{
  "license": {
    "ours": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "terms": "/licence/",
    "note": "Notes, \"Where things stand\" and the record are CC BY 4.0. Excerpts and quotations belong to their owners."
  },
  "no": 1,
  "slug": "banchhada-community-sex-work",
  "title": "The Banchhadas, and what is expected of their daughters",
  "nativeTitle": {
    "text": "बांछड़ा",
    "lang": "hi"
  },
  "nativePending": null,
  "summary": "Girls of the Banchhada community in Neemuch, Mandsaur and Ratlam are expected to enter sex work. A running record of family debt, the marriage market, jati panchayats, and the resistance led by community youth.",
  "standfirst": "A record of a practice that is talked about in euphemism and rarely written down: the celebration of a daughter's birth to support the household, the marriage market that binds families, the denial of caste certificates, and the people fighting to end it.",
  "opened": "2026-01-22",
  "closed": null,
  "keptBy": "The editors",
  "url": "/long-view/1-banchhada-community-sex-work/",
  "whereThingsStand": {
    "revision": 1,
    "date": "2026-08-02",
    "changed": "the Long View opens with ground reporting from The Hindu, the IDR investigation of bride price and jati panchayats, Wikipedia documentation, and reporting on the film Khilawadi.",
    "body": "In most of northern India, the birth of a daughter is met with quiet or sorrow. Among the Banchhadas, families celebrate it with music and feasts. The joy is not equality: the eldest daughter is expected to earn for the household through sex work.\n\nThe men in the community find little work outside daily-wage labor on construction sites. The household depends on what the daughters bring in from roadside settlements along the highways of Neemuch, Mandsaur and Ratlam.\n\n> “Sitting in her older daughter’s room, where one corner is covered with maps and math formula sheets, Savitri, a 40-year-old former sex worker, recalls when she began hating her profession. ‘It was when my girls turned five and seven,’ she says. ‘I had decided that my daughters would never live the life I had. They would live with dignity.’”\n>\n> Savitri, in *[The Hindu](#e-2026-celebrated-at-birth-pushed-into)*\n\nThe custom is locked in place by marriage debt. Under rules enforced by the community’s jati panchayat, as recorded by [India Development Review](#e-2021-the-cost-of-marriage-banchhada), when a young man marries, his family must pay ₹2 to ₹2.5 lakh to the bride’s family. That money is earned by the groom’s sister. If a woman wants to leave an unhappy marriage, the panchayat orders her family to pay back double, up to ₹5 lakh. Going to the police or the courts changes nothing; families have to live under the panchayat’s authority every day.\n\n> “When a man gets married, the bride’s family is paid a sum of INR 2–2.5 lakh. That amount is earned by the groom’s sister,” adds Anjali. These terms are dictated by the jati panchayat, a unit of the village panchayat that dictates the conduct of a particular caste.\n>\n> Anjali, community organizer, in *[India Development Review](#e-2021-the-cost-of-marriage-banchhada)*\n\nThe law has made escape harder, not easier. The British declared the Banchhada a \"criminal tribe\" under [the statute of 1871](#e-1871-criminal-tribes-act-1871). India denotified the community in 1952 and listed it as a Scheduled Caste (as recorded on [Wikipedia](#e-2026-banchhada)), but the stigma never lifted. Employers refuse to hire people known to belong to the caste; educated young women hide their identity or change their surnames to find work.\n\nThen there is the paperwork. As documented in reporting on [Shobhita Thakur’s short film *Khilawadi*](#e-2026-khilawadi-spotlights-the-caste-based), fathers are rarely named on official records, and government offices routinely refuse caste certificates to the children. Without a certificate, a child cannot claim a school seat, a scholarship, or a reserved job.\n\n> “The idea of women being pushed into a profession because of where they are born and the caste they belong to stayed with me for a long time,” says filmmaker Shobhita Thakur. “The fact that such exploitation is upheld in the name of tradition makes it even harder for women to escape these systems.”\n>\n> Shobhita Thakur, director of *Khilawadi*, in *[The Hindu](#e-2026-khilawadi-spotlights-the-caste-based)*\n\nThe break is coming from women who refuse to pass the work on. Former sex workers are resisting family elders to keep their daughters in school. Local youth groups, including Akash Chauhan’s Jan Shaurya society in Neemuch, help families obtain caste certificates and support women who want to leave the trade. In *Khilawadi*, and in reporting from Neemuch, what happens to Banchhada daughters is no longer accepted as an unalterable tradition: it is a cycle of family debt and paperwork that mothers and daughters are fighting to end. ॥"
  },
  "entries": [
    {
      "title": "Criminal Tribes Act, 1871",
      "kind": "act",
      "kindLabel": "Act of Parliament",
      "group": "Law and courts",
      "date": "1871-10-12",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-01-22",
      "note": "The colonial statute that branded the Banchhada a criminal tribe by birth. Though repealed in 1952, the resulting police surveillance, social isolation, and exclusion from mainstream land ownership solidified reliance on commercial sex work.",
      "citation": "Act No. XXVII of 1871",
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": null,
      "excerpt": null,
      "url": "https://www.indiacode.nic.in/",
      "archiveUrl": null,
      "anchor": "/long-view/1-banchhada-community-sex-work/#e-1871-criminal-tribes-act-1871",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "The cost of marriage: Banchhada women have a unique problem",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2021-12-12",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-25",
      "note": "An investigation into the jati panchayat’s marriage mandates: a groom’s family must pay a bride price of ₹2–2.5 lakh, funded by his sister’s sex work earnings, while a bride wishing to leave must pay double to the groom’s family.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Debojit Dutta"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "India Development Review",
      "excerpt": "When a man gets married, the bride’s family is paid a sum of INR 2–2.5 lakh. That amount is earned by the groom’s sister... These terms are dictated by the jati panchayat, a unit of the village panchayat that dictates the conduct of a particular caste.",
      "url": "https://idronline.org/ground-up-stories/marriages-are-a-unique-problem-for-women-in-the-banchhada-community/",
      "archiveUrl": null,
      "anchor": "/long-view/1-banchhada-community-sex-work/#e-2021-the-cost-of-marriage-banchhada",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "‘Khilawadi’ spotlights the caste-based sex work tradition still trapping girls in Madhya Pradesh",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-07-06",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-07-06",
      "note": "An account of Shobhita Thakur’s award-winning short film following 12-year-old Sapna under family debt, and the work of Akash Chauhan’s Jan Shaurya society helping community members obtain caste certificates without their fathers’ names.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Nainu Oommen"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "The Hindu",
      "excerpt": "“The idea of women being pushed into a profession because of where they are born and the caste they belong to stayed with me for a long time,” says filmmaker Shobhita Thakur. “The fact that such exploitation is upheld in the name of tradition makes it even harder for women to escape these systems.”",
      "url": "https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/khilawadi-spotlights-the-caste-based-sex-work-tradition-still-trapping-girls-in-madhya-pradesh/article71065570.ece",
      "archiveUrl": null,
      "anchor": "/long-view/1-banchhada-community-sex-work/#e-2026-khilawadi-spotlights-the-caste-based",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Celebrated at birth, pushed into sex work",
      "kind": "report",
      "kindLabel": "Reporting",
      "group": "Reporting",
      "date": "2026-08-01",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-08-01",
      "note": "A Ground Zero investigation across Neemuch, Mandsaur, and Ratlam on the tradition of initiating daughters into sex work to support their families, the colonial legacy of the Criminal Tribes Act, and the mothers fighting to educate their children.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Mehul Malpani"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "The Hindu",
      "excerpt": "Sitting in her older daughter’s room, where one corner is covered with maps and math formula sheets, Savitri, a 40-year-old former sex worker, recalls when she began hating her profession. “It was when my girls turned five and seven,” she says. “I had decided that my daughters would never live the life I had. They would live with dignity.”",
      "url": "https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/madhya-pradesh/celebrated-at-birth-pushed-into-sex-work/article71290516.ece",
      "archiveUrl": null,
      "anchor": "/long-view/1-banchhada-community-sex-work/#e-2026-celebrated-at-birth-pushed-into",
      "specimen": false
    },
    {
      "title": "Banchhada",
      "kind": "research",
      "kindLabel": "Encyclopaedia",
      "group": "Entry",
      "date": "2026-09-25",
      "datePrecision": "day",
      "added": "2026-09-25",
      "note": "The encyclopaedia entry on the Banchhada community: their classification as a ‘criminal tribe’ under the British Raj, their denotification in 1952, and their listing as a Scheduled Caste in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.",
      "citation": null,
      "held": null,
      "figure": null,
      "authors": [
        "Wikipedia contributors"
      ],
      "photographers": [],
      "publication": "Wikipedia",
      "excerpt": "Banchhada (or Banchada) is a caste in central India that is traditionally identified with prostitution and other crimes. They are listed as a Scheduled Caste for the purposes of India’s reservation system and were formerly classified as a criminal tribe in the British Raj.",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banchhada",
      "archiveUrl": null,
      "anchor": "/long-view/1-banchhada-community-sex-work/#e-2026-banchhada",
      "specimen": false
    }
  ],
  "related": []
}