Have you watched Gangubai Kathiawadi? If you have, then join me as we cheer for Alia Bhatt, alias Ganga in the movie. Three cheers for this incredible actress who leaves you in all your feels, questioning all you’ve known or believed all your life. Gangubai Kathiawadi depicts the story of a girl, Ganga, who grows from a grievously wronged girl to an intrepid activist for the rights of sex workers and their children. The 2022 movie is based on the true life story of Gangubai Harjivandas, whose life was documented in the “Mafia Queens of Mumbai: Stories of Women from the Ganglands” book. The movie starts by showing the very heartbreaking reality of young women who get duped and sold off into prostitution by their boyfriends, trusted friends or family. It takes you through their traumatic experiences, broken dreams, pain and cries. Then it continues to show how they adapt to their new life and source of income, wear fake smiles, accept their fate and persevere despite everything. The different scenes portray how they are shunned by society, mistreated with no legal protection. How they form their own world, with deep sisterhood ties and as is in any other business, competitors threats. The most emotional part is when they give birth to fatherless progenies, who must be raised in the same environment. How their children are bullied or rejected from schools and lack access to the most basic of needs like health and education services. It shows how society doesn’t make it easy for those once on the streets of Kamathipura (their city) to reintegrate into society, and live a normal life again. Then Ganga, who is later named Gangubai, reins over Kamithipura as the president of the over 4000 prostitutes. She fights for their rights, goes to great lengths to ensure their safety, engages different government officials, even partners with underworld connections, and sacrifices her own love life, all to pump hope back into them. In her long speech, her strongest words go like, “aren’t our children, like your children, the future of India? I won’t let women of Kamithipura become homeless, and our children will get the right to education, and we will get our right to live in society with dignity.” “Write in tomorrow’s newspaper that Gangubai made a speech at Azad Maidan, not with her eyes downcast, but with her head held high,” she ended. What Gangubai Kathiawadi does is to shine light on things that we usually shove aside, or just ignore as we go on with our lives. While some of those may be very present in our day to day lives, even for the most conservative of communities as India. It leads to a question, when do you say that something is bad or good? It may be our religious beliefs, academic education, societal established ethics or parental guilt and communities do’s or donts that keeps us in line, or not? A friend recently argued that all those factors could be debatable. “Beyond all those factors and relativism theories, we are left with Absolute truth,” he said. According to him, ‘absolute truth’ is the fact that the core reality of things is known regardless of culture, context, and circumstances that lead to something. He gave an example of murder, regardless of anything, we just know killing someone is wrong. Relativism on the other hand, states that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not definite. Or the belief that what is good or bad for someone is not necessarily the case for someone else. So sex work may be bad or good and this article does not seek to establish an absolute truth. But as Gangubai said, every child regardless of who parent them should be given a chance for a better life, access to education and other basic needs necessary for biological and intellectual development. Our community should be safe for everyone and allow them dignity as is core human right
