ok
well you know your stuff NYA, I'll hand you that much.
Still it could be worse. If Mr Mahmood Kanjar is an influential political leader at least they have some social standing.
I only remember that programme vaguely now but to look at the girls could have passed as daughters of diplomats they were so well spoken.
These were the dancing girls. I can't remember now if they were prostitutes but I don't think so.
OldLahori, please do share. Could you also include a bibliography? Thanks.
Nahee yar extreme bhai!!! Ks are also invited to weddings to dance!!! Believe me yar, I know the difference between Ks and Khusras. Trust me on this one. Ive attended wedding, where both have performed
http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/smile.gif
I could send you snaps too, and you can also observe that some of these Ks are pretty attractive too.
[This message has been edited by Spock (edited August 08, 2002).]
what is kanjar??
prostitutes??
i think it would av helped if u read da whole topic mate 
so,ummm,guys dont ny1 think we should u no try some way to wipe out this society…like not in a bad way,…but give um other things to do…give um a good life. a respectfull life.
ok
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by NYAhmadi: *
so,ummm,guys dont ny1 think we should u no try some way to wipe out this society...like not in a bad way,....but give um other things to do.....give um a good life. a respectfull life.<<<
Punjabi Kuri…I am so sorry, but could you please tell us what is so ‘disrespectful” about being a Kanjar? And what do you mean by giving them a ‘respectful’ life?
[/QUOTE]
well, in my world, kanjars are not respectfull, they basically av no respectful occupation....in my world kanjar is a swear word...i duno wht world ur livin in but here they av no respect wht so ever, i mean even in london a very popular asian swear word is "kanjar"...
hope iv explained enough.
.
ok
.
Sarah, how can we legalize this? I know these women are probably doing it for bread and butter, but we must realize this is wrong, be it any religion, not just Islam. We have to get rid of this menace from our societ. It pains me to see our youth cracking jokes about Heeramundi each time. We can do better than that. A strern crackdown on this place can only be done by this Government, and even though there are influential people backing this place in Lahore, there have been various plans to get rid of prostituition permenantly. There is virtually no more prostituition in Islamabad, thanks to the law enforcement agencies, who raided influential sectors such as F10 and F6 and caught Afghani women on duty. I hope they do the same in Lahore as well, and in no way is heera mundi part of our culture...
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Sarah Splendor: *
NYA, I have great respect for kanjars and prostitutes and I have no doubt they are capable of making their own decisions, with or sans education. However, I value education above all else. Knowledge never hurt anyone, and as far as I'm aware, they are only educated up to elementary school and that to because of NGO pressure. May just be heresay though.
I forgot to add that while many women may be satisfied with the life they lead as kanjars and prostitutes, some may want to get out of the profession. In the community though, there are not many ways a woman can get out of it without incurring the wrath of her fellow community members. And even if she does, without education, there is very little she can achieve in a competitve and patriarchal society like Pakistan.
That said, legalizing it and providing the aforementioned things will solve a lot of problems. Maybe then finally the government can concentrate on the feasible.
[/QUOTE]
This is getting very interesting. In my community kanjars are definitely looked down on. I'm still not sure whether kanjars are dancers or prostitutes, but if it's prostitues then it's pretty much a worldwide phenomenon. "Whores", "slags", "hookers", etc, aren't Pakistani inventions.
The difference is I guess that in some countries it's a matter of choice.
.
It is very easy to pass judgement. It turns out Kanjars have a very long history, and their traditions go back quite a few centuries. Not all cultures consider sex as evil, nor are all cultures as obsessed by it as many present day ones are. Here is one book about the local Kanjar community in Lahore. There are other communities in Bombay, Southern India etc. One of these days when I get the time and resources I would like to do a social studies research on their Background. Somewhere I read, and unfortunately I have been unable to find the reference now, that it is well established that the Gypsies of Europe are really a tribe from India that had been taken by one of the early invaders to South Asia, and this tribe was from Rajasthan or Sindh. What some body was trying to show linguistically and by social customs (especially the matriachal nature of the family in Gypsies and Kanjars) was that the tribe was from the Kanjar caste. Anyway guys, go easy on people we do not know and leave the judgement to the One who can really judge.
Book
Hidden Worlds
Fouzia Saeed’s research opens up a window into the hidden world of Hira Mandi..
By Dr. Tariq Rahman
While there are serious academic studies of prostitution in many parts of the world, including India, there is no study of this nature in Pakistan. The only book-length study is Shorish Kashmiri’s Us Bazaar Mein [In that Bazaar], which is not well-researched and tends to be tiresomely moralistic. Kashmiri tries to find out the causes of prostitution but does not succeed. Fouzia Saeed, on the other hand, does come up with a theory of prostitution by going deep into the counter-culture of professional prostitutes i.e. women born in the traditional families which specialise in entertainment.
The author uses the ethnographic method of research. She paid several visits to Shahi Mohalla, the Red Light Area of Lahore, talking to musicians from the mirasi biradari and procurers as well as prostitutes from the kanjar biradari. She contacts, men and women, who started trusting her to the extent that they told her the well-kept secrets of this covert sub-group. Her study was conducted in the late 1990s and is, therefore, the latest scholarly work on this subject.
Fouzia found that the mirasi men keep their own women away from the Shahi Mohalla itself. They do not even give them lessons in music and dancing so as to maintain the societal distance between themselves and the kanjars. To ply their trade they hire studios, called baithaks, in the Shahi Mohalla, and that is where the kanjar households send their young daughters to learn the art of singing and dancing. They are respected as teachers (or ustads as they are called) and are the backbone of the entertainment industry in Pakistan. As the government has banned prostitution but still allows dancing and singing, the prostitutes call themselves dancing girls. They are allowed to entertain customers between eleven at night to one o’clock in the morning. After this the customers are supposed to leave and police-patrolling increases. However, even during these hours, not everybody is merely listening to songs and watching dances. Some men, maybe the majority, indulge in fornication in garishly decorated secret rooms. After the closing hours, very powerful people, whom the police are also scared of, take over. This is the most dangerous time in the bazaar. This is the time when drunken parties of men wander around picking fights with each other and even murders take place.
The kanjar families apparently invert the usual male-female relations in Pakistani society. In most Pakistani families, men are dominant and sons are valued as guardians of the family, upholders of family honour and providers of old age insurance for the parents. Among the kanjars, however, female managers or naikas are dominant. They control the finances and lives of dependent men, who are generally unemployed, as well as the younger women. The daughters-in-law, who are duped into marriages with sons, are made to take care of the home, providing free labour for the whole extended household. They are not, however, forced into prostitution. The daughters are highly valued and their births are celebrated while those of sons are not. The daughters are sent to be trained by an ustad and not having an ustad entails loss of prestige. Then, when the girl reaches puberty and sometimes even before that, the naika or a male manager arranges her ‘marriage.’ This ‘marriage’ is no more than a contract for either exclusive rights to her for a period or preferred rights in lieu of a sum of money or a maintenance allowance. Eventually, the ‘marriage’ lapses, or even while it is in place, the young woman is encouraged to earn as much for the family as she can from dancing and singing as well as prostitution.
The kanjar households have values as do all sub-groups and one’s prestige depends upon how one adheres to these values. For instance, the higher a girl is paid for her ‘marriage’ (i.e. loss of virginity), the more prestigious is the family. If her ‘marriage’ is delayed, the family loses face. Similarly, the more a girl is offered for her mujra (singing and dancing), the more prestigious she is. Nowadays, however, girls are considered lucky if they get into the film industry. They also go for variety shows instead of the traditional mujra which involved classical singing and dancing – arts which are on the decline even in traditional kanjar families. For such families the elopement of a girl with a client, even if she marries him, entails loss of face. Similarly, prostitution without singing and dancing, represents a descent in the social hierarchy. The most despised members of the profession, says the author, live degraded lives indulging only in prostitution in hired rooms. Such women are looked down upon in the more prestigious kanjar social order.
Fouzia Saeed’s research was extremely difficult and risky. First, she had to defy the bureaucracy (of which she was a member, being an officer in the Institute of Folk Heritage, Islamabad) to proceed with the research. Secondly, she had to face hostility from the police and, lastly, she had to endure degrading insinuations and proposals from members of the kanjar community and others. But she persisted and finally came up with this unique piece of research. Shorish Kashmiri had spent three years from, 1949 to 1952, interviewing 600 prostitutes of whom 80 had joined the profession out of poverty and 116 were from the professional families of prostitutes. The others had drifted in for other reasons such as bad company (45), failed love affairs (57) and abduction (22). However, he is so intent upon blaming the men for intemperate lust that he tells us nothing about their culture. Fouzia focuses on the professional kanjar families and gives the readers valuable information on the lives of the prostitutes and their sub-culture.
Fouzia does not choose to write in the conventional academic style complete with notes and references. However, she is academically trained and has made an effort to refer to all aspects of prostitution. She chooses the case-study method to study prostitution. The study reads like a novel with real life details about conversations, hospitality, humour and temper, making for highly interesting reading. In the end she suggests that prostitution is the outcome of men’s desire to control women. As this involves controlling the sexuality of one’s own women, it also requires the creation of ‘sub-cultures for their own entertainment.’ The kanjar community provides such a sub-culture and is as much a victim of the power of patriarchy as are the respectable women in society. In other words, ‘respectable’ women and prostitutes are both victims of the patriarchal system which, however, blames women for prostitution.
While this conclusion as well as the details of the research are extremely useful and the narrative is most interesting, this method of research is far too subjective to yield quantifiable results. One feels that such results, on the lines of Kashmiri, might have been insightful. The other problem is that Fouzia Saeed has not mentioned Shorish Kashmiri, the only person who has done research like hers, however flawed it might be, anywhere. She has also missed out a fairly large number of novels, stories, films and journal articles on prostitution which could certainly have provided her with a comparative dimension which the book lacks. However, despite these omissions and the non-academic style, Fouzia Saeed’s work is original and extremely significant. It is one of those rare undertakings which a bold and enterprising researcher comes up with, once in decades. I hope it will become as well known as Fernando Henrique’s classical (1966) study on the subject.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Sarah Splendor: *
but we must realize this is wrong
I don't get it. Why is it wrong? They just dance for money or charge money for having sex. I don't see it as being different to a a man busking on the street. It's only wrong when they have no other options available. Legalizing it will make their lives easier and allow them more opportunities, should they choose to avail them. Like NYA pointed out, they do have education, or at least SOME education. If they still choose to indulge in this, who are you to show them what you see as the error of their ways?
[/QUOTE]
Sarah, why do you think its not wrong? Charging money for having sex is a good thing? This is afterall the 'Islamic Republic of Pakistan' and even though its not necessary to impose the misconceived fundamentalist religious laws, but the basic laws of Islam and all other religions should apply, and a woman, who is given such respect in the religion itself, should not be allowed to sell her body for a handful of money.
Even if you do not consider Islam, prostituition is the decay of a society, and needs to be dealt with. How can you even talk about legalizing it. If you think men arent getting oppurtunities, well they should live with that. The concept of marriage should solve this problem, if they are mature enough for that. If only you would realize the serious impact this is having on our society in the negative, you would support its complete ban in Pakistan. I just hope that the military regime has enough courage to get rid of it.
Btw, you still didnt answer one thing, the women in Lahore are clearly doing this not just for fun, but for money, and if they get bread and butter, I am sure they'd be willing to quit this filthy job for good. As for as who I am to stop them? I am a citizen of Pakistan and I have a right to raise my voice, to put an end to this so called 'kanjarkhaana'. I cant tell you how it sickens me when even decent educated people bring things like heeramundi in their conversation and jokes. This nation was built upon the guiding principles of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and we will make sure it stays that way.
I hope you understand my point of view too...
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Mr Xtreme: *
This is getting very interesting. In my community kanjars are definitely looked down on. I'm still not sure whether kanjars are dancers or prostitutes, but if it's prostitues then it's pretty much a worldwide phenomenon. "Whores", "slags", "hookers", etc, aren't Pakistani inventions.
The difference is I guess that in some countries it's a matter of choice.
[/QUOTE]
exactly.
*Originally posted by NYAhmadi: *
I will show you the places there that have never been seen before. There is more to discover in that city than all of historic Egypt combined.
:D
The broken under ground sevage pipes in old lahore had remained lost for half a century but the municipal corporation has finally discovered them as well ...!! But you could still discover the aquarian life under Ravi!! ...Now that is a thought...!!
*Originally posted by NYAhmadi: *
You meet beggars there who can quote from Shakespeare and Mehfooz in the same breath.
:laughing till death wala smily:
Well THOSE definitely need to be discovered...!! Who is Mehfooz??
*Originally posted by NYAhmadi: *
You meet intellectuals with deep sense of distinctiveness.
and so they are called Intellectuals....!! :)
:D You certainly are well_versed, NY... But I somehow think that you ain't got a clue!!!
Still yet ... hats off to you...!!!! and..You had quite a guest list for july!!!
Surprise Surprise....
Born and raised in pakistan ...lived a lifetime in lahore... always thought that "Kanjar" was a Gaali that meant "B*****D"...!! Oh what a shame...!!
Thanks for teh info everyone ..... But allow me to say that i am still confused....!! First sabah says that kanjrahs are the bought male children who are forced into dancing !! then Xtreme adds thsi post about prostitution in india ...AND... NY believes that they are both and yet pakistan should be proud of them !!! Interesting!!!
So Are they really a part of OUR culture and heritage OR Ny is still confuses Pakistan and India for the Indo pak subcontinent?????
Mr Xtreme
If u r looking for a career change I would rather recomend
www.career-move.com.
happy surffing and kunjering :)