Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 379
CHAPTER 14 processes centered on the royal households. These articles highlight
Courtesans of Hyderabad and
Beyond: Claiming Significance
INTRODUCTION
Recent major works on the Mughal state and on women in the
Indo-Muslim world have not considered courtesans or tawa 'ifs, 1 the
singing and dancing women employed in lndo-Muslim state and noble
household establishments, to be significant participants in politics and
society. Christopher Bayly's 1996 comprehensive survey of imperial
information and social communication in the late Mughal empire has
few references to women and courtesans, and he usually characterizes
courtesans as 'of poor backgrounds', 'humbler', or 'lower down the
social scale'. 2 Muzaffar Alam's and Sanjay Subrahmanyam's edited
1998 volume on the Mughal state focuses on Mughal authority, fiscal
organization and social structure, politics and trade, and resistance to
the state. Their authoritative introduction compares the Mughals to the
Safavids and the Ottomans and traces the dispersion oflndo-Muslim
policies and practices, their adaptations by regional powers in India,
from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Recognizing
their own focus, the authors say 'Should we be content to reducing a
complex political system to its agrarian fiscal aspects? Were there not
other elements in the Mughal state (whether structural or processual)
that might equally command our attention?' 3 As if in answer to this,
Gavin Hambly's edited volume on women in the medieval Islamic
world, also published in 1998, has five articles on women in Mughal
and Indo-Muslim states, articles that examine social structures and
*I thank Esha De, Sunil Sharma, Scott Kugle, Supriya Singh, Zainab Cheema,
and Veena Oldenburg for their help with earlier versions of this article, and I thank
the reviewers for IESHR for help with a shorter version of it. I thank the British
Library for allowing.me to use the 1860s photograph of Hyderabadi courtesans
and Raghu Cidambi for telling me about that photograph.
the activities of royal women (the wives, daughters, sisters, and wet
nurses of rulers),4 but they sometimes hint at the significant roles
played by courtesans. 5
The research on courtesans or tawa'ifs is quite scattered and
uneven in its coverage of places and times. I draw much of it together
here to make three major arguments. In the first section, I present
detailed findings from late nineteenth century Persian records about
courtesans in the former Hyderabad state. These women, whom the
case records bring to vivid life, had access to leading political figures
and exercised considerable financial and social independence. Living
and working in close proximity to state bureaucrats and nobles, they
clearly were intimate .participants in urban life and political affairs,
sometimes as powerful figures in court, sometimes as property owners,
and always as confidants, gatherers and dispensers of information. The
Hyderabad courtesans earned for themselves but also for others. They
were regulated in important ways, first by their own establishment
heads or 'mothers' and then by officials and employees of the Nizam's
household administration and the state judicial system, including the
Diwan or Prime Minister himself.
Second, I move beyond Hyderabad, re-examining the lifestyles
of courtesans in the north Indian or Indo-Muslim tradition and
arguing against some prevalent notions about them. Drawing on the
Hyderabadi and other historical, literary, and ethnographic materials,
I suggest that precolonial Indian states and princely states during the
colonial period, those governed by Mughal emperors, nizams and
nawabs, Rajput and Maharashtrian and Punjabi maharajas and rajas,
all featured courtesans working within state bureaucracies. I examine
the character and quality of the relationships among courtesans,
emphasizing sources of conflict as well as cooperation among them. I
question the binary notions about women and sexuality that scholars
have seen as constructing boundaries between tawa'ifs and begums
or 'respectable women' . Looking at sexual relations and emotional
bonds between women and between women and men, I find important
levels of emotional and financial dependence upon men. All of this
strengthens the argument that courtesans were significant participants
in court life and state politics.
Third, I review the fate of courtesans under British colonial rule
380 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
and in modem independent India. Under these regimes, courtesans
have been understood as prostitutes, their lifestyles and performance
traditions stereotyped, homogenized, and criminalized. I argue
that courtesans are best understood as occupational non-caste
'communities' or categories of women working in the context of
cosmopolitan medieval and early modem states in India. A comparison
commonly suggested between courtesans and ascetics, one that relies
on the non-adherence ofboth groups to patrilineal and conjugal norms,
deserves further investigation. Recent work on ascetics finds some of
them adapting to modem India rather differently than courtesans have
been able to adapt, yet for this occupational category too historical
work remains to be done. I end by calling for further research on the
varied and significant roles played by courtesans in the past, before
all traces of these roles are destroyed or denied.
COURTESANS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY HYDERABAD
Courtesans had played leading roles in Hyderabad's history even before
the Nizam, Mughal governor of the Deccan province, established his
autonomous dynasty there in the mid-eighteenth century. Courtesans
are linked to the earlier Shia or Irani rulers of the Qutb Shahi sultanate,
one of five sultanates succeeding the Bahmani dynasty in the Deccan.
In the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, when the Qutb
Shahi sultans ruled from Golconda Fort, three Hindu courtesans
became legendary. According to popular belief, it was because of
one, Bhagmati, that Hyderabad city was founded in 1590. The prince
Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, who became the fifth Qutb Shahi ruler,
had been crossing the river Musi to visit his beloved Bhagmati, who
lived south of the river. Founding a city there, he named it Bhagyanagar.
When Bhagmati became his queen and took the name Hyder Mahal, he
renamed the city Hyderabad. Then under the seventh Qutb Shahi ruler,
Abdullah Qutb Shah (r. 1625-72), Taramati and Pemamati (possibly
sisters) were the favorite performers at the court. Taramati constructed
a caravanserai that still stands, used today for cultural performances.
The tombs of these Hindu courtesans lie among the royal Qutb Shahi
tombs near Golconda Fort. We know more about the courtesan and
literary figure Chanda Bai or Bibi, to whom the second Nizam, Nizam
Ali Khan, gave the court title Mah Laqa Bai. She lived from 1768 to
1824-5 and built tombs for her mother and herself at the foot ofMoula
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 381
Ali Hill, a sacred site just outside the city that includes buildings erected
by both Hindu and Muslim nobles. 6 Still other courtesans founded and
patronized Hindu temples in and around Hyderabad. 7
Court cases from the 1870s contain fascinating material about
the lifestyles of Hyderabad's courtesans (see photo 1). A princely
state never incorporated into British India, Hyderabad followed a
system of household administration modeled on that of the Mughal
empire. The household administration was composed of various
karkhaneh (units) headed by serrishtahdars (record-keepers) and
darogahs (ma,nagers). These Mughlai (Mughal style) karkhaneh
included stores and supplies, animals, factories and production, and
court life and household administration. One section in the court and
household administrative unit was the Arbab-i Nisha! or Department
of Enjoyment. It included tawa'ifs, usually translated as courtesans
or dancing and singing girls, qawwalayan (musicians), and bhands or
bahrupiyas (mimics, buffoons). This karkhanah was in the Sarf-i Khas,
the Nizam's private estate; it was not part of the Diwani administration
modeled on that of British India being gradually established in the
state under the Diwan Salar Jung (from 1853). However, the Diwan
was also the Regent after 1869, as the sixth Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan
came to the throne then as a boy of three and gained full powers only
in 1884. Thus Salar Jung presided over the Sarf-i Khas as well as
the evolving modem administration. For the Diwani administration,
Salar Jung imported non-mulkis (outsiders, as opposed to mulkis or
countrymen) from British India. His was a balancing act, as he tried
to preserve the older Mughlai administration and its personnel while
setting up a new Diwani one with new personnel, and he slowly began
to implement changes in the Mughlai Sarf-i Khas before his death in
1883.8 The tawa' ifs adapted themselves to the changing administration,
utilizing both old and new systems and personnel as they continued
to play prominent roles in court and urban politics.
There were three kinds of tawa'ifs: derahdari (tent dwellers),
mobile and elite women who performed for nawabs and others highly
placed in the court; chaklahdari (fixed place), women in houses in a
locality, for middle class patrons, including performances at weddings
in their residences; and bazari (in the bazars). Just as military men
and Mughlai officials in the Deccan and south India could move from
place to place, tawa'ifs could move from place to place, sometimes
of their own accord, 9 sometimes to perform for a ruler as he moved
 Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 383
about his kingdom, and sometimes sent by one ruler to another. For
example, in the early nineteenth century the N awab ofArcot requested
the Nizam of Hyderabad to send some dancing girls from Hyderabad
oi
c: to his court in Madras, since dancing girls of a high caliber were
.2
] unavailable in Madras. 10
0
u
The Arbab-i Nishat Persian records in Hyderabad concern
:a"' primarily the second, chakladari, category, tawa'ifs residing in houses
..::
<._. presided over by senior courtesans, usually termed 'mothers' in these
0

~ records. Thus 'llaqah Pyaraji Bakhsh' denoted the house of those

c:
::l dependent on, and possibly related to, Pyaraji Bakhsh. The 'daughters'
Ul
....u were paid salaries, mamulat or annual salaries, and sometimes
on
0 payments for specific events. 11 The dancing girls gave receipts to
0
" the darogah or his agent when they received their dues, and there
"'~
..c:
were mutasaddis, accountants or clerks, keeping those records. The
<!'.
.s" courtesans earned by their skills but also generated income for others,
E . from their 'mothers' to the managers and accountants employed by
g ~ and paid primarily by the state. The Arbab-i Nishat employees, in
E "2
B .....J the old system, frequently earned commissions from the tawa'ifs'
"'..c:
~ ·E performances. These employees' positions were coveted ones and
"'d •t:
c: co seem to have been hereditary; at least, managers and clerks claimed
""'c.. ~"
.... ..c:
0
<._.
0
the right to appoint their successors.
0
::r: "'
>.. Hyderabad State's Arbab-i Nishat records include case files of
>.. t::
.n "
::l numerous disputes involving courtesans and other performers and their
c: 0
~ u managers and record-keepers. These cases were resolved by various
.s officials, courts, and committees, not only by Sarf-i Khas officials but
0
"'
'Cl
00 sometimes by the Diwan himself, the Prime Mihister of Hyderabad.
-0 The changing policies and practices in the late nineteenth century
"'
.n
provide tantalizing glimpses of the lives of courtesans and also of
e
" those supervising, paying, employing, and sometimes marrying them.
~ How were disputes resolved in early nin.e teenth century in
i
"uc: Hyderabad, before the changes initiated by successive Diwans, most
"'
Cl especially by Salar Jung in the 1870s? Judicial powers in the rural areas
..c:
B had rested with the subahdars (provincial governors) or sometimes
~ with qazis (Muslim clerics) and panchayats (Hindu caste elders) if
decisions involved Islamic or Hindu civil law. In the city, the kotwal or
~ chief of police maintained order and called upon qazis or the headmen
of various communities to adjudicate disputes. Judgements were issued
verbally, and enforcement could be evaded by taking refuge in the
 384 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
residence of a powerful noble patron. Many disputes were submitted
directly to the Diwan and were decided by him. 12 As courts were
established (the Diwan Munir-ul Mulk established an Adalat Diwani
Buzurg in 1821-2) and procedures extended to new areas and classes of
people, people thought it an insult to resort to the courts and continued
to submit cases to the Diwan directly, leading the Diwan Siraj-ul Mulk
to establish a court at his palace in 1846-7. This was first termed the
Chini Khanah (for the room in which it met) and later the Adalat
Diwani Khurd (small causes, in contrast to buzurg or causes involving
higher monetary claims). 13 When Salar Jung, Siraj-ul Mulk's nephew,
became Diwan in 1853, he set up an elaborate Diwani civil and criminal
judicial system and ordered all to comply with the decisions of the
courts, removing himself from judicial decision-making. 14 Munir-ul
Mulk, Siraj-ul Mulk, and Salar Jung were all members of the leading
Shia noble family in Hyderabad, a family that had earlier served the
Adil Shahi sultan of Bijapur.
One bundle of records in section Rl of the Andhra Pradesh
Archives, basta 122, with files of 1288 Hijri through 1301 Hijri (1871-
85), documents changing practices and recurring conflicts within the
Department of Enjoyment. Many of the disputes were resolved by the
Diwan as well as by various courts, including the Majlis Daryaft, or
Inquiry Committee, established especially for the Arbab-i Nishat after
Diwani reforms began to have an impact on the older administration.
The serrishtahdar of the Arbab-i Nishat in the late nineteenth century
was Durga Pershad, a Kayasth (of the Bhatnagar subcaste) in the old
city of Hyderabad, whose palace was just south ofMahbub ki Mehndi,
the locality where most Muslim dancing girls resided in the nineteenth
century. 15 Several darogahs reported to him, including the darogan
Mama Sharifa, and they traditionally got a share of the rewards given
to musicians and dancing girls. However, from about 1288 Hijri ( 1871-
2), this and other customary practices were being challenged as the
Diwan tried to change the old Mughlai practices. While removing
himself from the Diwani judicial system, we will see that the Diwan
continued to play a major role in adjudication of disputes within the
Sarf-i Khas Arbab-i Nishat.
The residential proximity of the courtesans to leading state officials
and nobles in Hyderabad's old city, to those interacting with them in the
Arbab-i Nishat records, is quite striking. Locating the residences and
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 385
offices of these leading figures in the old city (see Map l) reinforces the
sense of interconnection and intimacy among them, Muslim and Hindu,
Sunni and Shia, bureaucrats and performers in various departments of
the Mughlai administration.
On Map 2 below, the guide to a set of invaluable old city maps, 16
the Diwan Salar Jung's palace and properties are in sheet numbers 37
and 45,just south of the Musi River and east ofMahbub ki Mehndi,
the dancing girls' locality (named after the sixth Nizam Mahbub
Ali Khan because of his frequent visits). The palace of the Arbab-i
Nishat serrishtahdar Raja Durga Pershad Bhatnagar is in sheet number
50, just south of Mahbub ki Mehndi. The Malwala Palace, home to
Rajas Inderjit, Prithvi Raj, and Shiv Raj of the Mathur Kayasth noble
family, 17 men who often headed up inquiries into Arbab-i Nishat
disputes, is in sheet number 53; other Bhatnagar Kayasth employees
of the Arbab-i Nishat resided there too, along Chowk Maidan Khan.
Bhands or bahrupiyas resided slightly west of Mahbub ki Mehndi
along Bahrupiya Lane and Bahrupiya Kacchi Street in sheet number
41. Mama Sharifa, darogan in the Arbab-i Nishat, built a prominent
ashurkhanah (shrine for Shia relics) just north of Purana Pul Road
in Husaini Alam between the palaces ofNawab Nasib Uddaula and
Nawab Shahamat Jang in sheet no. 43. Map 3 is a closeup of Ashur
Khana Mama Sharifa, presented in hopes that the details on these maps
will persuade others to work with them.
Policies and practices in the Nizam's Sarf-i Khas changed
slowly from 1869 on, but the residential proximity of those involved
helped administrators and employees alike to learn about and adapt
to the reforms. 18 Map 1 reflects political relations in the Mughlai
administration, before the shifting ofDiwani administrative offices to
the new city of Hyderabad developing north of the Musi River in the
late nineteenth century. The British Residency, built north of the Musi
in 1803-6, and the building of new bridges across the Musi in 1839 and
1857 19 began to reorient and diffuse personal and political relationships,
especially since the numerous non-mulki Diwani officials all settled in
the new city. Yet the Diwan remained in the old city and continued to
be accessible to the largely hereditary employees of the Sarf-i Khas,
including the courtesans. The Diwans who succeeded Salar Jung
included his own son and members of the noble Paigah and Peshkar
families, 20 families that also resided in the old city, in Dud Baoli and
~
Ram Bagh temple ·
Kishen Bagh temple
~·

- .. .
Keshovgm temple

Adajlted"'from Leonard Munn, Hyderabad Municipal Survey, index to cicy area sb.ee~ I· 128.
Nobles' residences are in bold. TI1e scale is 2000 feet to 1 inch.

MAP 1. KEY LOCALITIES, RESIDENCES, AND B.UILDINGS IN

HYDERABAD'S OLD CITY

Scale 2,000 ft. to I inch.

MAP 2. CITY AREA: INDEX TO SHEETS

 Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 389
Shahalibanda. The sixth Nizam, Mahbub Ali Khan (r. 1869-1911 ), built
a new palace, Purani Haveli,just south of the Diwan's establishment,
and the seventh Nizam, Osman Ali Khan (r. 1911-48) moved to King
Kothi palace, near the Residency, only in 1912.
Given the close connections among those clustered in the old
walled city, political access and influence continued to empower
courtesans and others working within the Sarf-i Khas well into the
twentieth century. Changes were occurring, however. SeveralArbab-i
Nishat cases concerned rights to positions and the power to appoint
people, from performers to managers to accountants. In 1871 , the
darogah Sarfaraz Ali reported that darogah Ghulam Rasul and darogan
~ Mama Sharifa were giving payments not to the musicians actually
entitled to them, but to others. 21 Sarfaraz Ali asked Durga Pershad,
~
rl'.l
=i the serrishtahdar, for the official lists of the musicians (although
' ::i::
Ii~ musicians and dancers usually worked together, this case involved
--< only the musicians). Durga Pershad failed to send official lists, but the
~~ matter was referred to Raja Inderjit, the Malwala Kayasth nobleman
in charge of the Majlis Daryaft of the Sarf-i Khas. The two offenders
52 were ordered to repay the sums involved, and they had to sell some
rl'.l
--< of their property to do so. 22
rl'.l
Another case involved a clerk in Sarfaraz Ali's office, one Ganesh
it Pershad (a Kayasth, like the serrishtahdar). He wrote from Lucknow
~
rl'.l in 1872, asking that his salary be sent by hundi (long distance credit
~
~
instrument), as promised by the office of the Taqsim-i Mohallat, so
that his marriage could be completed and he could return to duty.
o...·
His gold-speckled sealed letter addressed to the Diwan was sent via
~·
Raja Inderjit (above). Some five years later Raja Prithvi Raj, relative
3u of and successor to Raja Inderjit as head of the Majlis Daryaft, was
M
queried by the Diwan's secretary about Ganesh Pershad. The reply
~ identified him as a clerk under Mama Sharifa in the Toshakhanah
:2
(bedding, fabrics, clothing) who had been earning Rs. 100 a month.
However, according to the Diwan Salar Jung's orders in 1869-70, a
large reduction of palace salaries (of Rs. 2,958) meant that Ganesh
Pershad's whole salary should have been stopped, i.e. his job had
been lost. 23 Yet another set of papers reported that after the ousting
of naib or deputy darogah Ghulam Rasul and Ganesh Pershad, Mata
l
;; ~/~
Pershad started an audit and inquiry and appointed Ram Sahae as
i" v.iiJ: clerk. The same Mata Pershad then sent a memorandum to Shiv Raj,
390 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 391
son of the Malwala Raja Inderjit and then presiding over the Adalat 38 rupees and 8 annas, but Riza Ali didn't pay me, saying that the amount was
Diwani Khurd in the Diwan's residence, claiming that Mama Sharifa equal to his share. I want my money and I want the demands to be stopped.
had refused to pay his salary of Rs. 300. 24 These cases tell us that the
A year later the Diwan responded, writing to RizaAli Beg: "When there
Diwan was making changes, asking for official records of employees
is no procedure for taxes from tawa'ifs, according to Ghulam Rasul
and payments, but that his orders were slow to be implemented in the
who also stopped this, why have you taken her salary as customary
Sarf-i Khas. We also note that a high-ranking Kayasth noble family
mamulat? It is not necessary. Pay her and send the receipt you take
controlled the Majlis Daryaft and was influential with the Diwan; the
from her to me." 26
leaders of this family likely interceded on behalf of other Kayasths in
Many cases were filed by tawa'ifs in the Arbab-i Nishat's Majlis
the old city as administrative changes began to impact the Mughlai
Daryaft. Most of them were filed by 'mothers' whose tawa'ifs ran
administration there.
away with, or were taken away by, men employed by the state, and
Whereas previously the darogahs in the Arbab-i Nishat could
in case after case those men's salaries were docked to reimburse the
assign work and pay people as they wished, without officially recording
'mother'. For example, in 1876 the Madar-ul Moham himself ordered
their names or duties, new rules and procedures were instituted in
the pay of the Postmaster of Hyderabad, Ahmadullah Beg, to be docked
about 1874. According to a case involving five employees working for
Rs. 7 a month and the money sent to the petitioning mother. 27 One file
Mama Sharifa from 1867 but ousted by Durga Pershad in 1874, the
recorded the details of eleven pending cases in 187 5-6, summarized in
new rules meant that even darogahs had to be named and collect their
Appendix I. The list was sent by the darogah RizaAli Beg to the Arbab-i
own salaries. The five ousted employees, clerks and attendants, wanted
Nishat office and the Majlis Daryaft, giving the date of initiation, the
to give their jobs to certain others, but according to the new rules it
names of the parties involved, the nature of the case, and its resolution. 28
was the serrishtahdar's decision to appoint and pay all employees, and
While other texts or oral histories are not available to contextualize
employees had to be named in official records. The five ousted men
these cases further, even the few details provided allow important
claimed back wages ranging from Rs. 5 and 4 annas to Rs. 13 and
generalizations, and a few of the people in these cases show up in the
12 annas, and they pressed their cases to the Majlis Daryaft presided
two more fully documented case files discussed below.
over by Prithvi Raj . The Madar-ul Moham's secretary Syed Abdul
Strikingly, in the Appendix I cases, tawa'ifs, especially those
Razzak corresponded with Prithvi Raj about this case, and in 1877
who were mothers, claimed rights and had their claims honored in
the Diwan approved of the oustings and of new appointments made
a systematic and fairly efficient manner. The cases almost all view
to two of the positions involved. The contested cases took three years
tawa'ifs as property, investments for whose loss the mothers (and
to resolve.25
in one instance a father) should be compensated. The mothers filed
Money was at issue in almost every case and the tawa'ifs them-
claims not just for the return of their daughters but also for the jewels
selves were most often the petitioners. Courtesans could, at least in
the women took with them. The daughters were never ordered to
some instances, take their cases directly to the Diwan, appealing to him
return, and the men taking them seemed to be respectable, sons and
as the initiator of new practices and benefitting from them. A striking
grandsons of well-known figures in the city and salaried officials from
instance concerned the dancing girl Miraji from Pyaraji Bakhsh's house
whom compensations could be sought. The compensations ranged
who petitioned theMadar-ulMoham (Diwan) in 1876-7. Miraji wrote:
from Rs. 60 to 72 a month and the jewels were consistently valued at
Previously the darogah was Ghulam Rasul, and on dancing occasions he Rs. 5,000. Since the periods for which monthly payments were assessed
required me to give him some share of my pay. I presented myself in your were not indicated, the jewels seem to have been the larger monetary
office and you ordered me not to give that amount. Then Riza Ali, the next loss. The heads of the houses, the mothers, sometimes met together to
darogah, tried to use the same old system, but by your order I didn't give him decide a case, and both they and their house residents were expected to
any share. I attended some Id occasions and expected to be paid, an amount of maintain certain standards (cases 7 and 9). In case 10, a man had loaned
 392
Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
money to a courtesan but was entitled to its return (and he pressed his
case in the Diwani court, in the evolving modem, not the Sarf-i Khas,
administration). In eight of the eleven cases, the Majlis Daryaft of
the Sarf-i Khas made the decisions, with the Prime Minister making
one decision and expected to make another (cases 1 and 4, involving
relatives of high-ranking individuals). Without comparison to earlier
case records one cannot be sure of earlier practices and outcomes, but
certainly twa'ifs actively utilized the new Majlis Daryaft, seeking and
achieving beneficial outcomes.
Two complicated cases produced voluminous records and fuller
details about the lives of courtesans, their employers, and their lovers.
Following up case 2, Prithvi Raj of the Majlis Daryaft conducted a
lengthy inquiry into Phandaji 's loss of her daughter Salar Bakhsh
to Mohammed Karimuddin. 29 Mohammed Karimuddin signed an
agreement dated in 1874 to purchase the ti.fl (child) Salar Bakhsh,
daughter of Phandaji, for Rs. 60 monthly and a stipend for clothes and
other things to her mother. This agreement was also signed by four men
working in the Arbab-i Nishat office, and it included Mohammed's
promise to have her dance only, and not before others save his father.
Two years later Phandaji pressed for Rs. 5,000 'as agreed', and the
following year Salar Bakhsh appealed, seeking not to give Rs. 5,000.
There followed a long letter from Mohammed Alimuddin, father of
Mohammed Karimuddin, explaining this affair. 30
In about 1871-2, my son Mohammed Karimuddin fell in love with Salar
Bakhsh. I advised against this and told them to stop; further, I sent word to
Phandaji that my son was not financially competent to take money, loans,
from others. But they continued. Sa!ar Bakhsh took my son and hid him in the
Amberpet house of her old wet nurse, and after some time I sent for the police
and disowned my son; he went and lived in Nampally with her. I sent word to
her mother that I had disowned him and that for the good of my son and her
daughter she should stop them. Then Salar Bakhsh had a baby, and on its chilla
[40th day ceremony], another person and Phandaji brought jewels from the
chobdar [attendant] of the Arbab-i Nishat, and my son also brought a golden
pazeb [foot ornament] from someone. When these jewels were in their hands,
they wouldn't return them but asked for a written agreement for 7,400 rupees.
The agreement was negotiated down to 5,000 rupees and signed and she came
and lived with my son again, returning most of the jewels. When I came to
know of this I went to Riza Ali Beg, asking how such an agreement had been
signed without my knowledge. He couldn't answer but offered to dispose of
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 393
it if even two or three thousand rupees were given to her [Phandaji]. I asked
Phandaji how she did this, having earlier agreed not to ask for money, and
she said that for the sake of her daughter and the baby's future we are doing
it now. I want to comment that my son is her dashtah [keep], not the usual
pattern but vice versa. Now, having some disagreement, they have separated
but they still press the case, how is that possible?
In the final papers in this file, Mohammed Karimuddin wrote that
Salar Bakhsh had not appeared to give evidence for nine months, so
could the case please be dropped. Phandaji and Salar Bakhsh protested
that they had not filed this case, they themselves had never claimed
Rs. 5,000, other people had fili;:d it in their names. The last paper stated
that because the girl did not give evidence the case was dropped in
1889. Seemingly the son had returned to the father and the daughter to
the mother by the end of this case, but we see Arbab-i Nishat officials
centrally involved in its conduct, attempting to safeguard the interests
of the young courtesan as well as the interests of her mother. It is
very clear that decisions by the Majlis Daryaft did matter and could
be enforced.
The last case discussed here concerns inheritance among tawa'ifs
and again shows the role of the Arbab-i Nishat as mediator and
protector. Some of the actors come from case 9 in Appendix I, but
their claims to property highlight particular courtesan lineages, for
want of a better term, and disputed lines of descent or affiliation
within the lineages. 31 The case opens in 1876 with papers from Roshen
Bakhsh and others terming themselves proteges of Ainir Bakhsh and
complaining about Imtiaz Bakhsh, their current guardian. 32 They
say that Imtiaz Baksh has a maqta (grant) in Aurangabad and other
properties, shops and a haveli (residence), but that she had mortgaged
them all 'while they were in her charge', implying that they were the
property of the collective. She beat them and threatened to shoot them
and guarded them so they could not petition the head of the Arbab-i
Nishat (but see case 9); she was keeping them in a rundown palace.
The implication is that they, who should be heirs to Amir Bakhsh's
property, want to protect it from Imtiaz Bakhsh. A letter from one
Afzal Bakhsh followed. She called herselfa resident ofAmir Bakhsh's
house, the house in which Imtiaz Bakhsh was currently living. Imtiaz
Bakhsh had ordered her to leave the house but Afzal Bakhsh wanted
to stay there, contending that although Mukkadam Jung gave her
394 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
Rs. 300 a month for fourteen years, 33 she gave all that to Amir Bakhsh,
her then guardian (mother, in other cases).
Roshen Bakhsh and the others wrote again in 1877 to the Prime
Minister himself:
Afzal Bakhsh lived in the house of her own lover in the time of Amir Bakhsh
and now wants to return to Amir Bakhsh 's house. Although the biradari ahil
tawa'ifs [the brotherhood of the tawa'ifs] said no, it was impossible for her
to return, you, the Prime Minister, ordered me to give Afzal Bakhsh a room
in Amir Bakhsh's house. Instead, I gave Afzal Bakhsh a whole empty house,
although that was not the custom of our community. Afzal Bakhsh had been
given her own house with the late Mukkadam Jung in Fateh Darwaza, and she
keeps a person in Baiji's house [presumably Amir Bakhsh's house] and lives
near the Deorhi ofNawab Mutahavar Jung. Why does she need our house?
And she is building a wall there too, she may rent it out. I gave her a whole
house, while you ordered only one room. Lenders are pressing me to repay
loans, why have you issued such orders?
Afzal Bakhsh's counter letter in that same year threw further light on
these conflicting claims as she told the history of the house:
Amir Bakhsh was first in the house, gaining fame in the city, and then she
died. Second came Pyaraji, who after the death of the fifth Nizam [1869]
married Syed Abdur Razzaq [secretary to the Prime Minister, see above] and
took to him the carpets and other furnishings of the house. In the presence of
lmtiaz Bakhsh also but against her will, he lived here in the house too, and
she, Pyaraji, was famous. The third girl, Imtiaz Bakhsh, also lived in the same
house but then married Abdulla Bakhshi and went and lived in his house.
But then Roshen Bakhsh, with the help of the office of the Arbab-i Nishat,
conspired against me, taking a blank paper with stamps of mine and Roshen
Bakhsh and saying there that the property was Pyaraji's. But it was mine. I
asked, ifthe property was Pyaraji's, why was it left to me until now, but they
didn't listen, there was corruption. Thousands of rupees of my salary I gave
to the first two named, but now I have lost the house . . . .
The subsequent papers take the case down to 1881-2. Although many
'facts' are disputed, it appears that after the death of Amir Bakhsh,
Imtiaz Bakhsh took out a loan of Rs. 7,000 and also mortgaged the
house for Rs. 6,000 and built shops by Char Minar; then Imtiaz Bakhsh
married Abdulla Bakhshi and left the mortgaged house and the loan
repayments to Roshen Bakhsh, who asserts that Intiaz Bakhsh's maqta
in Aurangabad and her building in Husaini Alam were also mortgaged.
Afzal Bakhsh at one point found a hukm zabanee or verbal order from
the 'Kanchan Kacheri' insufficient and requested a written order from
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 395
the Majlis Daryaft or other competent authority from the Arbab-i
Nishat. (The Kanchan Kacheri was a 'unique court' dealing with civil
and criminal cases involving the prostitutes of the city; apparently these
were bazari or street prostitutes, from whom the chaklahdari courtesans
would have distanced themselves.) 34 Later Afzal Bakhsh wrote that
she now had half the portion of the house and that Roshen Bakhsh
was trying to saddle her with half the mortgage and loan repayments,
whereas she had only one fourth of the other shares (the four sharers
are Pyaraji Bakhsh, Imtiaz Bakhsh, Roshen Bakhsh, and Afzal Bakhsh,
with the first two married and living elsewhere). Afzal Bakhsh argued
that if she was to be responsible for half the debts, she wanted half the
shares, including half of the girls in the house. Then Roshen Bakhsh
complained that she was being asked to be responsible for the shops by
Char Minar that Imtiaz Bakhsh had mortgaged but that Afzal Bakhsh,
who now had at least half of Amir Bakhsh's house, wanted to claim
as well. Roshen Bakhsh, unable to afford the repayment of loans or
mortgages on the shops, asked Shiv Raj (the Malwala nobleman again),
heading the Majlis Daryaft which had become involved in the case
along with vakils representing the various claimants, to give the shops
to Afzal Bakhsh. However, the Prime Minister then asked for a new
statement from the Arbab-i Nishat about the dates of the mortgages
and sales deeds and details about those named in them. Afzal Bakhsh
was also pressing for this information from the Taqsim-i Tankhwah
Mohallat Mubarak, and she wrote to the Kotwal of the city and to
Shiv Raj asking that certain very expensive jewels be returned to her,
ending the latter request with a poem (courtesans often wrote their own
poems and songs). The final paper was a plea from Roshen Bakhsh.
She wrote that creditors were pressing her, that details were with the
Arbab-i Nishat, and that since Afzal Bak.hsh had been given the three
shops, her income was not sufficient for her children or dependents.
She begged that her house be unmortgaged and lmtiaz Bakhsh be
required to repay the outstanding loans.
In these nineteenth-century Hyderabad cases, we see that a mother
could acquire considerable property in addition to her house, obtaining
loans and mortgages and investing in commercial properties. Marriages
and/or affairs could temporarily or permanently threaten a protege's
or daughter's claims to property, and marriages were not uncommon.
Tawa'ifs evidently could become Begums, contrary to some assertions
(discussed below). Sometimes courtesans found security in marriages
396 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
or long-term relationships, but a courtesan could leave debts behind
that fell upon her successors. These successors fought each other to
gain the properties (including other tawa'ifs living in a house) or
fought to shed the properties and escape from debts. Again a decision
made by the mothers as a group was invoked, and again and again the
officials of the Sarf-i Khas and the Prime Minister himself played roles
attempting to mediate the conflicts. Showing political astuteness in
adapting to the changing practices as Diwani administrative practices
replaced the former Mughlai karkhanah ones, one courtesan (Afzal
Baksh) turned away a once-authoritative verbal order and demanded
an official written notice. Strikingly, the Prime Minister's secretary,
Syed Abdul Razzak, married a leading courtesan in this last case. 35
. Hyderabad's Arbab-i Nish at records, in fact, show that a boundary
between courtesans and begums was far from rigid or impermeable.
They featured several tawa'ifs who became wives and many instances
of women running away with lovers; in the latter cases we do not
learn if they become wives or concubines. In the complicated case of
succession to property in Hyderabad (Amir Bakhsh, Pyaraji Bakhsh,
Imtiaz Bakhsh, Roshen Bakhsh, and Afzal Bakhsh), two women moved
out of the house into marriages and one into a long-term relationship,
yet they retained close connections to the house and other tawa'ifs,
one even successfully reclaiming financial interests in the properties.
All of the details in the many cases discussed above and in
Appendix I convey a sense of how closely the world of the courtesans
intersected with those of the Diwani as well as the Mughlai officials
of the state. Tawa'ifs and officials at all levels in both older and newer
administrations knew each other intimately and negotiated conflicts
as the older Mughlai policies and practices began to be replaced by
policies and practices introduced from the Diwani administration. In
Hyderabad, the Mughal state's cosmopolitan bureaucratic culture lived
on, continuing to integrate diverse individuals and groups into the life
of the court and the city.
BEYOND HYDERABAD: NORTH INDIAN COURTESANS
The Hyderabad cases concerning courtesans expand our knowledge
of courtesans in early modem India in important ways. Much of the
literature about tawa'ifs is superficial. It focuses upon their singing
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 397
and dancing performances for Mughal, British, or other nobles and
administrators; photos and paintings and prints of them abound.
Ganikas (courtesans in early Sanskrit texts), nautch girls (from naacna,
to dance), devadasis (Hindu temple dancers), naikins (Goanese singing
and dancing girls)-women in courts and temples in very diverse
regional settings and time periods have been lumped into a single
category of women skilled in poetry, song, and dance who also served
their male patrons sexually.36 Analysing the paintings and portraits, and
particularly the carte-de-visite picture postcards of courtesans produced
from the 1860s, Joachim Bautze remarks 'What do we know about
all these courtesans called "tawa'ifs" shown here? Next to nothing'. 37
The glimpses we do have of courtesans in Inda-Muslim, primarily
north Indian, culture, bring them into closer focus . In the Mughal
imperial capital, Delhi, and in Hyderabad and Lucknow, capitals of
princely states once part of the Mughal empire, courtesans primarily
functioned within the Mughlai administrations rather than as inde-
pendent entrepreneurs. Katherine Schofield identifies courtesans in
Mughal India as female performers 'attached to the court'. Pointing
out that female performers before British colonial rule have been little
researched, she tries to distinguish among various categories of dancers,
singers, and musicians, objecting to 'courtesan' as a blanket term. She
looks at whether women performed in female space (the haram),
both male and female spaces, or only in male space, but her evidence
sometimes contradicts her statements about the sacrosanct separation of
male and female spaces and the impermissibility of courtiers marrying
courtesans (as does other evidence discussed below). Her 'courtesan
tales' are primarily concerned with male courtiers and their downfall,
with men's perceptions of courtesans' lives. Schofield states that in
later writing about courtesans, the male protagonist rather than the
courtesan 'has disappeared from the story' ,38 and this is certainly true
of the two early modem novels examined below.
Ramya Sreenivasan, writing about slave performers (drudges,
dancing girls, concubines) in the establishments of Rajput rulers
between 1500 and 1850, had difficulties similar to Schofield's in sorting
out the designations and functions offemale performers. She places the
Raj put chiefs and rulers in the context of Mughal overlordship, with
the Mughal emperor becoming arbiter of conflicts among Rajput rulers
and the Mughal court influencing regional household administrative
 398 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
and record-keeping practices. Mentioning the 'houses of patars
(performers)' or 'houses of melody' owned by the state as well as by
individual Rajput queens, she draws attention to the investment of
time, labour, and resources embodied in skilled female performers,
investments that spoke of the wealth and prestige of their 'holders'.39
Anshu Malhotra writes about the strange case of the courtesan
Piro, during the rule of the Sikh Maharajah Ranjit Singh (d. 1839) in
the Punjab. Piro seems to have been a Muslim dancing girl who left
her 'professional colleagues and guardians' to become the disciple
and consort of Guiab Das, a Udasi Sikh guru, reminding us of the
Mughal court culture's influence on Sikh gurus and Sufi saints as well.
Influenced by colonial and post-colonial classifications, Malhotra most
often refers to Piro as a prostitute, but she was clearly a courtesan, and
her career reflects the fluid religious, social, and political interactions
characteristic of precolonial times. 40
Like Sreenivasan, Alam and Subrahmanyam trace the regional
impacts of Mughal policies and practices as the empire expanded,
and they give some attention to the Indo-Persian pre-Mughal states
of the Deccan as well. Unlike Sreenivasan, they focus on fiscal and
revenue matters, although implicit in their discussions is the spread of
the Persian language and lndo-Muslim court culture. 41 Interestingly,
they discuss almost the same regions through which Davesh Soneji
traces the impact oflndo-Muslim musical and dance performances on
south Indian devadasis. 42 Sonej i's research on devadasis challenges the
stereotype that they performed primarily in Hindu temples; 43 preferring
to term them courtesans, he maintains that their me/ams, troupes or
households, performed primarily in salons. Like Sreenivasan, he
emphasizes the control of courtesans by court authorities, in Tanjore
and Baroda. Unlike most writers on tawa'ifs and devadasis, he
challenges the assumed division between north Indian and south Indian
courtesans. Suggesting that the salon-style culture in south India stems
from the movement of musicians and dancers from the Mughals to
Maharashtra and Tanjore, he documents the influence ofnorth Indian
or Hindustani music and dance and the presence of Muslim as well as
Hindu courtesans in south India. 44
But it is in north India that we have two famous novels
featuring courtesans in early modern times. The Nautch Girl is an
autobi0graphical novel and The Courtesan of Lucknow seems to
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 399
have been based on a known courtesan's life story. While they un-
doubtedly present romanticized pictures of the courtesans' cultural
skills and access to the highest levels of male society, the novels
provide fascinating insights into courtesans' lives: Anthropologists
and others have argued that fiction, like ethnography, tries to build 'a
believable world ... one that the reader will accept as factual' .4s Books
can be difficult to classify, seen as both fiction and non-fiction; these
two novels about courtesans in north India assuredly contain valuable
ethnographic material, accounts £if lived experience that ring true.46 •
The Persian eighteenth-century novel Nashtar, translated into
English as The Nautch Girl, narrates the tragic love story of the author
and Khanum Jan, a courtesan in a traveling troupe of musicians and
dancers. The translator Qurratulain Hyder, herself a novelist and an
academic, calls it the first known modern novel in India, and one
whose author was not influenced by English novels. 47 Living in tents,
the derahdaris in The Nautch Girl were employed briefly by the same
officer of the British East India Company who employed the author;
commentators agree that the novel is autobiographical. The Courtesan
ofLucknow: UmraoJanAda is the more famous novel, written in Urdu
and published in 1905, with the first English translation coming out in
1961.48 Reputedly based on the life story of a mid-nineteenth century
courtesan in Awadh, it begins under the N awabs of the princely state
ofAwadh and ends after the British conquest of the state in 1857. The
author claims that Umrao Jan recounted her story to him after they met
at a poetry gathering in Lucknow, and it reads as a first person memoir.
Some believe she did exist and lived to see the book's publication.
The novel vividly portrays the court culture of Lucknow, capital of
the Nawab of Awadh, and three popular films have been based on it.49
A third source for north Indian courtesans is the pioneering 1990
article by Veena Oldenburg about the courtesans of Lucknow.so She
proposed a new way of looking at courtesans, one that challenged
conventional wisdom about them and analysed their lifestyles as
resistance to patriarchal values. While some might not construe the
struggles of courtesans as 'real' resistance, she quoted James Scott
effectively to buttress her view that they struggled for material
needs and against patriarchal values while outwardly conforming
to behaviours in harmony with male power and sexuality.s1 Her
qualitative interview material from the 1970s and 1980s is invaluable,
 400 . Hyderabad and Hyderabadis r Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound
but the context for the material is, first, British colonial India, after the
conquest of the princely state of Awadh by the East India Company,
and, second, modem India in the 1970s and 1980s. Stressing colonial
control and classification of courtesans at the expense of pre-colonial
patterns of control and classification, Oldenburg viewed courtesans
as independent entrepreneurs rather than salaried employees of states
and households. She was surprised to find courtesans in the tax ledgers
and on lists of property holders in Lucknow and as conespondents
of British officials there after 1858; she found the lists of courtesans'
possessions 'remarkable', their jewels and numerous luxury items
'eloquently evocative of a privileged existence'. 52
Careful comparison of Oldenburg's interview materials, the
Hyderabad court cases, and the two early modem novels introduced
above allows consideration or reconsideration of a number of significant
questions. First, what was the character and quality of the relationships
among courtesans in their business establishments? Second, what was
the relationship between courtesans and wives or 'respectable women'
in Indian society? Third, what do we know about sexuality, sexual
relations between women and between women and men?
How do the various sources refer to these women and their business,
and how do they describe the women's relationships to each other? The
translator of The Nautch Girl described those in charge as 'leaders of
the troupe' and 'guardians' of 'wards'; characters in the novel talked
about the 'profession', the 'caste', and 'sisters-in-profession'. The
translators of Courtesan of Lucknow chose 'establishment', 'house',
and 'profession', and Umrao Jan termed herself a 'girl' in the charge
ofher 'mistress', 'ruler', and 'guardian'. The Hyderabad cases refened
to 'houses' or 'units' and 'mothers' and 'daughters'. Oldenburg's
courtesans referred to chaudharayan and kotha, usually translated
as chief or head courtesan and salon respectively; Regula Qureshi
has also written more recently about courtesans in Lucknow, their
establishments or salons, and 'daughters, real and putative'. 53
Financial and emotional considerations both strain and strengthen
the relationships among the women in all these sources for the lives
of courtesans in early modem India. Oldenburg found that only four
of her 30 courtesans were the biological daughters of courtesans;
most came to the kotha to escape abuse and misery in their natal or
conjugal homes. 54 Stating that Oldenburg believed courtesans to be
matrilineal, Qureshi wrote that, while invariably the only lineage
401
identity courtesans have been assigned by others is the matriline, 'the
absence of patrilineality does not equal matrilineality'. She saw "a
'loose matrilineality' that extends familial solidarity to the biologically
unrelated women who have joined a propertied senior courtesan
and her daughter in an extended family setting; she found 'little
information' about the economic aspects of the courtesans' properties
and businesses. 55 The chaudharayan in the Lucknow interviews always
received a fixed proportion of her women's earnings (Oldenburg
estimated one-third). 56 A financial interest this substantial certainly
helps explain the aggressive use of the Hyderabad courts by mothers
trying to reclaim or be compensated for runaway daughters. We glimpse
others important to the courtesans: a wet nurse features in one of the
Hyderabad cases, providing a home away from home for her charge
(the case of Salar Bakhsh and Mohammed Karimuddin), and in The
Nautch Girl, the young boy who carries messages back and forth
between the lovers is the son ofKhanum Jan's wet nurse and is called
her foster brother. In both Courtesan of Lucknow and Oldenburg's
interviews, a son of a courtesan features as house resident and servant,
a person valued far less than a daughter of the house. 57
In most of the sources there are conflicts among courtesans,
particularly between mothers and daughters. Both The Nautch Girl
and Courtesan of Lucknow contain numerous examples of diverging
interests as daughters leave and return, living with male patrons or
setting up their own businesses, all the while retaining ties with the
mother house and sometimes returning to it. In The Nautch Girl,
Khanum Jan is reminded that 'we all belong to the same caste and
profession', that she has obligations to her 'colleagues and sisters-
in-profession' ,58 yet the heroine struggles against her guardian and
her chief musician. Similar tensions in Courtesan ofLucknow are too
numerous to mention. For example, Umrao Jan's falling-out with her
mistress Khanum Jan 59 and escape from the Chowk with a lover had to
be carefully planned,60 and that journey led her to adventures outside
Lucknow. 61 She eventually returned to Khanum's establishment and
then set up on her own business in Lucknow. 62
The sources also testify to long-lasting, affectionate ties between
mothers and daughters. In the final pages of Courtesan of Lucknow,
Umrao Jan says about Khanum: 63
Although I had parted from Khanum, I had no doubt of her love for me and
continued to look upon her as my guardian. She had so much money that she
 402 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
lost interest in it ... [she] ceased to concern herself with the girls' earnings.
But she continued to cherish them as before and did not tum any of them
out of her establishment . ... As long as Khanum lived, no one asked me to
vacate the room that she had allotted to me. My things were left in it and I
had my own lock on the door. .. . I made it a point to spend the ten days of
Mohurram with Khanum. To the day she died, Khanum had a tazia [Shia
commemorative emblem] put up in my name.
The second question concerns the relationship between courtesans
and wives, or 'respectable women' . Courtesans have often been
contrasted to begums. The prevailing view has been that these two
kinds of women came from and remained in separate spheres, a view
encouraged by the scarcity of good information about courtesans.
Doris Srinivasan opened her essay on precolonial courtesans (including
pre-Mughal ones) by posing two options for power for Indian women:
'that of the sexually liberated and educated courtesan or the pure,
sexually controlled, uneducated wife'. She went on to discuss 'The
Wife/Courtesan Dichotomy' .64 Courtesans and begums operated in
'competing social spheres', according to Carla Petievich, a scholar of
Indo-Muslim poetry and culture.65
The ethnomusicologist Regula Qureshi, extending her earlier
'adaptation of a Marxist mode-of-production perspective on the
feudally based music-making nexus of male hereditary professional
musicians' to her work on courtesans, also contrasts courtesans and
respectable women.66 'Traditional kinship studies suggest that the
viability of these "non-wives" was predicated on the seclusion of
respectable elite women to maintain reproductive control over feudal
property' , she writes, and further:67
In contrast to the patron's wife, her [a courtesan's] role is reproductively
irrelevant and the gendered space she occupies lies on the margins of the
patrilineal system of reproduction that is controlled through female seclusion
within a propertied patron's family, leading to a de facto functional separation
between the reproductive and the social and musical heterosexuality of wife
and courtesan respectively.
Few have tried to look behind the surface, to investigate life stories of
tawa'ifs (or begums for that matter). Oldenburg did collect life stories,
and she learned that some married women who observed purdah rented
rooms in the courtesans' kothas, coming there for financial or other
reasons to conduct clandestine liasons. 68 Yet Oldenburg also clearly
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 403
viewed the world of the courtesans as quite separate from that of
wives and far more empowering for women: the satire enacted for her
mocking the life of married women made a compelling case for that. 69
However, this boundary between courtesans and begums was
clearly not rigid or impermeable. Hyderabad's Arbab-i Nishat records
featured several tawa'ifs who became wives, and in one succession
case women who moved out of the house into marriages or long-term
relationships retained close connections to the house and one reclaimed
a financial interest in the properties. In the novels, also, marriages
were not unusual. In Hasan Shah's The Nautch Girl, the eighteenth-
century narrator fell in love with a courtesan in a travelling troupe,
and eventually, but secretly, he married her. When the troupe left for
another engagement, he was unable to fulfil his promise to follow
her immediately because of his employer's demands, and when he
did reach his beloved, she had died from the pain of separation. This
dancing girl, Khanum Jan, became the wife she aspired to be,70 but her
tale ended tragically. Another instance in The Nautch Girl concerned
a genteel Syed (descended from the Prophet) widow teaching a
courtesan's daughter to read the Quran. When this resident teacher died,
she entrusted her own little girl to the courtesan, Mewa Jan. Mewa
Jan educated the girl, kept her in purdah, and intended to marry her to
a Syed gentleman; when Mewa Jan and her ward attended Khanum
Jan's troupe's customary winter feast night, the troupe made special
arrangements for the girl's seclusion. 7 1 In Courtesan of Lucknow,
Umrao Jan Ada did not marry in the course of her long career, but
others in the novel did. The dramatic ending of the story finds Umrao
Jan and Ram Dei, a Hindu girl captured with Umrao Jan when they
were both children, reunited - one still a courtesan and the other a
begum.72 The title of an essay, 'Bai Theke Begum: From Courtesan.
to Wife', tells its own story. 73
Taking a different tack about courtesans and begums in Lucknow,
Zainab Cheema argues against the strict separation of courtesan and
begum, showing that the begums frequently employed courtesans for
festive and ritual occasions. Both men and women sponsored public
and private entertainments featuring courtesans, and Cheema posits
a 'dynamic relationality between begum and courtesan that came to
be written out of reformist Indian literature'. 74 Ruth Vanita delineates
the rich cosmopolitan culture of pre-1857 Lucknow, tracing it back to
 404 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
Mughal Delhi. Relying on Urdu poetry for her primary sources, she
too shows 'dynamic relationality' among courtesans and others in that
precolonial society. 75
The novel Courtesan of Lucknow provides examples of this
'relationality' or boundary crossing. After Umrao Jan's colleague
Bismillah Jan was deflowered by the wealthy Nawab Chabban,
Bismillah Jan heartlessly exploited her patron and prevented the
marriage his mother had been planning for him. The Nawab's mother,
the Begum, sent an old woman to deal with Khanum Jan, mistress of
the house (and biological mother of Bismillah Jan), to beg that her
son's marriage not be thwarted. The Begum argued that the marriage
would secure the property to the young Nawab; otherwise it would be
the end of his prosperity and of the family. Khanum replied, 'Please
convey my greetings and good wishes to the Begum and say that if
God wills it will happen as she has desired. I am her life-long slave
and will do nothing to harm her interests.' She and others in the room
promised not to let Chabban know about the women's agreement. 76
The closing pages of Courtesan of Lucknow also fit Cheema's
model, describing Umrao Jan's visit to a dargah, a saint's tomb.
Interestingly, the courtesan first went into the men's courtyard to
light candles and make her offering, but as she left she thought of
visiting the women's section, where 'I was sure to meet someone
who knew me, as my fame as a singer of laments and my association
with the court of the Queen Mother had made me a familiar figure'.
It was there that Umrao Jan met again the Begum from Kanpur and
confirmed that she was Ram Dei, the Hindu girl with whom she had
been kidnapped and sold so many decades earlier. 77 Certainly these
literary and historical materials demonstrate the permeability of the
conventionally hypothesized boundary between begum and courtesan.
A third question concerns sexuality, the nature and quality of
the courtesans' sexual relationships. Oldenburg argued not only that
these women exemplified independence and resistance but that warm
relationships, lifelong partnerships, with other women were common
among them. Further, she estimated that perhaps a quarter of the thirty
women she interviewed were lesbians 78 and that relationships with
men in the kothas (save for kin) were businesslike, that 'very few' men
became 'emotional bondsmen'. 79 With regard to the former assertion,
Oldenburg's finding remains unique: apparently no one else has thought
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 405
to ask courtesans about lesbianism. (Ruth Vanita's research on Urdu
poetry, however, explores homosocial and homosexual relationships
in Lucknow. 80)
The other part of the question about sexuality' concerns the
courtesans' relationships with men. They routinely had sex with men,
but the extent of their emotional involvement with men and dependence
upon them has been disputed. Oldenburg and the aging courtesans she
interviewed downplayed the importance of male/female relationships,
and in those interviews and in Courtesan ofLucknow there is plenty
of evidence of courtesans deceiving men, pretending to love them,
entrapping them for financial support. But there is also evidence of
close attachments between men and women. Qureshi had made an
earlier visit to the same household headed by the senior courtesan
whom Oldenburg interviewed, where she viewed a performance by
the daughter. This performance was arranged thanks to: 81
a landed gentleman who had an already existing quasi-familial patronage link
to the artist. His late father had had a permanent liason with the chaudhrayin
and he therefore continued a benevolent relationship with the daug1*r as his
half-sister-another aspect of patriarchy and perhaps also a reason for the
continuing prosperity of the chaudhrayin's family.
More recent life stories of women singers (below) also have instances
of continuing relationships of patrons with courtesans and the children
they had together.
Male kin lived in the houses, most notably the sons of courtesans,
but other men lived in the houses as well. Male musicians were present
in the novels featuring courtesans and were even more so in the articles
and life stories featuring female singers (below). The interdependence
of these professionals was stressed; the sarangi players, teachers of
singing, were more likely to live in the houses than the tabla players,
teachers of dance, and the musicians' positions were often hereditary
(patrilineal). 82 Other men who sometimes lived in the houses included
teachers of literature, from the Quran to Persian and Urdu poetry.
Talking about her early years, Umrao Jan recalled the school for
reading and writing supervised by a Moulvi Sahib which she and others
attended. 83 The Moulvi Sahib had become attached to Umrao Jan's
foster mother, Husaini. He had left his properties and family to live
with Husaini in the house, and she considered him 'her real husband'. 84
According to Umrao Jan, 'it is customary for courtesans to keep a
 406 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
man'. She herself kept her schoolmate and seducer as her dashtah
85
or keep (as Salar Bakhsh did in one Hyderabad case). Describing the
many services he and others like him provided for courtesans, she
mentioned the affection and indulgence with which sister courtesans
treated lovers who were often longtime residents of the household.
Umrao Jan secured a handsome well-educated patron and lover, 86 and
at the same time a much older gentleman engaged her services for two
hours a day for Rs. 75 a month. Calling the latter a 'lovable old man',
she learned many songs oflamentation for the holy Imams, songs she
performed during the Muharram observances every year. 87 Emotional
attachments to men were not lacking, although they might not have
coincided with sexual relationships.
Returning to a new Lucknow after the British takeover in 1856,
Umrao Jan described the changing physical features of the city at
some length. About other changes, she says only 'The city was under
a new administration and new laws had been enacted'. She had to fight
a legal case fending off a Nawab who claimed she had married him,
and she had to spend six years and many thousands of rupees to win
her freedom. Seemingly familiar with courts and litigation, she gained
a new male friend in her attorney who, after finishing his work at the
law courts, 'used to come to my house to say his evening prayers and
would have his supper sent for from his house ... we used to pool
whatever we had and ate together'. 88
COURTESANS UNDER BRITISH RULE
AND IN MODERN INDIA
Having assembled evidence about the life styles of north Indian
courtesans in early modern India, we can now distinguish among the
very different ways the Mughal and Indo-Muslim states, the British
colonial state, and the modern Indian state have related to courtesans,
who still have a distinctive presence in Indian society. What happened
to the courtesans under British rule? Oldenburg wrote: 89
Women, who had once consorted with kings and courtiers, enjoyed a
fabulously opulent living, manipulated men and means for their own social
and political ends, been the custodians of culture and the setters of fashion
trends, were left in an extremely dubious and vulnerable position under the
British. 'Singing and dancing girls' was the classification invented to describe
them in the civic tax ledgers ... .
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 407
As the Hyderabad records remind us, this was not a new or invented
classification - it was an existing Mughlai (and probably much earlier)
administrative category. In Lucknow, the equivalent of Hyderabad's
Arbab-i Nishat was called the Nishatkhanah, Oldenburg notes, 90 and
similar departments of enjoyment or pleasure existed in many Mughal
and post-Mughal Persianate administrations. 91 The Hyderabad cases
highlight the fact that courtesans worked within the state bureaucracy
but were under the direct control of courtesan 'mothers', with pre-
dominantly male administrators supervising their payments and state-
appointed courts and officials arbitrating disputes involving them.
Details about the workings of Lucknow's Nishatkhanah were not
reflected in the two novels or in Oldenburg's interviews conducted
in the late twentieth century,92 although, in both novels, government
officials patronized courtesans.
Under British rule, things changed dramatically. Scholars tracing
regions under colonial rule discuss the British and British Indian
Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864 that interpreted courtesans as
prostitutes and subjected them to medical inspection and regulation.
These were followed by the Indian Contagious Diseases Act of 1868,
various Cantonment Regulations, and the first Suppression of Immoral
Traffic Act of 1923, all of them attempts to regulate prostitution that
continued to define courtesans as prostitutes. Scholars of British
India have studied disciplinary institutions and practices based on
that classification. 93 The colonial state's efforts coincided with the
growing interest of bourgeois leaders oflndia's nationalist movement
in 'devadasi reform' and urban upper caste appropriation of dancing
and musical cultural traditions, especially in south India. 94
Patronage of cultural performers by princely states continued
for some time. Oldenburg's chief and oldest courtesan informant,
Gulbadan, testified that as the standards of the business and particularly
of customers declined in Lucknow, she and the famous Akhtari Bai were
invited by the Nizam of Hyderabad; Gulbadan also entertained at parties
in the Nawab ofRampur's palace. 95 However, the ethnomusicologists
Regula Qureshi and Amelia Macisewski discuss the decline of princely
patronage of music and dance (a decline especially severe after 1971
when the privy purses of the former rulers of the princely states were
disallowed or severely cut, breaking agreements made following
India's independence in 1947). They discuss the rise of patronage
408 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
by commercial and industrial magnates and rural feudals, and, most
recently, the ambivalent patronage by government institutions and a
largely middle-class public.96 Qureshi provides a concise overview of
the changed circumstances of courtesans since India's independence in
1947. The nationalist reform movement culminated in a ban on salons
enforced by police raids, princely states were abolished in 1952, and
'All India Radio, which had consciously taken over musical patronage
from the princes, banished all (women) performers "whose private life
is a public scandal'" .97 The question oflndian state patronage, possible
for the hereditary male musicians, was thus resolved soon after 1947
and against customary or hereditary courtesans; 'respectable' women
took up singing and dancing traditions. 98
In the princely state of Hyderabad, tawa'ifs remained prominent
well beyond the end of the nineteenth century. 99 Furthermore, des-
pite the presence of a military garrison nearby in Secunderabad,
Hyderabad's twin city developed under British military administration,
I have found no literature about classification oftawa'ifs as prostitutes
and carriers of venereal diseases in Hyderabad. But after Hyderabad's
incorporation into India in 1948 and its subsequent merging with the
Telugu-speaking portion of formerly British Indian Tamil Nadu in
1956 to form the new state ofAndhra Pradesh, that new state adopted
and amended the Madras Anti-Devadasi Act of 1947. The amended
Act criminalized performances by women from 'hereditary courtesan
communities' at marriages and private social events. As Soneji points
out, men associated with these cominunities could and did claim
property and performance rights after the passage of these Acts. 100
Just as two novels provided insights into courtesans' livestyles
in the early modern period, the life stories of women singers and
performers in late colonial and post-independence periods provide
insights into their changing lifestyles. I turn first to two readily available
popular books. The first features Gauhar Jan (1873-1930), a courtesan
of mixed Indian and European parentage in north India who became the
reigning diva among tawa' ifs in Calcutta in the early twentieth century.
She is also legendary because hers was almost the first Indian voice to
be recorded on the gramophone. 101 Many details of her life resonate
with materials presented above. Her grandmother, Rukmani, lived with
a British Army officer in Azamgarh and had two daughters by him,
but he died when the girls, Victoria and Bela, were young. In 1872
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 409
Victoria, aged fifteen, mairied an Armenian engineer, Robert Yeoward,
and their daughter Angelina was born in 1873. After Yeoward divorced
Victoria and deserted her and his six year old daughter in 1879,
Victoria accepted the patronage of a Muslim nobleman who took them
(Rukmani, Victoria, and Angelina) to Banaras. Victoria and Angelina
converted to Islam, were renamed Malka Jan and Gauhar Jan, and
trained as courtesans (the author of this popular biography speculates
that Rukmani may have come from a courtesan community). 102 Gauhar
began performing with her mother; both were talented poetesses as
well as singers and dancers. 103 The two moved in 1883 to Calcutta,
capital of British India and also the city of refuge for Wajid Ali Shah,
deposed ruler of Awadh after 1856. WajidAli Shah created 'a second
Lucknow' there and artists and performers migrated from Lucknow
and elsewhere to seek his patronage.104 Gaining the Nawab as a patron
and securing a talented teacher for Gauhar Jan, Malka Jan was able
to purchase a three-storey building by 1886. Gauhar Jan's career was
launched with her deflowering that year (she was thirteen), 105 and
later that year the Maharajah of the Darbhanga Raj invited her for a
performance and made her his court musician. Shortly after that, Rai
Chaggan from Banaras came to hear her in Calcutta, courted her, and
took her off to Banaras for two years, sending Malka Jan Rs. 500 a
month to compensate for her daughter's absence. 106 Gauhar Jan visited
her mother in Calcutta and was faced with a court case concerning
saris. Testifying in this case, Malka stated that she herself had been
'in the keeping ofRai Pawan Dass' in Banaras for three years and that
'Before Gowhar was kept by Chagganji she was kept by the Raja of
Kheragarh; she remained (as such) for two months. Prior to that she
did not carry on the profession' . 107 Gauhar Jan's relationship with Rai
Chaggan ended in 1891, 108 and, back in Calcutta, Malka Jan and Gauhar
Jan found new patrons (wealthy businessmen). Gauhar Jan's growing
popularity led the Maharajah of Mysore to invite her to his kingdom. 109
Her spectacular success began in 1902, when the Gramophone and
Typewriter Ltd. representatives in Calcutta made their 'first "native"
recordings' and Gauhar Jan became 'the country's first gramophone
celebrity and a mainstay of the Company's fortunes in India'. 110 She
accepted invitations from many princely states and wealthy households.
When in Bombay in about 1905 she found romance again, but within
two years her mother and then her new lover died as well. 111 Facing
410 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
court challenges to her inheritance, she found her father, performed
throughout India, and in about 1912 gained a new patron in the N awab
ofRampur. When performing in Rampur, she lived with the women of
the royal family in the zenana, and the Begum Sahib's memoirs mention
an exclusive all-women's concert for the zenana featuring Gauhar Jan
and other singers of the time. 112 Sampath remarks on Gauhar Jan's
sarangi players, calling them and tabla players 'hangers-on' who lived
off of courtesans, often in their salons. 113 In 1913, Gauhar Jan entered
into a muta (temporary, Shia) marriage with her Muslim manager which
ended badly in 1916 with an infamous legal case. 114 A patron resettled
her in Darjeeling, she stayed in Rampur in the zenana with the royal
women, and she moved to Bombay with a patron's support. Toward
the end of her life, she accepted an appointment as palace musician at
the court of the Maharajah ofMysore for Rs. 500 a month (inclusive of
salaries of her musicians and accompanists) in 1928. This last seemed
to her a terrible comedown from earlier days when she had earned and
spent fabulous amounts ofmoney. 115 She died alone in 1930.
The semi-autobiographical novel by Namita Devidayal, The Music
Room, elegantly portrays the world of classical Indian musicians
in later twentieth-centmy India. Written as a tribute to her teacher,
Dhondutai Kulkarni, it includes valuable material about Dhondutai's
teacher Kesarbai Kerkar. Kerkar (1892-1977) was one of India's
greatest classical singers. She came from a courtesan community and
studied with Alladiya Khan, the late-nineteenth-century founder of
the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana or musical lineage. Devidayal discusses
the princely patronage of Indian music, 116 its gradual decline, and
subsequent patronage by Bombay textile barons who became a 'new
breed of maharajas'. These new patrons supported women singers
who were often their lovers; children born to the singer and her patron
were fully provided for, although staying with the mother and bearing
her name. 117 Discussing how women singers helped each other but
competed for the same small group of clients, Devidayal writes 'they
knew they had to be the prettier woman, the better singer, the more
passionate lover. It was only the handful who became great artistes who
could live without the lovers and patrons. The others had no choice.' 118
Kesarbai's lover and patron, a Bombay mill owner, tricked Alladiya
Khan into accepting Kesarbai as his student despite her gender and
courtesan community origins. This patron had fathered Kesarbai's
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 411
only child but gave up his role as her lover to further her studies
with Alladiya Khan; he continued to provide for her and his
daughter. 119
The final questions addressed here concern the nature of the
courtesans' communities and their situation in India today. Oldenburg
wrote, in the late 1980s, 'I would argue that these women, even today,
are independent and consciously involved in the covert subversion of
a male-dominated world; they celebrate womanhood in the privacy
of their apartments by resisting and inverting the rules of gender of
the larger society of which they are part.' 120 Unfortunately, recent
scholarly work shows a less happy situation, perhaps of independence
but embattled independence and forced adaptation to new working
conditions imposed by the modem Indian state and its cultural
apparatus.
Compelling articles by Qureshi and Macisewski, the most recent
ethnographers of north Indian traditions, highlight the dilemmas of
India's courtesans today 121 but are unclear about the composition of
these communities, neither having done a survey of the sort Oldenburg
undertook of her 30 informants. 122 Qureshi focuses on singers without
discussing origins or castes. Maciszewski writes that some courtesans
locate themselves as members of a gharana, for example the Banaras
gharana or stylistic community of musicians, and she occasionally
refers to one or another caste, clan, or subcaste (like Gandharvas,
Deredars, Bedias, Nats, Kanjars, and Mirasis). There are analogies
here with ascetics, whose identities clearly varied by region, caste,
and guru-chela lineages 123 and some of whom, like courtesans, could
be said to have been 'married differently', a concept developed by
Kamala Visweswaran and applied by Maciszewski to the support of
courtesans by benefactors. 124 Generally, however, Maciszewski refers
to low-status hereditary professional women musicians and dancers
termed baijis (usually singers) or tawa'ifs. 125 Oldenburg's findings
about members of the profession being mostly non-hereditary seem
ill-matched or tangential to this research; 126 of course Maciszewski
and Oldenburg were looking at different communities of courtesans.
Maciszewski describes adaptations on the part of some north
Indian courtesans to modem state-driven definitions and institutions,
adaptations necessitated by their plight. Most of the women with whom
she worked were disempowered and socially marginalized: 127
412 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
Except for the outstanding few who have been accepted as mainstream artists,
tawa'iflead a precarious existence, living in poverty and crime-ridden red-light
districts where the present-day clientele is more interested in sex than songs,
and the songs 'patrons' wish to hear often have little, if anything, to do with
the rich traditions these women embody ... they struggle to make a living
with their performance in their respective localities, frequently supplementing
this income with sex work. This survival strategy, ironically, only serves to
reaffirm their negative status.
She traces the development of an NGO headed by a male founder and
president, Guria Sewi Sansthan (doll help/service collective), and its
efforts to enlist courtesans as performers in national festivals. The
NGO's goal is to preserve and 'mainstream' regional performance
traditions, overriding the stigma attached to them. However, when
Guria Festivals publicize their cultural shows, because Guria is
dedicated to the uplift not only of courtesans but of prostitutes, the
participants are represented to the public homogenously as 'WIP'
or Women in Prostitution. Despite this conflation of courtesans
with sex workers, 128 the dire predicament in which most courtesans
find themselves means that some female performers welcome the
opportunity to present themselves and their music in public. Guria is
thus a catalyst for revitalizing a women's performance-tradition, yet it
requires 'a new, quasi-paternalistic relationship-in this case, between
tawa'ifs and festival organizers-that is, simultaneously empowering
yet reminiscent of the feudal one between benevolent patron and
dedicated service professional'. 129
Maciszewski sees Guria as offering opportunities for tawa'ifs
as 'postcolonial artists and independent "micro-entrepreneurs"', and
she discusses women's strategies of cooption and subversion in the
face of the mainstream's patronizing and valorizing attitude toward
courtesans.130 The women must accept their classification as 'prostitute'
as they step onto the national stage with this particular NGO, an identity
that blurs the many diverse preexisting and continuing identities based
on region, caste, subcaste, and musical stylistic traditions.
Much remains to be done to capture the histories and voices of
India's courtesans, who struggle today to preserve and practice their
arts. The wealth of material from the HyderabadArbab-i Nishat records
confirm_s that courtesans were significant participants in that princely
state. Members of a non-caste community, part of a cosmopolitan
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 413
Mughlai bureaucracy, women whose art and learning gained them
properties and alliances with powerful men, they inspire us to learn
more about courtesans in precolonial times and in other princely states.
Beyond Hyderabad, the findings about how courtesans' establishments
were constituted and governed, how courtesans related to men, to
patriarchy and patrilineal practices, and to each other, strengthen
the argument tpat courtesans played significant roles in state and
society. Certainly colonial and modem India have been less than kind
to them and their artistic traditions, but just as certainly we know too
little about courtesans in the past. The recordings of famous courtesans
that existm remind us that their voices still carry far, requesting more
attention, more love, less separation from India's valued artistic
traditions.
NOTES
I. Instead of accurate transliteration of Persian and Urdu words with
superscripts indicating long vowels and subscripts differentiating among
consonants, I use versions that have become customary in English, for
example tawa'if and tawa'ifs for courtesan and courtesans (instead of
taa 'ifa and tawaa 'if
2. Bayly, 'Empire and Information', pp. 18-19, 62-3, 196, 209.
3. Alam and Subrahmanyam, The Mughal State, p. 16.
4. Barnett, 'Embattled Begams', Blake, 'Contributors to the Urban
Landscape'; Fisher, 'Women and the Feminine'; Hambly, 'Armed
Women Retainers'; Kozlowski, 'Private Lives and Public Piety'. Ruby
Lal 's Domesticity and Power offers rich details about royal women in
the early Mughal world but nothing about courtesans.
5. Blake, 'Contributors to the Urban Landscape', analyses the nine women
builders of Shahjahanabad who built bazaars, mosques, garden, streets,
caravanserais, bathhouses, and mansions: Seven were members of the
royal family, one was the wife of a leading nobleman, and one was a
'famous singer', whom he describes as 'from the lower reaches of the
socio-economic order'. She built a mansion in which she entertained
noblemen but also high-ranking women of the court, ' a place of pleasure
and diversion for the urban nobility', pp. 411-13, 424. Kozlowski, 'Private
Lives and Public Piety', also comments on the importance of building
mosques, temples, and tombs and notes that women actively participated
in factional conflicts at the court, p. 470. Hambly, ' Armed Women
Retainers', mentions a late sixteenth century Rajput noble in the sultanate
414 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
of Gujarat whose household maintained four bands of dancing girls,
p. 436; his tendency to use 'household' and 'zenana' interchangeably leads
to confusion at times: Fisher, 'Women and the Feminine', while arguing
that Luclmow's urban court culture and that of the rural landholders of
Awadh was quite separate, none the less reports that a landholder Raja
took a favored courtesan ofLuclmow, a woman who had been an intimate
of the ruler ofAwadh, as his second wife, p. 505. He discusses the world of
the Luclmow courtesans, one in which women could function 'relatively
independently from men as owners of property, heads of households,
and respected poets and/or artistic performers' (taking a lead from Veena
Oldenburg's article, discussed below, in this and other respects), p. 507.
6. Her family, she claimed, was descended from Sayyids on both sides; her
grandmother was in Ahmedabad in Gujarat but was forced to migrate to
the Deccan. Her mother and elder stepsister (fathered by a Raj put prince)
became dancing girls and then became honorable through concubinage
and marriage to important nobles in Hyderabad. (Mah Laqa Bai 's elder
stepsister reportedly became the third wife of the Diwan Rulmuddaula,
whose tomb is near that of Mah Laqa Bai and her mother.) An oral
history claims she was born a Hindu in the Bogulkunta/Nagula Chinta
area where Bhagmati lived. See Kugle, 'Mah Laqa Bai', and Leonard,
'Hindu Temples', for more details.
7. See Leonard, 'Hindu Temples', especially about the temple in Keshovgiri.
Chenna, alleged to be mistress to the father ofVikar-ul Umra, one of the
Paigah nobles, granted the main garden (other names for the locality are
Chanarai ghat or Chandryanaguda) and her samadhi is said to be there;
the twai'fVenkata gave a mango garden; and another twai'f, Padagaia
Mutam, gave a garden.
8. Leonard, 'Hyderabad'.
9. Kugle, 'Mah Laqa Bai'.
l 0. Arcot Diwani Records, 'Persian correspondence on behalf of the N awabs
of Arcot with the Hyderabad Vakils', Madras, India, consulted in the
1970s.
l l. For late nineteenth century photos of dancing girls in Hyderabad, see
Khan, Images ofHyderabad, pp. 73-5.
12. Rao, Bustan-i Asafiyah I, pp. 263-4.
13. In 123 l Fasli (1821-2), Munir-ul Mulk established the Adalat-i Buzurg,
in Hyderabad city. In 1247 Fasli (1838), Raja ChanduLal setup another
court for criminal cases, appointing Moulvi Karamat Ali from the British
Indian United Provinces as judge. Karamat Ali prepared a code for
judicial procedures for Hyderabad that directed cases from magistrates
to the Prime Minister for a final decision. In 1256 Fasli (1847), Siraj-ul
Mulk extended judicial appointments in the districts and also the powers
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 415
of the city civil courts, putting magistrates on salary for both civil and
criminal cases. His regulations prohibited the amputation of hands and
the practice of sati and limited the payment of interest to 1 per cent. Rao,
Bustan I, pp. 265-67; also Muttalib, Administration of Justice, pp. 53,
62-3, 113-14, 121-2, 152-3, 189-90.
14. For the Diwanijudicial system (especially from the 1880s and 1890s), see
Muttalib, Administration ofJustice (but he barely mentions the judicial
systems of the Nizam's Sarf-i Khas and of the leading nobles,jagirdars
and samasthan rulers, the latter being Hindu feudals from earlier times).
15. Hindu dancing girls had dominated what was probably an earlier center
in Nagulachinta, further south and east by Shahalibanda, in city area
maps sheet no. 84: Munn, Hyderabad Municipal Survey.
16. Munn, Hyderabad Municipal Survey.
17. See Leonard, Social History of an Indian Caste, for this leading noble
family in Hyderabad. The Malwalas kept the revenue records for
the eastern half of the state, while another Hindu noble family, the
Maharashtrian Brahmin Rae Rayans, kept the revenue records for the
western half of the state.
18. See Leonard, Social History of an Indian Caste, pp. 138-40, for more
details.
19. The Chaderghat bridge linked Dabirpura to the Residency in 1839,
the Naya Pu! bridge linked the Char Minar to Afzal Ganj in 1857, and
the Muslim Jung bridge linked Mahbub ki Mehndi to Begum Bazar
in 1897: all reflected the growth of the city to the north and the pull
of Secunderabad, the British cantonment town: Alam, Hyderabad-
Secunderabad, p. 10.
20. These were the Sunni Muslim Paigahs Sir Asman Jah, 1887-94, and Sir
Vikar-ul Umra, 1894-1901, and the Hindu Khatri Peshkars Maharaja
Narinder Parshad, 1883-4, and Maharajah Kishen Parshad, 1901-12.
21. 'Mama' was often translated as maidservant but Mama Sharifa was termed
a darogan.
22. Arbab-i Nishat, basta (bundle) 122, section R 1 in the Andhra Pradesh
State Archives (APSA), Hyderabad, India, file dated 1288 H/l.
23. Ibid., 1289 H/l and 2.
24. Ibid., 1290 H/3.
25. Ibid., 1293 H/7.
26. Ibid., 1293 H/9.
27. Ibid., 1293 H/8.
28. The darogah remarked in his covering letter that some cases were still
pending and some final decisions were being appealed. Those appealing
argued that the Majlis was not competent to decide cases, but Riza Ali
stated that the decisions had been reached after thorough consultation
416 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
and there should be no further delay in their implemention. Ibid., 1293 Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 417
H/6.
write that 'the regional identities that were formed in the eighteenth
29. Ibid., 1291 H/4. The darogan Mama Sharifa assisted with the inquiry.
century were themselves the product of a complex interaction between
30. The father, Alimuddin, had retained two vakils or lawyers to represent
region and empire. Both came to be redefined in this process', p. 68.
him in this matter, as presumably he was being pressed to pay the money
42. Aiam and Subrahmanyam, The Mughal State, discuss the Maratha rulers,
on behalf of his son. Alimuddin is further identified as 'ilaqah Mandozi,
including those in Tanjore from the 1670s, and post-Mughal rulers 'in
possibly meaning he was employed by the prominent Mandozai Afghan
Hyderabad, Arcot, Awadh, the Punjab, and Bihar; Soneji, Urifinished
family in Hyderabad.
Gestures, discusses the courts of the Peshwas in Maharashtra and of the
31. See Leonard, 'From Goswami Rajas', on Goswami ascetics and their
princely states of Baroda, Gwalior, and Tanjore,
maths or monasteries, where successors can similarly be either biological
43. Marglin, Wives ofthe God-King, about devadasis in Puri, Orissa, assumes
or adopted/bought.
temples, not the royal court, to be the major employers of courtesans
32. Arbab-i-Nishat, basta 122, APSA, 1293 H/5.
there. Heavily influenced by the work of Louis Dumont, she nevertheless
33. TheArab Mukkadam Jang's makbarah (tomb) and kabristan (graveyard)
provides ethnographic details of great interest in the context of Soneji 's
appear on Fateh Darwaza Road on city area sheet no. 90, while his palace
work.
and two separate zanana buildings adjacent to it loom large on city area
44. Soneji, Unfinished Gestures, pp. 36-7, 50-2, 70.
sheet no. 75 along a street named at its southern end Mukkadam Jang
45 . Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography, discusses examples
Topkhana Street and at its northern end Mukkadam Jang Deorhi Street:
of ethnography as fiction and/or fiction as ethnography, p. l; see also
Munn, Municipal Survey.
Clifford and Marcus, Writing Cultures.
34. Muttalib, Administration ofJustice, pp. 325-6, states that it was presided
46. Alam and Subrahmanyam approvingly cite the use by Narayana Rao
over by a woman mohtimima or superintendent and employed a jamadar
and Richards of 'unconventional semi-literary materials for history
or policeman, four clerks, and some harkaras (messengers) andjawans
writing': The Mughal State, p. 60. Schofield, 'The Courtesan Tale',
(constables). Those accused could defend themselves and produce
p. 152, discusses courtesan tales as 'impossible to verify' but containing
witnesses, and the decisions of the Kacheri were binding. The official
'a cultural veracity and meaningfulness that gave the story considerable
Kacheri language was Persian, and the court ceased functioning in the
power to affect Mughal readers'.
early twentieth century. Muttalib cites Mir Basit Ali Khan, Tarikh-
4 7. Hasan Shah's 1790 novel, Nashtar (Surgeons Knife, referring to the pain
e-Adalat-e-Asafi (Hyderabad, 1937), pp. 305-6, and Abdul Haleem
of separation) was translated by Qurratulain Hyder and published as The
Nasarullah Khan, Tarikh-e-Deccan (Lucknow, 1875).
Nautch Girl: A Novel. Hyder's statement is on p. 5.
35. SayadAbd-ur-Razzak Sahib's large residence appears on city area sheet
48. Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa, The Courtesan ofLucknow: Umrao Jan
no. 44, just off Khokawari Street: Munn, Municipal Survey.
Ada, published in Urdu in 1905, translated by Khushwant Singh and M.A.
36. Neville, Nautch Girls of India, is a typical popular account; it has no
Husaini, Delhi, 1961.
footnotes but many fine reproductions of paintings and photographs.
49 . The three films were Umrao Jaan Ada, produced in Pakistan and released
37. Bautze, 'UmraoJanAda',p.142.
in 1972, Umrao Jaan, produced in India starring Rekha and released in
38. Schofield, 'The Courtesan Tale', pp. 152, 165.
1981, and Umrao Jaan, produced in. India starring Aishwarya Rai and
39. Sreenivasan, 'Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines', especially pp. 137,
released in 2006.
142. For the 'houses', she refers to Varsha Joshi, Polygamy and Purdah:
50. Oldenburg, 'Lifestyle'.
Women and Society among Rajputs, Jaipur, 199~, p. 134.
51. Ibid., pp. 280-1. A fuller version appears in Douglas Haynes and Gyan
40. Malhotra, 'Bhakti and the Gendered Self', quote from p. 1513. See also
Prakash, eds, Contesting Power, Resistance and Everyday Social
Fenech, Darbar of the Sikh Gurus, and Green, Making Space, the latter
Relations in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992),
for references to dancing girls performing at Sufi shrines.
pp. 23-61.
41 . Alam and Subrahmanyam, The Mughal State, discuss 'regionally oriented
52. Ibid., pp. 259-60.
sub-states' in which fiscal policies 'tended to gravitate little by little
5 3. Qureshi, 'Female Agency', p. 318 (she uses the spelling chaudharayin).
toward a perceived Mughal style', pp. 33-39, 64-8; quote p. 35. They
54. Oldenburg, 'Lifestyles', p. 266.
55. Qureshi, 'Female Agency', pp. 326, 314, 318.
418 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 419
56. Oldenburg, 'Lifestyles', p. 263. struggled to retain her purity and marry Hasan Shah. She vowed that
57. Shah, The Nautch Girl, p. 40; Oldenburg, 'Lifestyles', p. 264; also if her troupe leaders insisted she 'lead a licentious life', she would kill
p. 262. herself: Shah, The Nautch Girl, pp. 43-4, 66.
58. Shah, The Nautch Girl, pp. 55-6. 71. Shah, ibid., p. 41.
59. Asked to accept an invitation to sing for which Khanurn had already 72. Ruswa, Courtesan, pp. 199-200, 206-8.
accepted the advance-money, Umrao Jaan flatly refused to go and said 73. Ganguli, 'Bai Theke Begum', pp. 73-93.
that if Khanum did want to return the advance she herself would give 74. Cheema, 'Representing the Tawaifand her City'.
Rs. 100: Ruswa, Courtesan, pp. 123-4. 75. Vanita, Gender, Sex, and the City, provides a wealth of material about
60. Ibid., pp. 125-6. courtesans and their significant roles in society, fully supporting the
61. She set herself up in Kanpur and really missed Lucknow and musicians findings and views put forward in this article.
of Lucknow caliber. 'I so much enjoyed being my own mistress that I 76. Ruswa, Courtesan, pp. 93-4.
never thought of going back. . . I would again have to be one ofKhanum's 77. Ibid., pp. 199-200, 206-8.
girls. All the women in the profession feared Khanurn and ifl had set up 78. Oldenburg, 'Lifestyles', p. 282, and n. 34, p. 287.
on my own no one would have had anything to do with me. I would also 79. Oldenburg, ibid., p. 282.
have found it hard to get good musicians. And how could one run the 80. Vanita, Gender, Sex, and the City.
business of dancing and singing without musicians?' Ibid., pp. 143-4. 81. Qureshi, 'Female Agency', pp. 314-15; also p. 317, about Lal Kunwar,
62. She found that Khanurn had changed and did not try to hold her. Ibid., Zarina Parveen and Begum Akhtar.
p. 173. 82. Qureshi, ibid., p. 313. She views the musicians as the masters of
63. Ibid., p. 202. But she also said, p. 219: 'I looked upon Khanum as my courtesans, stressing the latters' dependence upon the former; accom-
mistress and my ruler and did as she told me. If I did anything against panying musicians usually received 25 per cent of the income, she writes:
her wishes, I did it on the sly so that I might not be beaten or scolded. pp. 322-3. Neuman, The Life of Music in North India, focuses on male
(Actually Khanurn never beat me, but the fear that she might was always musicians and states that those associated with courtesans were oflower
there.)' status: pp. 124, 132.
64. Srinivasan, 'Royalty's Courtesans and God's Mortal Wives', p. 161. She 83. Umrao Jan's fellow student Gauhar Mirza (and her first lover) was, like
concludes that social reform and artistic movements eclipsed the power the Chote Miyan in Oldenburg's interviews, the son of a courtesan and
of courtesans and concentrated power in wives, the new keepers of both a patron. Unlike Chote Miyan, Gauhar Mirza knew his father, saw him
culture and pure lineages (pp. 177-8). occasionally, and received some financial support from him: Ruswa,
65. Petievich, 'Innovations Pious and Impious', n. 33, pp. 117-18. Schofield, Courtesan, p. 44.
'The Courtesan Tale', and Sreenivasan, 'Drudge, Dancing Girl, 84. Ibid., pp. 38-43.
Concubine', also appear to take this division seriously. 85. When Umrao Jan was seduced by Gauhar Mirza, the house rushed to
66. See also Qureshi's 'In Search of Begum Akhtar' for its sensitive hold the customary deflowerment for her. She was offered to a wealthy
interrogation of this famous singer's 'matrilineal family' (p. 123) and man for Rs. 5,500; she then got her own room in the house and received
subsequent marriage and how these Bai and Begum identities interacted Rs. 1,000 a month from him for her services for six months. Ibid.,
in Lucknavi feudal patriarchal culture. pp. 63-6.
67. Qureshi, 'Female Agency', pp. 312, 324. 86. Ibid., pp. 71-82.
68. Oldenburg, 'Lifestyles', p. 264. Such women uriderstandably do not show 87. Ibid., pp. 82-5.
up in the Hyderabad court records. 88. Ibid., pp. 173-5.
69. Oldenburg, ibid., p. 272. 89. Oldenburg, 'Lifestyles', p. 260.
70. Khanurn Jan told Hasan Shah that, an orphan, she had been brought up 90. Oldenburg, Email communication, 9 April 2012.
by the leaders of the troupe who at first swore they would not allow her 91. Devidayal, The Music Room, pp. 130-1, comments on the book of rules
to become a whore; later, as financial pressures mounted and she doubted for court performers used in the kingdom ofSajirao Gaekwad of Baroda;
their ability to keep their promise or find her a suitable husband, she this Kalavana Khatyache Niyam slotted artistes into categori~s which
420 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
determined their salaries, their costumes, when they could take leave,
and what they were to perform. The rules were probably modeled on
Mughlai or earlier pre-Mughal ones, but Devidayal seems to attribute
them to British influence. Neuman, The Life ofMusic, p. 89, wrote that
'female singers were employed like men, at royal courts with a regular
salary'.
92. Oldenburg did give a good description of the place of courtesans in
Lucknow just prior to the British takeover: The Making of Colonial
Lucknow, pp. 134-8.
93. Oldenburg, ibid., and Dang, 'Prostitutes, Patrons and the State', pay
much attention to the British and British Indian Contagious Diseases
Acts of 1864; Legg, 'Stimulation, Segregation and Scandal', discusses
the later Acts and efforts. Vanita, Gender, Sex, and the City, comments
that randi meant simply 'unmarried woman' before the late nineteenth
century, when it became used to mean prostitute, p. 19.
94. This shift from South Indian devadasis to 'respectable' bharatanatyam
dancers has been shown by Soneji, Unfinished Gestures, among many
others.
95. Gulbadan was referring to the early or mid-twentieth century, not earlier,
but Oldenburg found an 1869 article from the Oudh Akhbar stating that
'bawds ... now ... go into Independent states'. Oldenburg, The Making
of Colonial Lucknow, p. 141. Gulbadan's Akhtari Bai is undoubtedly
Qureshi 's Begum Akhtar.
96. Qureshi, 'Female Agency'; Amelia Maciszewski, 'Tawa'if, Tourism,
and Tales', pp. 332-51.
97. Qureshi, 'Female Agency', p. 312.
98. In Sri Lanka, even traditional male dancers from low caste communities
lost out to 'respectable' Kandyan dancers: Reed, Dance and the Nation.
99. In 1967, friends were going to take me and my husband to see Sartaj,
the reigning courtesan of the day in Hyderabad's Mahbub ki Mehndi,
but her senior musician died and we left Hyderabad before the mourning
period ended. A Kayasth friend, Dr. Mahender Raj Suxena, advised me
against going, saying 'Madame, the art has come down so since the
days of the Mughals'.
100. Soneji, Unfinished Gestures, particularly pp. 111, 154-5.
101. Sampath, My Name is Gauhar Jaan! is a popular rather than scholarly
biography, its title coming from a singer's obligatory self-naming at
the end of early recordings.
102. Sampath, ibid., pp. 12-17, 23, 28-9.
103. Vanita, Gender, Sex, and the City, p. 6.
104. Sampath, My Name is Gauhar Jaan! , pp. 30-1.
105. Unfortunately, Gauhar Jan immediately got pregnant and was sent
Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 421
to a relative, where she gave birth to a still-born child, ibid., pp. 35-42.
106. Ibid., pp. 43, 46-7.
107. Ibid., p. 52. The Raja of Kheragarh was named as her seducer or
deflowerer.
108. Although Gauhar had given up performing in public once in Benares
with Rai Chaggan, she feared other courtesans in Benares were jealous
and working against her; actually, Chaggan's family broke up the
relationship by marrying him to a charming and literate wife. Ibid.,
pp. 53-4.
109. Sampath includes gossip about other courtesans and Gauhar Jan herself
(her romance with Nimai Sen, zamindar ofBehrampore) as he writes
about the years 1891-1900: ibid., pp. 56-65.
110. Her gramophone discs were best-sellers until the late 1930s, and her
photograph appeared on match-boxes manufactured in Austria and on
picture postcards: ibid., pp. 84-6.
111. This was Amrit Keshav Nayak, a major figure on the Gujarati and
Hindustani stage, who died at the age of thirty ofa heart attack in 1907,
ibid., pp. 122-6.
112. Ibid., pp. 147-8.
113. He names some who taught Gauhar Jan and repeats gossip about other
courtesans and musicians of the early twentieth century, ibid., pp. 161-7.
114. Ibid., pp. 172-82.
115. Ibid., pp. 204-14.
116. Discussing how the ruler ofKolhapur came to invite the great Alladiya
Khan to become his court singer, Devidayal writes that the Maharajah's
younger brother had a courtesan as a lover who wanted her daughter
to learn music from that renowned singer, so he got his brother the
Maharajah to hire Alladiya Khan, Devidayal, The Music Room, p. 132.
117. Ibid., p. 227.
118. Ibid., pp. 228-9.
119. Ibid., pp. 174-5, 229-33.
120. Oldenburg, 'Lifestyle', p. 261.
121. Qureshi, 'Female Agency'; Amelia Maciszewski, 'Tawa'if, Tourism,
and Tales', pp. 332-51.
122. Neuman, The Life of Music, has some perfunctory' material on
contemporary courtesans, pp. 100-2, 222-3.
123. Oldenburg, 'Lifestyles', pp. 277-9, proposed that female courtesans,
like primarily male sanyasis or ascetics, were rejecting the householder
role, and Marglin, Wives of the God-King, also proposed similarities,
pp. 20-1. Much remains unknown about the social origins and histories
of both courtesans and ascetics, and while it seems that lower caste and
disadvantaged persons could find refuge in brothels and ascetic orders,
 422 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis
recent work on some ascetics shows quite different adaptations to the
modem Indian state. See Leonard, 'From Goswami Rajas'; Kasturi,
"'Asceticising" Monastic Families'; Pinch, 'Soldier Monks and Militant
Sadhus', and Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires.
124. Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography, likens the silences
of women refusing to speak about their marriages to 'being married
differently', to women's agency negotiating marriage, p. 57;
Maciszewski, 'Tawa'if, Tourism, and Tales', n. 20, p. 349. Agrawal's
Chaste Wives and Prostitute Sisters provides rich ethnographic material
about the Bedias, a particular rural north Indian community and one
to which Visweswaran's remark about 'being married differently'
obviously applies.
125. Maciszewski, 'Tawa'if, Tourism, and Tales', n. 1, p. 348, pp. 339, 333,
334.
126. Reinforcing Oldenburg's findings, Premchand's novel The Courtesans'
Quarter features a young Brahman wife who escapes an oppressive
husband by becoming a tawa' if; the novel focuses on the men, recalling
Schoberg's point that Mughal courtesan tales focused on courtiers rather
than courtesans.
127. Maciszewski, 'Tawa'if, Tourism, and Tales', pp. 333, 334.
128. Ibid., p. 333.
129. Ibid., p. 335.
130. Ibid., p. 348.
131. CDs accompany two recent books, one featuring Gauhar Jan (Sampath,
My Name is Gauhar Jaan!) and one with tracks by Begum Akhtar,
Zarina Parveen, Chandni, and Arona Devi (as discussed in Qureshi,
'Female Agency', and Amelia Maciszewski, 'Tawa'if, Tourism, and
Tales'.
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426 Hyderabad and Hyderabadis Courtesans ofHyderabad and Beyound 427
APPENDIX I: SUMMARIES OF ELEVEN PENDING CASES 1875 penalty of Rs. 200 ifthe agreement was not kept. Since the mistreatment
continues, new arrangements must be made.
1. 1873, Roshenji of 'ilaqah Navrangji asks Syed Rifai son of Hakim 10. 1873, Zia Ali Saduddin demands that the dancing girl Dilaramji repay
Mir Qurban Ali to return her daughter Omdah Bakhsh and her jewels. the loans he made to her. The Diwani Court decided on repayments of
Suspended in 1875, the case started again after appeal to the Madar-ul Rs. 75 a month but she has not presented herself to make the payments.
Moham; the decision was to stop the man's salary and remit part of it to 11 . n.d., Vazir Bakhsh of'ilaqah Chandaji, Mahbubjiwali [resident ofMahbub
Roshenji. ki Mehndi, the dancing girl locality] against her daughter Amir Bakhsh,
2. 1874, Phandaji asks for the salary of Mohammed Karimuddin and for wanting her to return. The daughter had a pain and was sent to the kacheri
the jewels of Salar Bakhsh, her daughter. Case not yet concluded but an (office) of the Arbab-i Nishat against her mother's wishes. She was kept
agreement for Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 60 a month has been tentatively reached there for three or four days and sent home, so there is no case.
[a thick separate file is discussed in the text].
3. 1874, Mohanji of'ilaqah Budaji, asks Ikram Khan, son of the brother of
Hamid Khan, to return her daughter Mehtabji and her j ewels. The Qazi 's
office produced a nikah (marriage) certificate; the mother accepted the
marriage but still claimed Rs. 5,000 for the jewels. The serrishtahdar
Rae Sukh Lal was ordered to stop the man's salary, but Mohanji is still
waiting for the money.
4. 1877, Kaminiji, asks Fiaz Ali Khan Bahadur to return her daughter Ilahi
Bakhsh and her jewels. But the man is related to Bari Begum Sahib
Dilavarunnisa Begum [the Nizam's wife], so the Madar-ul Moham has
been appealed to but without a result yet.
5. n.d., Papaji, asks Ali Hussein, son of Faiziuddaulah, to return Imtiaz
Bakhsh and her jewels. The Majlis decided to pay Papaji Rs. 72 a month
but the decision is being resisted as unreasonable and no money has been
turned over yet.
6. n.d., Amumiyan Sahib asks Husamuddin, grandson of Moulvi Akbar
Sahib, to return the jewels and the salary of his daughter Madanji. The
Majlis decided that the jewels and five months salary should be paid, and
this was given by Husamuddin, but it is still in the custody of the Majlis
as the father has not come for it yet.
7. 1876, Baguji and other children ofMehtabji of'ilaqah Chandaji request
accommodation. By decision of all the head tawa'ifs (collectively),
accommodation was refused, but then an agreement was made to put the
petitioners and their salaries in the house of Chandaji if they signed a
• surety bond regarding their jewels and characters. So far the petitioners
have not presented this bond.
8. 1875, Madar Bakhsh requests Ahmed Ullah Baig, Munshi Sadr Topa-
khanah, to return her daughter Mumin Bakhsh. The decision in 1876
was that he should pay Rs. 60 a month to Madar Bakhsh; he signed a
statement to do so with his own brothers as witnesses but has not paid.
9. 1875, Roshen Bakhsh and other girls oflmtiaz Bakhsh's house complain
of beatings and insufficient food. The Majlis got a written agreement
from Imtiaz Bakhsh not to beat them and to give food and announced a