No country for sex workers, then or now: Srijit Mukherji’s Begum Jaan (2017) and its many imagi-nations

ABSTRACT

This paper reads the period film Begum Jaan (Mukherji, 2017) for its portrayal of Partition of the Indian subcontinent as an event of gendered and sexual violence. In doing so, it explores the biopolitics of sex work at the historical juncture of 1947 and examines how the birth of nations accompanies the devaluing of women’s lives over their unraped bodies. Focusing on the political and ethical import of the sex workers’ resistance against eviction in the film, it highlights the precarity of women within the institutional mechanisms of an incipient nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Partition
• kotha; precarity
• ritual suicide
• veerangana

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Sreejata Paul

Sreejata Paul is an Assistant Professor of English at Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi-NCR, India. She holds a dual-badged PhD degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay) and Monash University (Melbourne). Her research and writing revolve largely around gender and Islam in South Asia, utopian and science fiction, women-centric Bollywood cinema, and South Asian content on OTT platforms.