Of Prostitutes and Politicos

I’m getting nostalgic this month because it has been slightly more than a year since I started blogging about Bangladeshi politics. A few days ago, I recalled my conversation about Ayub Khan last year with J@Shadakalo. We both agreed then that labeling Ayub a “Khan-ki Pola” – tempting as it was, and factual too, in both Bangla and Urdu – would be an insult to all children born into brothels everywhere. (I feel like I should explain that term, but I doubt that the 7-8 people who still read this blog will any problem deciphering it.)

Now I realize that even associating Ayub Khan and others of his ilk with prostitutes would be an insult to the latter. It all started earlier this month, in Big Daddy Kissinger’s country. Deborah Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam” as she was dubbed, committed suicide. She herself was a former prostitute before turning into a “Madam” – essentially a female pimp. Her clients – which include one “family values” Republican, David Vitter – continue to lead their lives and retain their jobs.

Yet, which of these two made the worse trade-off? Palfrey for selling her body? Or Vitter for selling his soul?

No, visiting a prostitute does not mean you have sold your soul. Not in my books. But Vitter is such a panderer that he stood for “family values” in public – values that he clearly did not act by – to get elected by a bunch of rednecks. Did Ayub Khan really care about the “integrity” of Pakistan on which his government brought the Agartala charges forward, while at the same time mouthing off about how every country needs a civil war? Of course not. He was just trying to sell himself to his “dear countrymen”.

Who deserves more condemnation? Ayub or the girl turning tricks at Ramna? Who gets more?
Major religions – both Ayub’s and Vitter’s – teaches you that this body is simply a shell and that the soul is all. Should that not also mean that the soul is more valuable than the body? Then why do religious leaders from both Christian and Islamic traditions judge those who sell their body so much more harshly than those who sell their soul? Less than a month after a bunch of bearded men made a taal out of a teel in front of Baitul Mukarram, the answer is on the wall. The infamous double-standard. Religion might make women and men equal, but (even religious) boys will be (testosterone-charged) boys. And in a boy’s eyes, a woman’s sex is so much more than anyone’s soul.

Religion was supposed to reverse that that sort of animalistic thinking, but you won’t have to look too hard among the religious to find defenders of insecurity-filled patriarchy. Ironic really.
Perhaps you do not believe in a God or any religion. Fine by me. You may care about people then (if not, God help a nihilist like you). Who has the greater effect on people’s welfare, a politician or a prostitute? Yet, have you ever seen the same kind of moral outrage over a politician’s pandering? A few months back, the media in our country jumped up and down on the couch screaming about a “Nikita” and darkly implying that she was running a prostitution ring. But at the same time, there were politicians (and bureaucrats, both civil and military) who were renouncing their life’s beliefs, all in the face of money, power and prestige.

Yet, what effect did Nikita really have on our lives?

And what effect will a new, servile class of politicians eager to sell their souls for those in power, what effect will that have on our lives?

But the double-standard sells newspapers you see. We can all be outraged at prostitutes and “fallen women” like Nikita without risking anything. Expressing outrage at politicos, who are in favour – a Hafiz, an Ibrahim or a Qureishi – comes with the risk of being hauled up by the “powers that be”. Yet, these latter have sold their souls, their beliefs to those who come offering them silver and gold.

Yet, we must condemn those who sell their bodies. Louder and louder.

Enough about Bangladeshi global social and moral hypocrisy. Can anyone tell me what the legal view of prostitution is in Bangladesh? Does the client get charged if caught? If so, is his (and it’s almost exclusively a “he”) punishment equal or less than the prostitute’s? I like the Swedish legal system’s take on this matter: make prostitution legal, but soliciting illegal. Thus, the entire legal liability hinges on the (almost exclusively male) customer rather than the (mostly female) seller. I am tempted to say that it will only be the Baitul Mukarram/Kakrail Mosque crowd who would oppose a move like that. But I know that such a statement would greatly understate the misogyny of the “secular” Bangladeshi middle/upper-classes.

~ by dhakashohor on May 19, 2008.