Nautch The Whites Away: To what extent did colonial rule transform gender relations in the lives of women?

This paper was written in 2024

The word nautch simply translates to the verb ‘to dance’. However its etymology lies in ‘an anglicization of the Hindi-Urdu verb nachna’[1] and came to refer to all forms of dance and entertainment conducted within Mughal society. This issue alone is emblematic of the colonial process that simplified and debased the vast network of performers operating at diverse levels of the late Mughal courts. Singers, dancers, masters of arts and sex workers, who once occupied distinct categories were now conflated with nautch, which originated in early Indian civilizations and was connected to various Hindu temples.’[2] Its prominent regard in northern regions of the subcontinent resulted from an increasing demand from Islamic rulers of established empires, wherein nautch girls or ‘courtesans became associated with courts and palaces instead of religious temples.’[3] The nexus of this development crystallized most significantly in the late Mughal courts with a hierarchical system that featured nautch girls on a spectrum that spanned low culture to high culture. The second subject of my analysis will be the tawa’if, a courtesan of the highest regard in Mughal society. Occupying the category of highly sophisticated female entertainers, tawa’ifs, were privileged with the position of ‘influential female elite[s]’[4] until the arrival of colonial rule. This disruption transformed cultural and social exchanges, wherein tawa’ifs were soon represented as nautch girls and ‘commercial sex workers and were subject to the increasing surveillance and medical intervention of the British colonial state’[5] by the mid 19th century. The Contagious Diseases Act and the Anti-Nautch campaigns will be imperative to understanding how the roles of nautch girls and tawa’ifs transformed from late Mughal society to early colonial rule, all of which will be succeeded by an assessment of twentieth century tawa’if relations. In doing so, I hope to measure the extent to which colonial rule transformed gender relations in the lives of my chosen subjects within the Indian subcontinent.

Despite having commenced Mughal rule in 1526[6] with a reign notorious for its frequent deployment of violence and brutality, the Mughals were equally regarded for their ‘refinement and beauty in speech, dress, manners, art, architecture, performing arts, and landscaped gardens; they had taste for fine culinary arts, and an ear for poetry and music.’[7] Integral to their efforts of cultural reproduction was the intricate network of artists and entertainers occupying significant facets of social and courtly life. This included the kasbi (prostitute from hereditary sex trade), randi (first generation prostitute), domni (singer from hereditary musicians), devadasi (temple dancer), kanjari (low-class tawa’if) and the nochi (young trainee under tawa’if). Their classification depended not only on profession but additionally the intersections of region and caste, which dictated much of their prospects.[8] The nautch girl, adopting the role of a general, all-encompassing entertainer, played ‘a central role in the performance of music, dance and poetry’[9], catering to all members of society. It is recorded by Pran Nevile in Stories from the Raj that ‘a dinner in the community was usually followed by a nautch performance’[10], and yet, although ‘nautch girls catered to a mixed society of men and women it was exclusively for the eyes of the men that they used their seductive charms.’[11] It is likely this accessibility of nautch performances as well as ‘their connection with supposedly degenerate courts, decadent salons and prostitution [which] has often compromised their reputation as superior artistes.’[12] The tawa’if, on the other hand, ‘caters almost exclusively to nobility, senior officers of the Raj, and the elite. The tawa’if is a master of the arts… She is erudite, well-read, often multi-lingual, and an authority on decorum and etiquette.’[13] This is substantiated by the play Ubhayābhisārikā[14], which depicts a quarrel amongst tawa’ifs who dispute the accessories of dance, including techniques of representation, movements, postures, rasas (flavours/sentiments) and tempos.[15] The dispute is emblematic of how integral the maintenance of high culture within Mughal courts has been since the dawn of tawa’if culture, for ‘the dancer’s art is pleasure for others and the knowledge of the art form seems absolutely essential for the courtesans.’[16]

The centrality of performances within the Mughal courts, as well as the fact that the courtesans ‘are mentioned as being inseparable from the life of the king’[17] inevitably resulted in the Mughal Empire becoming ‘patrons of the dancing girls of the north and actively support[ing] the training and employment of courtesans’[18]. This included but was not limited to Akbar (r. 1556-1605), Jahangir (r. 1605-1627), and Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658). Performing sexual services to India’s elite was an optional component to the tawa’if’s role, however was incomparable to the cultural aspect of their duties, ‘occasionally, [tawa’ifs] would sexually gratify a patron, if a sufficient price were paid; however, many court dancers did not normally offer sexual services to upper-caste men.’[19] We can therefore conclude that although tawa’ifs were ‘subjects in many ways to the male gaze and patriarchal power structures, they were often able to exercise sexual agency and have control over their bodies.’[20] In spite of the evidence provided, discourse concerned with the pre-colonial period portrays both nautch girls and tawa’ifs as immoral and promiscuous. Many have noted this contradiction whereby ‘on the one hand they are talked of being so talented that their presence in the city is almost mandatory; on the other hand they are portrayed in a derogatory light’[21], however one must consider the role of internalized colonial ideologies in these writings.

It was during the early years of colonial rule that accounts of nautch girls and tawa’ifs began to take shape in favour of British sensibilities, which began with the complete revocation of their autonomy, ultimately usurping existing power structures and operations in India. However this acquisition occurred gradually, as much of early British intervention operated as a site of (albeit unbalanced) cultural exchange and ‘had not yet identified with the “civilizing mission.” For the East India Company was not as interested in governing India as in generating profits.’[22] During the early colonial period of the 18th century, ‘nautch parties worked as a form of cultural interaction between Indian rulers and British East India company officials.’[23] After having gained notable popularity amongst many sahibs or British men of India, the nautch girls ‘began to move en masse to British stations… engaging troops of dancing girls [became] common practice for the English in India.’[24] Relations between courtesans and the British remained consistent however nautch girls and tawa’ifs were soon conflated and regarded simply by the former title. The newly defined category of nautch girls became synonymous with backwardness, as the mid-nineteenth century saw them ‘represented as commercial sex-workers and… subject to the increasing surveillance and medical intervention of the British colonial state.’[25] Thus began a process of cataloguing in which European officials ‘logged appearance and nationality, and religion. They measured attractiveness and they classified brothels by hygiene, clientele, and fees. British officials elusively sought knowledge of indigenous sexual conditions, but in the process actively created indigenous sexual identities.’[26] This provoked the societal decline of the tawa’if and by extension the nautch girl, not only due to ‘a shift in perception of the courtesan who now became… an entertainer rather than a dispenser of the aesthetic graces of the courtly culture’[27] but additionally due to a biased, prejudiced model of codification.

The classification of ‘singing and dancing girls’ was used in civic tax ledgers[28], reflecting not only the exoticization of courtesans but additionally signals the extension of incessant regulation to be imposed by colonial powers. The annexation of the Awadhi royal court incited the Great Indian Rebellion of 1857, which is not only regarded as ‘the most serious military challenge to the might of British colonialism over the nineteenth century’[29] but also solidified the growing tensions. The dedication to Awadh’s annexation ensued in part due to the elite circles of Lucknow, ‘of which the tawa’if was an integral part.’[30] ’ The tawa’ifs’ centrality in the harem of Awadh’s last ruler Nawab Wajid Ali Shah were able to continue trade, however ‘the attitudes had changed, and they were degraded to the status of bazaar prostitutes.’[31] Having occupied ‘the highest tax bracket, with the largest individual incomes of any in the city’[32], tawa’ifs were the incarnation of the ‘dangerously exotic Orient that threatened the power and stability of British colonial rule.’[33] The Empire’s stringent social and financial management of the courtesans was in part due to their ‘instigation of and pecuniary assistance to the rebels’[34] of Lucknow. British officials were therefore keen to confiscate the assets listed in the names of courtesans including ‘houses, orchards, manufacturing and retail establishments for food and luxury items.’[35]

However these attitudes and actions conveniently neglect to consider that courtesans were simultaneously relocated ‘in the cantonment for the convenience of the European soldiers… dehumaniz[ing] the profession, stripping it of its cultural function… [making] sex cheap and easy for the men and expos[ing] the women to venereal infection from the soldiers.[36] The rising cases of STDs and the ‘failure of regulatory measures in the nineteenth century’[37] also incited the classification of prostitutes to encompass all courtesans, as exhibited through the Crown’s enforcement of corresponding legislature via the Indian Penal Code of 1860. ‘The implementation of this Code meant that ‘prostitutes’ were assumed to be in a criminal category… implementing legal documents that criminalized this cultural institution and tradition.’[38] Supplementary regulation ensued upon the discovery that one in every four European soldiers were afflicted with venereal diseases, [therefore] the courtesans of Lucknow as well as the other 110 cantonments in India in which these exchanges had persisted… were to be regulated by Britain’s Contagious Diseases Act of 1864.[39] The methods of regulation proceeded as follows:

1)    The registration of prostitutes

2)    Their regular inspection for venereal disease

3)    Their sanitary detention

4)    The licencing of brothels and accommodation houses

5)    The inspection of brothels and accommodation houses

6)    The zoning of vice districts by segregating prostitutional spaces

7)    The policing of public space

8)    The creation of dedicated morals police[40]

What remains discernible is the methods executed ceased to infringe upon the British officials continued compulsion for the courtesans’ services. The early nineteenth century saw the commencement of lal bazaars and lock hospitals, with the former denoting ‘the area of the cantonment bazaar dedicated to regimental (regulated) prostitutes’[41] and the latter referring to ‘a venereal disease “hospital”, where bazaar women who were considered diseased would be sent for treatment, to remain detained there until “cured”’.[42] These two institutions were consolidated and established initially in 1797 at Baharampur, Kanpur, Danapur and Fategarh[43] but were soon popularized throughout the nineteenth century amidst the Crown’s legislative developments. The severity of imperial jurisdiction is evidenced by the fact that ‘a women was not permitted to return to her home without first obtaining a Certificate of Discharge, which was then delivered to the kotwal responsible for her bazaar, notifying him of her improved condition.[44] The acts were reformed twice in 1866 and 1869, however it has been argued that ‘the rhetoric of the British legislation remained doggedly attached to the possibility of redemption, and women hospitalized for treatment of venereal disease were subjected to religious and moral instruction and urged to remove to refuges and asylums upon cure and release.’ [45]

These puritanical approaches defined much of early endeavours by the East India Company, who established an Anglican ministry in order to ‘instruct the G**toos [European slur for Indian natives]… in the Christian religion.’[46]  It was this internalization of colonial ideologies transmitted over centuries as well as the events outlined thus far that culminated in the Anti-Nautch Movement of the 1890s, which was ‘inspired by the example of missionary Puritanism’.[47] ‘Indian men and women of upper castes actively worked against the social production and attendance of nautch performances… [in a campaign] linked to Hindu nationalist movements, reform movements and Western-based middle class gender norms’.[48] This demonstrates an interesting movement from resistance to assimilation that grew rampant in the late nineteenth century with the growing prominence of the subaltern figure, which was later formally theorized by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in 2009.[49] The inauguration of “Social Purity” organizations ‘in the model of Great Britain were established in different regions of northern India to strengthen Anti-nautch sentiment’[50] which had initially launched in the South against the devadasis.

Their presence was understood as ‘uncontrolled expressions of obscenity and sexual availability’[51] with prominent social reformer and nationalist Keshub Shandra Sen writing, ‘Apparently a sweet damsel, a charming figure. But beneath that beautiful exterior dwells – what? Infernal ferocity… Her blandishments are India’s ruin. Alas! Her smile is India’s Death.’[52] M.K Gandhi was equally fervent in alienating the “fallen woman” from the project of nation-building, all of which was exercised by ‘homogeniz[ing] the devadasis, courtesans, and common prostitutes in his speeches and us[ing] the appellation “fallen sisters” or “unfortunate sisters” as euphemisms for their disreputable status.’[53] The perpetuation of British codification, exoticization and puritanism is the crystallization of elite Indian society’s ‘increasingly internalized British gender and class values.’[54] These ideas were cardinal to India’s rapidly advancing national identity, which began taking shape during the early twentieth century. It clearly outlines the political and social priorities of elite Indians, whose moral and civic frameworks were, in part, rooted in colonial doctrine. As a result, ‘Indian nationalists and reformers idealized the image of the New Woman and denigrated the courtesan as a way to combat British political and economic dominance in India, similarly to how the British used nautch girls to justify their colonial presence earlier in the century. In both cases, courtesans were used as symbols to validate gendered ideals and political power.’[55] Therefore women were seen as ‘strategic anchors to help define modern bourgeois constructions of chastity, morality, family and ethnic and religious identity’[56], which allowed for the continued policing of courtesan’s bodies.

However perhaps some of the most interesting and unexpected developments for courtesans in the twentieth century lies in the acquisition of autonomy and redemption, as seen in 1930s popular culture and the Lucknowi kothas of the 1990s. The courtesans ‘who were in strained circumstances, sought other means of sustenance… because of harsh police action against Lucknow salons’[57] by becoming courtesan singers. The spread of gramophones before and during the Second World War allowed for these tawa’ifs to find success, ‘as long as feudal nobility remained in place… enhanc[ing] the fame of courtesan singers, and hence their cultural value and earning capacity’.[58] The project of nation-building therefore included ‘the institutionalization of classical and semi-classical music by the establishments of music colleges and performances by artistes in public concerts’[59] of which Lucknow was ‘the cultural and political centre.’[60] Trained in Lucknow and established in the 1930s Begum Akhtar ‘epitomized its feudal high culture both in her music and poetry’[61] demonstrating a reclamation of tawa’if high culture that had been corrupted and contaminated throughout British rule. Furthermore, Begum Akhtar became ‘an icon of both modern nation and feudal nostalgia… [and was] recast into a national treasure’[62], thereby personifying the potential for affluence and regard in particular postcolonial contexts. Following Indian independence, however, the All India Radio, which had once platformed and sustained the careers of courtesan singers ‘barred them, because it did not wish to sully its socially respectable image by supporting women of dubious moral record.’[63]

Spaces for nautch, on the other hand were met with almost unanimous disdain, ‘accusing [the nautch girl] of appropriating and debasing the performing arts, stripping them of their former dignity and devotional purposes.’[64] However it was the combined forces of ‘Hindu reformers, Christian missionaries and British public opinion… which finally sounded its deathknell’[65], leaving the tawa’if as the only remaining patron of the trade.

Lucknow remained an influential centre for those who continued operating outside the folds of high culture, as Veena Talwar Oldenburg’s survey uncovers. Remaining deeply disenfranchised, some have noted the darker realities of postcolonial life, including Amelia Maciszewski who writes, ‘tawa’ifs lead a precarious existence, living in poverty – and crime-ridden red-light districts where the present-day clientele is more interested in sex than songs.’[66] Be that as it may, Oldenburg’s data holds equal rational prospects, as she insists that these women, ‘even today, are independent and consciously involved in the covert subversion of a male-dominated world.’[67] The kotha is painted here as a place of refuge for both men and women, some of whom are escaping precarious and vulnerable circumstances, while others simply seek to escape the mundanity of middle class life in exchange for cultural expansion and social development.[68] Within the network of tawa’ifs, which in some senses acts as a continuation of the courtesan’s social structures within the Mughal court, daughters are regarded as more favourable than sons due to their contribution to the sex trade. Furthermore, heterosexual relationships and male sexuality of the conjugal home are mocked[69], many tawa’ifs choose to remain in pardah outside the home and several identify as lesbians. By ‘reversing the constraints imposed on women’s chastity and economic rights and by establishing a female lineage’[70], these courtesans emancipate and liberate themselves to a degree. This ‘nonconfrontational resistance to the new regulations’[71]  still conforms to patriarchal expectations by perpetuating the commodification of the female body and centralising capital in the plight for independence, however what remains equally important is the removal and denouncement of colonial officials and their intermediaries.

This investigation has interrogated the coalescence of nautch girls and tawa’ifs, all of whom were mandated into the category of ‘singing and dancing girls’ or sex workers from the pre-colonial to colonial and postcolonial periods. Whilst some operated purely as singers, others were affiliated with the sex trade, and many fell in between these divisions, an issue that was corrupted and exploited during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by colonial powers. The fall of the Mughal empire, the implementation of legislature by the British Raj and the project of nationhood have been outlined as catalysts for these changes, which are oftentimes overlooked in scholarship concerned with the courtesan’s role in Indian society. Much of this discourse, particularly that which surfaced during the 1980s, was fixated on the courtesan’s immorality and disrepute.[72] Clouded by internalizations and continuations of colonial ideologies, much of this discourse is not in conjunction with pre-colonial historiographical accounts. Even so, readers should be equally mindful of Anumapa Taranth’s sentiment that ‘courtesanry cannot be written into the idyllic pre-colonial view of Indian culture that glorified the status of women’.[73] Instead ‘present-day academia contests the image of courtesans created by previous generations of scholarship and attempts to nuance the experiences of these women through subaltern and intersectional theoretical frameworks of gender, ethnicity, and class/caste.’[74] My analysis has sought to remain grounded in these nuances by prioritising historical accounts and surrounding discourse whilst entertaining the possibility of new perspectives in order to understand how colonial rule impacted gender relations in the lives of nautch girls and tawa’ifs.

[1] (Cushman 16)

[2] (Howard 2)

[3] (Howard 2)

[4] (Oldenburg 262)

[5] (Howard 3)

[6] (Stein 159)

[7] (Din 13-14)

[8] (Howard 14)

[9] (Walker 551)

[10] (Nevile Stories from the Raj, 37)

[11] (Singh, From Tawa’if to Nautch Girl 181)

[12] (Walker 551)

[13] (Adnan)

[14] The Caturbhāni is a series of four plays from 5th-6th century CE, comprised of monologues that present the complex roles adopted by courtesans in Mughal society, one of which includes the Ubhayābhisārikā.

[15] (Singh, Women’s World 100)

[16] (Singh, Women’s World 102)

[17] (Singh, Women’s World 102)

[18] (Howard 20-1)

[19] (Howard 23)

[20] (Howard 23)

[21] (Aditi 102)

[22] (Taranth 8)

[23] (Howard 2)

[24] (Nevile Stories from the Raj, 37)

[25] (Howard 3)

[26] (Levine Prostitution, race and politics, 201)

[27] (Singh From Tawaif to Nautch Girl, 179)

[28] (Oldenburg 260)

[29] (Pati 1)

[30] (Oldenburg 265)

[31] (Singh From Tawaif to Nautch Girl, 184)

[32] (Oldenburg 259)

[33] (Howard 4)

[34] (Singh Visibilising the 'Other' in History, 1678)

[35] (Oldenburg 259)

[36] (Oldenburg 265-6)

[37] (Howard 142)

[38] (Howard 142)

[39] (Oldenburg 260)

[40] (Howell 323)

[41] (Wald 13)

[42] (Wald 13)

[43] (Wald 13)

[44] (Wald 13-4)

[45] (Levine Venereal Disease, Prostitution, and the Politics of Empire, 585-6)

[46] (Marshall 194)

[47] (Sharma 236)

[48] (Howard 159)

[49] See Can the Subaltern Speak? Written by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, published in 2009

[50] (Sharma 236)

[51] (Sharma 236)

[52] (Sharma 236)

[53] (Sharma 237)

[54] (Howard 160)

[55] (Howard 160)

[56] (Taranth viii)

[57] (Singh From Tawaif to Nautch Girl, 185)

[58] (Qureshi 106)

[59] (Qureshi 128)

[60] (Singh From Tawaif to Nautch Girl, 186)

[61] (Qureshi 110)

[62] (Qureshi 105)

[63] (Singh From Tawaif to Nautch Girl, 188)

[64] (Walker 551)

[65] (Nevile Nautch Girls of India, 172)

[66] (Maciszewski 333)

[67] (Oldenburg 261)

[68] (Oldenburg 267)

[69] (Oldenburg 273)

[70] (Oldenburg (278)

[71] (Oldenburg 261)

[72] (Howard 18)

[73] (Taranth 5)

[74] (Howard 18)

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