8)
Sex worker also punished for prostitution near any public place or
notified area. (Imprisonment of up to 3 months with fine, point 7)

Clients

A client is guilty of consorting with prostitutes and can be charged
if he engages in sex acts with a sex worker within 200 yards of a
public place or "notified area". (Imprisonment of up to 3 months,
point 7) The client may also be punished if the sex worker is below 18
years of age. (From 7 to 10 years of imprisonment, whether with a
child or a minor, point 7)
Pimps and Babus
Babus or pimps or live-in lovers who live off a prostitute's earnings
are guilty of a crime. Any adult male living with a prostitute is
assumed to be guilty unless he can prove otherwise. (Imprisonment of
up to 2 years with fine, point 4)

Brothel

Landlords and brothel-keepers can be prosecuted, maintaining a brothel
is illegal. (From 1 to 3 years imprisonment with fine for first
offence, point 3)
Detaining someone at a brothel for the purpose of sexual exploitation
can lead to prosecution. (Imprisonment of more than 7 years, point 6)

Procuring and trafficking

A person procures or attempts to procure anybody is liable to be
punished. Also a person who moves a person from one place to another,
(human trafficking), can be prosecuted similarly. (From 3 to 7 years
imprisonment with fine, point 5)

Rescued Women

The government is legally obligated to provide rescue and
rehabilitation in a "protective home" for any sex worker requesting
assistance. (Point 21)
Public place in context of this law includes places of public
religious worship, educational institutions, hostels, hospitals etc. A
"notified area" is a place which is declared to be "prostitution-free"
by the state government under the PITA. Brothel in context of this
law, is a place which has two or more sex workers (2a). Prostitution
itself is not an offence under this law, but soliciting, brothels and
pimps are illegal.[19]

Causes

Most of the research done by Sanlaap indicates that the majority of
sex workers in India work as prostitutes due to lacking resources to
support themselves or their children. Most do not choose this
profession out of preference, but out of necessity, often after the
breakup of a marriage or after being disowned and thrown out of their
homes by their families. The children of sex workers are much more
likely to get involved in this kind of work as well. A survey
completed in 1988 by the All Bengal Women's Union interviewed a random
sample of 160 sex workers in Calcutta and of those, 23 claimed that
they had come of their own accord, whereas the remaining 137 women
claimed to have been introduced into the sex trade by agents of
various sorts. The breakdown was as follows:

Neighbour in connivance with parents: 7
Neighbours as pimps (guardians not knowing): 19
Aged sex workers from same village or locality: 31
Unknown person/accidental meeting with pimp: 32
Mother/sister/near relative in the profession: 18
Lover giving false hope of marriage or job and selling to brothel: 14
Close acquaintance giving false hope of marriage or job: 11
"Husband" (not legally married): 3
Husband (legally married): 1
Young college student selling to brothel and visiting free of cost: 1
The breakdown of the agents by sex were as follows: 76% of the agents
were female and only 24% were males. Over 80% of the agents bring
young women into the profession were known people and not traffickers:
neighbors, relatives, etc.

Also prevalent in Indian prostitution is the Chukri System, whereby a
female is coerced into prostitution to pay off debts, as a form of
bonded labour. In this system, the prostitute generally works without
pay for one year or longer in order to repay a supposed debt to the
brothel owner for food, clothes, make-up and living expenses. In
India, the Government's "central sponsored scheme" provides financial
or in-kind grants to released bonded labourers and their family
members, the report noted, adding over 2,85,000 people have benefited
to date. Almost 5,000 prosecutions have been recorded so far under the
Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 1976.

Some women and even girls are by tradition born into prostitution to
support the family. The Bachara, for example, follow this tradition
with eldest daughters often expected to be prostitutes.

Over 40% of 484 prostituted girls rescued during major raids of
brothels in Mumbai in 1996 were from Nepal.[20] In India as many as
200,000 Nepalese girls, many under the age of 14, have been sold into
sexual slavery. Nepalese women and girls, especially virgins, are
favoured in India.[21][22]

At the other end of the spectrum operate high class escort girls
recruited from women's colleges and the vast cadres of India's fashion
and film industries. They can command large sums of money. These
services usually operate by way of introduction. However a recent
trend has seen the emergence of several snazzy websites, openly
advertising their services.

Male sex workers

Male prostitution is increasingly visible in India. Gigolo service in
India is growing.[23] But there are cases of harassment of client
women by gigolos.[24] In Delhi there are as many as twenty "agencies"
offering "handsome masseurs" in the classifieds of the newspapers
(Hindustan Times). They offer both in and out services, although the
facilities are usually very basic. Most western clients are visited at
their hotels. Local middle class Indians are also now using these
services. Fees are discussed over the phone, typically 1000 - 3000
Rs[citation needed]. Safe sex and condom use is generally well
understood. The workers typically do not speak English too well. They
are also found in Delhi's emerging gay night life scene, with several
"one nighters" at various middle class night clubs in the city.

In India, male homosexual acts are now legal but male prostitution is
all but invisible and not much is currently known about the status of
male sex workers. Due to the social stigma attached to homosexuality
in India and the lack of legal protection, they tend to face higher
risks than females. They are often faced with violence from the
police, clients, and are often subjected to extortion from the police
in order to carry on with their work. A large percentage of male sex
workers are eunuchs or hijrahs. Most know of sexually transmitted
diseases through experience, but there are few preventative measures,
such as condoms, that are made available to them. Due to their legal
status, no regimen of testing for AIDS or other diseases, are made
available.

AIDS

Mumbai and Kolkata (Calcutta) have the country's largest brothel based
sex industry, with over 100,000 sex workers in Mumbai[25]. It is
estimated that more than 50% of the sex workers in Mumbai are HIV-
positive[26]. In Surat, a study discovered that HIV prevalence among
sex workers had increased from 17% in 1992 to 43% in 2000.

A positive outcome of a prevention program among prostitutes can be
found in Sonagachi, a red-light district in Kolkata. The education
program targeted about 5,000 female prostitutes. A team of two peer
workers carried out outreach activities including education, condom
promotion and follow-up of STI cases. When the project was launched in
1992, 27% of sex workers reported condom use. By 1995 this had risen
to 82%, and in 2001 it was 86%. Reaching women who are working in
brothels has proven to be quite difficult due to the sheltered and
secluded nature of the work, where pimps, Mashis, and brothel-keepers
often control access to the women and prevent their access to
education, resulting in a low to modest literacy rate for many sex
workers.

Consistently high HIV infection rates among sex workers (50% or more
among Mumbai's female sex worker population since 1993[27]), coupled
with lack of information, failure to use protection, and the migrancy
of their clients [28], may contribute to the spread of AIDS in the
region and the country [27].

Popular culture

Prostitution, has been a theme in Indian literature and arts for
centuries, Mrichakatika a ten act Sanskrit play, set in Pataliputra
(modern-day Patna), was written by Śhudraka in the 2nd century BC. It
entails the story of a nagarvadhu (royal cortesan) Vasantsena. It was
made into Utsav, a 1984 Hindi film. Amrapali (Ambapali) the nagarvadhu
of the Kingdom of Vaishali famously became a Buddhist monk later in
the life, a story retold in a Hindi film, Amprapali (1966) [29]

Tawaif, or the courtesan in the Mughal era, has been a theme of a
number of films including Pakeezah (1972), Umrao Jaan (1981), Tawaif
(film) (1985), and Umrao Jaan (2006 film). Other movies depicting
lives of prostitutes and dancing girls are Sharaabi, Amar Prem (1972),
Devdas (2002), Chandni Bar (2001), Chameli (2003), Laaga Chunari Mein
Daag (2007), and Dev D (2009).

Born into Brothels, a 2004 American documentary film about the
children of prostitutes in Sonagachi, Kolkata, won the Academy Award
for Documentary Feature in 2004.[30].

See also

Prostitution in Kolkata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Kolkata
Born into Brothels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_into_Brothels
Pornography in India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_India

References

^ 2008 Human Rights Reports:India http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/sca/119134.htm
^ Around 2.8 mn prostitutes in India Indian Express, May 8, 2007
http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=86159
^ BBC report on number of female sex workers in India BBC News.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7376762.stm
^ Prostitution 'increases' in India BBC News, July 3, 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/south_asia/5140526.stm
^ a b Prostitution: A burning issue in India today merinews.com, April
7, 2008. http://www.merinews.com/article/prostitution-a-burning-issue-in-india-today/131963.shtml
^ A mandate to legalise prostitution The Times of India, August 25,
2003. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/145540.cms
^ Leupp, Gary P. (2003), Interracial Intimacy in Japan, Continuum
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^ Fisher, Michael Herbert (2006), Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian
Traveller and Settler in Britain 1600-1857, Orient Blackswan, pp. 106,
111–6, 119–20, 129–35, 140–2, 154–8, 160–8, 172, 181, ISBN
8178241544
^ Fisher, Michael H. (2007), "Excluding and Including "Natives of
India": Early-Nineteenth-Century British-Indian Race Relations in
Britain", Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
East 27 (2): 303–314 [304–5]
^ Fischer-Tiné, Harald (2003), "'White women degrading themselves to
the lowest depths': European networks of prostitution and colonial
anxieties in British India and Ceylon ca. 1880-1914", Indian Economic
Social History Review 40: 163–90, doi:10.1177/001946460304000202
^ Tambe, Ashwini (2005), "The Elusive Ingénue: A Transnational
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& Society 19: 160–79
^ Enloe, Cynthia H. (2000), Maneuvers: The International Politics of
Militarizing Women's Lives, University of California Press, p. 58,
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^ LEADER ARTICLE: Sex Workers Need Legal Cover-Editorial-Opinion-The
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India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/LEADER_ARTICLE_Sex_Workers_Need_Legal_Cover/articleshow/2353579.cms
^ LEADER ARTICLE: Sex Work Is No Crime-Editorial-Opinion-The Times of
India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Sex_workers_clients_shouldnt_be_penalised/articleshow/2566234.cms
^ BBC NEWS | South Asia | India sex workers get life cover
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^ The Immoral traffic Prevention Act
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^ "S. Asia Urged to Unite Against Child Prostitution", Reuters, June
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^ Millions Suffer in Sex Slavery http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/4/23/184354.shtml
^ Fair skin and young looks: Nepalese victims of human trafficking
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^ [3] http://www.intoday.in/site/intoday/
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^ "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: India", US State
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a need for sex education for the uneducated", Internations Conf erence
on AIDS. 2002.
^ Amprali at the Internet Movie Database.
^ "NY Times: Born into Brothels". NY Times.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/299929/Born-Into-Brothels/details.
Retrieved 2008-11-23.

Further reading

History of Prostitution in India, by S. N. Sinha. Published by Bengal
Social Hygiene Association, 1933.
Reporting on Prostitution: The Media, Women and Prostitution in India,
Malaysia and the Philippines, by Lois Grjebine, UNESCO. Published by
Unesco, 1985.
Prostitution in India, by Santosh Kumar Mukherji, Biswanath Joardar.
Published by Inter-India Publications, 1986. ISBN 8121000548.
The Castaway of Indian Society: History of Prostitution in India Since
Vedic Times, Based on Sanskrit, Pāli, Prākrit, and Bengali Sources, by
Sures Chandra Banerji, Ramala Banerji. Published by Punthi Pustak,
1989. ISBN 818509425X.
Child Prostitution in India, by Joseph Anthony Gathia, Centre of
Concern for Child Labour. Published by Concept Pub. Co., 1999. ISBN
8170227712.
Immoral Traffic - Prostitution in India, by V. Sithannan. Published by
JEYWIN Publications. ISBN 8190597507.
Broken Lives: Dalit Women and Girls in Prostitution in India, by M.
Rita Rozario. Published by Ambedkar Resource Centre, Rural Education
for Development Society, 2000. ISBN 8187367024.
Gomare et al. 2002. Adopting strategic approach for reaching out to
inaccessible population viz Abstract WePeF6707F abstract, The XIV
International AIDS Conference.
Trafficking in Women and Children in India, by P. M. Nair, Sankar Sen,
Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, India. National Human Rights
Commission, UNIFEM South Asia Regional Office, New Delhi. Published by
Orient Blackswan, 2005. ISBN 8125028455.
INDIA & Southeast Asia to 1875, Beck, Sanderson. ISBN 0-9762210-0-4

External links

India - Facts on Trafficking and Prostitution from the Coalition
Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/india.htm
Rape For Profit -- Human Rights Watch Report http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1995/India.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_India

http://bakulaji.typepad.com/blog/hindu-moral-messmessageage-sid-harth.html

...and I am Sid Harth