Source: Hindustan Times
KOLKATA, INDIA, August 28, 2002: While Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas dedicated generous celluloid space to the Bengali tradition of procuring earth from a prostitute’s threshold for Goddess Durga’s idols, the country’s largest body of sex workers has declined to yield to the pre-puja custom this year. For the first time, the conglomerate Durbar Mahila Samanvaya Committee has opposed the age-old tradition, saying it was “disrespectful” for the community. “We are not going to be part of such a tradition which is based on the principle that customers come to us and shed all their sins, and in turn take away earth, signifying piety, from outside our doors. We refuse to be treated as society’s dustbins,” the DMSC president, Swapna Gain, told Press Trust of India. The decision to spread public awareness against the “derogatory” custom was taken at DMSC’s two-day workshop on rights of sex workers that ended last Saturday, she said. Gain, who leads the committee of over 60,000 sex workers across West Bengal, said that the myth portrayed sex workers as the lowest strata of society who were elevated to the mainstream only for a day when sculptors came to their doors for the earth, called “veshyadwar mrittika.”