Prostitution in Kolkata formerly Calcutta is present in different forms. Prostitution may be brothel -based or non-brothel based as in the case of call girls. Prostitution is legal in India. The total number of prostitutes in Kolkata is unknown. Some estimates state that there are more than 6, brothel-based women and girls in prostitution in Kolkata.
The population of prostitutes in Sonagachi constitutes mainly of Nepalese , Indians and Bangladeshis. According to some sources the most common form of trafficking consists in offering false promises or some offer of help out of a dead-end or crisis situation, force is used later after the prostitutes have already been sold. It is not very familiar or much discussed book till now. In this drama, a good description can be found about the negative attitudes shown by the then existing 19th century educated Bengali Babu class of people towards the prostitutes and the prostitution.
From the first half of the 19th century, centering on Sonagachhi, a huge organised prostitution area surrounding Cornwallis Street on the east, and Chitpur on the west were formed. Although many areas in Calcutta were inhabited by those prostitutes outside those areas also. On the south it was Kalighat to Khidirpur dock areas, in the middle-Calcutta it was Kalinga-Fenwick Bazar, on the far south in Kareya area many girls from different social-classes of Hindu-Muslim-Christian communities were engaged with this profession.
More than that, there was no clear 'mark' or 'boundary-line' between the 'gentleman areas' and the 'prostitutes areas'. Many areas had scattered or mixed up population of those two kinds. Rather, many areas could be termed as 'half-gentleman' areas, where normal gentleman's families and various types of prostitutes co-existed side by side.
From the middle of the 19th century, the British colonial administration, Christian Missionaries, and native English-knowing educated 'Victorian' Indian gentlemen started campaign against prostitutes. This was their part of the project of social 'sanitation' process for creating the so-called 'gentle-society'.
