[Reader-list] IFS'07 - Displacement of Prostitute -July - 5th posting

[SUROJIT SEN]

Hi All,
  This is my 5th posting.
  Act 14: Social Scenario: Taking advantage of the Act 14, the police began heckle the prostitutes and a section of common people by threatening to frame them. The Act thus helped the police upgrade their positions and flatten their pockets by extorting money from those women. In order to get rid of police harassment, prostitutes, in this time, devised a strategy. The Act 14 applied mainly to street girls or harlots and not to those ‘kept’ by babus or permanent clients. Prostitutes, now, began to introduce themselves as concubines of babus. The story of Sukhimoni is a case of point.
  On 22 September, 1869 Sukhimoni was produced in the court on the charge that she had not undergone medical test which was mandatory under the Act 14. Defining herself sukhimoni argued, ‘I didn’t go to the doctor because I am not a prostitute. It is the darogababu (officer – in – charge of a police station) who has registered my name. I haven’t done it on my own’. In her appeal to the court, Sukhimoni said that she was not a harlot; She worked in the factory run by one Mr. Angello and lived in the custody of one Mataho, an employee of the same factory. She also added that one day the police broke into her room and showing a warrant of arrest took her to the police station. There she was asked to tell her name and her father’s name. While disclosing this information, she never thought that the police would register her name as a prostitute. Satisfied with the truthfulness of her statement, two judges of the Calcutta high court acquitted Sukhimoni of all charges.
  The Act 14 made it mandatory for the prostitutes to register their names with the local police station and then undergo medical test. If the test revealed symptoms of any venereal disease, the woman, in question, would have to be kept confined in the Lock hospital (set up for this purpose under the Act 14). As a result, prostitutes infected or suspected to be infected with any kind of contagious disease would lose their earnings. This also affected those who depended on those women’s incomes. In order to get out of this predicament, the prostitutes, therefore, did not register their names. The statements, made before the court, of those arrested clearly indicated that those women knew very well how to give the slip to the police and the administration.
  This Act provided Battala (Battala is located near the Sonagachi red-light area. It was famous as earliest publishing centre in the 19th century Calcutta. Bodmayes Jobdo, the text under review, may be broadly viewed as a specimen of the Battla kind of literature) authors with a ready source-material, satirical sketches, poems, booklets, etc on the police oppression, the plight and flight of prostitutes, the painful state of the brothel-going babus and so on flooded the Battala market during this time. As the authors and publishers of these books lived in areas close to Sonagachi, the books provided a detailed and first-hand description of the situation developed in the wake of the Act 14. It is almost impossible to find a complete list of these publications. Of the innumerable texts, besides Bodmayes Jobdo, we can mention a few names, such as: 1. Bahoba Choddo Aain (Bravo Act 14-1869;anonymous;) 2. Beshya Bibaran(On the prostitutes, a play by Tarinicharan Das,1869) 3.
 Beshyanurakti bisam bipatti (whoring in Danger – anonymous, 1869) 4. Panchali Kamalkali (Saga of Kamalkali the whore; by Aghorchandra Ghosh, 1872;) 5. Bharatdarpan (The Indian Mirror by Priyalal datta and Lalitmohon Shil, 1872)
  Two years after the enforcement of the Act 14, in 1870 Keshabchandra Sen, a reputed Brahmmo (‘Brammo’ refers to the Brahmmo Samaj, an organization founded by Rammohun Roy in 1829 with the objective of bringing about reforms in Hindu society and preaching theism.(Keshabchandra Sen (1838-84) was a powerful leader of this movement. He was the editor of a Bengali periodical ‘Sulabh Samachar’)leader wrote a letter to Josephine Butler, a British lady who espoused women’s cause. Sen in his letter described in detail how the said Act had turned out to be a cause of physical and mental torture for the prostitutes who were being forced to undergo medical examination. In the following two decades, Ladies’ National Association under the leadership of Ms. Butler carried on with a movement demanding the abolition of the Act 14. Such an Act had been in force in Britain too.
  In 1888 Ms.Butler and her Association sent a memorandum to the British Government in India. Referring to the oppression of prostitutes consequent on the Act14, they expressed grave concern and strongly condemned the unjust treatment being meted out to their ‘Indian sisters’. In the face of opposition voiced by Ladies’ National Association, some Christian missionary women’s organizations and some socially conscious Indian citizens(like Keshabchandra Sen) coupled with the administration’s realization of failure of the Act 14 to prevent contagious diseases, the British Government finally repealed this Act in 1888. 
   
   
   
   
   
   

 				
---------------------------------
 Here’s a new way to find what you're looking for - Yahoo! Answers 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/defanged-47920
Size: 8399 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20070713/c377fb0f/attachment.bin