Ancient Practices and the Modern Trade: A Case Study of Eight Prostitutes in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Abstract

Understanding humans across the globe seem to be simple on the surface level, however, it is quite difficult to understand the complexity of human nature every one exhibit. This depends on the person himself and the person with/ to whom he is communicating, situation, gender, feelings, place of exposure, lifestyle & culture, social exposure, the family upbringing which altogether makes a person think and react at that particular moment, resulting in action. However, inclined sexual instincts among both the genders get them connected through one or the other ways with mutual benefits, which is popularly known as an illicit or extramarital affair. While there is also a large section of women who irrespective of their sexual inclination serve people with their physical needs for mutually agreed money; has been a trade for survival to many of them. While these kinds of relationships between the two genders are not those emerged in the recent centuries, they have references of previous ages survived on the earth. India, since then has witnessed the social culture of an illicit affair between the two genders in various forms such as devadasi, extramarital affair with one or many, which later turned to prostitution. Though the prostitution and devadasi system in modern India is constitutionally banned, the devadasi tradition persists to be in the remote rural areas while prostitution has mushroomed across the country irrespective of their geographies. With a lot more of scholarly articles available, this study attempts to present few cases of women who were interviewed with an effort to understand the lifestyle, earnings, social background, reason to be in prostitution, the treatment and respect they receive and the challenges they encounter every day.