On Heeramandi, Artisthood of Tawaifs and Vices of Colonial Modernity

One thing that found me and saved me in my late teens was music. It deepened my sense of self. I remember the days I was alone in my room, imagining myself to be a nobility with a non-existent gajra on my wrists. Begum Akhtar reverberated in my hostel rooms. I didn’t know life could be enriched in ways and then it happened. Unravelling a Ghalib’s couplet about a dream in a dream. Finding solace in that ghazal sometimes in Iqbal Bano’s voice, sometimes in Mallika Pukhraj’s. I would sing Ulti Ho Gayiin Sab Tadbeerein at midnight in college looking at the moon, feigning more drama than that actually existed in my life. I imagined pushing my lover away in mock-anger while listening to Tum Jao Jao Mose Na Bolo. Poetry and music were means to find more meaning to life (in the same/less number of words), there was nothing more joyous than that instinctive understanding. These renditions were not just melodious but meaningful. Who are these women with strange titles who were my first teachers of poetry?

I recently tried to unsuccessfully watch Heeramandi and I disliked it so much that I had to listen to Rasoolan bai in my earphones in the office for at least 2 weeks to purge myself. There is a story here. And it is the one oft recalled, of what happens to women and their artforms. Let’s oversimplify this. A good quality nexus between hypernationalist hindi-hindu people and the cunning colonial masters. They encounter the artists and their systems that continue through birth and caste and glorious patronage. The women who have power and wealth without the last names of significant men. They could be bai and begum and not necessarily upper-castes. The idea of women unmarried but wealthy (they were highest taxpayers in Lucknow) and prestigious and powerful is obviously against the Victorian imagination. And when has that settled with the Hindu nation trying to discipline the Hindu women. These women confuse and defy any set boundaries which don’t sit well with our census-loving white men. 

Two things immediately happen through colonial interventions- Indians are rendered ignorant of the artforms these women master (the last courtesans lament that they can sing a thumri , a dadra, a kajri or a drupad but the audience remains clueless. One can’t help but think of Macaulay’s Minutes on Education). These women are labelled as “nautch girls” at large (everyone is clubbed as prostitutes/sex workers) trying to corrupt society with their lecherous ways, they demonised, marginalised through legislations and imposition of colonial imagination. Their intellectual, cultural language diminishes. 

Picture Courtesy: The Other Song by Saba Dewan and Rahul Roy

The rest of the deed is accomplished by Bollywood. The male gaze in Bollywood reduces them to either an object of desire or pity (while the first women in Bollywood were all tawaifs). Women who have sexual choices must be sex workers (not that there can be anything wrong with that). The ultimate realisation of women’s womanhood lies in marriage. Men can be tortured artists, women too attached to their art are negligent whores. So, classical music survives but without the women and their systems that nurtured it (Men became ustads and women prostitutes). The question is what gets elevated to high art and what remains trapped in the intrigue of middle-class voyeurism.

Take for example, Sanjay Leela Bhansali says in an interview that he likes to portray stories of tawaifs because there is an enigma, a mystery about them. They have the power to convert their inner suffering or grief into something beautiful. They are deprived of love and thus their love is pure. They are overall “interesting” than regular married women whose love is more complete (because there is no love beyond the heterosexual imagination). Prof. Veena Talwar Oldenburg talks about an incident when she asked about the desire of domesticity to a tawaif and she declared her fellow tawaif as a life partner (But let’s wait for a diktat for recognition of non-normative love to come from the white). The director adds, “I don’t like too much research”. Well, imaginations about histories of marginalised women should suffice.

The courtesans, when recounting their yesterglory, would mention all the royal courts they have performed in. They performed in Agra, in Rampur, in Calcutta, in Lucknow, in Darbhanga, in Patna, in Gwalior and where not. With the power, cultural, and economic centres being established in the metropolitan, how can an artist share the same zeal. So much gets lost in the military-centric recounting of history. So much identitarian violence normalised in the nation-building project (the peak of my annoyance with the TV series was the two possibilities afforded to tawaifs, mujrewaali (dancers) versus mulkwaali (nationalists). It randomly reminds of the time my grandmother asked me when I was leaving for college in Punjab, “This place you are going to, is it bides?” It has taken me all these years after her death to understand what did des mean for her.)

Should women always break chains as a part of some modern revolutionary purpose? Should we not question the elements that went into moulding those chains? I’ve many questions about courtesans and their songs and one is how did their songs reach the women of my villages. My mother knew the Umrao Jaan’s Kaahe Ko Biyaahi Bides (written by Amir Khusro) from her village, and my aunty danced Nazar Laagi Raja Tere Bangle Mein (sung by Zarina Begum, the last courtesan of Awadh). But this is not a conversation about free trade or copyrights or authorship, so that’s about it. 

There is nothing much for me to say here but an invitation to dive into the rabbit hole with me. Here are some of the resources I’ve been exploring (with copious dosage of Rasoolan Bai and Gauhar Jaan obviously).

Resources

• The Other Song by Saba Dewan

• The Courtesan Project by Manjari Chaturvedi

• Indian Women on Record by Vidya Shah and Parthiv Shah

• How Courtesans Shaped Bombay Cinema by The Swaddle

• O Gaanewaali by Avanti Patel

• Tawaifnama by Saba Dewan

• Courting Hindustan: The Consuming Passions of Iconic Women Performers by Madhur Gupta

• My Name is Gauhar Jaan by Vikram Sampath

• Ashgari Bai- Sannate ka Sur Pancham by Priti Chandriani and Brahmanand Singh

• Speech by Asghari Bai at Haafiz Ali Khan Awards at Usha Kiran Palace in Gwalior

• I was able to track down at least one courtesan of Heeramandi at the suspected place, Pakistani performance arts industry. Here is a rendition by Gulzar Begum or Tamancha Jaan but there is more on Courtesans of Heeramandi here.

• Sureele Dinon ki Dastaan talks about some courtesans.

• A rendition by Janki Bai aka Chhappan Chhuri, who was stabbed 56 times by a jilted lover

• Manjari Chaturvedi serves a primer on tawaifs here

Thank you for reading. You might want to buy me a book here.