| RATLAM, India (WOMENSENEWS)--In the
morning, 12-year-old Maya Lal plays with her dolls. She no
longer goes to school. Instead, as soon as the sun sets, she
retreats into a room with her father's "friend." Maya is not
the only 12-year-old engaged in such work. In the Ratlam
district of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, when a
first-born daughter of the Banchhara tribe turns 12, her father
organizes a ceremony where she makes known her intentions to
work as a prostitute. After this declaration, her father takes
her to her first customer, who waits in a room in her family's
house reserved for this purpose.
"My father has told me that I have to do this work because it
is part of our custom. So I don't mind," Maya said.
Young Banchara girls such as Maya may entertain up to six
clients each day. Fathers and brothers live off the earnings of
their daughters and sisters, who make between $10 and $100 each
day, according to the Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission, an
affiliate of India's National Human Rights Commission. The
agency submitted recommendations last year to government
officials about ending the practice. Since Indian law prohibits
prostitution, the industry is unregulated by health or business
officials, and more than 90 percent of these pre-teen
prostitutes become pregnant. Many others are infected with
sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, the commission
found.
"Conditioning these girls from an early age to accept
prostitution as their destiny and their religious duty is the
worst form of human rights violation," said Justice Gulab Gupta,
the commission's chairman. He was referring to the 500-year-old
custom of initiating first-born daughters into prostitution that
began when a beautiful, poor young woman was kidnapped by a
king, raped and forced to bear his child. According to legend,
she then forced their daughter into prostitution to exact
revenge for her own humiliation.
"They feel that they have divine sanction to initiate their
daughter into the flesh trade. Therefore they don't feel guilty
of having done anything wrong," said Gupta, a former judge of
the state high court.
'For Them, It Is God's Will'
Once she becomes a prostitute, a girl cannot marry or go to
school. She is worshipped by the community because she is
supporting her family and carrying forward a religious tradition
found only in Madhya Pradesh and nowhere else in the country.
Men in the community not only bring in the customers but also
decide the girls' wages. They say they follow the practice out
of religious duty and economic necessity. "It has been going on
from times immemorial," said Maya's father, Manohar Lal, who set
up a back room in the family's two-room hut in Jawra village,
one of the least developed areas in the state, for his daughter
and her clients. "If our oldest daughter doesn't become a
prostitute, how will I marry off my other four daughters? What
will we eat?" Lal asked rhetorically.The Banchharas are a
scheduled caste, one of the lowest-ranking communities of the
Indian caste hierarchy. The scheduled caste traditionally has
been an economically impoverished community and has been
deprived of developmental opportunities. The Banchharas, as well
as several other scheduled caste communities, have been
identified by human rights observers as a group that uses
prostitution as its primary source of revenue.
"They do not see it as ruining their daughter's life," Gupta
said. "For them, it is God's will." Bancharas women don't
complain about the practice. In fact, the mother, sisters and
female relatives of first-born daughters actively participate.
When Neetu Kumari turned 12 years old, her mother, Kalawati
Kumari, dressed her up for the occasion.
Mothers Prepare Their Eldest Daughters to Become Prostitutes
"I wanted to make her look pretty. Why shouldn't I do it?"
Kumari said. "My mother did it for my elder sister when she
turned 12 years old. Now it is my turn because Neetu is the
oldest among my three daughters. It is my duty to get her
prepared for her new life."Neetu doesn't object.
"I knew what was in store for me when I was 5 years old," she
said. "My mother told me and also I have seen other girls going
through the same ceremony. So I have accepted this life."That
life often is one of disease, health officials say.
When the state government's representative in Ratlam conducted a
health survey in 2000, almost 50 percent of the women were found
to have sexually transmitted diseases. The survey also found
that 14 percent of the Banchhara women had symptoms of AIDS. In
its house-to-house survey, the Madhya Pradesh Human Rights
Commission corroborated these findings, and discovered that many
of the girls, ranging in age from 12 to 16, were being sent to
West Asian countries despite Indian laws prohibiting trafficking
and prostitution of women.
Reformers Persevere Despite Local Resistance
Madhya Pradesh officials say that local politicians often stymie
their efforts. When the state government launched a drive two
years ago to crack down on the flourishing flesh trade, some
local officials termed the effort "anti-human."
In a letter to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in
1999, one of his Congress Party colleagues contended that
eradication of prostitution would "create a threat to our women,
as they would then become targets of sexual abuse."
After the state human rights commission issued its
recommendations last year, however, Madhya Pradesh welfare
officials began making greater efforts to end child
prostitution. They are working in collaboration with women's
organizations to make door-to door visits to offer free
schooling and vocational training to young girls, as well as
explaining the dangers of unsafe sex and offering free health
checkups.
But their work is hampered by red tape. While the commission
suggested that free land distribution for agricultural
cultivation would give the Bancharas economic incentive to end
the custom, bureaucratic procedures and tardy decisions have
undermined such efforts, said Sushila Dubey, a government
development officer working in Ratlam.
But Dubey said she believed government could reduce the number
of women and girls taking part in the practice because some
Banchhara women have said they are willing to give up
prostitution if they can find alternate sources of income.
"But the government must continue to demonstrate its political
will and combine it with speedy implementation. This will help
us achieve our goal to end the practice," Dubey said.
Swapna Majumdar is a senior Indian journalist based in New
Delhi who writes on development issues with a gender
perspective.
For more information:
National Human Rights Commission, India:
http://www.nhrc.nic.in/
HindustanTimes.com
"A goddess by day, but a prostitute at night":
http://167.216.192.98/infotainment/persona/relationship/prostitute.shtml
The Week
"Sex-stops on the highway":
http://www.the-week.com/21jun24/life8.htm |
