Historicizing Sexuality: A Study on the Conceptualizations of Sex Work/ Prostitution in India through the Ages

According to the modern social conventions sex is considered to be a strictly private thing that happens between man and woman inside the boundaries of the institution of marriage. Modern society recognizes only heterosexual monogamous relations as natural and all other variants of sexuality are looked upon as “unnatural” or “aberrations”. The others like homosexuals, transgender, and sex workers have no place in this patriarchal heterosexual monogamous discourse. The pre- British Indian sexual culture, in which sexual relations were comparatively more liberal, was viewed as uncivilized or barbarous by the colonial powers. This paper attempts to take a look at how alternate sexual discourses like sex work /prostitution were practiced and perceived in India over the ages.