Prostitutes Cantonment,

The prostitute has over the ages never been explicitly defined, but commonly any woman, who for the sake of monetary consideration or any other gainful remuneration, sells her body is regarded as such. In some districts of the United Provinces there was a definite traffic in girls Prostitutes Cantonment the Punjab, while Allahabad and Banda contain local matrimonial agencies, whose methods were not always above suspicion. The result Prostitutes Cantonment which would be her being summoned by the Cantonment Magistrate to appear before the regimental physician for a physical inspection.

Prostitutes Cantonment were strong underlying currents of why prostitution should be allowed, with the belief perhaps Prostitutes Cantonment if men were not allowed physical relief they would start having sex with other men or boys. Through his presentation Steve showed how spatial criteria were important determinants in cases of policy and law making.

The Cantonment Act provided for the registration and inspection of prostitutes who served British soldiers. Ballhatchet has shown that these women were. Prostitutes who didn't register as prostitutes in 19th century France the regime of medical checks and registration to women outside the cantonment.

Please click here for a copy of his write up. The presentation was attended by about 30 people. Comments, questions and general discussion followed.

There were queries about whether the speaker had had a look at other regions apart from Delhi or if he had a sense of the number of sex workers at these sites. Steve replied that for the scope of Prostitutes Cantonment presentation, he had broadly looked at the issue of prostitution in Prostitutes Cantonment and although the official figures of prostitutes was prostitutes in houses in the city based on a survey of ; he added that these figures are by no means conclusive.

There was another query into whether there was a shift in the focus in the 19th century from that of protecting Prostitutes Cantonment from contagious diseases to that of the regulation of public morality.

Steve clarified that the Prostitutes Cantonment Acts were all about protecting soldiers. However, with time it shifted to morality.

The aim might have been not just to cleanse but also to harass the brothel owners and sex workers. There was also an interesting discussion on whether there could be comparisons made on the degrees of tolerance towards sex workers and homosexual men.

There was a question on whether Steve had come across texts or examples on analogous regulation of men who have sex with men MSM. Steve said that so far Prostitutes Cantonment had found only about three oblique references.

Inexpensively built Prostitutes Cantonment with tiled roofs of a village character Prostitutes Cantonment best suit the occasion. Then again see the intense gender-bias when he says that it was the woman who infected the English soldier.

Now, Prostitutes Cantonment reality, since so few women had to serve such a large group of soldiers, varying from a few hundred Prostitutes Cantonment a thousand, the probability is much more for her gaining infections from the lascivious soldiers, than vice-versa. However, to the British Civilian-cum-Military Officers, the registered-cum-unregistered prostitutes were the source-pools of the syphilitic and gonorrhea germs. The threat from the unregistered prostitutes was regarded as extremely harmful.

They were labelled as coming from the coolie-class of women —the grass-cutters and the ditch-diggers who were described as seen roaming about and inside the cantonment after dark.

Here, they swarm not only the by-lanes and back-slums of Calcutta, but also its principal thorough-fares, polluting the atmosphere of our neighbourhood Prostitutes Cantonment scandalising the morals of the population. The Prostitutes Cantonment appear to be hypocrites par excellence. To show the superiority of their own puritanical values they had to show the Orient in poor light as a region where prostitution was openly acceptable to society and to show oriental women as one of Prostitutes Cantonment morals or even outright prostitutes.

Prostitution in Colonial India

Phillipa Levine in one of her articles tells of how a British doctor stationed in colonial Burma in Prostitutes Cantonment the Burmese women as unchaste and considered them as very nearly approximating to outright Prostitutes Cantonment.

Commenting upon the perceptions of the colonial British administrators, she writes: Modernity and rationality implied containing and channeling sexual instincts in ways that colonists claimed were beyond the reach of less advanced peoples. This is a Prostitutes Cantonment. Old women go between persons who are strangers to each other, and in our large towns there are regular meeting houses where men and outwardly respectable women are brought together.

The majority of these women who visit these houses I Prostitutes Cantonment told are married women.

The women already there, who were examined by the doctor, and found diseased, had their passes taken away from them, and were then removed by the police out of the Cantonment, and these fresh, innocent girls put in their places.

When Lieutenant-General Lord Sandhurst was questioned Prostitutes Cantonment the Royal Commission of as to the advisability of soldiers being periodically examined by male physicians, he replied that he preferred to treat his soldiers as reasonable men, not as brutes.

About Prostitutes Cantonment quarter of a century later inwhen the then Secretary of War, Lord Lansdowne, was asked about the practicability of measures regarding the periodical examination of military personnel, he remarked that the issue had been discussed with all the high authorities of the Army, and that the soldiers unanimously considered it as brutalising and degrading, and that he concurred with the sentiments of the men.

Now when one takes into consideration that these soldiers and officers would never have had Prostitutes Cantonment undergo the inspection of their private parts by a female doctor, Prostitutes Cantonment women, whom society branded as prostitutes, were forced by law to undergo this inspection periodically, and that too at the hands of a male physician, the gross bias and injustice perpetrated by the male dominant society is so palpably visible.

India Code: Section Details

Sumanta Banerjee Prostitutes Cantonment a wide variety of official and non-official sources predominantly the Prostitutes Cantonment.

His use of the latter comprises numerous newspapers and periodicals as well as a genre of mid to late nineteenth century Bengali satirical literature. The learned author uses the Bengali satirical works to bring the hidden voice of the Baishya Vaishya out into the open and to portray the hypocrisy of the self-righteous Bengali middle-class male in its true colours.

Yet, at the same time, it cannot be denied that these works were printed to cater to a Prostitutes Cantonment local demand for literature of the sensational or Prostitutes Cantonment type they can be equated with the modern day tabloid press.

He tells us how the British officialdom, obsessed as it was with castes and religious segregation, also differentiated the prostitutes on the same basis. There were a the high-caste Brahmin prostitute who Prostitutes Cantonment a relatively independent life as she was maintained by a rich patron; b the prostitute of good caste by this the officials might have meant non-Brahmanical but not of the lower castes who also lived by herself but had relatively smaller means at her disposal, and who received a limited number of clients of her own or superior caste; c the third category comprised again of Hindu prostitutes who did not have the means to operate from residences of their own, resided in rented Prostitutes Cantonment under a Bareewallah to whom they paid rent for their lodgings and food; these invited Hindu customers only but from all castes thereby appearing to be more eclectic-minded than Prostitutes Cantonment two earlier categories; d dancing women of both Hindu and Muslim creeds who often lived together and invited customers irrespective of caste and creed; e public prostitutes of Muslim creed; f the low-caste Hindu prostitutes; g the Christian and European prostitutes.

Banerjee also gives us some interesting facts relating Prostitutes Cantonment their numbers and religious composition. He cites the official reports pertaining to the Calcutta of the s and s for what they are worth since no census of the country took place prior to that revealed that in Calcutta in the yearthere were estimated to Prostitutes Cantonment around 12, prostitutes of whom 10, were believed to be Kulin widows or daughters of Kulin Brahmins.

In total, Calcutta in was estimated to have 12, prostitutes which in a space of just fourteen years was estimated at 30, If the latter figure is correct, then nearly 7. Now, Caroline Sledgholme and Indrani Sinha, citing the Census figures for Calcutta, tell us that there were 14, prostitutes who were calculated at 25 per cent of the working women in the metropolis.

Yet, these figures do not tally with the universal perception of the terrible expansion in the trafficking and prostitution of minor girls and adult women.

I have some reasons for discounting both figures. It is Prostitutes Cantonment recognised fact that British Census Enumerators clubbed all Prostitutes Cantonment children of prostitutes in the same category as their mothers.

If the same tendency to paint the entire family of a prostitute as such existed in the case of Calcutta, this would inflate the number of female sex-workers by a factor of two to three so that in the British figures for 30, could in reality mean 10, females as were actually engaged Prostitutes Cantonment the sex-trade. Similarly, Sledgholme and Sinha, by referring to only those who live Prostitutes Cantonment work in red-light areas, may be drastically underestimating the true menace.

That such floating sex-workers visit Sonagachhi. The spatial geography of their presence shows that, though the initial nucleus of the red-light region in colonial Calcutta lay in the Sonagacchi area comprising the Chitpore Road and the by-lanes emanating from it such as Sinduriapattiby the s and s, the red-light areas spread to central and southern Calcutta with Bowbazaar, Kidderpore, Bhawanipore and the dock-area showing a proliferation of brothels.

In fact, even the nerve-centre of British colonial administration at Fort Williams was not left untouched and the soldiers and sailors stationed therein were catered to by numerous Indian and European prostitutes. One interesting case which was reported by a journal of the first half of 19th century shows that in British India, the higher-class prostitutes Prostitutes Cantonment not submit to exploitation meekly even at the hands of their patrons and were quick to seek the remedy of the criminal courts.

In this case, one Huroo Khankee had initiated a Prostitutes Cantonment of burglary against two Prostitutes Cantonment by the name of Bhairab Ganguly and Bhagwan Ghosh. Prostitutes Cantonment prosecutrix openly confessed before the court that she was a prostitute who was living as a tenant by hiring a room in a house in Shiboo Shibu Thakur Lane, Calcutta, and owned by one Shibu Prostitutes Cantonment. She remarked that there were four to five other prostitutes residing in the same house who like her had hired single rooms.

They were either Prostitutes Cantonment the keep of babus or entertained customers secretively. The Prostitutes Cantonment also told the judge that she was being kept as a joint mistress Prostitutes Cantonment the two accused, Bhairab Ganguly and Bhagwan Ghosh, each of whom were to Prostitutes Cantonment her eight rupees per month separately.

The plaintiff had brought a case of theft of her clothes, the jewels on her body and some other items, against these two who at the time of the theft had been her patrons. This case was ultimately decided in favour of the prostitute with her two ex-patrons being subjected to two years of imprisonment with hard labour. What is apparent from the above case is that in the early part of the nineteenth century, the activity of prostitution was not considered so derogatory that those plying the trade would try to avoid the public gaze.

Instead it appears that they could operate by hiring rooms and houses owned by the most respected of Bengali middle and Prostitutes Cantonment families. It appears that the morals of the upper and middle-class Bengalis were not offended by hiring out their premises for such purposes as long as they made good money out of it.

It assumes a horrible, loathsome and often fatal form through which in time, as years pass on, the sufferer finds his hair falling off, his skin and the flesh of Prostitutes Cantonment body rot, and are eaten away by slow, cankerous and stinking ulcerations; his nose first falls in at the bridge and then rots and falls off; his sight gradually fails and he eventually becomes blind; his voice first becomes husky and then fades Prostitutes Cantonment a hoarse whisper as his throat is eaten away by foetid ulcerations.

Ratnabali Chatterjee, quoting from a correspondence of A. Mackenzie, reveals to us Prostitutes Cantonment the British administrators in Bengal considered to be an important source of prostitutes in the city of Calcutta. The prominence of Hindu women among the prostitutes of Bengal, often it is stated: women of good caste and that even in districts where a large Mohammedan population predominates is the most curious feature disclosed in the correspondence and quite different to Prostitutes Cantonment state of things in other parts of northern India.

One reason for this could be the preponderance of child-widows as a Prostitutes Cantonment of the total widows within Bengal. This arose due to a rampant Prostitutes Cantonment evil prevalent in nineteenth century Bengal and which was the obsession of upper-caste Bengalis to have their daughters married to a Kulin Brahman irrespective of his age. In the princely states like Oudh, the nawabi culture was epitomised by legendary misrule, abnegation of most, if not all, public duties, and a patronage of lifestyle which centred on songs, dances, musical soirees, cock-fighting, pigeon flying etc.

(1) Whoever in a cantonment loiters for the purpose of prostitution or importunes any person to the commission of sexual immorality, shall be punishable. The Cantonment Act provided for the registration and inspection of prostitutes who served British soldiers. Ballhatchet has shown that these women were.

The best of these tawaifs were individually patronised by the top nobility and the richest merchants of Oudh. These absurdities went so far that it is said that until a person had association with courtesans he Prostitutes Cantonment not a polished man. Typically, a wealthy courtier began his direct association with a kotha by bidding Prostitutes Cantonment a virgin whose patron he became with the full privileges and obligations of that position.

In those days, the most beautiful and accomplished of the tawaifs owned Prostitutes Cantonment real estates in the form of orchards, manufacturing and Prostitutes Cantonment establishments, mansions, precious jewels and furniture imaginable. Even in the post-rebellion period, when the British Crown wreaked its full vengeance on them for their major support to the cause of the rebel-soldiers of Oudh, many of them were the highest taxpayers and ranked along with the richest nobles, merchants, talukadars and other traditional elites.

Archives: Prostitutes and Politics: the Tolerated Brothels Debate in Colonial India

The Prostitutes Cantonment of tawaifs was indeed a strange inversion of the typical male-centric patriarchal society where the male child was favoured right from birth and the Prostitutes Cantonment victimised, biased and ignored. Veena Oldenburg in her interviews with a group of thirty odd tawaifs, from towho were, perhaps, the last of their breed, recounts of her Prostitutes Cantonment with them.

It was as if by their inversion of the male-centric world-view they were trying to rebel against, and subvert the general social behaviour, which was structured and controlled by men. It was as if through such deliberate inversion of the social order, they were creating an autonomous existence of their own, completely independent of the Prostitutes Cantonment.