Inside the hustling and bustling city of Lahore, there exists a dark territory near the Taxali Gate of the Walled City. The Heera Mandi, also known as, Shahi Muhallah (royal neighborhood), was once a place of dance, music, and a school of etiquettes for the children of Nawabs and royalties. However, it has now turned to a place that is used to satisfy the carnal desires of men. The place is known as Heera Mandi or Diamond Market in the modern days as a metaphor for the women who live and work here. Although the history of the name is quite different.
The Heera Mandi of Lahore was established during the Mughal Era. At the time it was called Shahi Mohallah because it was situated near the royal court and its sole purpose was to provide entertainment in the forms of dance, music, and poetry to the royals and South-Asian elites. It was also a place where the royals and elites used to send their children to learn all three of these things along with basic living etiquettes. The women who resided there lived with honor and were respected by everyone in the society.
The royal status of these courtesans was lost when Ahamad Shah Abdali and Nader Shah invaded the city and turned the neighborhood into a center of prostitution. The art culture was revived when Maharaja Ranjit Singh took over the city. Later on, when Ranjit Singh died, his Prime Minister Hira Singh Dogra opened a grain market there and named it Hira Singh di Mandi (Market of Hira Singh).
Soon when the East India Company took control of the city, the English people seemed less interested in the art of these women and made it a center of prostitution for their soldiers. This was the beginning of the dark era for the women of Heera Mandi, who were once known as respectable artists, had now lost the royal patronage and left to entertain the wealthy, and work as sex workers when needed.
All was not lost, as this place still produced some of the greatest musicians of South Asia. The place became a sex hub after former Dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization that included the criminalization of extra-marital sex and an attempt to shut down the market completely.
After Zia-ul-Haq’s attempts at radical Islamization of the country, the Heera Mandi suffered quite a lot. The plan of shutting down sex work was not successful although it hurt the dance and music aspect of the community. During the crackdown, the brothels moved to other parts of the city, but according to the old residents of the area, the police turned a blind eye towards a lot of activities after taking bribes. The sex work continued but the music suffered at the hands of religious extremists who gained momentum during Zia’s regime. They called music irreligious and immoral and tried their best to shut it down at all costs.
Finally, the place where one of the most famous singers of Pakistan, Muhammad Rafi, resided before becoming famous had become nothing but a red-light district where only brothels operated.
In an article written by Louise Brown, she explained that some of the women were forced into the business because they wanted to escape their abusive households, and some were forced into prostitution by sex trafficking rings. Moreover, the rest of them inherited the trade from their earlier generations. The children of sex workers are seen with the same bitter eye as their mothers. They don’t get accepted either for respectable jobs or have any prospects of marriage as they are considered dishonorable women.
Due to the taboo status of sex and sex work in Pakistan, sex workers are quite vulnerable to exploitation in the country. Among one of the thousands of victims, there was one girl Laila (name changed for privacy purposes). Laila, who was pregnant with her second baby and lived with her asthmatic mother, was asked by her pimp to dance for some clients through the night for a mere sum of three thousand rupees. After hours of continuous dancing, the audience demanded the organizers to remove her from the stage, and Laila was paid only a thousand rupees. The girl miscarried her unborn child for a thousand rupees, a sum that would feed her mother and child only for a couple of days.
The politicians do not seem to care about this community and nor does the police want to do anything, as their meager pay makes them easy to be bribed. The sex workers living here are sometimes paid as low as Rs. 200-400 for a visit. According to one sex worker, the workers are often brutally tortured and sexually assaulted by either their wealthy clients and sometimes the police officers. Because of the stigmatization of sex work in society, if the sex workers are robbed, assaulted, or even murdered, they cannot file complaints on any forum. Most of these cases are either ignored or in the case of murders, the criminals escape justice through settlements with the help of the police.
With the advent of technology, the business has moved along with it too. Unlike in the old days, women seldom sit in their balconies waiting for their clients. The number of procurers waiting in the streets to make offers to the customers has reduced as the business can now even be conducted on social media websites like Facebook, Tinder, Twitter, or even advertising websites such as Locanto. Some of these escort services advertised online even claim to have about 50,000 clients.
According to one of the Madams who is also a cosmetic surgeon by profession, she works through Facebook and Twitter and has changed the whole dynamics of the business. Additionally, she now wants to expand her business to male sex workers as there has been a surge in demand for it.
Even with sex work being one of the taboo businesses in the country, it has not stopped some kind souls from helping out the community. A non-profit organization, the Institute of Rural Management, has opened a school in the heart of Heera Mandi to educate the children of sex workers in the area. The organization has established around 61 schools for underprivileged children. The one in the Heera Mandi has 20 students and the woman who has given her place on rent for the school also studies along with the children.
Pakistani Actor, Hamza Ali Abbasi, has also made contributions towards the children of sex workers of Heera Mandi. It had been revealed that he had 11 children under his care from the community. He said in an interview, “I have been sponsoring kids of sex workers for few years and I know that Allah says to not boast about the charity work which one does but sometimes it is good to tell people so they become educated about this as this is an ignored area where no one comes, no charity nor any NGO. These kids are abandoned”.
Renewable energy has emerged as a game-changer in the global energy landscape, offering sustainable and… Read More