The Queens' Daughters: Prostitutes as an Outcast Group in Colonial India

Abstract

The report historically traces the social construction of the Indian prostitute, which misrepresented and degraded the imagery of an accomplished courtesan and artistic entertainer to the degraded western image of a prostitute. The first part deals with the methods and motivations of the colonial government in construing Indian prostitutes as a separate and distinct group. The second part analyses the reactions and effects the colonial discourse had on indigenous elites, and ends with a presentation of the imagery surrounding the Indian prostitute in Bengali popular literature of the time.