This photo was taken by AP in 2004 during a visit to a Badi community, when prostitution was still legal

Along the road from Nepalgunj to Tulsipor we stop at a bus stop above the River Rapti to meet Jamuna Badi and her husband Sankar Badi Nepali. Jamuna and Sankar are our introduction to the Badi, one of the few Dalit sub-castes that are well known outside Nepal. The reason is that Badi women practiced prostitution for many centuries and still cannot shake off the stigma. We’d like to hear why from the Badi themselves.

I’ll share more of Jamuna’s story in my next blog but for the moment I want to reflect on one of the defining features of caste – the fact that it leaves people with no option to change. The Badi are a perfect, if poignant, example.

The Badi first came to Nepal from India in the fourteenth century and served as courtesans at principalities and the Royal Court where they danced, sang and provided sex for nobles. This ended in 1951 when the Rana dynasty collapsed. Deprived of royal patronage, Badi women were left to fend for themselves and took up prostitution on a larger scale.

Prostitution was criminalized in 2008 but a government task force the same year found that 6% of all Badi women were still practicing prostitution and almost twenty years later the association still hangs over the Badi like a cloud.

There is still some controversy over whether the prostitution was coerced, and if so how. I noted in my second blog that caste was by definition coercive because it denied people agency, and this is certainly implied when one says that Badi girls were “born into prostitution.” The process is explained in this fascinating 2007 paper by Thomas Cox which describes how Badi girls were readied for prostitution, like child brides:

“Badi girls from early childhood on know and generally accept the fact that a life of prostitution awaits them. Badi girls see all the young women around them and often their own mothers and sisters prostitute themselves on a daily basis. Badi girls also usually do not go to school and have little contact with outsiders. They are thus not exposed to many ideas, values or beliefs that counter those in their own society.  Girls also learn early on that prostitution is the only means of support available to most Badi women.”

Prostitution was so deeply entrenched in Badi communities that a girl’s first experience of sexual intercourse was – like marriage – accompanied by a ceremony known as nathiya kholne. Badi girls had their own argot (slang) which allowed them to discuss prostitution with their mothers in the presence of strangers without disclosing business secrets.

This is how a social norm coerces and it resembles other traditional practices encountered by The Advocacy Project through the years. These have included genital cutting in Kenya (FGM), bonded labor in Nepal, the trafficking of women from Nigeria to Italy, and child marriage in Zimbabwe. In each of these cases tradition combined with poverty to further dis-empower vulnerable people, particularly girls. Such practices are so deeply embedded in society that it requires enormous willpower to resist. The younger the victim the more difficult this is and the less likely she will understand, let alone protest.

In some cases, we have found that women who had themselves suffered were among the most zealous advocates. For example, the trafficking of young women from Nigeria to Italy (2000) was managed by “madams” who had themselves been trafficked. We also found that parents were also fierce defenders of FGM in Kenya (2014). This fits with Cox’s description of Badi prostitution in Nepal in 2008. His paper suggests that the main culprits were Badi mothers and grandmothers who prepared their daughters for prostitution and took care of the business side.

Poverty is also relevant to this discussion because it leaves people with few choices. Did prostitution condemn Badi families to poverty? Perhaps. Some girls interviewed by Cox in 2007 charged as little as 30 rupees (21 cents at today’s rate) for a session. Hardly enough to support an entire family.

The impact of prostitution on Badi children offered an even more clear-cut example of coercion. Clients of Badi prostitutes would refuse to give their names or accept responsibility if they fathered a child, which happened often. As a result, the children remained stateless because citizenship was patrilineal (handed down through fathers).

This was pure coercion because the children had no say in the matter, and it spelled the beginning of the end for Badi prostitution. In 2005 The Supreme Court of Nepal passed a landmark decision granting citizenship to Badi children. When the government dragged its feet, over 500 enraged Badi mothers descended on Kathmandu and partially undressed in the center of the city. Lawmakers were scandalized and no doubt embarrassed (because some had fathered Badi children). The world also took notice and a law was passed in 2007. The same year, prostitution was also outlawed.

Of course, not every individual act of Badi prostitution was involuntary. Some feminists would also say that women should be free to choose their own profession, however unsavory it might appear. Some literature even suggests that prostitution in Nepal gave Badi women agency and turned them into the family breadwinners. As recently as June 2021 some Badi women in the mid-west even demanded a license to practice sex-work, to ensure their livelihood.

All of this is fascinating, but for now I’m happy to go with the prevailing theory that Badi women were trapped into centuries of prostitution by the social norm. Judging from this first meeting, many Badi remain trapped by the stigma.

More reading:

The Badi: Prostitution as a social norm among an untouchable caste of West Nepal by Thomas Cox Orchid Press,  Hong Kong, 2007.

The Badi Community of Nepal, UN Field Bulletin, December 2012

Poverty Forces “Untouchable” Women to Prostitution by Anju Gautam Yogi, Global Press Journal 2012

Next: A Badi Family Remembers