Rukhsar attends the school with her sister Shahana, not pictured. Rukhsar Khatun has her hair combed by a schoolmate. Twelve-year-old Karishma enjoys a shy moment laughing with her friends inside the boarding school, where she lives with some other 100 girls. The girls pray together inside their communal bedroom that sleeps 20 during the five holy days of Durga Puja.Ī view from the roof of the boarding school, situated not from from the Indo-Nepal border town of Bihar, one of the poorest districts in India.
The young girls develop strong bonds at the boarding school and have the opportunity to act carefree, a luxury most do not have in their communities. This serves as protection when a trafficker accosts her, because he immediately knows that Apne Aap staff will follow up if she goes missing. Here two young school girls listen to men call out to them from the field, trying to get their attention.Īll the girls supported by Apne Aap are given photo identification to show that they are members of the group. The girls are still vulnerable to sex traffickers who routinely prowl the outside of the school hoping to abduct them into a life of prostitution. The girls get three meals a day at the boarding school. The school girls play a game of kabaddi during recess. The girls overcome caste stigma by forming friendships that take away the boundaries of caste and class. Neelam and Urmila, both 14, pass the time playing during the high holiday season. The girls and their math teacher, Shruti Priya, observe the Durga Puja festival that honors the victory of Goddess Durga over the evil buffalo - hence the victory of good over evil. “But keeping that child in school is even harder.” “Many people think: ‘Oh, enroll a child in school,’” Gupta said. But keeping them safe is a long-term commitment, Gupta said.
Some fathers have tried to snatch the girls back.īy keeping costs down, Apne Aap is able to keep the girls in school for about $160 a month per student. A few graduates of the school are even heading off to college - with ambitions of becoming lawyers and doctors.īut many struggle to achieve a much smaller ambition: avoiding being caught up in systemic prostitution.Īt the school, fathers regularly put pressure on the girls to do their “family duty” and start working as prostitutes. “But it's neat and clean.”įor most of the 100 girls at the school, it's the first time any member of their family has been offered access to education. “It's not a five-star school,” Gupta said. Gupta's group works to get the girls out of the reach of men who might sell them - by enrolling them in the boarding school but allowing weekend visits with their mothers and siblings. The Nat group has been relegated to the margins of Indian society since the 1870s, when it was classified as a “criminal tribe” by British colonial rulers. “Otherwise, they would join their mothers in prostitution.” “The school keeps them safe and away from the home-based brothels that they were growing up in,” said Ruchira Gupta, Apne Aap's founder. Founded by the nonprofit organization Apne Aap, its supporters and the Bihar state government, the school aims to break the bonds of caste and inequality.
Their school, not far from the border with Nepal in the Indian state of Bihar, is part of a national program of girls’ boarding schools called Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, intended specifically for minority groups. They are members of a marginalized caste known as the Nat community, which is trapped in a system of hereditary prostitution. Ruchira Gupta (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) Twelve-year-old Aarti Kumari combs her hair at the Kasturba Gandhi Girls School.Īt this school, many of the children playing games, doing homework, helping with dinner and making crafts are the daughters of prostitutes. The school keeps them safe and away from the home-based brothels that they were growing up in. In villages such as Simraha, it is not uncommon for girls as young as 12 or 13 to be sold. More children are sold into prostitution in India than in any other country.
It could be any small village school in a desperately poor rural area of India - except that these girls have barely escaped a 21st century system of slavery. In the bare dirt courtyard of a low-slung building in a small farming village, a group of girls chase one another in a round of kabaddi, a local schoolyard game a bit like Red Rover.