Social Hierarchies, Sex Work and anti-Trafficking Governance in Colonial and Post-Colonial India: A Critique

Jaffer Latief Najar, International Institute of Social Studies

This study critiques and analyses the relationship between social hierarchies, sex work, and anti-trafficking governance in colonial and post-colonial modern India. Patriarchy and caste hierarchies are ensconced in the social, political and governance arrangements of India, yet the governance of sex work and human trafficking is relatively little studied within such frameworks by critical feminist scholarship. This study aims to contribute to such gaps and examines how the relationship between (colonial and brahmanical) patriarchy, caste hierarchy and governance of sex work and human trafficking persists in India, how it shaped the governance arrangements in colonial and post-colonial period, and how it impacts the realities of subalterns. This study argues and critiques that an intricate relation between social hierarchies, sex work, and anti-trafficking measures augments the making and re-making of subaltern minorities as a margin in India. Subalterns are understood, in a context of this study, as structurally silenced and marginalised individuals or groups such as sex workers, transgenders, religious minorities, lower caste communities, migrants, etc. While colonial patriarchy refers to colonial hierarchies and contentions, brahmanical patriarchy denotes caste based patriarchy and power relations, which benefits the privilege of upper caste groups and subordinates lower castes in India. I use colonial patriarchy and brahmanical patriarchy as a frame of analysis in this study to explain how it intensifies the inequalities and marginalisation in both colonial and post-colonial period in India.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 174. Transnationality and Gender I