Prostitution and the Intersection of Subalternity and
Queerness: A Comparative Study of Daughters of the Brothel: Stories
from Delhi’s Red-light District and Taboo!: The Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area
(NON-FICTION CATEGORY)
Aisha
Haleem
PhD Research Scholar
Department of English and Modern European Languages
University of Lucknow
Lucknow, India
Abstract:
Since
its inception, prostitution has been seen negatively and harshly by society.
Numerous writers and scholars have occasionally paid attention to this topic
and continue to do so. History demonstrates this profession’s marginalised and
subaltern status, particularly in South Asian nations. The oldest occupation in
the world was limited to the flesh trade, while having the most prestigious and
beautiful history in classical music and literature. As no research and study
can be done in isolation, so can prostitution also; there is hardly anything
left that is still not discussed and mirrored through literary perspective in
the shadow of various theoretical analyses, so again do the books of fiction
and nonfiction on prostitution. This paper will try to focus on the subaltern
identity and ostracised image of this profession in the society that it became
queer for us to be neutral towards sex workers and their non-normative way of
earning money and live their familial lives without any judgment and
marginalisation. The queerness and subaltern perspective of this prostitution
have been analysed and studied in this paper through the reading of Daughters of the Brothel by Deepak
Yadav and Taboo!: The Hidden Culture
of a Red Light Area, which represent both India and Pakistan and the
status of prostitution in these countries.
Keywords: Aesthetic, Post-colonial, Prostitution,
Queerness, Subaltern, Tawaif
The world’s oldest profession has its roots from the very beginning of
human race and civilisation as a part of entertainment and the decorative
implementation of classical art forms and literature. Even after having such a
glorifying historic classicism, it is treated as an insulting profession, and
sometimes people do not even consider this a profession. After lots of field
research and observations, Indian writer Deepak Yadav has documented a
tremendous text dealing with the lives of sex workers of GB Road in his book, Daughters
of the Brothel, and Pakistani writer and social worker Fouzia Saeed
authored a phenomenon work named Taboo!: The Hidden Culture of a Red Light
Area depicting the lives and tradition of prostitutes of Shahu Mohalla in
Lahore, Pakistan. Both texts extensively and boldly portray the picture of
prostitutes in India and Pakistan with the description and explanation of
historic references. After reviewing the literature, this paper will try to
present the social reality of prostitution and the Marxist ideology that could
be seen in these texts as it deals with the lives of prostitutes and how they
become prostitutes and how the whole structure of this profession works as a
manipulator where the power of money and the possession on the lives of
prostitutes is still in the hands of customers, brothel owners, and sometimes
in the hands of pimps.
We often engage in
discussions about our rights and responsibilities to our neighbourhood,
society, and nation as citizens of a democratic democracy. However, we
frequently forget that, in parallel to our community of rights-abiding
citizens, there exist other portions of society who are so oppressed that not
even the legal system can come to their aid. One such group in society is
represented by the sex workers on G.B. Road. Whatever administration comes into
power, it won’t matter to them since all they need to continue doing is selling
their flesh to make ends meet. Eight chapters make up the book, together with a
prologue and an epilogue. Along with a few peeks into the lives of transgender
people, the storylines revolve around seven sex workers: Kareena, Jhumpa,
Roopal, Madhuri, Munni, Reshma, and Ganga. The proprietor of brothel number 56,
Fatima, frequently makes an appearance to demonstrate that not everyone who
owns a brothel is lucky. Their tiny children, who attend school in order to
receive an education, too experience hardships and sorrows, but more so due to
the fact that their mother works as a bully. Every prostitute on G.B. Road is
in business against their will. The major reason for being on a G.B. road and
as a prostitute was poverty, hunger, and illiteracy. Social realism can be seen
through this power structure and the socio-political condition of this
profession, which is not even a profession in our society. People usually talk
about equal rights in education and every aspect of human race but will deny
the rights of working-class people by making their illiteracy and unawareness a
tool to dominate them, which creates a sense of being subaltern among them, and
that is a similar case with the sex workers in G.B. Road and Shahi Mohalla.
Prostitution in India
and Pakistan has been a subject of significant discussion in both fictional and
non-fictional texts. Many researchers and scholars have contributed their
understanding and knowledge regarding this stigmatising profession and its
representation in texts of India and Pakistan. Numerous writers were attracted
to this subject and authored many texts; among them, Fouzia Saeed challenges
the phallocentric language through her documentation of the lives of
prostitutes of Shahi Mohalla or Heeramandi, a famous historical courtesan’s
place in Lahore. Another writer from India named Deepak Yadav, even after being
a male writer, explored the whole GB Road and interviewed every sex worker
there with neutrality and patience. Rohini Sahni, V. Kalyan Shankar, and Hemant Apte explored the existence
of prostitutes and their profession from the history till now in India in their
edited book, Prostitution and Beyond: An Analysis of Sex Work in India.
Pakistani short story writer Sadat Hasan Manto has penned numerous short
stories with the backdrop of partition and communal riots. It is a subject of
immense astonishment that not only Manto but another male short story writer,
Ghulam Abbas interpreted the lives of prostitutes in his short story titled,
“Anandi”. So just like the writers, academicians have and still working on this
profession and documenting their observations through literature and
interviews. Muhammad Aqib, Javaria Farooqui, and Dr. M. Ammad Ul Haque
collectively published a paper dealing with the lives of prostitutes presenting
in Sania Munir’s short story, “Maria A Wanton One” published in the collection,
Unfettered Wings, the name of their paper is, “(Re)Framing Sex Work and
Prostitution through Sana Munir’s “Maria a wanton one.” Hassan Bin Zubair, PhD
scholar from Islamabad Pakistan written a book review of the text, Taboo!:
The Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area. Hassan tried to highlight the
hidden classical art and literature and the culture of sophistication. Like
Hassan’s review, Fouzia Saeed herself written an article about traditional
prostitution in Pakistan titled, “Women Working as Traditional Prostitutes in
Pakistan” published in the issue called, Review of Women’s Studies. As
the name of the book itself sarcastically suggestive probably that is the
reason that Fouzia Saeed’s work is more talked and less researched one but it
gets her a reputed place among post-modern writers in South Asia and she got
many awards for her courageous step to further publish this book on demand in
many languages such as Marathi, Hindi and Urdu. Muhammad Usman Amin Siddiqi and
Aamir Yaqoob written and published a paper, “Comprehending Commercial Sex: An
Exploration into Governance Models Rooted in Feminist Discourse.” In which they
mentioned Fouzia Saeed’s Taboo!: The Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area and
Louise Brown’s book The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving
Dreams in Pakistan’s Pleasure District. Just like these writers many
academicians and researchers published their piece of research o shahi Mohalla
or Heermandi and its classical culture of music and literature which sort of
related to the theories of Indian aesthetics. Deepak Yadav’s book, Daughters
of the Brothel got equal attention of many researchers and scholars such as
Dr Prabha Parmar and Vandana Chitkara reviewed the book and interpreted all the
details and the marginalised and subaltern identity of sex workers in GB Road,
the review was published in International Journal of Research Cultural
Society. Like Deepak Yadav another Indian author and photojournalist wrote
a book about the lives of sex workers of GB Road named, Nobody Can Love You
More.
After reviewing the literature, this study will, upon a thorough review of
existing literature, delve into select primary texts to unearth the nuanced
elements of queerness that shape the identities and experiences of those on the
margins. By tracing these elements, this work aims to unravel the formation of
a subaltern identity born of queerness as observed in the lives of prostitutes
of GB Road in Daughters of the Brothel and in the inhabitants of Shahi
Mohalla, or Heeramandi, in Taboo!: The Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area. Using
JA Cuddon’s definition as a guide, this research plans to question how
queerness appears not just as a personal experience but also as a shared
underlying theme. This theme turns these spaces into areas of both concealed
strength and untold stories caught between the need to be seen and to survive.
Queer theory does not work towards the
inclusion of excluded groups within dominant notions of normality, but rather
seeks to understand and challenge what Michael Warner has called ‘regimes of
the normal’, i.e. those discourses and institutions that produce certain kinds
of behaviour as normal, and others as aberrant. Thus, queer theory is motivated
by a politically progressive agenda: to help envisage circumstances where
sexuality and gender can be lived in less restrictive and more creative
ways (Cuddon 580).
Through this
definition, one can understand that queerness or queer theory is not just
related to the LGBTQIA+ community but with every individual or group of
individuals who are involved in something that is a sort of unacceptable or
unusual, irrespective of its effect and involvement in a negative sense on
society, it will be judged and dehumanised. One such profession is
prostitution. Society considers this profession unusual or strange because it
is non-normative in their eyes, though it is not an ideal way of earning money
and maintaining livelihood. But after the forceful implication of this
profession on any girl or woman, they will understand that no matter what,
society will never accept them in any other role or profession, so they make it
their full-time earning profession. Now the same society, after witnessing and
becoming part of this forcefulness and taking advantage of anyone’s poverty,
becomes estranged towards the existence of sex workers. So, this process of
dehumanising prostitution and making questionable remarks made the profession
non-normative and challenging the traditional labour system and earning
techniques and this queerness led to sex workers’ subaltern identity, where
they are not only rejected but neglected by society. Fouzia Saeed and Deepak
Yadav try to hammer on these aspects in their path breaking books, which this
paper will try to analyse. Summarising Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick’s
definitions and views on queer theory and queerness, Tara Verma, Eli
Chapman-Orr, and Antonix Davis stated that, as the characteristic of being
strange and non-normatively unusual, there is no single or definite definition
of queerness and queer theory, but it does challenge the essentialist system of
anything, and especially in a forceful manner. So, prostitution is also an
unusual profession, and the unusual trait makes the people involved in it
subaltern and marginalised.
Daughters of the Brothel: Stories from
Delhi’s Red Light District
was published in 2020 through the writer’s own publication house, named Bigfoot
Publication. The book portrays and documents the real-life stories and
struggles of sex workers from the most famous and neglected place in Delhi,
known as GB Road. The author specifically focused on the brothel number 56. The
book woven with the first-hand narratives of the sex workers with the help of
vivid images that make readers feel as if they are listening to and witnessing
those incidents of negotiating nights, exhaustive mornings and conversation
coloured with slang and sexual undertones with pimps hunting customers. Another
book, Taboo!: The Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area, deals with the
same sort of queerness and subaltern identities of the prostitutes from a
famous area in Lahore, named Heeramandi or Shahi Mohalla. It was published in
2001 by Pakistani author and social activist Fouzia Saeed. Saeed accurately
described the lives of the parents of these Mohallah’s prostitutes, focusing on
the actual names Laila, Razia, Soni, Chanda, and Faiza, among others. Readers
are also introduced to the real hidden subculture of this red-light area and
how the pimps, the whores, and the customers of this locality employ particular
euphemisms. The irony is that Shahi Mohalla or any other brothel is not just
about a flesh trade but more than that, especially in a place like Shahi
Maohalla where trained classical musicians and dancers perform with an art of
sophistication, wooing through sexually coloured undertones in a form of erotic
and sometimes explicit Urdu poetry. Fouzia Saeed herself said in an interview
with Aasim Akhtar that, “My entire research towards Taboo! was
an expose of the so-called social morality shedding light on the distinction
between a pious woman and a fallen woman”. Society tends to avoid and neglect
these aspects related to the world’s oldest profession and associate it with
only body selling which is also not to be questioned and ostracized until and
unless it is harming anyone. Fouzia Saeed successfully depicts this hidden
reality of Shahi Mohalla, the sarcastic and misleading title of the book itself
putting question on the mentality of our society that hidden must be something
lethal and questionable with the characters and
The book starts
with author’s interaction with a transgender Sharmila Prakash. The author found
her struggling with youngsters on the railway station as they were bullying and
harassing her so much that she felt uncomfortable sitting next to the author.
Being transgender, she has gone through a lot as per her statement she and
other transgender people must sell their bodies without their consent, they are
not even considering proper prostitutes, here reader can see the identify
crisis and loss of self. After a few minutes she tells the writer that she is
returning to Lucknow, her hometown, to meet her family, especially her mother,
after nine years, her mother had a second cardiac attack. To hide their genuine
identities, nearly all of the women in the brothel live under false identities.
The narrator begins by telling the story of Kareena, a middle-aged woman who
was born in a tiny Himachal Pradeshi town. She was actually named Pinky. After
being married off as a youngster to an abusive husband, she endured years of
mental and physical suffering. When her husband killed their daughter during a
violent outburst, it was the tipping point. Pinky escaped after this tragedy
and took a job at a construction site, where she was abused by the management,
causing her to experience more anguish. The event was reported, but the
authorities did nothing. Pinky was advised to take up sex work by a female
co-worker at the workplace in order to provide for her two youngsters. The
thought of being touched by strangers was difficult for her at first, but she
finally accepted it as her only option for survival. Despite being mistreated
by customers, she told the narrator that none of them had ever been as mean as
her husband. On one occasion, she described the violence she endured at the
hands of law enforcement.
The marginalisation
and the subaltern identity of sex workers can be seen through the description
of Tariq about how even police used to treat sex workers in GB Road, “Violence with a sex worker is a normal thing
on G.B. Road, Deepak. Every sex worker has gone through brutality in her life
more times than they care to remember. Once, a policeman brutally burned a
girl’s face with cigarettes while she screamed and fought to resist” (Yadav
48-49).Through Reshma’s description also Deepak presented the merciless
behaviour of police officers towards prostitutes, she continues to say, “Every
man who touches a prostitute leaves a permanent mark on her soul but they don't
understand this” (Yadav 103).The cruelty of police is towards this profession
and urge to earn free sex and easy money through this profession was so high
among police officers that whenever some minor try to elope from this pot of
vulgar shit, then police took sexual advantage and sell them again to the same
brothel, as again being unusual, non-normative work, nobody care the least
about this practice of paedophile. It is a very judgemental
profession of queer status, as it is not usual acceptable profession for the
society to accept and imagine anyone in this profession earning their
livelihood. Deepak also interacts with a prostitute from Bedia community, named
Roopal. The depiction of Bedia community and their norms where women are
subalternised to the extent that they do not have choice to pursue any other
profession and being from a scheduled caste, they hardly have possibility of
getting education. The life and Roopal’s story narrated in the book through
Roopal’s colloquial narration with the writer,
Earlier, prostitution
was the sole occupation in our community. But nowadays it doesn’t pay too well.
We are respected by no one…A Bedia man is accustomed to being
unemployed. Men in my community have got used to a comfortable living
which entails little or no responsibility. They pimp for the women of their
household, play cards, drink liquor and produce offspring (Yadav 89-90).
Prostitutes of GB
Road or from Shahi Mohalla do not have their right on their body as Jhumpa, the
youngest sex worker had to suffer a lot, as she had to take pink injection
(oxytocin injections) to make her body look like an adult for more customers.
Jhumpa is just one such of many prostitutes who forcefully brought to brothels
in Delhi, Mumbai or any other part of India, Pakistan and any other South Asian
countries and forced to have sex with middle aged men, and also forced to take
this deadly injection for the growth of body parts. After accepting their fate,
they will be further judged as if they choose this queer path earning their
livelihood. Jhumpa’s plight was also mentioned unfiltered and in a neutral tone
through Jhumpa’s straightforward narration,
My first menstrual
cycle was yet to come, and Madam used to make me sleep with more than twenty
men in a day. My private parts were perpetually swelled up and had developed
lacerations, and livid rushed. To make my body mature fast, she used to give me
a pink injection every day. These injections were given to all the young
inmates of the brothel. Within a week, I began to menstruate (Yadav 74).
Not just Bedia
community but Deepak explored other prostitutes who had traditional value for
being in this profession. Ganga, a Devdasi had to accept her fate in this
profession because again due to the unusual and subaltern identity of a girl
who is Devdasi, so she has to earn her living by selling her body as a toll for
sex, the art and aesthetics related to the classical dance form and religious
devotional standpoint will be neglected because a female body is associated
with this sort of devotional tradition. Researcher Ranjani S. has discussed
about how Devdasi is now seen through the lens of prostitution only and that is
also with exclusivity in her paper titled, “The Customs and Confrontations of Devadasis in Our Society.” Another
researcher K. A. Geetha studies about why Devdasis are forced into prostitution
and the answer is most girls from Dalit community, so the possibility of double
subalternation is increasing. As Ganga herself described her story and revealed
the rejective and dehumanising outlook of upper class and caste society, “I
remember when I was young, about nine or ten years, I wasn’t allowed to go to
the main village, as that was the place where people from higher caste lived.
We cannot touch them” (Yadav 112). Reshma belongs to Mirasis family of
musicians from Pakistan. Her grandmother was a popular tawaif from Heera Mandi,
due to communal riots during Partition, she came to India, then poverty and
homelessness brought Reshma and her mother to the brothel in GB Road.
Struggle and journeys of prostitutes in GB
Road is portrayed in a colloquial tone. The queerness of this profession easily
be seen through people’s reaction and awareness about the existence of sex
workers and their living conditions in the book. The existence of nihilism in
the middle of existential crisis can be seen through the real-life depiction of
sex workers of GB Road named, Kareena, Jhumpa, Roopal, Madhuri, Munni, Reshma
and Ganga. The book’s language is straightforward, and the story
moves at a clear pace making it easy to read. The author paints vivid pictures
when describing places and characters in depth. The sex workers on G.B. Road
represent all sex workers in the country and worldwide.
Unlike Deepak Yadav
Fouzia Saeed talked about traditional prostitution or courtesan culture of
Shahi Mohalla. Recently a web series called Heeramandi by Sanjay Leela
Bhansali was made. But Saeed’s intensive study and ethnographic research is
more accurate and filled with actual colour of classical culture and art forms
among pimps and courtesans, their historical past and hierarchy, the variety
shows of Mirasi musicians, their love interest and marriages, we can see the
similarity with the book Tawaifnama by Indian documentary maker and
author Saba Dewan. Saba Dewan presented the courtesan culture of Banaras
gharana through the first-hand narration of the tawaif herself from 1857 to
2014.The context might be different but Fouzia Saeed depicted the same
queerness of the profession where prostitutes of any sort are subalternised,
though they were the worthiest tax payer during colonial period (Dhruva). But
the whole personality and aesthetics flushed away just by the one part or trait
of prostitution. Courtesan culture got subalternised because of the colonial
power of Britain, during that period tawaifs were known as nautch girl about
which Hasan Shah wrote a novel titled, The Nautch Girl further
translated by Qurratulain Hyder. Soon the dancing girl concept became the
concept of sex work and the strangeness and non-normative characteristic became
more challenging and questionable for the society when it comes to acceptance
which made them a subaltern.
Not just prostitutes
but famous ustads are mentioned in the book such as Ustad Mohammed Sadiq,
Gaman, Allah Bakhsh, and Haji Aftaf Hussain (Tafoo). Still society is taking it
as a non-normative and unusual profession to accept. Saeed investigates the
performing arts in Shahi Mohalla, a neighbourhood in Lahore that is home to
several well-known Pakistani performers. This area is well known for its
traditional Indo-Asian forms of entertainment, music, and singing. Prostitution
is categorised under this unofficial nightlife ghetto in Pakistan, a country
with a strong Muslim community. In their own community, women are both despised
and coveted, making them doubly inferior (Zubair 221). The sounds of male musicians (Dhol wala) playing drums
to their dancing girls (Kanjar) in their performance chambers (kotha) for their
affluent patrons (moti asami) fill Shahi Mohalla between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.
These musicians are usually from the Mirasi caste, and the dancing females are
from a family that has a long history of prostitution and performance in the
area. The majority of pimps and prostitutes are Shiite (Shia) Muslims,
according to Saeed, who discusses their sect and religion. This is because they
are granted the legal and religious right to engage in safe sexual
interactions. Young girls are highly valued because they may be sold or married
off to customers who are eager to “take off their nose rings” (Deflower the
Virgin, Nath Utarwai). A lot of years later, those now elderly prostitutes are
unable to get married and are unable to draw attention to their acts, so they
are forced to continue taking care of the kothas (brothels). In the book we
cans see the description of nath utarwai when Laila was supposed to initiate
the profession officially; many rich and famous clients came. Each chapter
describe the life struggle and aesthetic value of tawaif culture and the role
of musicians and pimp. In the last chapter we can see accurate description of
subaltern identity of prostitutes,
“All I know is
someone carved out this groove for us and we stayed in it, without questioning.
God is a witness; we did not choose it; this role was given to us. I was told
that to be a good daughter, I should do my job well and keep my mother happy.
I’ve been doing it honestly, but I didn’t choose it myself (Saeed 300).
through Chanda’s
description but the irony is she was equally in unaware about the patriarchal
system of the society as she said that in her profession everything is other
way around in contrast to the ideal society structure the male dominance has no
place in prostitution here in this profession they need to earn through their
potential and hard work, then they will be treated superior. This is the other
type of sarcastic Queerness of this profession which the paper talked about
that society ostracizing this profession and totally neglecting the existence
of sex workers because the profession holds a non-normative labour system where
women supposed to be at centre and men are in the supporting roles though men
are the reasons or in more blunt way they are the way why and how women became
prostitutes, having a history of wealthiest and highest position in the society
where they used to hold the sophisticated position specially prostitutes from
South Asian countries and gradually became a commercial sex workers with zero
rights or unexecuted rights. So, this non normative status, strangeness and
oddness of this profession made them more subjugated and subaltern then that
ever been.
In the foreword of her book Taboo!: The
Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area, she called prostitution in Shahi
Mohalla a ‘flesh market’ where women in this profession are finding and
fighting for their identity, still unable to qualify as dignified citizens of
Pakistan due to several myths and superstitions related to prostitution. The
height of denial and neutrality of the people around Shahi Mohall and other
parts of Lahore is vividly discussed by Saeed. During her research and wondering
in Shahi Mohalla, she found that even after being an active participant as a
client of that area, many men and police personnel do not want to have any word
regarding that area, which she did not fail to confront with her friend and
policeman Amjad Shah. The actual hidden culture that fascinates Fouzia to write
a book is the culture of aesthetic values and ethos of this non-normative part
of society; she confessed, “The fact that most of Pakistan’s musicians,
singers, and film actors, especially women, came from the red-light area made
me want to look more closely at this phenomenon” (Saeed 18). Not just the
aesthetics, poetry, dance, and architecture were discussed in the book, but
Saeed sort of followed Hélène Cixous’ theory of feminine writing, famously
known as Écriture feminine, because being a female author and writing about the
hidden and undiscussed part of society is itself a challenging task further her
work placing prostitutes stand point in front of phallogocentric one. Saeed
depicted the familial system and power dynamics in the courtesan culture of
Shahi Mohalla, especially in the Kanjar community, where women usually get
property rights and other benefits of being a tawaif, which is perhaps a
matriarchal system of power dynamics as the primary earning member would be a
woman.
Through the analysis
of subalternity, queerness, and the lived realities of women who work as
prostitutes, Daughters of the brothel and Taboo!: The Hidden Culture
of a Red Light Area provides relevant findings of communities that have
experienced a lot in their struggle for recognition, power, and even life. Both
texts illustrate the impact of social and economic marginalisation, systemic
discrimination against the sex workers, and more importantly, how queerness
adds layers to these issues. The comparative study found that the sex workers
featured in the representations are subalterns’ speech, which cannot be easily
defined and does not conform to any identity or agency. Daughters of the
Brotheldelves into the
aspirations and hardships faced by daughters growing up within the brothel
environment, where they often strive to escape cycles of oppression. Similarly,
Taboo! explores the inner workings of red-light districts, revealing
hidden cultures, complex social hierarchies, financial dynamics, and the daily
interactions of individuals within these spaces. Together, these texts
illustrate the paper’s argument that queerness and subalternity intersectional
and injecting as being on the margins in the society sex workers are seen as
strange creature who do not fit into the traditional value system of family and
other normative perspectives.
Thus, the present
paper highlights the agency and tenacity of people negotiating the intricacies
of subalternity and queerness in the context of the sex trade. Both texts
encourage readers to go past superficial presumptions and delve deeply into the
cultural and socioeconomic factors that influence these marginalised people’s
lives. Daughters of the Brothel and Taboo!: The Hidden Culture of a
Red Light Area challenge societal stigmas while also raising awareness of
these experiences and advocating for a more nuanced vision of identity, power,
and human dignity in the complex social context of prostitution. They encourage
readers to explore how queerness and subalternity intersect as sites of
oppression and potential liberation in this way. The peculiarity of this
occupation does not render sex workers subaltern or place them on the outskirts
of society; but, the hierarchy in brothels and some communities does belong to
the subaltern community, with no right to speak, as discussed in the article.
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