Month: December 2017

Ali, Kamran Asdar. “Courtesans in the Living Room.” ISIM Review, Vol. 15, 2005, pp. 32-33.

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This article is open-source and can be freely downloaded here. 

Summary

In the spring of 2003, Pakistan’s GeoTV ran its first serialized television play: Umrao Jan Ada, based on the novel of the same name. (This novel also spawned films in 1981 and 2006, both named Umrao Jaan.)

This article examines questions about how this series, and popular television performances like it, reflect and facilitate discourse on gender politics in present-day Pakistan. The courtesan has long been a stock character in South Asian popular culture, including literature and film, but its recent proliferation is of particular interest: as the author asks, “Why have Pakistan’s liberal intelligentsia and feminists chosen at this juncture to depict the life-world of the prostitute and the figure of the courtesan as metaphors to argue for sexual freedom and women’s autonomy?” (32).

In short, Ali argues that the film’s representation of the Nawabi era as tolerant and inclusive confronts and challenges the “more homogenizing elements of Islamic politics in [modern-day] Pakistani society.”  He also addresses the issue of linguicism within the play: while it confronts issues of sexism and inclusivity, it does so localized entirely within the space of high Urdu culture, “and in doing so remains oblivious to the vital issues of cultural and linguistic diversity within Pakistan” (33).

Brown, Louise. “Performance, Status and Hybridity in a Pakistani Red-Light District: The Cultural Production of the Courtesan.” Sexualities vol. 10, no. 4, 2007, pp. 409-423.

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Abstract: Prostitution is a cultural practice, and the purchase and sale of sex take diverse forms. This article uses ethnographic research to examine elite prostitution within Heera Mandi, the traditional red-light district of Lahore, Pakistan, and demonstrates that the signifiers of status for elite tawa’if (courtesans) have altered as their client base has changed. Traditionally portrayed as the carriers of culture, the contemporary tawa’if is frequently lamented as debased and divorced from her heritage and skills in the performing arts. This article argues that contemporary courtesan culture still requires significant investment in cultural capital and social skills, but that these have taken new forms. The globalization of prostitution and the hybridization of cultures are shown to influence the performance of the courtesan, particularly in the mujra – the singing and dancing show. Today’s tawa’if is argued to be a cultural production, a woman who uses her cultural, social and sexual capital in performances that negotiate hierarchies both within and outside the brothel quarter.

Brown, Louise. The Dancing Girls of Lahore: Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan’s Ancient Pleasure District. HarperCollins, 2005.

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Although Louise Brown is a sociologist who teaches at Birmingham University in the U.K., The Dancing Girls of Lahore is not so much a work of scholarship as it is a journalistic memoir. Based on a diary she kept during eight visits to Lahore from 2000 – 2004, this book is full of vivid descriptions of life in Lahore’s famous Hira Mandi (Diamond Market) from the perspective of a white Western woman.
Brown actually lived in the Hira Mandi – initially with a famous artist, Iqbal Hussain, who grew up and currently resides there and whose mother was a courtesan, and later with a family of women and girls who are trained dancers and practicing courtesans. Living in the same neighbourhood as the people she is studying allows the author access to certain everyday situations and events that might not otherwise have been available to her. But while Brown’s observations are often intriguing, she offers only very brief analyses of the lives and choices of these women, choosing instead to focus on her personal interactions with them and with other residents of the Hira Mandi, including some members of the khusra or transgender community and a sweeper family.

Hackney, Arya Rose. The Question of Agency and Conjugal Norms for the Devadasi. MA Thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2013.

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This MA Thesis is free for download here.

Abstract: The devadasis have been a subject of inquiry in the history, gender studies, and postcolonial studies for South Asia. In India’s colonial past, Europeans have called them ‘temple prostitutes.’ Apologist accounts in the present have equated them to ‘nuns.’ Recent postcolonial works, however, have conflated these categories and suggested many of these women were courtesans with a respectable standing in both temple and secular settings. Debates in the past have focused on the question of agency amongst the devadasis when investigating the factors leading to the Devadasi (Prevention of Dedication) Act of 1947, which effectively outlawed their system. However, this thesis examines an even more pervasive element surrounding the abolition of the devadasi system: the construction and reconstruction of conjugal norms. This shift in societal ideas regarding conjugal norms presents itself in the history of India beginning with British rule after the Indian Revolution of 1857, which extends well after Independence in 1947.

 

  • This thesis provides extensive information and resources for readers wishing to learn more about the devadasis, including devadasi history, their role in literature, debates and legislative measures surrounding them, and more.
  • Of particular interest to us are pages 33 and 34, on which Hackney argues that devadasi reformists and apologists, despite having very contrasting ideas about devadasis, both often adhere to the same normatives pertaining to the value of sexual purity.

Kohli, Namita. “In the company of the tawaif: Recreating the magic with darbari kathak.” Hindustan Times, 27 Aug 2016.

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This piece profiles Kathak performer Manjari Chaturvedi and her project to recreate kathak dances once performed by courtesans, as part of her show “The Courtesan – An Enigma.” Kohli discusses some of the negative stereotypes surrounding courtesans and their representation in Bollywood and wider media, contrasting them with Chaturvedi’s research and attempts to build a more accurate, nuanced and dignified portrayal of courtesans and their role in art and history. As Chaturvedi herself notes, “I had to do this for her, and for all the other tawaifs who deserve that dignity.”

Orr, Leslie C. Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu. Oxford UP, 2000.

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Summary from Google Books: Through the use of epigraphical evidence, Leslie C. Orr brings into focus the activities and identities of the temple women (devadasis) of medieval South India. This book shows how temple women’s initiative and economic autonomy involved them in medieval temple politics and allowed them to establish themselves in roles with particular social and religious meanings. This study suggests new ways of understanding the character of the temple woman and, more generally, of the roles of women in Indian religion and society.

Schofield, Katherine Butler. “The Courtesan Tale: Female Musicians and Dancers in Mughal Historical Chronicles, c. 1556-1748.” Gender & History, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2012, pp. 150-171.

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Abstract: There are many problems in trying to construct a history of female musicians and dancers in Mughal North India. Such women appear frequently in Mughal writings and apparently played an important role in elite society; there is clearly much we can learn from such sources about gender and class in the empire generally, as well as female performers more specifically. However, what evidence we have is written from the perspective of their male patrons and cast according to long-standing rhetorical and cultural conventions concerning the fateful roles of music and love in historical events. In this article I examine how Mughal historical chronicles transform named female performers into stereotyped agents of the downfall of noblemen. Using the stories of several historical courtesans, I demonstrate how stock topoi of desire, enslavement, longing, rebellion, danger, fate and above all musical and erotic power, were used to shape all stories of courtesans into tragic cautionary tales. I aim to show that the ‘fictive’ elements of Mughal courtesan tales furthermore reveal important cultural truths about the role and meanings of music in Mughal male society.

 

“3 October 2015 TALK – Heritage Series. The Courtesan – by Manjari Chaturvedi.” Youtube, uploaded by India Habitat Centre Lodhi Road, 4 October 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf9duzmktZY

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This video depicts a talk by Manjari Chaturvedi discussing her life and experience with sufi kathak dancing and addressing some of the negative responses she has received due to kathak’s association with courtesans. Chaturvedi also recounts her partnership with Zareena Begum, sometimes referred to as India’s ‘last living courtesan,’ and the controversy she faced in working with a professed courtesan.

“Manjari Chaturvedi, Darbari Kathak – Lost Songs of the Courtsans.” Youtube, uploaded by Joy Sangeetam, 21 May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=illUrj46HuA

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This video shows clips of a performance of the show “The Courtesan – An Enigma,” featuring Manjari Chaturvedi performing Darbari Kathak, billed as the “dance of the Courtesan.” In addition to the performance of the dance itself, the show includes several narrated stories about courtesans, and the video concludes with Chaturvedi discussing the history and representation of the courtesan, arguing that courtesans have been pushed aside in historical narratives and twisted into a negative concept, and that we must reexamine history and the role courtesans have played throughout.