|
Take off your dancing shoes
By Narendra Kaushik
May 1, 2005
Basia Khurd - Hundreds of Bedia women living in Basai, a hamlet on the edges of
Agra, have returned to their village after the decision to ban dance bars was
announced by the Maharashtra government.
Not only did these bars offer employment to these girls, but they also helped
them to continue a tradition which reportedly began simultaneously with the
construction of the Taj Mahal — the Bedias were supposedly brought to Agra to
entertain the labourers building the monument.
Back home, the girls have now become targets for the local Divisional Rescue
Officer (DRO), voluntary groups working against prostitution and the community
at large; suddenly, they’re not being seen as mere dancers but as prostitutes.
Moreover, six girls have been arrested on charges of immoral trafficking by the
police, which has generated immense anger.
“We’ve said we’re not into flesh trade. Our daughter just returned home after
the bar where she worked closed. But nobody is listening to us. Shouldn’t our
daughters come home?” asks an angry Maina, whose daughter Radhim was arrested
last week, along with five other girls of her family.
Flanked by her husband Deepak, Maina alleged that the police targetted the
women from her family after she abused a person who propositioned them.
Baijav, wife of Kalua, whose two daughters Khushbu and Madhvi were also
arrested, made the same allegation.
Of these six girls, three worked in dance bars Megha and Diana in Mumbai. In
affidavits filed before the city magistrate, all of them have denied the
charges made by the police and claimed to be only ‘dancers’.
While the girls were granted bail, they have yet to be released from the Nari
Niketan, because the Additional Sessions Judge had not signed their release
forms.
Meanwhile, Basai’s Municipal Corporator, Chandersen alias Taplu, has shot off
complaints to the National Commission for Women (NCW) and is threatening to
file a case against the police. “None of these girls were into prostitution.
They’ve been victimised,” said Taplu, a Samajwadi Party (SP) leader.
The DRO and the police have gone on the defensive. They view the arrests more
as rescue operations, because they prevent the girls from being prostitutes.
DRO G P Srivastva, who claims to have ‘rescued’ roughly 47 women in the city
from January 2004 to April 2005, has also said that he suspects that the girls
aren’t Deepak’s family members at all; that might simply be a front for the
flesh trade racket.
The police, however, also fear that many more bar girls may get into
prostitution in Basai due to the ban in Maharashtra.
According to Superintendent of Police (SP) Agra, Gulab Singh, the number of bar
girls from Mumbai who’ve come to Basai is 250. The police are unable to
authenticate that claim (some say hundreds of dancers have returned), but
they’re sure many dancers are already operating as prostitutes in the area.
During a tour of the village, many kohl-eyed, heavily made-up girls wearing
western clothes could be spotted. While most refused to comment on the issue,
one of them, Nisha, who claimed to be a bar dancer, objected to being called a
‘prostitute’. “I’m not a prostitute. I am a bar dancer.
Why can’t I dance in a bar when women can work as bus conductors?” she asked,
criticising the Maharashtra government for its decision to close the bars.
A family legacy of bar dancing and prostitution
In a country where the female child is regarded as a curse and female foeticide
and infanticide are rampant, Basai is unique.
Not only does this village, which has a 3,000 strong population of the Bedia
tribe, celebrate the birth of a female child, it prays and plans for more
daughters. It is said that pregnant women here go for Pre-Natal Determination
Tests (PNDT) to ensure that they deliver baby girls, even practicing male
foeticide.
A case registered by the Agra police helped the police shed more light on this
practice.
Rakhi and Henna, two bar girls working in Mumbai, were arrested in the village
in September last year, after it was found that they went for medical tests to
determine the sex of their foetus.
During interrogation, they revealed that their community showed a marked
preference for the female child, and at times, indulged in male foeticide. Like
hundreds of other girls in the Bedia tribe, the girls were single parents,
their livelihood as bar dancers in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata their sole means
of support.
Further, the income generated by them also supported the men of their families
— their fathers and brothers.
More daughters are viewed as more sources of income, a sound investment for
future financial security — once they’re older, they too can join the flesh
trade or become bar dancers.
Since over 300 years, there have been virtually hundreds of such families. The
female members financially support the male members through these professions.
The older the woman, the more likely it is that she runs a brothel.
That this is Basai’s tradition is confirmed by Singh. “The women are either
into prostitution or work at dance bars. The male members of families serve as
pimps. They won’t do anything else,” Singh says.
Srivastva also confirms this fact.
According to Khairati Lal Bhola, head of the Bharatiya Patita Udhar Sabha, an
NGO working for the welfare of prostitutes and their children, the preference
for the female child applies as much to quite a few other tribes who the
inhabit villages in and around Agra, Jodhpur, on the Alwar-Jaipur road, in
Madhya Pradesh, Uttranchal and Maharashtra.
Comment on this story,
click here.
Copyright 1999-2004, AsianSexGazette.com. All rights reserved. No
content may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission.
Please contact us via the link below for re-print and syndication policies.
|
|
Bar
girls’ choice: dancer or prostitute
4-27-2005
Bar
girls will now take up prostitution
4-14-2005
|
