G.B. Road, Garstin Bastion Road, (officially changed to Swami Shradhanand Marg in 1966) is a road running from

Ajmeri Gate The Gates of Delhi were city gates at various medieval townships around Delhi, built under dynastic rulers in the period that could be dated from the 8th century to the 20th century. They are the gates in: * The ancient city of Qila Rai Pithora o ...

to Lahori Gate in

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...

, India. It is a large red-light district. It has several hundred multi-storey

brothels A brothel, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. For legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe t ...

and there are estimated to be over 1,000 sex workers. It is lined with two or three-storey buildings that have shops on the ground floor. About twenty of these buildings have about 100

brothel A brothel, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activity with prostitutes. For legal or cultural reasons, establis ...

s on the first floor that open at night after the shops at ground level close. It is the biggest red light area in Delhi.

History

The old city of Delhi,

Shahjahanabad Shahjahanabad colloquially known as Old Delhi( Hindustani: ''Purāni Dillī'') is an area in the Central Delhi district of Delhi, India. It was founded as a walled city and officially named Shahjahanabad in 1648, when Shah Jahan decided to shi ...

, was surrounded by a wall. The wall had many gates and

bastion A bastion is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fire from the ...

s. A bastion is an angular structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of an artillery fortification. It is called "Burj" in Arabic and Urdu. One such ''burj'' or bastion was named after a British officer of East India Company. The history of G.B. Road can be dated back to

Mughal Mughal or Moghul may refer to: Related to the Mughal Empire * Mughal Empire of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries * Mughal dynasty * Mughal emperors * Mughal people, a social group of Central and South Asia * Mughal architecture * Mug ...

era. It is said that there were five red light areas or ''kotha''s (brothels) in Delhi at that time. Then came the

British Raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

, when a British commissioner Garstin Bastion consolidated all the five kothas in one area on this road. The road has about 100 brothels now. G.B Road has one of the few red light areas in India apart from

Kamathipura Kamathipura (also spelled Kamthipura) is a neighbourhood in Mumbai, India known for prostitution. It was first settled after 1795 with the construction of causeways that connected the erstwhile seven islands of Mumbai. Initially known as Lal ...

(Mumbai),

Sonagachi Sonagachi is a neighbourhood in Kolkata, India, located in North Kolkata near the intersection of Jatindra Mohan Avenue (north of C.R. Avenue) with Beadon Street and Sovabazar, about one kilometer north of the Marble Palace area. Sonagachi i ...

(Kolkata) and Chaturbhuj Sthan (Muzaffarpur). The place also contains thousands of prostitution rooms or kothas.

Market

The road is famous as a market for machinery, automobile parts, hardware and tools and is the largest market for these items in the National Capital Region. The road is crowded with vehicles and persons during the day as it is a commercial area. The segment of the road starting from the Ajmeri Gate in the south until the small intersection with a street leading up to Farash Khana in the north has shops on the ground floor and ''kothas'' or brothels on the first and second floors. The streets and houses at the back of the road are residential areas.

Crime

At night, the road is a dangerous place for the uninitiated. Mugging, snatching of wallets, watches and phones and other crimes happen quite often. A policeman on duty was stabbed to death by muggers just after midnight in September 2012 when a posse of policemen tried to save a man from a gang of criminals who had waylaid him on the road and stabbed him while he was going home from work.

Bibliography

References

External links