{"id":200,"date":"2017-10-24T11:20:53","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T16:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=200"},"modified":"2021-02-02T12:35:28","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T17:35:28","slug":"ansari-usamah-there-are-thousands-drunk-by-the-passion-of-these-eyes-bollywoods-tawaif-narrating-the-nation-and-the-muslim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=200","title":{"rendered":"Ansari, Usamah. \u201c\u2018There are Thousands Drunk by the Passion of These Eyes.\u2019 Bollywood\u2019s Tawa\u2019if: Narrating the Nation and \u2018The Muslim.\u2019\u201d South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, 2008, pp. 290-316."},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>From the Introduction<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cSumita Chakravarty claims that \u2018courtesan films\u2019 constitute a separate genre, with a specific style of narration and plot development. But rather than focusing on the internal dynamics of these films, I want in this paper to link representations of the tawa\u2019if with issues surrounding the postcolonial condition and consciousness, including their role in mediating the conflicting narrations of the nation. Within this rubric, a special focus will be placed on gender and Muslim-minority positioning in post-Pakistan India, because tawa\u2019ifs represented in Bollywood are often Muslim, and even when not, they can be linked to certain tropes of Muslim cultural identity and historiography.<\/p>\n<p>With these focal points noted, I argue in what follows that the tawa\u2019if is a signifier whose gendered meaning, far from being fixed, is brought to the service of different post-Independence discourses that attempt to construct the nation\u2019s narrative and the Muslim\u2019s positioning within it. Bollywood cinema, as an institution that reaches India\u2019s masses, provides a concrete platform through which the tawa\u2019if-as-signifier can be examined. To approach this discussion, I first outline a \u2018theoretical trajectory\u2019 that includes feminist, post-colonial and post-structural thought. Next, I explore the cultural location of tawa\u2019ifs within their social and historic contexts, with a special emphasis on the city of Lucknow in which courtesan films are often set. I then discuss important themes in Bollywood representations of tawa\u2019ifs, highlighting their contradictory representations through their conflicted relationships to agency. This leads into an examination of how the tawa\u2019if can be interpreted by different and conflicting discourses to produce and sometimes challenge narratives of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Cited in the Introduction<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Chakravarty, Sumita. <em>National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947-1987. <\/em>U of Texas P, 1993.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Introduction \u201cSumita Chakravarty claims that \u2018courtesan films\u2019 constitute a separate genre, with a specific style of narration and plot development. But rather than focusing on the internal dynamics of these films, I want in this paper to link representations of the tawa\u2019if with issues surrounding the postcolonial condition and consciousness, including their role <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=200\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[31,69,70,26,49],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-tawaifs","tag-courtesan","tag-gender-roles","tag-muslim-culture","tag-secondary-source","tag-tawaif"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}