Sachhi Sinha, B.A.LL.B (Hons.), Banasthali Vidyapith
Through this article focus has been laid on the legal aspect of the prostitution that how it being an activity which has been always against the social norms of India is given the legal status by the government of India which is said to be a democratic government that is the government of the people. And here by legalization government is in favor of its people only and thus in order to protect the rights of those who has been forcefully engaged in this profession and then are unable to come out of it and even if they somehow make it out they don't remain the same in the eyes of the society therefore they are being hurt by people. For the purpose of stopping all the mistreatment towards these prostitutes it is good thing that we have prostitution as a legalized profession in India.
The practice of prostitution can be found right from the mythological era as we have several religion books mentioning about apsaras clearly indicating the fact that sex workers used to exist even at the time of God. We can locate the origin of prostitution in India from the ancient era when the practice of donating female child’s to the temples for the purpose of dancing in and decorating the temples was very much prominent among the Hindus. The female child’s sacrificed for this purpose were widely called by the name devdasi in the society. India was slowly becoming financially weak from the time when mughalrule failed here thus demanding from the people of India to search for an alternate source of income specially from the female servants who were in continuous service of one or the other royal and after some time India got attacked by the britishers thereby raiding the textile industries of India which were acting as one of the major source of income for the citizens and on the other side we found the devdasisbeing taken advantage of that too by the temple priests. The already existing shortage of income promoted the misuse of devdasis in order to earn money, thus introducing a new practice into the Indian society known as prostitution. Not only these devdasis but with time even the other females of differenthouseholds got employed in this field so that they can survive which would have been not at all possible in any other way since they weren't educated enough to join any other profession.
