From ‘veshyas’ to ‘entertainment workers:’ Evolving discourses of bodies, rights, and...

From “Veshyas” to “EntertainmentWorkers”: Evolving Discourses ofBodies, Rights, and Prostitution inIndia_1115 255..281

Subir K. KoleUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa

The discursive terrain of prostitution has undergone several changes with modernity/postmodernity. Various groups of feminists hold contentious, often conflicting, ideologieson this issue. Two broad groups emerge from these debates: One takes a clear abolitionistperspective, while the other takes a sex work position. Both these groups actively lobbyand join forces with individuals and institutions to influence global and national policy-making. There is a great degree of variation and overlap within and across each camp.Among those taking a sex work position, some argue that selling sex is equal to using anyother part of the body for making a living. This article examines the discursive terrain ofprostitution in India, focusing on what it means to treat sex as any other use of the bodyin commerce. It concludes that prohibition is a prejudice that India must overcome todevelop sound public health policies.

Background

On October 16, 2005, the Times of India, a leading national English daily,reported that the Planning Commission of the Government of India, the

highest body for designing national Five Year Plans (FYPs),1 had recommendedthat the government legalize prostitution (“Plea to legalize prostitution,” 2005).In this sensational news item, the Times of India reported that the suggestions toremove legal constraints that prohibit prostitution, called the “impediments inthe anti-AIDS program,” were officially made to the Prime Minister in the exer-cise to prepare the 11th Five Year Plan document2 (for the years 2007–2012). I callthis news item “sensational” for two reasons. First, in a sexually conservativesociety such as India, where discussion around sexuality still remains a taboo, theidea of legalizing prostitution causes discomfort not only among conservativesand right-wing radical Hindu nationalist groups (who view any such proposal asdegrading, immoral, and cultural imperialism of the West), but also amongfeminists, activists, policy makers, development practitioners, and sex workers

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themselves, who are divided over how best to address the problems inherent inprostitution while recognizing the rights of women engaged in it. And second, itis sensational because the news originated from a particular concern that the“contours of sexual behavior in India may change radically” (“Plea to legalizeprostitution,” 2005, n.p.), if such a recommendation fructifies. This anticipatedchange in sexual behavior remains a matter of intense debate among policymakers, researchers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and activistgroups whose broader argument has been that with the legal recognition ofprostitution, a range of other associated “industries” such as pornography, stripclubs, private rooms, live sex shows, and buying and selling of women in themarketplace will also demand legalization.3 The Planning Commission’s recom-mendation stemmed from the fact that India’s HIV epidemic is primarily hetero-sexual, with more than 84% of total transmission taking place through this route,4

and it still remains largely concentrated among sex workers and their clients,drug users, and men having sex with men (Caldwell, 2006; Commission on AIDSin Asia, 2008; Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic Network, 2006). According toSyeda Hamid, Member-in-Charge of the Planning Commission, “The legal actionand criminalized status of prostitution drives the epidemic underground andputs the high-risk categories of sex workers out of reach of social interventions”(“Plea to legalize prostitution,” 2005, n.p.). Researchers have also estimated thatin many metropolitan cities (except Kolkata, formerly Calcutta), somewherebetween 40 and 60% of sex workers are HIV-positive (Amin, 2004, p. 3; Chatto-padhyay, 2003, p. 5); these people have overall poor access to basic health careservices and are also discriminated against while receiving care and treatment forAIDS-related complications. Thus the proposal for legalization is an importantstep toward improving the living standard of sex workers by recognizing theirbasic political and civil rights.

Sex work in India has remained criminalized as per the Immoral TraffickingPrevention Act (ITPA, 1956 and 1986 Amendments; see Kotiswaran, 2001;Gangoli, 2006; and Kapoor, 2000–2001), and the law prohibits soliciting, pimping,brothel-keeping, trafficking for sex work, and living off the earnings of a prosti-tute, though sex work per se is not illegal. This law is frequently used by thepolice to arrest sex workers and conduct rescue and rehabilitation raids in broth-els that often involve manhandling, beating, sexual coercion, violence, and extor-tion of sex workers’ earnings, including “free rapes”5 (Shalini & Lalitha, 1996;Sleightholme & Sinha, 1996). Despite its prohibition, prostitution (includingpimping, brothel-keeping, and all other aspects of the trade prohibited by law)continues to occur widely in almost every part of India, with an estimated 3–10million prostitutes serving about 10 million clients per day, generating 146 billionrupees (about US$3.6 billion) annually.6 One may reasonably argue whether theIndian law has any practical purpose and relevance other than simply controllingsome aspects of the trade that tend to offend middle-class sensibilities, whilemoralistically despising those who engage in it. Over the years, the law hasworked against sex workers by placing them outside of legal protection andmaking them extremely vulnerable to violence from police, pimps, traffickers,and customers who would exploit their relative powerlessness (D’Cunha, 1992;Gangoli, 2007; Kapoor, 2000–2001). Thus the proposal to legalize prostitutionseemed to be a significant step toward improving the living condition of sex

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workers, ensuring their health and safety standards, recognizing their politicaland civil rights, and making HIV/AIDS prevention efforts effective in thecountry (Gangoli, 2006; Kotiswaran, 2001; Shah, 2006).

One of the first proposals for legal reform on prostitution was made in 1988by the Maharastra State Legislative Assembly in the wake of the HIV/AIDSepidemic; it called for compulsory registration and licensing of all prostitutesin the state, a health checkup and medical examination every three months, aminimum age of 21 for entry into prostitution, and a list displayed of all pros-titutes at the brothel with their ages, among other items.7 In 1994, Maharastrastate witnessed the introduction of another bill that called for setting up a boardresponsible for welfare among sex workers, compulsory registration with theboard, mandatory health and medical checkups, a quarantine policy, andmarking the prostitutes’ bodies with indelible ink if they were found to beHIV-positive.8 At the national level, two such proposals for legal reform weredrafted by the National Law School of India University at the behest of theMinistry of Women and Child Development (though neither of these proposedbills were considered for implementation). The first proposal (Prevention ofImmoral Traffic and Rehabilitation of Prostituted Persons Bill, 1993) recom-mended mandatory testing of sex workers but also conferred rights to the“victims” of forced prostitution to take legal action against pimps, brothelowners, and clients.9 The second proposal, mainly concerned with the HIV/AIDS crisis, recommended that sex workers must have safe working conditionsto protect themselves from HIV infection, hence prostitution must be decrimi-nalized and considered as a legitimate exercise of the right to work, which alsoincludes the right to solicit.10 Similarly, the National Commission for Women,in its Report on Societal Violence on Women and Children in Prostitution 1995–96,also recommended eliminating the imprisonment of prostitutes, referring casesto the civil rather than criminal courts; repealing Section 4 of the ITPA, whichprohibits living off the earning of sex workers; introducing law reform to reducepolice violence; and addressing other concerns of prostitutes without condon-ing the prostitution itself (Kapoor, 2000–2001).

Though various such proposals on prostitution reform were made earlier byhigher-level bodies, the 2005 proposal was fundamentally different in at leastthree important ways. First, in the earlier period when legal reforms were con-ceived, no large-scale prostitutes’ rights movement and NGO activism hademerged in India. Hence, grassroots realities and sex workers’ voices poorlyinformed the policy formulations that often took an anti-prostitution, anti-human rights perspective. By contrast, today’s reform process is a constantlynegotiated realm and is mediated by complex power relationships between thestate, NGOs, and prostitutes’ rights groups. This in no way means that today’spolicies are more pro-prostitution; it only suggests that there is a greater likeli-hood of prostitutes’ voices being represented in more recent policy, as some oftheir representatives now actively participate in policy dialogue. Second, therewas also very limited public discussion earlier on the issue of prostitution, as itoffended Indian middle-class morality to talk about “fallen” women. In today’srapidly globalizing India, a growing media attention on HIV/AIDS, and localand global networking among various rights groups aided by cheap telecommu-nications technology such as the Internet, blogs, e-groups, telephone, and fax

From “Veshyas” to “Entertainment Workers” 257

have brought the issue of prostitution into the public domain. Public discussionmay affect policies in important ways as long as the policy makers get to knowthe public sentiment on a particular issue. Third (and perhaps the most im-portant), the discursive field of sex work and the nature of discourse within thatfield have fundamentally changed from a moralistic, stigmatizing idiom about“veshyas”11 to a more inclusive, secular, and normalizing discourse about “enter-tainment workers.” The meaning of prostitute is gradually evolving from whore(veshya) to sex worker (jouno karmi) to more secular forms like entertainment worker(binodon karmi); these workers recently concluded an All India Conference ofEntertainment Workers in Kolkata.12 Shading the previous conception in whichall prostitutes were uniformly seen as “victims,” the new discourse articulatesprostitution as a free choice in which women exercise their agency. The currentview aims to normalize13 prostitution as “any other work” in which selling sexualservices is seen as equivalent to selling intellectual or other physical labor tomake a living.

This article is primarily motivated by the third concern to do two importantthings (while I only mention the first and second point in passing). First, itexplores the process of transition from veshyas to entertainment workers—thatis, how in a sexually taboo and otherwise conservative society like India, thenormalizing discourse has gained prominence over the years. In doing so, Ifirst examine the feminist debates on prostitution (both globally and in India)and then explore the sex workers’ mobilization in relation to globalization andthe HIV/AIDS epidemic in India. And second, it draws on societal apprehen-sion about normalizing prostitution and what radical changes are implicatedby such a proposal. This part draws heavily on Anderson’s (2002) article inwhich he argued that institutional prohibition on prostitution helps maintainthe sexual autonomy of individuals in the society and thus normalization willtend to perpetuate already existing inequalities between men and women.Based on this formulation, I examine whether Anderson’s arguments can bejuxtaposed well to suit the Indian context and whether a compelling case canbe made for the prohibition of prostitution in India. My concern here is not thatthe proposed legalization will automatically bring about the normalization ofprostitution in India, but only to examine the alleged implications of the movefor normalization and what it means to consider sex work as just “any otherwork.”

Feminist Debates on ProstitutionGlobal feminist approaches to prostitution have shifted in the last two decades

to reflect society’s modernity/postmodernity (Bell, 1994; O’Neill, 2001), and thediscursive terrain of prostitution is extremely murky, with several groups offeminists having contentious, often conflicting positions on the issue. For sim-plicity, I have classified the major debates emerging from these positions intotwo groups: one that takes a “pro–sex work” view and the other that takes an“abolitionist” view.14 Among those who articulate a pro–sex work position, thereare liberal/libertarian feminists, Marxist feminists, socialist feminists, andpostmodern/postcolonial feminists, whereas the abolitionist perspective ismostly advanced by the radical feminist school. Both groups actively lobby and


join forces with individuals and institutions supporting these two opposingideological strands. For example, pro–sex work feminists in the United Stateshave actively lobbied with individuals and institutions that take a (neo)liberalperspective of prostitution, in the same manner that U.S. abolitionist feministshave joined conservative forces to gain access to financial resources from formerPresident George W. Bush’s anti-prostitution program. There are also rival politi-cal agendas among feminists, and the differing assumptions of the abolitionistsand pro–sex work feminists have led to different organizing strategies and policyrecommendations put forth by two rival global networks of feminist anti-trafficking organizations: the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW),articulating an abolitionist agenda, and the Global Alliance Against Trafficking inWomen (GAATW), articulating a sex work agenda.15 Both these networks havecome to dominate the global discursive terrain of prostitution. Though variousother scholars have summarized their viewpoints more usefully and at length(Bell, 1994; Miriam, 2005; Zatz, 1997), I only briefly outline some of the majordebates emerging from these two schools.

The Abolitionist PerspectiveThe abolitionist position advanced by radical feminists results from their

general analysis of social relations, in which they tend to focus on how womenare generally disadvantaged in society and how these disadvantages are mani-fested in sexual practices that reinforce and maintain women’s subordinate statusas a “class” (Barry, 1995; Overall, 1992). Among other arguments, they contendthat (1) the good purchased from a prostitute is frequently her own degradation(Dworkin, 1997); (2) the existence of prostitution depends on the existence of adeeper system of social and economic inequality between men and women andbetween prostitutes and their customers (Raymond, 2003a, 2004); and (3) prosti-tution contributes to perpetuating the inequalities that underlie this practice(Giobbe, 1990). With respect to the first claim, abolitionist feminists contend thatprostitution is an inherently violent and degrading institution that causes muchharm to women and perpetuates an oppressive and exploitative institutionalstructure of male dominance that justifies women’s bodies being sold in thecapitalist marketplace as commodities for men’s sexual pleasure (Barry, 1995;Farley, 2004; Jeffreys, 1997; Miriam, 2005; Raymond, 1998, 2004; Sullivan, 2005).They also amass a great deal of evidence and testimony to suggest the violenceand brutalization inherent in daily lived experiences of the prostitutes before,during, and after their life in prostitution16 (Barry, 1995; Farley, 1998; Giobbe,1990; Hunter, 1993). As Raymond has argued, what prostituted women mustendure in their work is what in other contexts would be termed sexual harass-ment, rape, and sexual abuse at the workplace (1998, p. 2). Hence what men buyin prostitution is the subordination and degradation of women reflected in theseharms, which are neither incidental nor separable from the practice of prostitu-tion (Dworkin, 1997).17

The second contention holds that the free choice and agency in prostitution isa false consciousness because it does not consider the social, economic, structural,and political context under which women make the “choice” to be a prostitute(Raymond, 1998). The fact that the supply of a “free” and “willing” prostitute isavailable is the result of a deeply entrenched social and economic injustice. The


vulnerability to prostitution is thus “gendered” to the disadvantage of women,on which the pimps, procurers, and brothel owners capitalize. The root questionis not whether women “choose” prostitution, but why men have the right to“demand that women’s bodies are sold as commodities in the capitalist market”(Pateman, 1988, p. 194). Thus the existence of prostitution depends on the rolesocial inequality plays in ensuring that the socially and economically more pow-erful have access to sexual objects of their choice. As Dworkin said, “[a]ny manwho has enough money to spend degrading a woman’s life in prostitution hastoo much money. He doesn’t need what he has got in his pocket. But there is awoman who does” (1997, p. 150).

The third criticism rests on the argument that prostitution plays a key role inmaintaining the social inequality of women. The fact that any woman’s bodycan be sold for sex in the marketplace legitimized by the state reduces “all”women to sexual objects and instruments, thus defining “what a woman is inthis society and what she is made for” (Raymond, 2003b, n.p.). Similarly,Pateman argued, “[w]hen women’s bodies are on sale as commodities in thecapitalist market . . . , the law of male-sex-right is publicly affirmed and mengain public acknowledgement as women’s sexual masters” (1988, p. 208). Pros-titution thus supports a stereotype of what women are for and reinforces thesociety’s tendency to view women, first and foremost, in sexual terms. AsHughes contended, since “men create the demand, women are the supply”(2000, n.p.). So what is really sold in prostitution is a relation of commands inwhich the prostitute as “employee” sells commands over her body to the john/pimp/employer in exchange for money. It is this fundamental relation of domi-nation and subordination that is mystified, if not denied, by the proponents of“free prostitution” (Miriam, 2005, p. 4).

The advocates of the abolitionist perspective thus believe that legalizationand/or decriminalization is a state-sponsored prostitution that legitimizesmen’s right to buy women’s bodies as commodities.18 They argue that theliberal proposal to normalize prostitution stems from the assumption that pros-titution is inevitable and results from “natural” and uncontrollable man-lust(Farley, 2004), and hence to meet their lust, women and children must be madeavailable in the marketplace.19 This definition of normalcy is then reflected inpublic policy that defines prostitution as a form of genuine labor (sex work).Citing evidence from the Netherlands, where 80% of prostitutes are traffickedfrom other countries, Raymond (2003a, p. 316) argued that legalization/decriminalization promotes sex trafficking and increases the size of the sexindustry. Following legalization in the Netherlands and Australia, there hasbeen a corresponding increase in the number of brothels, pornography, sexbars, strip clubs, sex shows, and women trafficked for prostitution, includingchild trafficking20 (Raymond, 2003a, 2003b; Sullivan, 2005). Advocates of aboli-tion also offer substantial evidence that while legalization does not promotewomen’s health and safety standards, neither does it protect them from vio-lence. However, it could be argued that in the absence of legal protection ofprostitutes, the situation would be much worse, as it is in India today and inmany other countries. There are certain merits to the argument of the pro–sexwork feminists that women would be able to claim some rights once prostitu-tion was legalized and decriminalized.


The Sex Work Feminist ResponseThe sex work feminists conceptualize prostitution as a legitimate form of

“labor.” By legitimizing the labor in prostitution, and by equating a prostitute’suse of body with a secretary’s use of fingers, or a philosopher’s use of mind(Nussbaum, 1999, pp. 278–285), the sex work feminists aim to restore the dignityof women in prostitution by claiming it as “any other work.”21 Though they agreewith abolitionist feminists on the extent to which prostitutes suffer from vio-lence, they differ in one significant aspect as to how prostitution should becontrolled and regulated under less-than-ideal circumstances. The sex workfeminists are concerned that the voices of sex workers are not heard in theabolitionist feminist discourses that completely eliminate the agency of sexworkers and view them as permanent victims. In addition, as noted by Out-shoorn (2005), not all feminists adhering to the sex work position set prostitutionwithin the same feminist framework. Some are radical liberals who celebratesexual variety and free choice (Bell, 1994); some argue that prostitution should beviewed as a queer and/or subversive sexual practice to challenge the oppressiveheteropatriarchal norm (Zatz, 1997); still others, while analyzing prostitution as(sexual) service work, maintain a feminist critique by contextualizing prostitutionwithin unequal relations of sexual economic exchange (O’Connell Davidson,1998; Pheterson, 1996). Moreover, while some authors may want to “normalize”prostitution as “any other work” (Nussbaum, 1999), others take a quite nuancedposition on the complexities of sexual commerce (Kempadoo & Doezema, 1998;O’Connell Davidson, 1998). Often, the phrase sex work is used to gain recognitionof the need for interventions in the sex industry to treat it as labor rather than asa criminal activity. For a sex worker, however, sex work is viewed as “work” inthe following terms:

The reporters flocking to cover our organizing drive often had a difficult timeunderstanding what we do as “work,” but the job has always been defined to MYmind by [the] repetitive manual labor it demands. Punch a time clock, spot anopen window, make eye contact, pout, wink, swivel your hips a little, put astiletto-clad foot up on the window still to reveal an eye-full of your two mostbeautiful orifices, fondle your tits, smack your ass, stroke whatever pubic hairyou haven’t shaven off, repeat these ten steps until the customer comes, thenmove on to the next window, repeat the process until your shift’s over, punchout. Some call it the fast food of the sex industry: we produce assembly-lineorgasms. (Miss Mary Ann, a dancer at the Lusty Lady peepshow, San Francisco,cited in Gall, 2006, p. 21; emphasis in original)

In this conceptualization, sex work is not only compared with other servicework, such as the fast food industry, but also with factory work in the Fordistmodel of assembly-line production. Chapkis has argued that sex work is a dis-tinct kind of “emotional labor” in which sex workers have “the ability to summonand contain emotions within the commercial transaction . . . a useful tool inboundary maintenance rather than as a loss of self” (1997, p. 75). Chapkis con-tended that the sexual-emotional labor involved in prostitution is similar to theemotional work involved in psychotherapy, acting, or the provision of day carethat has some intrinsic social value and should be respected and socially honored,as it expresses a form of care and creativity. Similarly, Schwarzenbach has arguedthat legalization is essential to transform the institution of prostitution into


something as “commercial erotic therapy” in which the prostitute as a practitio-ner “could be respected for her wealth of sexual and emotional knowledge”(1990–1991, p. 125). And many feminists who are against abolition are dividedabout what should be done: While legalization is only a prerequisite to protectagainst sexual abuse, violence, and harm resulting from prostitution, it is cer-tainly not a guarantee of acceptable working conditions. Even the most successfulabolition can offer only a partial solution to the problems inherent in prostitution.Hence the goal should be to protect the basic human rights of those engagedin the business by introducing some kind of legalization, regulation, anddecriminalization.

The second category of arguments offered by sex work feminists distinguishesbetween “free” versus “forced” prostitution and “trafficking” from “voluntarymigration” for sex work. Sex work feminists argue that the tendency of radicalfeminists to view prostitutes as a homogeneous group of “victims” who havebeen trafficked or forced into prostitution is to deny their basic right that manyof these women show some amount of choice and agency to enter into theprofession. Other than arguing that it is a matter of a woman’s self-determinationof what to do with her body, they argue that a woman has a legitimate right toenter into prostitution, similarly as a typist has her right to be one. Two broad setsof arguments are offered against abolition.

First, even at the lowest rungs of voluntary prostitution, women still gainsome benefit from it, and it may be the best overall employment option thatthey have. Eliminating prostitution would make things worse for the poorestwomen, who have no skills or no other survival options. As St. James haspointed out, “A blowjob is better than no job. In trying to stop abuses in pros-titution, one should not try to put the women out of work because the job is allthey have” (cited in Pheterson, 1989, p. 21). If women’s economic conditioncannot be improved by political or other means, then one is forced to considerthe second-best, still feasible option (Anderson, 2002). Abolition thus does notoffer a solution to improve the economic condition of the poor or vulnerablewomen.

Second, prostitution may be a site of serious harms that need social/politicalredressal, but those harms specifically result from the conscious decisionof individuals to engage in sexual commerce as “buyers” or as “providers.”Unless it could be made clear why the selling of sexual services contributes tomaintaining women’s oppression rather than other forms of heterosexualrelations, it would be unjustified to bar individuals from engaging in voluntarysexual commerce (Anderson, 2002). While prohibition does not improvethe background circumstances under which women live, it might makethings worse for those women for whom prostitution is the only available sur-vival option. Since prohibition offers only a partial solution, the best way todeal with the problem is to reform the circumstances under which prostituteswork.

After laying down the basic tenets of abolitionist versus sex work feminists’conceptualization of prostitution, I now turn to explicating how these two dis-courses have come to inform Indian prostitutes’ rights movements.


The Indian Scene: Globalization, AIDS, and the Discourse ofSex Work

The Indian feminists’ approaches to prostitution are not significantly differ-ent from those of their Western counterparts in that different shades of femi-nists are divided over abolitionist versus sex work positions. Within India,the Durbar Mahila Samanaya Committee (henceforth DMSC), Sangram-VeshyaAnyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), Lawyers Collective, Samraksha, and theNational Network of Sex Workers (NNSW) are some of the prominent groupsthat advocate a sex work position, whereas Sanlaap, Prajwala, Prerna, andRestore (international) are some of the groups that believe in abolitionism. Bothsets of groups actively lobby with various key players to influence nationalpolicy-making. The sex work perspective has come to appear as the officialposition of many international development agencies and NGOs working inIndia, such as the Population Council, CARE, Ford Foundation, Family HealthInternational, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, GAATW, and otherbilateral and multilateral donors (Department for International Development,Swedish International Development Agency, Global Fund), including networksof sex workers (Asia Pacific Network) and official bodies of the UN such as theInternational Labour Organization (Lim, 1998). Similarly, abolitionist groups aresupported by their international counterparts, such as CATW, United StatesAgency for International Development (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDSRelief), and Christian Aid.

In India, the feminist conception of prostitution and sexuality (or to say theIndian women’s movement on issues surrounding sexuality) has passedthrough two distinct stages. If I could draw a clear temporal line of distinction,I would draw that line somewhere 1991. There are at least two importantreasons for this. First, the AIDS epidemic that emerged in the later part of the1980s affected different vulnerable groups, mainly sex workers, gay men, andinjectible–drug users in diverse ways. The draconian and repressive AIDS pre-vention policy of 1989 that outlined the forcible testing of sex workers andquarantining or imprisoning them, denying basic human rights, made enoughroom for civil society and feminist scholarship to debate on this issue (thispolicy was withdrawn after two years and was not passed by the Indian Par-liament; Dube, 2000, pp. 20–27). Second, in July 1991, India joined the global-ization brigade by exposing its 1 billion people and a giant economy toneoliberal market forces and foreign direct investment that affected variousgroups (especially women) in many complex ways (Oza, 2001; Sadasivam, 1997;Upadhyay, 2000). Globalization facilitated a global exchange of ideas, a vibrantand mushrooming civil society, and global advocacy on HIV/AIDS preventionthat connected global sex workers, global gays, and global queers with eachother to share their concerns and build collective resistance against the domi-nant social order. Thus a distinct feminist debate on sexuality, such as prosti-tution and lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) identities, was discerniblein the post-1991 era. Globalization not only changed dominant Indian discourseon sexuality, but it also affected policy development and the “official” govern-ment stance on various such issues.


From Veshyas . . .The word veshya (whore), bearing tremendous moral stigma, has its origin in

the discursive production of sexuality that separated ideal “women” from theprostitute Other and has deeper historical roots. In the pre-colonial period, thenature of prostitution was fundamentally different: Prostitutes enjoyed a muchhigher social status and were integrated into the social and cultural system toperform important activities such as worship, song and dance, and entertainingthe wealthy (Nag, 2006; Sharma, 2007). They were respected for their wealth ofknowledge and skills in the domain of classical music, song, and dance. Therewas religious prostitution, or the devdasi system, in which young girls weremarried off to the temple god but were sexually available to men (for an excellentdiscussion on this based on ethnography, see Orchard, 2007). There was also thecourtesan system (tawaif), based in the kotha (this has a meaning similar to amodern brothel), in which young girls were trained in classical music and dancebut were also used to engage in sexual services with men.22 The commercializa-tion of women’s reproductive labor that thrived within the Indian cultural milieubecame appropriated by different political economic structures in modern times(Sharma, 2007). The British colonial intervention outlawing the devdasi systemand the zoning of prostitution into red-light areas has given rise to modernprostitution as we know it today.

British rule reshaped the sexuality discourse in significant ways as commonprostitution became an icon for colonialism or “foreignization” in the eyes of theBengali middle class, or bhadralok (Dell, 2005). The Bengali bhadralok (literally“civilized people,” here mostly Hindu upper castes) differentiated their idealmothers/wives (bhadramahilas) from colonized prostitutes by constructing amoral opposition between the chaste wife (the patibrata, who is shy, silent, doesher duty, is totally undemanding, and keeps her whole body covered) and theprostitute (the beshya, who is loud-mouthed, is always restless, bares special bodyparts, falls on men, and demands jewelry.)23 In the new discourse, women wereseen as mothers belonging to the home, while prostitutes belonged to the market(as non-mothers) and were called bazari aurat (market women). They were seenas an amalgam of filth, vice, disease, and vaginal slime; a lot of men had beenthere, and they wantonly possessed a “dangerous sexuality” that put them insocial and moral quarantine away from home and family. The medicalization ofa prostitute’s body as an object of inquiry with the passing of the ContagiousDisease Act (1864) subjected them to periodic medical intervention, and thoseinfected with venereal diseases were treated in legal confinement at the “lockhospitals”24 (Ghosh, 2004).

This process of social exclusion that started during the British colonial periodreinforced the stigma, as prostitutes were separated from “women” by demar-cating red-light zones from urban residential areas. Ghosh (2004) pointed outthat after independence, the colonized modernity of Indian women whoemerged as the educated and refined companion of modern men upholdingtraditional purity did not allow “impure” prostitutes to be accommodated in thenationalist discourse. The Indian elite and nationalist political leaders generallyagreed to the legal territorialization of the prostitutes, as they posed a constantthreat to the monogamous home and family and emerging middle-class morality.


Thus Indians did not object to the legal measures taken by the British to crimi-nalize prostitution. The Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act passed in 1923, andthe regime of control and regulation continued until 1956, when in independentIndia, the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act was enacted (see Kotiswaran, 2001;Gangoli, 2006; and Kapoor, 2000–2001). In this revised statute, the veshyasremained criminalized, despised, fallen, and marginalized female Others, butprostitution per se was not considered an offense. Such stigmatizing ideas havebeen recycled even in modern times through popular Bollywood films. As themale protagonist Shahrukh Khan says in the blockbuster film Devdas (2002),directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, “Aurat ma hoti hai, behen hoti hai, patni hotihai, dost hoti hai, aur jab woh kuchh nehin hoti, tawaif hoti hai [A woman is amother, a sister, a wife, a friend, and when she is nothing, she is a prostitute].”

In the pre-1991 period, the Indian women’s movement heavily focused itsattention on issues such as sexual assault, sexual harassment, domestic violence,dowry-related death, female infanticide, and pornography. Sexuality thereforewas an adjunct to the discussion of rape, adultery, or violence, but it was rarelyseen as a celebration of a woman’s identity. As Gangoli (2007) pointed out,prostitution was perhaps so alien to the experiences of middle-class feministsthat it was not addressed for possible negotiation as a potentially emancipatoryspace. Veshyas were uniformly seen as innocent victims of trafficking, economichardship, or natural calamities. With the emergence of the AIDS epidemic in thelate 1980s, they were thought to be the reservoir of the disease and vectors of theepidemic. Some feminist activists in the state of Tamil Nadu thus claimed that sexworkers should be “eliminated,” or rather, that sex work should be abolished(Dube, 2000). The government treated HIV/AIDS as a “law-and-order” problembecause, according to the government, it was spread by “criminals,” mostly sexworkers, gay men, and drug users who then infected “innocent” people. Thus thepolicy option was that such criminals must be detected, forcibly tested, andquarantined if found positive, all of which were outlined in the National AIDSControl Policy (1989; see Dube, 2000, pp. 20–27). In 1989, the state government ofMaharastra thus deported several hundred Tamil sex workers from Mumbai toChennai. Following this repressive policy, the state government of Tamil Naduin 1990 forcibly tested hundreds of sex workers in Chennai and locked up 800HIV-positive women for several months (Dube, 2000, p. 27). The AIDS awarenesscampaigns during this initial period also proclaimed that AIDS was a diseasespread by veshyas, whereas the official HIV prevention program categorizedthem as the “highest-risk-groups”25 (Singhal & Rodgers, 2003). Thus while inpublic discourse the prostitutes were conceived of as “criminals” and chargedwith the offense of infecting “innocent people,” the customers who used sexworkers were in no place despised or condemned. As I pointed out earlier in thisarticle, the Maharastra government proposed in 1994 to mark the infected pros-titutes with indelible ink.

To Entertainment WorkersThe year 1991 marked a significant divide in the economic, social, and political

history of India as the country adopted a structural adjustment program andopened its economy to the neoliberal global market. The economic reform created


a substantial increase in the middle class, who in turn supported economicliberalization because it offered them concrete benefits (Sridharan, 2004). Follow-ing economic liberalization, a huge amount of funding was available for HIV/AIDS prevention that led to a boom in NGOs that worked specifically on HIV/AIDS prevention (mostly established by the emerging middle class.)26 The NGOsand advocacy groups brought the issue of prostitution into the public domainthrough the discourses of sexuality and human rights in which inclusion of thecondemned prostitutes was seen as a mark of the spiritual superiority anddesired postmodernity of the Indian elite. When the government launched itsnational HIV/AIDS prevention program in 1992, it required the collectivizationof sex workers in the form of an organization, as funds could only be given to aregistered entity. Thus the value of sex workers was shifted from the Other to a“partner” in the development process. Once sex workers became collectivized,they established networks with the sex workers’ collectives in other parts of thecountry, as well as sex workers’ movements elsewhere in the world, that acted asa significant pressure group for influencing national policies.

Since the early 1990s, organizations and campaign groups in various partsof India such as Sangram and VAMP in Maharashtra, DMSC in Kolkata, theSex Workers Union in Thiruvananthapuram, and the NNSW in New Delhi havearticulated their demands. They are working not only to amend the legal andsocial systems to ensure better working conditions and give the sex workers theirbasic civil and political rights, but also to evolve prostitution into something elsethat alters the societal attitude toward it. In this new discourse, prostitution isequated with any other work performed by selling labor for money. DMSC’smain slogan, gatar khatiye khai, shramiker adhikar chai (we live by making our bodytoil [literally], we want worker’s rights) now articulates a new discourse aroundbodies (gatar) in which one’s sexual labor (khatiye) is seen equivalent to, say, thelabor of a construction or factory worker. For Mala Singh, the secretary of DMSC,sex work is conceived simultaneously as the work of a doctor and an artist:

I am Mala Singh and I am a sex worker from Calcutta . . . . We think of ourselvesas workers and I see myself as a worker and as an artist. I am looking forward tothe day I can travel with a passport that says that I am sex worker. Those who donot want to be a sex worker should be allowed to leave and go through reha-bilitation, but those who want to stay should be allowed to stay. I am not doinganything criminal. I am not thieving. It is a transaction. I make people happy andthat makes me happy. I describe my work as someone who cures people. Icompare my work to those who make cigarettes and that make[s] people sick. Icure people. I am rather like a doctor. (United Nations Economic and SocialCouncil [UNESC], 1999, p. 32)

This new discourse articulates a bodily identity in which the label sex worker isnot only officially recognized as a category on a passport but is also asserted as anidentity based on one’s profession. In addition, not only is sex work equated withthe work of a doctor, philosopher, singer, or entrepreneur, but bodily (sexual)service is also seen as equivalent to renting a house, according to the followingcommunication:

The media asks us why we do this job, then we also ask them, why they do theirjob? To earn money. Then I also say that I work to earn money. When they ask uswhy we have not done some other job, then we tell them: a landlord rents his


house, we also rent our body for some time and get money in return. (cited inCornish, 2006, p. 467)

One factor that has contributed to the development of this bodily identitypolitics could be the counting, marking, and labeling of prostitutes’ bodies invarious ways, especially after the advent of AIDS. Thus, following Appadurai(1996), it could be argued that the practice of conducting census counts, enumer-ating, marking, and classifying prostitutes for the purposes of HIV/AIDS “inter-vention” gave rise to a new concept of group identity and bodily distinctions.27

For example, men having same-sex relationships were required to be identifiedas “gay” following a census (called a “mapping exercise”), and if they refusedthis identity, then they would be reclassified as “MSM” (men having sex withmen). Similarly, sex workers who were not based in brothels (popularly calledflying sex workers) who did not identify themselves with the larger “sex worker”category before the census in fact did so because they thought the governmentwas conducting the census to begin a welfare program for them. This situation isnot current, as a census of prostitutes is not a regular event. The count of pros-titutes happened only in the initial years of launching the HIV/AIDS program.But once they embraced a prostitute identity, it was difficult for them to come outof it.

Proposals such as marking prostitutes’ bodies with indelible ink may have alsocontributed to the development of a new sense of bodily identity. Yet thereremains a constant contradiction between claiming a separate bodily identitybased on one’s occupation on the one hand, and “normalizing” that occupationwith “any other work” on the other. In an ideal society where prostitution isconsidered as any other work, there would be no “prostitutes,” but the means toreach that point is by asserting the very “prostitute” identity. Much of the rightsmovement has been modeled after the identity politics of the gay and lesbianliberation movement in the United States, including an attempt to reclaim theword whore, modeled on the reclamation of the word queer. Whores, however,articulate their identity not on their desires (as queers do), but to their work,which they call “sex work” that may not have any deep connection with theirerotic life (Zatz, 1997). Giobbe (1991, p. 35) rejected the notion that “prostitute”can be an identity. She argued:

The process of becoming a prostitute entails the systematic destruction of anindividual woman’s belief, feelings, desires, and values. Upon entering prostitu-tion a woman typically acquires a new name, changes her appearance andcreates a fictitious past . . . . To be a prostitute, is to be an object in the market-place: a three dimensional blank screen upon which men project and act out theirsexual dominance. Thus the word “prostitute” does not imply a “deeper iden-tity”; it is the absence of identity: the theft and subsequent abandonment of self.What remains is essential to the “job”: the mouth, the genitals, anus, breasts. . . and the label. (cited in Bell, 1994, p. 128)

Other prostitutes’ collectives like Sangram-VAMP believe that:

Making money from sex is using a part of our body, which is in no way differentfrom using our brains or physical labor. We protest against a society that deemsour work contribution as less prestigious than other traditional forms of work.We believe that we challenge and undermine structures of power by using a part


of our womanhood—our sexuality as a source of our power and income. (VAMP,2008, http://www.sangram.org/collective1.htm)

Today, this normalizing discourse that sex work is “any other work” has takenthe form of recategorizing and renaming the profession from “sex work” tosomething like “entertainment work.” To this end, DMSC also formed a Unionof Entertainment Workers in India in 2007. Its definition of entertainment isextremely broad: It gives a secular and depoliticized appearance of the politicalstruggles of the sex workers’ union, consisting of traditional dancers, singers,musicians, folk artists, circus artists, and film and television workers. As DMSC’sstatement on this reads:

. . . it is common knowledge that the sex workers entertain their customers andthat their work is a form of intimate entertaining communication involvingsome very subtle and complex combinations of gesture, language, play andrelaxation, yet the ruling social conventions and beliefs in most modern soci-eties fail to concede the status of entertainment workers to the sex workers. Itis high time that we put a stop to this hegemony of the ideology of our rulersover our working class consciousness. . . . It is in this situation that we proposethat a Union of the Entertainment Workers of India be formed. This Unionproposes to unite all the traditional and modern entertainers of our land: theBauls, Nachanis, Jhumur and Chhou dancers of Bengal, The Nats of Rajasthan, theTamasha artists of Maharashtra, the Nautanki artists of North India, the Deva-dasis of Karnataka, all the folk and classical dancers and singers, all musicians,all actors and actresses, the circus artists, sex workers, film and TV workers, alledutainers and infotainers. . . . This union proposes to be a part of the interna-tional movement of the entertainment workers. . . . (DMSC, 2009, n.p.; italicsadded)

This could be interpreted as DMSC’s political strategy to reclaim the histori-cal significance of sex workers as “entertainers” in which devadasis and cour-tesan prostitutes (tawaifs) did not suffer from social and moral degradation;there is also a lack of evidence on the humiliating aspect of this trade (Sharma,2007). In the sociocultural setup where music and dance were an integral partof secular (as well as religious) functions, the services of such professionalswere necessary. While sex work may be called “adult entertainment,” which isage-restricted, DMSC does not delve into this aspect but rather makes a blanketequation of sex work with “all” other forms of entertainment not restricted byage, including some of the folk cultures. The discourse now focuses on secu-larizing and destigmatizing the term sex work as entertainment work, or to treatsex work as just any other work. By secularizing sex work as entertainment inthis discursive framework, the political project of the sex workers’ rights move-ment (and reclaiming the social status of prostitutes) is strengthened, whileat the same time, it depoliticizes the moralistic resistance and demobilizesthe right-wing veshya-phobia. As Mira Malik, a Sonagachi-based sex worker,pointed out:

For more than a decade we have been striving for our rights as entertainmentworkers. We work hard to entertain our clients as everyone does. We do it in ourown way . . . If any other entertainment worker like singer, dancer, magician,actor, can get social recognition, why not the sex workers? We also entertainpeople and we think it’s the highest form of pleasure. (“Sex workers’ meet ends,”2007, n.p.)


http://www.sangram.org/collective1.htm

DMSC thus emphasizes that sex work is “real work.” The members relate sexwork to many other kinds of women’s exploited labor as domestic servants andsweatshop workers, or in other oppressive conditions. They emphasize collectiveaction by the sex workers’ organization to make their living conditions betterinstead of rescue by moralistic middle-class activists. DMSC also employs politi-cally sound strategies to produce a counterdiscourse on sex work. For example,in a recent survey, DMSC attempted to flip the prevailing conception of happi-ness and freedom enjoyed by traditional housewives compared to that of theprostitutes. Based on in-depth interviews of 200 sex workers who were previ-ously housewives, DMSC claimed that the level of oppression is much less in the“sex sector” compared to the “domestic sector,” with prostitutes enjoying morefreedom in several aspects; being more self-sufficient, independent, and decisive;and having an overall higher quality of life than housewives. Though conceptu-ally flawed in many ways such as research design28 and sampling and researchbias, such an endeavor signals the effort to change the perception of mainstreamsociety about prostitutes.

To many Indians, this normalizing discourse that sex work is entertainmentwork or any other work seems to be deeply problematic. I now turn to explicatethe second plank of my argument. Following Anderson’s (2002) framework, Iaim to reconstruct whether a compelling case can be made for the prohibition ofprostitution in India.

Laissez-Faire or Prohibition?The proposition that sex work is any other work stems from the central claim

that it is just another use of the body for making a living, which is not differentfrom other paid activities such as singing, painting, dancing, chicken plucking, orwriting philosophical texts (Nussbaum, 1999; VAMP, 2008). Hence any reluctanceto normalize prostitution is based on a deep and unjustifiable prejudice that oncedenigrated female dancers, actors, and singers, which people must strive toovercome (Nussbaum, 1999, pp. 277–280). Anderson (2002) has examined thisproposition at its face value, that is, what it would mean to treat sex just as anyother activity, by hypothetically examining how people’s lives and practiceswould be different without any prohibition being placed on sexual commerce.Anderson’s fundamental contention is that the institutional prohibition andsocial regulation of what sex can be used for protects and maintains the sexualautonomy of individuals in the society. Hence treating sex as any other activityin commerce would undermine three aspects of people’s sexual autonomy,as he illustrated in the following examples (paraphrased and summarized fromAnderson, 2002, pp. 762–763):

Scenario I: Incentives to Have Sex

• Employees now protected from performing sexual tasks as part of theiremployment condition may find their job description redefined to includesexual duties. Moreover, some employees may be required to provide sexualservices to other employees for hiring or promotion.


• State welfare agencies or the labor and employment division would expectmillions of unemployed youth to take sex work as a profession if that isavailable and they are capable of doing so, rather than seeking unemploy-ment compensation from the state.

• Anyone would be able to make an enforceable service contract to makesomeone perform sexual acts and services (i.e., sex would be treated as anyother work in commerce), and the courts may be required to uphold suchcontracts and impose penalties on nonperforming parties.

Scenario II: Control Over Sexual Practices

• Large multinational corporations may legitimately emerge as providers ofsexual services (such as BabesMart, for example—similar to Wal-Mart, alarge-scale retail business of exotic women that may include some similarunethical business practices like longer working hours, poor environmentalregulation, and so on), and to maximize their returns on cheap labor, theymay recruit poor and disadvantaged (exotic) women from developing coun-tries.

• The corporations may be able to closely monitor and supervise workplacesexual practices (on closed-circuit television/surveillance camera) forimproving standards, customer satisfaction, and quality control. Workerswith sexual duties will have to adhere to the standards of nondiscriminationwith clients and colleagues.

• Government will be able to inspect the health and sexual practices of theprostitutes as these affect the government’s health and public safety stan-dards, and the government may impose a blanket prohibition on practicesthat seem “risky.”

Scenario III: Pressures on Sexual Attitudes and Values

• The BabesMart may be able to aggressively advertise and market its products(like “babes,” and the services they offer) by emphasizing the incentive tohave sex outside a relationship, or by advertising “underserved” sexualservices/practices and hidden desires, as well as other marketing objectivesthat attract their consumers.

• To the extent that special training may help one prepare to pursue such acareer, the public schools, vocational schools, and colleges may offer practicaltraining on how to be an entertainment worker instead of pursuing music,dance, painting, and art classes. The student counselor in the school mayadvise prospective students to take such a career.

Though Anderson’s arguments are deeply philosophical and hypotheticallyconstructed in a scenario in which there is absolutely no prohibition on using sexin commerce, they are difficult to dismiss on any ideological ground.29 To a greatextent I agree with most of his persuasive philosophical arguments and broader


framework. Such arguments have been made time and again by many abolition-ist groups and activists in India. Anderson did not claim that any of thesescenarios are forthcoming following normalization, but instead he examinedwhat it would mean to treat sex as just another use of the body to make a living.He concluded that if any of the above scenarios makes one uncomfortable, thenit is because of the ways in which a laissez-faire approach to sex in commercewould undercut one’s sexual autonomy. A prohibition on exchanging sex forcertain kinds of goods and services provides people with a defense againstintrusions by others against their sexual selves. Anderson defined sexualautonomy as a condition in which sex does not become a necessary means toavoid violence, brute force, economic hardship, or other sorts of pressures. If sexwas treated as any other work in commerce, then pressures emerging in ScenarioI would expose almost every worker and potential job seeker to have “unwantedsex” with an employer as a condition of employment. Though removing thebarrier between sex and commerce would vastly increase the number of goodsand services one could obtain by exchanging sex, at the same time it would makeit possible for others to legitimately demand, expect, solicit, or encourage“unwanted” sex by offering or withholding even the ordinary goods within theircontrol. All in all, it could lead to a situation in which everybody loses their sexualautonomy by engaging in “forced sex.”

On the other hand, as Anderson pointed out, pressures emerging from thesecond scenario would put sexual autonomy at risk by allowing a third party tomonitor and control private sexual lives by intruding in people’s bedrooms. Inmost societies, individuals have a right to privacy in their bedrooms that isupheld by privacy laws. Even the World Charter for Prostitutes’ Rights30 (seePheterson, 1989) demands that “it is essential that prostitutes can provide theirservices under the conditions that are absolutely determined by themselves andno one else” (Pheterson, 1989, p. 40). But the workers employed by BabesMart(and their clients) would not have this privacy, as the company would be entitledto closely monitor workplace practices and health of the prostitutes, rigorouslytrain the prostitutes, impose strict standards, and monitor client contact to assurequality and efficiency of service. Sex in such a repressive regime is unlikely to beautonomous, which runs counter to some of the sex work feminists’ and prosti-tutes’ claims of exercising sexual autonomy and agency in prostitution.

Anderson’s third contention was that if pressures emerging from both Sce-narios I and II are considered together, it appears that the extent to which anindividual would suffer from the loss of sexual autonomy would depend onone’s power and resources within the society. Those who have power andresources would be able to trade wanted, or reject unwanted, sexual advances.The greatest loss of sexual autonomy would be experienced by those who arepoor and powerless. Those having no power or resources could either lose theirjob or fulfill their employer’s sexual needs by losing much of their self-respectand personal integrity. If sex was something that an employer might legitimatelyexpect from some employees, then a person who refused to accept sexual tasks,knowing that someone else might accept, might lower his or her chances forcareer advancement and success. If employers were allowed to reward or punishtheir employees based on sexual activities, then it would be much less clear thannow when a person succeeded at a job, that is, whether her success was based on


“merits.” Thus allowing people to use sexual activity as just another means ofmaking money would not actually increase autonomy but would perpetuate aperson’s powerlessness and undermine his or her sexual autonomy.

Anderson’s final contention was that if indeed harms in prostitution resultfrom the deep-seated structural inequalities and hardships that women face ingeneral, then the proposal to normalize prostitution is a mismatch. Normalizingprostitution only gives a woman an additional economic option but does not alterthe broader circumstances of which prostitution is a part. One might expect thatnormalization would render the sexual aspect of the job less traumatizing andstigmatizing by making it more like other jobs and changing societal attitudestoward prostitution. But this expectation is again misplaced because theimproved work conditions would now come at the expense of the sexualautonomy that is retained in other jobs. Normalization would also undermineone’s ability to see the loss of sexual autonomy as an injustice. Though prohibi-tion cannot guarantee to provide sexual autonomy to those who now lack it,prohibition does play a role in rejecting arrangements that result in the loss ofsexual autonomy. Moreover, normalizing prostitution tends to undercut theclaim that sexual autonomy is a right and instead makes prostitutes’ loss of sexualautonomy a career choice. But as long as all other jobs are protected from theirsexualization by social institutions, prostitution cannot be a career.31 In theabsence of “any” prohibition, working as a prostitute may seem to be a career forthose who prefer other goods to sexual autonomy. But if they prefer these goods,then why not suppose that they also “choose” to be treated the way as they are,and hence, that they are adequately compensated for the harms resulting fromprostitution?

Is Prohibition Justified?Though on a philosophical plane Anderson’s arguments make much sense,

they somehow perpetuate the same, old, stigmatizing discourse about prostitu-tion in general and prostitutes in particular, especially—his attempt toward theend of his article to differentiate between “them” (prostitutes, who are immoral,who choose goods other than their sexual autonomy) and “us” because “they dothings we wouldn’t dream of doing” (2002, p. 779). Why is it that “we” renderthose who prefer other goods to their sexual autonomy to be treated as inhuman?Anderson responded that it is because “it’s connected to a thought that many ofus would nonetheless be very reluctant to give up: that our sexual choices aredeeply important to us, and thus the ability to make them carefully and autono-mously, is something that we aim to protect” (2002, p. 780). Why do we aim toprotect this value, and who are these “we,” “us,” and “our” multiple subjects thatAnderson constantly referred to? He clearly identified his subject position in linewith the radicals. In a society with absolutely no barriers between sex andcommerce that he hypothesizes, there would also be no “prostitutes.” Hencethere is no significance in proposing such a contestable value as “sexualautonomy.” To this Anderson responded that this is not how society is currentlyorganized; neither did he see any such changes as forthcoming (though hewished that such transformation would take place sooner or later). Throughouthistory, one’s sexuality has always defined one’s position in society, self-


conception, status in society, and economic and social prospects. Hence there ismerit in protecting sexual autonomy, however contestable that value may be. ButAnderson failed, I think, to reconstruct why choosing to trade other goods withsexual autonomy renders a person morally debauched and justifies renderingharm on these grounds. It still remains a “prejudice” connected to the thoughtthat Anderson mentioned earlier: that people are unwilling to give up moral andideological baggage about their sexual choices. When I presented an earlier draftof this article in an international conference, one sex worker participant pointedout, “Your discourse is too alarmist! It is tantamount to saying if homosexualityis normalized all members of the society will be lesbians or gays, posing [a] threatto natural family and reproduction. From the similar concerns, Anderson pre-sents his three scenarios.”

With reference to the Indian case, many scholars would be happy to take sideswith Anderson to argue that a continued prohibition is justified. Yet many femi-nists from both camps would argue that in a patriarchal institution of marriage,how could a prohibition on selling oneself to “many” maintain sexual autonomywhile women are still selling themselves to “one” man in the marriage market?Is sexual autonomy only possible in monogamy? Moreover, what are those regu-latory bodies defining and regulating what sex can be used for? I think thatAnderson failed to reconstruct these last two questions I raise here. ThoughAnderson (and other abolitionist feminists) acknowledged that the current legalregime does not protect prostitutes from harms that are done to them by pimps,police, johns, and psychopaths, it is important that appropriate legal measures beinstituted to minimize those harms. Two methods are proposed to this end:Undertake legal reforms to enable prostitutes to sue a party for damage compen-sation, and shift the burden from prostitutes to penalize abusive clients, pimps,procurers, police, or brothel keepers. The Ministry of Women and Child Devel-opment, Government of India, in its current Amendments to ITPA (Sanyal, 2006)exactly proposes the latter to penalize clients, modeled on a Swedish law. Therape law could also be reformed to treat prostitutes as any other citizen and thepolice and judges may be given special direction to treat the prostitutes’ case withrespect and dignity (otherwise a prostitute may be able to sue them).

This seems to be a mismatch in the Indian case. First, a reform programrequires ease in approaching the court and speedy disposal of a case with proper,corruption-free implementation, which is seriously lacking in India, and which Isee is not forthcoming either. With a ratio of 10 judges per million population, itwould take 324 years just to clear the backlog of cases before a prostitute’s casecan be heard (Misra & Chandiramani, 2005, p. 221). And second, shifting theburden from the prostitute to the client will drive the whole sex industry under-ground, resulting in more clandestine sex work and risky sexual behavior, asdocumented from Sweden (Kilvington, Day, & Ward, 2001). Considering bothsides, I would take my strongest consideration with some kind of legalization ofprostitution, not only because it is pragmatic, treats human beings as equal, andremoves some of the stigmatizing burden from prostitutes, but also because it isbeneficial for public health. Sound public health policies result from pragmatism.Hence the drive to legalization does not come from a political agenda to promotesex work, but from evidence about what works in getting people to reduce theirhealth risks.


The present unionization of sex workers must be viewed in the overallpolitical-economic context of the Indian state. West Bengal, a Marxist state withmore than 30 years of communist rule, has a notorious history of trade unionismin which various workers’ unions have largely remained successful in gettingtheir demands fulfilled through collective bargaining. The sex (entertainment)workers’ union must be seen as another reflection of the prevailing culture oftrade unionism, which is similar in ideology and function to other lower-leveltrade unions like the railway and street hawkers’ union, the auto rickshaw andtaxi drivers’ union, or the jute mill workers’ union. In fact, the lowest prevalenceof HIV among sex workers in Sonagachi (in West Bengal) and the high use ofcondoms there is attributed to the strong trade unionism among sex workers. Insuch a climate, if a female prostitute refuses to have sex with her client withouta condom and another prostitute accepts the same client, there could be troubleranging from collectively warning the second prostitute, to bringing the issue tothe union, to the suspension of her membership. Another positive aspect of thisunionization is reflected in the empowerment of sex workers. From an ethno-graphic study based in Sonagachi, Kolkata, Cornish quoted a sex worker:

Now I make the police rub their noses on my feet. Now they would take my casebecause I am a member (of the [Sonagachi] Project). They used to treat me like adog and make me stand outside the Police Station saying that a bloody whorefrom house No. 24 has come to lodge a complaint. But now, they offer a chair,give me a cold drink or tea and talk to me with a lot of respect. . . . Now I haveno fear. (2006, p. 468)

Thus in Anderson’s model, continued prohibition seems to be justified undercircumstances where sex work is normalized as “any other work.” However,barring a few groups such as DMSC, Sangram-VAMP, etc. (that call for completenormalization), what scholars in India are arguing is for the legalization ordecriminalization of prostitution. Thus there is a difference between the vision ofgroups such as DMSC and those activists working for policy reform. While manyin DMSC want all the moral and ethical baggage of prostitution to be removedand normalized, those working for policy reform may still want to maintainprohibition but improve the living conditions of prostitutes. It perhaps is the casethat DMSC has moved in a direction more similar to that of COYOTE32 in theUnited States in calling for using the term entertainment workers. India would faremuch better if some aspects of prostitution law reform were based on pragmaticpublic health science.

AcknowledgmentsThis article was first presented at the Sixth International Conference of the International Association

for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS), Disorganized Pleasures: Changing Bodies,Rights and Cultures in Lima, Peru, June 27–29, 2007. I am indebted to the East-West Center EducationProgram, Honolulu, Hawaii, for financially supporting my research project through a fellowship. I amalso grateful to IASSCS for awarding me a scholarship to attend the conference in Lima and presentthis work. Critical comments of the conference participants are gratefully acknowledged. My gratefulthanks to three anonymous referees and the copyeditor of Asian Politics & Policy.

Notes1Since independence from the British colonial powers in 1947, India has followed a planned

economic development in the model of the former Soviet Union. The Five Year Plan (FYP) is an


instrument of national planning that deals with all aspects of development including capital goods(such as coal, minerals, iron, and machinery), consumer goods, agriculture, transportation, communi-cation, health, education, and welfare. The Planning Commission was set up in 1950 and is headed bythe Prime Minister of India as the chairman, whereas the deputy chairman and members of thecommission are drawn from a wide pool of academia, bureaucracy, research, and other institutions. Thefirst FYP was launched in 1951, and two subsequent FYPs were formulated until 1965. However, therehave been breaks in five-year planning during national emergencies, such as the war with Pakistan(1966–1969), or due to economic and political instability (1990–1992). Instead, Annual Plans wereadopted during these periods, and FYPs resumed when situations became normal. See the PlanningCommission Web site at http://planningcommission.gov.in/, accessed September 8, 2008.

2Though no reference to the proposed legalization can be found in the three-volume final docu-ment of the Planning Commission, apparently one of the members of the Commission, Syeda Hamid,made a presentation to the Prime Minister to consider the legalization of prostitution as a viableoption for tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country. In her presentation, Hamid argued thatthe legal prohibition on prostitution impedes the fight against HIV/AIDS prevention efforts andis discrepant with a national AIDS control program that supports “targeted intervention” amongsex workers and in brothels. The three-volume Plan Documents are available at http://planningcommission.gov.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/welcome.html; Hamid’s opinion on this issuewas published in India Together (Hamid, 2005).

3I was one among this group to hold such a view and argued in an earlier newspaper article thatthe state should now legalize all such range of sexual services, including the buying and selling ofwomen (Kole, 2006). My conception since then has gone through a drastic transformation, especiallyafter being introduced to some individuals working in the sex industry and how they view sex workitself. Others who hold this view maintain that legalization will increase the size of the sex industryand cause more trafficking of women and children. See for example Mohan (2005).

4See National AIDS Control Organization (NACO, 2005, p. 4); World Bank (2004, pp. xvii, 10);Solomon, Chakraborty, & Yepthomi (2004); and UNAIDS (2006, p. 25).

5For example, D’Cunha (1992) in an earlier study reported that between 1980 and 1987, nearly53,000 women were arrested in Bombay alone and convicted for soliciting for prostitution under theBombay Police Act. In a more recent study, analyzing reported-arrest data under ITPA maintained bythe National Crime Records Bureau, Nair and Sen (2005) reported that between 1997 and 2001, morethan 65,000 arrests were made all across India, of which 87% were women (p. 200, though this is likelyto be a gross underestimate as most arrests are not even reported by the police, who drop the chargesagainst sex workers for bribes). By interviewing police officers, Nair and Sen also reported that morethan 90% of persons arrested under ITPA are generally females. For arresting the prostitutes, thepolice often set up a “trap” as a decoy customer or conduct raids and use abusive language, tear theclothes of the prostitutes, beat them up, and demand sex for free. D’Cunha (1992) reported that thereare known cases in Bombay where magistrates asked the lawyers defending the case of prostitutes incourt to send the latter to them.

6The figure 10 million is from Friedman (1996, p. 14), whereas Amin (2004, p. 8) reported that thenumber is somewhere between 2.3 million and 8 million, though she contended that the figure islikely to be an underestimate, as many women who engage in sex work do not identify themselves assuch due to the stigma associated with prostitution. Several other estimates put the figure of prosti-tutes at 2–3 million in 2006 (Nag, 2006, n.p.); 5 million in 1998, by the National Commission on Women(Venkataramana & Sarada, 2001, p. 1043); 3 million in 2001, by the Commission on Macroeconomicsand Health (Gisselquist & Correa, 2006, p. 737); and 3 million in 2004, by government-sponsoredstudies (Bhat, 2006, n.p.). Assuming that 3 million prostitutes work for 270 days in a year (afterdiscounting for menstrual periods and illness (Venkataramana & Sarada, 2001), with an averagenumber of 3 clients per day, we get a figure of 9 million clients per day, which is a very conservativeestimate. Assuming that the average rate per client a prostitute charges is Rs. 60 ($1.50), which isrealistic and the most conservative average estimate, the sexual labor of 3 million prostitutes generatesabout 146 billion rupees (US$3.6 billion at the September 2008 exchange rate) annually.

7Maharastra Legislative Assembly Bill VII of 1988. The bill stated that “medical experts have opinedthat the main cause of [HIV/AIDS] is common prostitute. About 90% of prostitutes are suffering fromvenereal diseases. . . . In view of imminent danger of the spread of AIDS, it has become veryimportant and necessary to have such legislation” (Gangoli, 2006, p. 124). The objective of the bill wasalso ambiguous, as it did not clearly mention which medical examinations and tests will be conductedon a prostitute and who will bear the expense. In addition, the bill defined prostitution as “theprofession carried out by a woman to have sexual intercourse with a man with or without consider-ation with the knowledge that such person is not her husband” (Gangoli, 2006, p. 124). Such anill-conceived definition not only fails to understand what prostitution is all about by excluding malesex workers but also includes activities such as extramarital sex and nonmarital sexual relations(Gangoli, 2006, p. 124).


http://planningcommission.gov.in

http://planningcommission.gov.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/welcome.html

http://planningcommission.gov.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/welcome.html

8Maharastra Protection of Commercial Sex Workers Bill 1994. The bill proposed in Section 4(i) that“all persons suffering from STDs, shall be liable to be branded with indelible ink on their persons toindicate the presence of STDs and the Board shall have the authority to decide from time to time themanner of markings, subject to the instructions of the government in this regard.” The bill not onlyfurther stigmatized sex workers but also violated their basic human rights (Gangoli, 2006, p. 125).Neither this proposed bill nor the 1988 proposed bill cited in note 7 above were passed.

9Although this bill was mainly concerned with prohibiting immoral trafficking in women andchildren, it gave substantial rights to women for taking legal action and demanding compensation forharms resulting from sexual abuse or the intentional transmission of diseases by a customer throughrefusal to practice safer sex. The proposal outlined community-based rehabilitation, vocational train-ing, setting up a welfare fund to support rehabilitation activities and HIV prevention programs, andmeeting the educational and health expenses of prostitutes’ children (Kapoor, 2000–2001). Amongother items, the bill called for mandatory HIV testing for prostitutes, their children, and spouses, andthe public humiliation of clients, imposing fines, and assigning them to correctional work (Gangoli,2006, p. 127).

10The Prohibition of Immoral Traffic and Empowerment of Sexual Workers Bill 1993, and the SexWorker (Legalization for Empowerment) Bill 1993. The bills proposed to decriminalize voluntary sexwork, equating it with any other kind of manual labor. The first bill stated that “this view, thoughapparently obnoxious to contemporary public morals, it is said to be the only sensible position thatlaw can adopt if it intends to empower the women involved and to effectively regulate the health risksof prostitutes, the customers and public at large” (cited in Gangoli, 2006, p. 128). The second billrecognized sex work as a legitimate right to work, decriminalized prostitution, and set out a numberof nondiscrimination measures to remove the stigma. It also prohibited the sexual abuse of prostitutesand provided criminal and civil remedies; it provided the right to health care, minimum wages andpay for sexual services, a welfare fund for medical expenses and old age support, guidelines to forma prostitutes’ collective, and the right of a female prostitute to retain her children (Kapoor, 2000–2001).

11The Sanskrit word veshya, originally used to denote the ritual prostitute who used to occupy amuch higher status in the society, was a less stigmatized and morally laden word than it is today. Ihave used this term in a positive note keeping in mind some of the recent efforts to reclaim sex worker,prostitute, and veshya [whore] as an identity. My use of the term should not be considered stigmatizingand morally laden; rather, I use veshya as a positive affirmation of an identity category, in the samemanner as whore in the West is claimed as an identity category. The words veshya and whore are nearlyequal in meaning and significance. I also use prostitute, sex worker, and veshya interchangeably. A slangand degrading synonym of veshya in Hindi, I would think, is randi.

12See the Report of the All India Conference of Entertainment Workers, Union of the EntertainmentWorkers of India, February 25–March 3, 2007. Kolkata, India. Retrieved January 8, 2009, from theDMSC Web site, http://www.durbar.org/updates/aicew_2007_report.html.

13Legalization, decriminalization, normalization, etc., by their very definition are different terms.When I use legalization, I only mean giving legal sanction to prostitution as legitimate work andcomplete or partial removal of some of the legal barriers that prohibit the institution. When legalized,income from the prostitutes may be taxed, prostitution would be considered as a distinct economicactivity, and the revenue thus generated may be added to the national system of accounting forcalculating gross domestic product. Decriminalization, on the other hand, may mean not giving legalsanction to prostitution itself but instead reducing or dropping some of the criminal charges andpenalties involving prostitutes, clients, pimps, brothel owners, etc. I use normalization here in a veryspecific sense, which is the basic thrust of this article. I am concerned here with the discourse thatusing the vagina for commercial activity is equal to using any other part of the body, like the brain forwriting a philosophical text, fingers to do the typewriting job, or manual labor to build a house, a ship,a truck, etc.; i.e., sex work is absolutely as normal as any other work.

14Other scholars also differentiate the prostitution debates in the same way (O’Connell Davidson,2002; Outshoorn, 2005).

15Scholars generally tend to support one or the other perspective and write papers that do notcompletely disclose their subject position. In this article, I situate myself somewhere in the middleground of pro-sex work and abolitionist scholars. I am in complete agreement with the pro-sex workfeminists that for a large number of women in India prostitution is the only viable option for survival.Abolition would further marginalize these women by taking their survival option away. Thus the onlyfeasible solution seems to be to make the living environment better for these women from violenceand disease. At the same time, I cannot celebrate the idea that sex work is just “any other work” or thatusing the vagina to make money is similar to using any other part of the body for making a living,which I discuss in “The Indian Scene: Globalization, AIDS, and the Discourse of Sex Work.”

16A not-so-exhaustive list of these types of violence would include (1) before: sexual abuse aschildren and adults, domestic violence, drug/alcohol abuse, poverty, divorce, and racism; (2) during:


http://www.durbar.org/updates/aicew_2007_report.html

rape, assault, murder, stigma, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, discriminatory legal practice,pimp control, slavery, psychological harm, inability to engage in intimate relationships, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); and (3) after: social stigma, psychological harm, PTSD, and pooremployment prospects.

17Anderson (2002) contended that many of these harms correspond to prostitution practiced at thelower level of socioeconomic status within the domain of prostitution, suggesting a subtext that“high-class” prostitutes serving “high-class” clients (who seem to be educated and therefore sensi-tive, i.e., they would not inflict injuries on or engage in violent sexual behavior with prostitutes) arefree from these harms—physical, emotional, or psychological. While Anderson referred his readers tothe testimony of a prostitute who has escaped many of these difficulties while earning a good livingin prostitution (Mikulski, 1993), the radical feminist argument that even higher-class prostitutesremain prone to violence still stands true. Without enough empirical evidence to support this fact, itis difficult to conclude the pattern of sexual behavior of “educated/higher-class” clients with theprostitutes. The extreme stand on this is taken by Jeffreys (1997), who argued that “if [the johns] hadpositive attitude [toward women], they might not be able to conceive of using women in prostitutionat all” (pp. 229–230).

18While I do not want to elaborate on some of the well-researched critique of legalization, I wouldonly like to point out some of the main arguments emerging from these debates. For an excellentcritique of legalization otherwise, I refer readers to the following sources: Raymond (1998, 2003a,2003b, 2004), Sullivan & Jeffreys (2001), Farley (2004), and Sullivan (2005).

19To some extent, some social scientists define the predatory behaviors of men buying women inprostitution as normal, maintaining that prostitution is simply part of human nature (Ahmad, 2001;Fisher, 1992). This is in contrast to both the abolitionist and sex work feminists’ view that man’ssexuality is not biological/“natural,” but rather socially constructed and learned.

20This proves nothing—that the size of the industry has increased could also be interpreted as morepeople being gainfully employed in this industry. I would think this only represents one side of thestory. Better health practices, collective bargaining, claiming legal rights, suing offending parties,condom use and safer sexual practices have also increased, but they do not get mentioned in radicalfeminist arguments.

21Take for instance the following comparison of prostitution to other bodily services by a sexworker, Eva Rosta: “I think women and men and feminists have to realize that all work involvesselling some parts of your body. You might sell your brain, you might sell your back, you might sellyour fingers for typewriting. Whatever it is that you do, you are selling one part of your body. I chooseto sell my body the way I want to and I choose to sell my vagina” (Pheterson, 1989, p. 146).

22See Kripalani (2002) for an excellent comparison of Hollywood and Bollywood representations ofcourtesans, and Sharma (2007) for an excellent account on this.

23This moral construction of the bhadramahila identity was published in Isanchandra Basu’s 1874edition of Advice to Women [Stridiger Prati Upadesh] cited in Dell (2005, p. 192).

24The Contagious Disease Act was first passed by the British Parliament in 1864 to tackle thegrowing prevalence of venereal diseases in the British armed forces. Subsequently, the act wasextended to many British colonies in South and Southeast Asia to protect the British militaryserving abroad from acquiring venereal diseases from prostitutes. The act gave the British colonialadministration the authority to detain and forcibly test any woman (who lived in, worked in, orpassed through poor areas) suspected to be a prostitute and to make her undergo medical exami-nation and treatment at one of the “lock hospitals.” These lock hospitals were thus an integralpart of the system to control the spread of venereal diseases (mostly syphilis and gonorrhea)amongst the troops. Infected women/prostitutes were detained at the lock hospitals and oftentreated with mercury until the symptoms disappeared (Gangoli, 2006; Kapoor, 2000–2001; Kotiswa-ran, 2001).

25For example, in a 2004 report of the UNAIDS, the HIV progression in India was theorized asbeing transmitted from the “highest-risk-groups” to the lowest-risk groups, such as women andchildren, through the “bridge population” (clients), who have contracted HIV from sex workers(UNAIDS, 2004, p. 10). Such a theorization ultimately holds only the sex workers responsible fortransmitting HIV to innocent housewives and their children.

26Nearly two-thirds of the total NGOs registered to receive foreign funds with the Ministry ofHome Affairs were established in the 1990s. While in 1989 their number was 12,000, by the end of2006, their number had reached 34,000. Foreign contributions received by these NGOs also increasedsignificantly, from $420 million in 1994 to $1.875 million in 2006, an average annual growth of 25%during this period (Government of India, 2005, 2006, & 2007). The total number of organizations“exclusively” working on HIV/AIDS increased from 165 in 2001 to 410 in 2004 (the Ministry does notreport data on this subject after 2005).

27In this formulation, Appadurai was trying to explain the roots of caste politics in modern India,for which he went back to the practice of conducting a census during British colonial times for


administrative purposes. He concluded that this practice was different in some fundamental waysfrom that of their Mughal predecessors. In the later period, there was an emphasis on markingindigenous bodies as belonging to a particular caste that offered a new concept of group identity andbodily distinctions. The way that scheduled castes and tribal bodies were counted, marked, andclassified gave them a new sense of bodily identity, which was later manifested in violent caste politicsin modern India (Appadurai, 1996, p. 115).

28See DMSC-TAAH (2007). The participants for this study were chosen from current sex workerswho had an earlier history of being housewives. I find this study conceptually flawed because amajority of these participants joined sex work due to an earlier history of abuse in the family. DMSCinterpreted this “compulsion” as “free will” and claimed that about 98% of prostitutes joined theprofession “out of their own choice” (2007, pp. 6–7). Thus selectively choosing persons with a historyof abuse and then generalizing their experience as the truth for the whole “domestic sector” seemsto be problematic. Yet the basic spirit of conducting such a study in collaboration with a foreigninstitution (TAAH, Theory and Action for Health, is based at the University of Nottingham) cannot beignored—to overturn the prevailing conception of who enjoys more freedom and happiness, prosti-tutes or housewives.

29I strongly recommend readers to refer to the original text of Anderson (2002) as, given the limitedspace in this article, it is difficult to fairly represent his whole argument.

30The World Charter for Prostitutes’ Rights was adopted by the International Committee forProstitutes’ Rights in Amsterdam in 1985. The charter, in setting the framework for a rights-basedapproach, demanded among other things legal reform to decriminalize all aspects of adult prostitu-tion; ensure and protect basic civil, political, and human rights of prostitutes; abolish the zoning ofprostitution; extend employment, counseling, legal, and housing services; and build up a supportivesocial environment through public education (Pheterson, 1989, p. 40).

31In the Indian context, D’Cunha argued that even if it were assumed that in the North prostitutionwould be a woman’s career choice, “[i]t cannot be argued so in the socio-cultural milieu of Asia whereit is at best a survival strategy for the majority of women. Choice can exist only when certain amountof freedom or option is available in decision making. This is conspicuously absent in most cases inIndia where brute physical force or socio-economic coercion lead women to a life in prostitution”(cited in Kapoor, 2000–2001, p. 364).

32Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE), one of the first and pioneer NGOs in the United Statesto work for sex workers’ rights was established by Margo St. James in San Francisco in 1973. Later,its state chapters (such as Coyote LA, Coyote NY) were established in many U.S. cities. COYOTEworks for the rights of all sex workers: strippers, phone operators, prostitutes, porn actresses, etc.,of all genders and persuasions. COYOTE is also a member of The North American Task Force onProstitution and The International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights.

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