{"id":573,"date":"2019-02-08T13:41:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T18:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=573"},"modified":"2021-02-02T12:35:24","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T17:35:24","slug":"needham-anuradha-dingwaney-performing-women-the-nachne-ganiwalis-of-bhumika-mandi-and-sardari-begum-new-indian-cinema-in-post-independence-india-the-cultural-work-of-shyam-benegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=573","title":{"rendered":"Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney. “‘Performing Wom[e]n:’ The ‘Nachne-Ganiwalis’ of Bhumika, Mandi, and Sardari Begum.” New Indian Cinema in Post-Independence India: The Cultural Work of Shyam Benegal’s Films. Routledge, 2013, pp. 47-78."},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

“This chapter addresses three films \u2013 Bhumika (The Role; 1976); Mandi (Marketplace; 1983); and the eponymous Sardari Begum (1996)….\u00a0[A] continuity of interests and ideological investments link the … three films … including: each film\u2019s focus on a female protagonist and subject; her conscious and unconscious efforts to emancipate herself from the debilitations of her gender, class, and caste oppression; and, finally, for the purposes of my argument, her function as a figure through whom women\u2019s relationship to the hegemonic values and ideological agendas of the Indian nation-\u00ad in-the-\u00ad making are assessed and interrogated. The nation remains, then, a salient frame of reference for grasping the ideological investments of these Benegal films….<\/p>\n

The performing women… represent professions, identities, and cultural repertoires that flourished under, and were indelibly associated with, a feudal order, but which were delegitimized, marginalized, even excised from the self-\u00addefinitions and constitutive narratives of the new Indian nation. \u201cWomen performers,\u201d Singh notes, \u201cwere kept out of the frame of the nation in the making\u201d (see epigraph; 2007: 94). By focusing on protagonists who belong to professions and identities that are devalued and marginalized in the new Indian nation, these three later films, I argue, \u201cunsettle\u201d (Singh\u2019s term) the processes through which the Indian nation constituted itself, thereby also unsettling an unambiguously negative assessment of feudal social and cultural arrangements. Thus, [these] films undertake a more fundamental interrogation regarding India\u2019s nation-\u00ad formation itself \u2013 what the nation deliberately excludes in order to become a nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Introduction “This chapter addresses three films \u2013 Bhumika (The Role; 1976); Mandi (Marketplace; 1983); and the eponymous Sardari Begum (1996)….\u00a0[A] continuity of interests and ideological investments link the … three films … including: each film\u2019s focus on a female protagonist and subject; her conscious and unconscious efforts to emancipate herself from the debilitations Read More …<\/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":[41],"tags":[31,56,71,58,38,26],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","tag-courtesan","tag-courtesan-films","tag-film-analysis","tag-film-tropes","tag-nautch","tag-secondary-source"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t