Tawaif Umarao Jan, Lucknow, c.1874
| Picture Credit score: Particular Association

If you hear the phrase tawaif, a psychological picture might emerge of a supple, fairly dance-girl who’s attempting to fascinate her shoppers by way of her intelligent actions and facial expressions. Her world, nonetheless, has not been confined to this alone. She not solely managed her place, known as kotha, but additionally stored herself focussed on her commerce whereas pursuing new heights of conventional artwork.

The dance-girl has been a part of a protracted historical past proper for the reason that mythological interval when the nartaki or dancer carried out to the music of the gandharvas and was known as apsara. It was Menaka, an apsara, who broke sage Vishwamitra’s penance on the insistence of Indra. The Vedas, Upanishads and Puranas too communicate of ‘Nritya’ in lots of locations, when it was related to religious worth. Lord Rama was welcomed dwelling from exile with a dance by ganikas.

Within the recorded historical interval, the nartaki has adorned cultural occasions in temples and royal courts, and she or he loved an elite standing. She was an essential entity in South India in temple and royal features and festivals.

Through the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal durations, her excellence and excessive social standing continued proper till the 1857 rebellion, with some prohibitions by some rulers. The nawabs, courtiers and the elite despatched their wards to tawaifs for coaching in adab, tehzeeb and nafasat (manners, etiquette and disposition). Thus, she performed a significant function in society. She was a supply of energy within the courts of the Mughals and nawabs, and several other political choices owed their origins to her. As an example, Mehdi Hasan of Awadh turned the wazir as a result of affect of a tawaif named Piyaro.

Tawaifs have been adept at language. Luminaries of Hindi literature, together with Bhartendu Harishchandra, had approached Husna Bai, a tawaif, for a literary dialogue on multiple event. Nice writers like Premchand and Amritlal Nagar have been so impressed by the ladies of this custom that they’ve written masterpieces like Bazar-e-Husn (Beauties of the Market) and Ye Kothewalian (Courtesan Quarters) respectively.

The tawaifs deserve the credit score of elevating kathak to classical heights. The Mughals emerged from Persian traditions, and when the native dancers adopted these kinds, the result, within the type of kathak, was scintillating. Initially, kathak was utilized by Brahmin story-tellers to introduce a dramatic factor of their tales. Some Muslim rulers, like Aurangzeb, tried to ban dance and music, however even he couldn’t maintain the ladies in his zenana away from poetry, singing and dancing.

It was from the start of the East India Firm’s rule that the custom of tawaifs began to see a downfall. Till the introduction of the steamships within the early nineteenth century, the tawaifs have been entertainers to the Europeans who largely arrived with out their households. It was owing to their affect that a number of Europeans embraced an Indian lifestyle, and even married them.

With the introduction of steamships, the Europeans have been capable of carry their households and began golf equipment and church buildings. It was at this stage that new laws focused the custom, as now the excellence between a tawaif and a intercourse employee was obliterated, and all of them have been included underneath a standard class of ‘nautch ladies’.

As well as, tawaifs have been on the receiving finish in different points too. Earlier, their conventional inheritance legal guidelines didn’t differentiate between Hindu and Muslim tawaifs, and their property was inherited by daughters; nonetheless, the British legal guidelines put them underneath Hindu or Muslim class to be ruled by the respective spiritual legal guidelines. As well as, different legal guidelines such because the United Provinces Suppression of Immoral Visitors Act, 1933 got here into existence, curbing the custom of tawaifs.

The social reform motion earlier than freedom too did them a lot hurt. Organisations such because the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj put the tawaif in a foul mild. Gandhiji needed tawaifs to desert the occupation and take up the charkha for livelihood. When a few of them joined the Congress, Gandhiji objected saying that none might officiate “who didn’t method it with pure arms and a pure coronary heart”.

All these prejudices degraded the excessive standing a tawaif as soon as loved, so she naturally nursed ill-will in opposition to the imperial masters particularly.

Throughout all the British interval — proper from the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to Independence in 1947, tawaifs have participated within the freedom motion. A lot of them, together with Azizan Bai and Dharman Bibi, picked up arms and sacrificed themselves within the 1857 rebellion. Begum Hazrat Mahal, who led a fierce resistance in opposition to the British, was a tawaif who fought to carry justice for her husband Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh. Certainly, one of many causes of the 1857 rebellion at Meerut was that the nautch ladies had thrown their bangles on the reluctant sepoys calling them “impotent”.

(The author is the creator of Dance to Freedom, a guide primarily based on the lives of tawaifs and their function within the freedom battle)

akganndhi@yahoo.in