TheDaak review

Courting Hindustan: The Consuming Passions of Iconic Women Performers of India by Madhur Gupta, New Delhi: Rupa Publications, Paperback, Published: 5 May 2023, 208 Pages, 19.8 x 12.9 x 1.18 cm, ISBN: 978-93-5702-103-6, ₹ 228.   

by Pushpita Mitra

If one were to analyze the socio-political placement of women in the cultural project of modernity in India, they would come across as a very complex tale of both empowerment and subversion. On one hand, there were movements in support of women’s rights, while on the other hand, a section of women was vilified, silenced and criminalized on charges of moral pollution. The women of the latter group stayed outside the conventional norms of marriage, spent life with suitors of their choice, and lived and worked under the public eye. Their ‘non-marital sexuality’ and association as ‘women who were in the public gaze.. accessible to all’ made them socially repulsive – ‘fallen and dangerous’ (Dewan,2019, p.2-4). Their ways of living could not fit into the cultural imaginations of a monogamous-patriarchal structure of the newly emerging middle-class. The nexus of the colonial state and a group of Western-educated reformists started to look at these practices as exploitative and any female sexual activity outside marriage as prostitution and illegal. They sparked off the anti-nautch movements from the 1890s and finally on the ninth of October, 1947, the Devadasi Abolition Bill was passed (Subramanian, 2006, p.125-127; Gupta, 2023, p.172). By tampering the image and silencing the voices of these women from the cultural memory, these episodes turned into a history of violence when the artistry and knowledge of these women was squeezed out from them without even a fleeting mention of their acknowledgement. These processes marred them not only of their reputation but also economically by snatching away their livelihood. This community of women who were pushed into obscurity were the female performers and courtesans. They were chronicled by several names like nagarvadhu, tawaif, baiji, devadasi, nautch-girls et cetera in different parts of the country and at various points of time. 

The courtesans carried strong matrilineal lines of performing tradition and underwent rigorous training in music, dance, and literature. In the pre-colonial times, they were regarded as ‘cultured women’ of high status in the society, expected not just to entertain the royalties but also to participate in the temple rituals (like in the case of the temple dancers or Devadasis of South India) and, serve as the guardians of art and culture. Titles such as ‘jan’ or ‘bai’, argues Gupta, were markers of such social standing (Gupta, 2023, p.5). In the North, young male members of the aristocracy (princes, nawabs-to-be) were sent to many tawaifs to learn good behaviour and social etiquette (tameez and tehzeeb)  along with various male musicians and artists who also accompanied and trained with them.  (2019, p.2). They were also quite active in the political spheres, some of them acted as important advisors of the monarchy running their day-to-day governing business and commanding the military in times of need. Since the nineteenth century, all that their persona got reduced to was a figure of prostitute – luring, swaying and trapping noblemen away from their households. Their free will and agency on matters of their sexual partnership and terms of living did not go well in the eyes of the Western colonizers and the newly-English educated native intellectuals who were guided by the Western ideals of Victorian morality. In their place, a new set of upper-caste women of ’respectable’, middle-class backgrounds were substituted as necessary steps taken to ‘reform’ and ‘purify’ the space of performing arts (Bakhle, 2005, p.5; Subramanian, 2006, p.115). 

Active processes to invisibilize these women from the cultural memory started happening in many ways. To rise above the social stigma, the moral guardians gave them the forceful alternative of marriage and an honourable domesticated life. In reality, however, like the author has observed in the case of Begum Akhtar, this meant choosing between the art-form or the domestic life. In most cases, the upper-class man would show the broad-mindedness to marry a tawaif/devadasi but after the marriage, rarely did he approve of her performing in public, putting into place the subtle practice of purdah. The newly independent state and its apparatuses, brought stringent laws to deprive them of their patrons and opportunities for public performances. While the commercial ventures of the gramophone and film industry enabled them to survive after the first few years of independence, state-run cultural entities, like the All India Radio, openly made attempts to dehumanize them in order to curtail their traditional ways of living. In this context, the author has cited the interesting example of Jaddan Bai who was the mother of the famous cinema actress, Nargis and the first female filmmaker, producer and music-director of the Hindi film industry.    

“Jaddan ensured that her daughter grew up respectable. That may be the reason why Nargis was not taught how to sing. Those who remained gaanewalis had to suffer discrimination when the All India Radio put out a preference for married female vocalists over them. The gaanewalis were even required to use a different entrance so that their presence at recordings would not annoy ‘normal’, well-born employees (2023, p.136).”

Saba Dewan’s work has further made another interesting observation of the usage of nomenclatures at this time to distinguish women performers of the two different worlds. The colloquial term “gaanewalis” used for the tawaifs were often pitted against “gayika”, the Sanskritized term preferred for the married women from respectable household (p.5).  

The cultural memory about these women entertainers have existed in two ways.Some solely chose to remember their skills, artistry, poetry and compositions, separated from their private lives. For others, the latter aspect of scandal and gossip about these women held more importance. The famous tawaif, Gauhar Jaan has been remembered for her feisty and extravagant character. She was the first to use the gramophone device in India at a time when the male ustads dreaded using the microphone, fearing the loss of their voice. Besides boasting her vocal prowess, Gauhar Jaan was known for her smart, bargaining skills of striking the perfect business deal with the foreign record companies. Janki Bai on the other hand, is remembered in the music fraternity by the acronym of “chappan-churi”- after she survived fifty-six stabbings by one of her lovers. Both these singers saw the epitome of their social status, glory and wealth when they were invited to perform for King George V at the Delhi Durbar in 1911. However, the results of their spendthrift habits did not go down well in history. They died with extreme penury, betrayed and robbed by their lovers and today lay in unknown graves in slum areas, forgotten in time. This was all that the moral policing eye chose to remember and document. It is only recently that the archivists and private music collectors have been finding a large corpus of unknown traditional bandish (Hindustani compositions) from their sound records, and cherishing their memory for their vocal expertise and understanding.       

Of late, scholars, some of the performing artists, and archivists have taken a renewed interest in and around the lives and times of these women performers. Their efforts have discovered traces of these women through scattered memoirs, songbooks, sound (gramophone) records, and popular oral retellings among the artist fraternity. They have suggested an alternative narrative which does not just reduce them to promiscuous figures as the reformists posited, but rather tells stories about their skills, pioneering artistic inventions, combat and survival. The book “Courting Hindustan” by Madhur Gupta is another such attempt to revisit the world of this country’s traditional female performers and entertainers, and the lesser-known narratives about their survival and little moments of victory. Within the sad episodes, the author chose to write in a celebratory tone to hint at a crucial fact that despite hardships the courtesans managed to survive, especially in the early decades of the post-independence period when the state was legally trying to erase them. Though their matrilineal tradition disappeared after the mid-twentieth century, their existence in the cultural memory is afresh among practitioners, artists and connoisseurs even today. Much of this has been made possible due to their sound records for the gramophone industry.  

Tales of their absence and erasure cannot be considered absolutely fictional for many women have completely gone into oblivion. The case of Chandrabhaga Bai is one such stark example whose memory now lives only in a few anecdotal references. Chandrabhaga Bai was the courtesan and mistress of Jayarao Scindia (1834-1886) of Gwalior, with whom she had a son, Bhaiyya Rao Ganpat (1852-1920). Bhaiyya Rao received his musical legacy from his mother and became one of the famous harmonium maestros from the Gwalior Gharana. There is ample evidence about Bhaiyya Rao and his paternal roots but rarely any affirmative information about his mother, mainly because of the social stigma that started getting associated in the modern period. This was a common phenomenon that many ethnomusicologists have observed –

“The male offspring of tawaifs are said to be acknowledged and cared for by their fathers..typically of wealthy classes… Some of the sons have risen to important positions…although I was told such musicians exist, I never met one who identified himself as such. (Neuman, 1980, p.100)”. 

The reason for the celebratory tone adopted by the author partially lies in the successful attempts of some of these artists (Begum Aktar, Balasaraswati as some crucial examples) to leave their indelible mark irrespective of their marginal status. By exploring ten different lives in ten chapters, he has attempted to segregate them based on historical timeframes. They chronologically navigate from the ancient Buddhist period to the Medieval to the modern and early years of the post-independence era. The triumphs for some women were about fighting for one’s dignity and principle (found in the chapters of Amrapali, Vasantasena and Roopmati). For few others, it was about rising to the ranks of a queen and exhibiting one’s leadership qualities in a place highly dominated by men and sometimes at a time when they even lost the support of their patrons/spouses (Begum Samru, Begum Hazrat Mahal and Begum Akhtar). Yet for some others, it was about foreseeing the changing times, grabbing the opportunities they brought in, and eventually becoming pioneers in bringing revolution within the art form and their ways of consumption (Gauhar Jaan and Jaddan Bai). In other words, the author has portrayed these women singers and dancers as loyal lovers, diplomats and advisors, leaders, survivors, philanthropists as well as entrepreneurs.       

Madhur Gupta’s Courting Hindustan meanders through accounts of oral history, mythology and empirical sources. His lucid language and story-telling manner of writing can even grab the attention of such readers who might not be from the world of the performing arts but have an interest in it. The book thematically builds on the history and historiography of women entertainers of the Indian subcontinent, bringing forth issues of women independence, individuality, morality, marriage, resistance and survival within. Gupta’s analysis of the traditional women performers stops at the case of Balasaraswati (1918-1984) whom he has stated as the last-living courtesan of India. However, the story of resistance and survival serves as a point of provocation and relevance to further analyze some of the post-colonial cases like the that of the bar dancers. Many journalistic and academic studies have thrown light on how some young girls and women from non-famous tawaif families ended up in the bar-dancing profession in search of employment. Thus, the vantage point of Victorian morality has often intertwined the business of women-entertainment with prostitution, but in reality, when the entertainment was stopped and they lost their means of livelihood, it was then these women entertainers who were forced into prostitution.   

Works Cited : 

1. Bakhle, Janaki (2005). Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition. Oxford University Press.
2. Daniel M. Neuman 1980). The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. The University of Chicago Press.  
3. Dewan, Saba (2019). Tawaifnama. Westland Publications Private Limited. 
4. Gopinath, Vishnu (2019, January 2019). Everything You Need To Know About India’s Ban On Dance Bars.The Quint.  
5. Morcom, Anna (2013). Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance: Cultures of Exclusion. Oxford University Press. 
6. Subramanian, Lakshmi (2006). From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy: A Social History of Music in South India. Oxford University Press.