A Short History of Tawa'ifs in India

Navaneeth Krishnan. S

M.A History (Hons)

University of Hyderabad

A 'Tawa'if' (Urdu: ‫ )فئاوط‬also Kanjri or Kanjari was a courtesan who purveyed to the nobility of
India, particularly during the era of the Mughal Empire. The tawa'ifs excelled and contributed to music, dance (mujra),
theatre, film, and the Urdu literary tradition, were considered an authority on etiquette. Tawa'ifs were the influential
female elite, were largely a North Indian institution that became prominent during the weakening of the Mughal rule in
the mid-18th century. The patronage of the Mughal court before and after the Mughal Dynasty in the Doab region
and the artistic atmosphere of 16th century Lucknow made arts-related careers a viable prospect. As well as the
demand for (mostly) male music and dance teachers, many girls were taken at a young age and trained in both
performing arts (such as Kathak and Hindustani classical music) as well as literature (ghazal, thumri) to high
standards. Once they had matured and possessed a sufficient command over dancing and singing, they became a
tawa'if, high-class courtesans who served the rich and the nobility. It is also believed that young nawabs-to-be
were sent to these "tawa'ifs" to learn "tameez" and "tehzeeb" which included the ability to differentiate and
appreciate good music and literature, perhaps even practice it, especially the art of ghazal writing. By the 18th
century they had become the central element of polite, refined culture in North India.These courtesans would
dance, sing (especially ghazals), recite poetry (shairi) and entertain their suitors at mehfils. Like the geisha
tradition in Japan, their main purpose was to professionally entertain their guests, and while sex was often
incidental, it was not assured contractually. High-class or the most popular tawaifs could often pick and choose
among the best of their suitors.Some of the popular tawaifs were Begum Samru - who rose to rule principality
of Sardhana in western UP, Moran Sarkar - who became wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Wazeeran - consort of
Lucknow’s last nawab, Wajid Ali Shah, Umrao Jaan Ada, and Gauhar Jaan.

A similar tradition was followed in some parts of ancient India,

called as Nagarvadhu or Nagar Vadhu. Women competed to win
the title of a Nagarvadhu, and it was not considered a taboo. The
most beautiful woman was chosen as the Nagarvadhu. A Nagarvadhu
was respected like a queen or Goddess, but she was a courtesan or
prostitute; people could see her dance and sing. A Nagarvadhu's
price for a single night's dance was very high, and she was only
within the reach of the very rich – the king, the princes, and the
lords. As an example I am mentioning names of two famous
Nagarvadhus - Amrapali, state courtesan and Buddhist disciple,
described in Vaishali Ki Nagarvadhu by Acharya Chatursen,
Vasantasenā, a character in the classic Sanskrit story of
nd
Mricchakatika, written in the 2 century BC by Sudraka.

Vasantasenā; by Raja Ravi Varma

Veena Talwar Oldenburg through her investigations has found out that, in the civic tax ledgers of 1858-77 and
in the related official correspondence preserved in the Municipal Corporation records'...they were classed under
the occupational category of "dancing and singing girls," and as if it was not surprise enough to find women in
the tax records, it was even more remarkable that they were in the highest tax bracket, with the largest
individual incomes of any in the city. The courtesans' names were also on lists of property (houses, orchards,
manufacturing and retail establishments for food and luxury items) confiscated by British officials for their
proven involvement in the siege of Lucknow and the rebellion against British rule in 1857. These women,
though patently noncombatants, were penalized for their instigation of and pecuniary assistance to the rebels.

These courtesans appeared in other British colonial records as well. They were the subject of frequent official
memorandums written in connection with a grave medical crisis that engulfed the military establishment in
Lucknow, as well as in all the major cantonments in British India. A greater number of European casualties
during the mutiny and rebellion of 1857, it was discovered, were caused by disease than in combat. The shock
of this discovery was compounded by the embarrassing fact that one in every four European soldiers was
afflicted with a venereal disease. It became clear that the battle to reduce European mortality rates would now
be joined on the hygienic front, to ensure a healthy European army for the strategic needs of the empire. It
became imperative that the courtesans and prostitutes of Lucknow, along with those in the other 110
cantonments in India. The imposition of the contagious diseases regulations and heavy fines and penalties on
the courtesans for their role in the rebellion signaled the gradual debasement of an esteemed cultural institution
into common prostitution. "Singing and dancing girls" was the classification invented to describe them in the
civic tax ledgers and encapsulates one of the many profound cultural misunderstandings of "exotic" Indian
women by colonial authorities. Characteristically they responded by keeping two sets of books on their income,
bribing the local da'i, or nurse, to avoid bodily inspections, bribing local policemen to avoid arrests for selling
liquor to the soldiers, or publicly refusing to pay taxes even when threatened with imprisonment. Veena
Oldenburg said that their "life-style" is resistance to rather than a perpetuation of patriarchal values. Quite
unexpectedly, another set of archival documents revealed about group of courtesans living in Lucknow in 1976.
These documents were the intercepted letters written by the Shi'i ruler, Wajid Ali Shah, to some of his wives,
whom he had been forced to abandon in the capital city of Lucknow, after the British annexed the prosperous
and fertile Awadh Province in northern India and exiled him in 1856.
Typically a wealthy courtier, often the king himself," began
his direct association with a kotha by bidding for a virgin
whose patron he became with the full privileges and
obligations of that position. He was obliged to make regular
contributions in cash and jewelry and privileged to invite his
friends to soirees and enjoy an exclusive sexual relationship
with a tawa'if. It is popularly believed that the chaudharayan's
most common mode of recruitment has always been
kidnapping; that the tawa'if were linked to a large underground
network of male criminals who abducted very young girls from
villages and small towns and sold them to the kothas or
nishatkhanas (literally, pleasure houses). Gulbadan(a
courtesan) ex-plained that not all women in need can make
the kotha their refuge; some are not talented enough to
become courtesans, and some are too anxious about their
moral standing. The women who said that their own parents
had sold them when they were unable to feed them, much
less pay for a wedding and a dowry, felt that their parents
were forced by circumstances to make such a hard decision.
Those who dare to hold "moral"objections to the life of a tawa'ifs hould first examine the thankless toil of an
average housewife, including her obligation to satisfy a sometimes faithless or alcoholic or violent husband for
the sake of a meager living. Such an existence is with-out dignity, and was not the situation of the housewife
tantamount to that of a common prostitute, giving her body for money? The courtesans' use burqa, which is a
long overcloak that Muslim women in purdah wear for extended seclusion outside the home. This cloak, usually
black or white, is worn over regular clothes and covers the wearer from head to foot. It has a small rectangular
piece of netting that fits over the eyes that enables the wearers to see, while they cannot be seen at all. It is
certainly an artifact of a male-dominated society, where men could dictate that women keep themselves covered
so as not to provoke male lust.

Almost every one of the women when interviewed during these

many visits claimed that their closest emotional relationships
were among themselves, and eight of them admitted, when I
pressed them, that their most satisfying physical involvements
were with other women. They referred to themselves as chapat
baz, or lesbians, and to chapti, or chipti, or chapat bazi, or
lesbianism. They seemed to attach little importance to labels
and made no verbal distinctions between homosexual and
heterosexual relations. There was no other "serious"or poetic
term for lesbianism, so I settled for the colloquialisms. Their
explanation for this was that emotions and acts of love are
gender-free." Serious" words such as mohabbat( Urdu) or prem
(Hindi)or "love"( English) are versatile and can be used to
describe many kinds of love, such as the love of man or
woman, the love for country, for siblings, parents of either sex,
so there was no need to have a special term for love between
two women. Although their lesbianism is a strictly private
matter for them, the absence of a specialized vocabulary makes
it a simple fact of life, like heterosexual love, or the less denied
male homosexual love.

The tawa'if have created a secular meritocracy based on talent and education,
accepting Hindus and Muslims alike. They too, like the ascetics, hold
positions of respect by the society at large, and both counter cultures exist by
maintaining vital links to the overarching patriarchal culture, while
consciously inverting or rejecting its values. By opting for the institutional
security of a monastery or a brothel, both groups wielded political power in
the past through the powerful heads of sects in ancient Hindu kingdoms in the
subcontinent or through the chaudharayanin precolonial Lucknow and other
court cities, such as Hyderabad, Rampur, Banaras, Bijapur, and Golkonda.
Returning to the question of sexuality, as reality and as a nakhra, because
there is the larger question, that of the social construction of sexuality, that
may well be illuminated by analyzing the world view of courtesans of
Lucknow.
By systematically reversing the socialization process for females, in order to combat the disabilities inherent in
women's existing social and sexual roles, the courtesans have logically "constructed" lesbian existence as a
legitimate alternative, just as much as Indian society at large constructs and enforces, through the institution of
compulsory marriage, heterosexuality as "normative" behavior. Heterosexual relations for most of the
courtesans was work, not pleasure...the growing evidence of lesbianism in brothels, salons, geisha houses, and
apartments of call girls in international capitals, which is a universal common denominator across time and
space.

Lesbian Geishas (above picture)

 Moti Chandra, in his study The World of Courtesans (first published in 1976), attempts to
provide a compilation of the various kinds of roles played by the courtesan women since the Vedic period. He
talks about their sexual, ritual and sacred roles and, citing various sources, catalogues the various terms that
have been employed for the courtesans over the ages—ganika, khumbhadasi—and the hierarchies between
these various terms. At the same time, the book is framed by a narrative that sees courtesans as women who
“served the baser needs of society but were also a symbol of culture and arsamoris.” At the same time, while
Moti Chandra sees these women as morally base and “living the life of shame”. perhaps depriving the rich
Aryans of a part of their possessions in cattle and gold.”Further, Chandra seeks to configure the courtesan
women primarily according to their sexual function, seeing it as the sole aspect that ‘explains’ all dimensions of
the courtesan, sexual, cultural and political. In this sense, Moti Chandra’s history of the courtesan women does
not explore the complexities of the inter-relationships between these women and the extant patriarchal
structures, even though it is a ‘women’s history’.

On the other hand, Vikram Sampath’s My Name is

Gauhar Jan (2010) produces a narrative that can be
traced through time, garnering a sense of gendered
community, in its relationship with the newly arrived
modern technology, specifically the gramophone,
and how it ‘rescues’ the courtesan women from their
depravity. Sampath’s Gauhar Jan escapes a life of
victimhood that her predecessors led as she is saved
by modern technology. But Sampath seems to miss
out on a number of historical questions that cannot
but be related to the popularity of Gauhar Jan as a
gramophone singer- why are courtesan women like
Gauhar Jan the first to sing for the gramophone?
What other options in terms of performance venues
or audiences are available to the courtesan women
singers? Are these two aspects related, and if so,
does it necessarily produce the ‘emancipatory’
narrative Samapth writes in his biography of Gauhar
Jan?
India's first disc had Gauhar Jaan, singing a khayal in
Raag Jogiya, recorded on 2 November 1902, by Fred
Gaisberg, an assistant to Emile Berliner, the father of
Gramophone record.

The courtesan figure in historical narratives is variously referred to as the dancing girl, natch girl, tawa'if,
kothewali. These categories, each with their own significance, were read within a broad category of ‘prostitute’
with the advent of the colonial government and administration in India. Accounts of pre-colonial India show
that a number of courtesan women lived under the patronage of a king/nawab and were, economically,
relatively independent. Tamkeen Kazmi, in his book Hyderabad Aisa Bhi Tha (translatable as Hyderabad As It
Was), points out that, in the Deccani context, the word tawa'if was coined for singing and dancing girls and not
for prostitutes. These women were trained in a long standing tradition of skilled entertainment. During any
happy occasion, it was these tawa'ifs who provided entertainment and performed, especially on marriage and
birth of male child among aristocrats and elites. Hence they were known to be artists with skills.
The Nizam, from early years of the 18th Century, patronized tawa'ifs by establishing a separate office known as
‘Dafter-e-ArbabNishat’ (Offices of Head of Pleasure). In the Asafjahi court, during the period of Nizam Ali
khan, in 1730s, “a sum of rupees twelve thousand per month was spent towards salaries of tawa'ifs.”. The
tawaifs held a very respectable position in Nizams society, they were looked upon as artists. It was compulsory
for tawaifs to sing in the marriage functions, and after the nikah a group photo was taken for the sake of
remembrance. The invited tawa'if was also given place. Tawa'ifs were an integral part of various festivities-
marriage celebrations, Bismillah ceremonies and Urs (death anniversaries of Sufi saints). Tamkeen Kazmi
argues that there were two kind of professional women in this period— prostitutes and tawa'ifs. He says that
latter were usually, “highly cultured women, very disciplined and trained in etiquettes and mannerisms…they
were also teachers in mannerisms…” While this account clearly marks its modernist imperative by creating a
demarcation between the sexual and cultural functions of the courtesan, what remains useful is its detailing of a
whole range of social functions of the courtesan, which can be shown to contest the contemporary equivalence
between ‘courtesan’ and ‘prostitute’. Kenneth Ballhatchet, in his book, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj:
Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics 1873-1905, points out that “British soldiers seemed to need
protection from the dangers of mercenary love,” and before the end of the eighteenth century, the Governor-
General in council had authorized the building of ‘hospitals for the reception of diseased women’ at Behrampur,
Kanpur, Dinapur and Fatehnagar. Prostitutes admitted to these institutions were not allowed to leave till they
had been ‘certified’ as cured. The question then is, if the courtesan/prostitutes posed such a threat, why were
their establishments not shut down? Ballhatchet points out, “In satisfying the soldiers’ masculine needs,
prostitutes are seen as playing a positive role, helping their clients to remain manly” As a result, there is “no
condemnation of prostitutes on moral grounds nor is there any attempt to persuade them to change their
occupation…prostitutes were not denounced as sinners, but society permitted them no alternate occupation.
Rehabilitation was precluded both by Indian realities and by British necessities.” Thus, the relations of power
did not comprise of simplistic relationships of oppression.
The nationalist movement in its Gandhian phase was geared towards involving women into the freedom
struggle. Interestingly, while it seems that colonial discourse situates the courtesan outside the domain of
culture, the constitution of the woman subject in nationalist discourse seems to simultaneously constitute the
woman subject around cultural markers, repeatedly. The depictions of womanhood in this period are many in
poetry, prose and journals. An editorial published in Chaand, a popular women’s journal, defined the ideal
woman as“…she should be free from the present ignorance, bad influences and ill feelings…she should not
observe purdah but this does not mean that she should go out laden with jewels, unnecessarily attracting men’s
attention…she should know how to fight oppression and to defend herself with her own hands, singing and
keeping merry are her ornaments, but only songs that become a respectable woman, she should be as virtuous as
a heroic wife and as courageous as a mother of lions and bear sons who will free India from servitude” 48. Partha
Chatterjee in his essay, The Nation and its Women, has argued that the inner (domestic) domain of women
became invested with the urgency of preserving the sanctity of national culture. At the same time, the
nationalist discourse was trying to purify itself of bad influences like the courtesan women. The nationalist
movement found its early expressions in the form of social reform programmes, such as the antinautch
campaigns, through which the richly diverse and stratified group of courtesan women was reduced into a
homogenous group which was a threat to the wellbeing of the society.
The clarion call for an abolishment of the natch was first given in Madras in around 1892-93. The government
also came up with an official decree whereby all natch girls were branded as mere prostitutes. This branding
also extended to devadasis. This also led to the rise of efforts to sanitize the themes and forms of various
performing arts to make them accessible to the general public and at the same time giving them a new, modern
base. People like Rabindranath Tagore, Madame Menaka, Rukmini Devi Arundale, Pandit Vishnu Bhatkhande
all played a major role in this project. Further, while, on the one hand, the early 20 th century found an increasing
prominence of women from a courtesan background in the cinema and gramophone industries. David Lelyveld,
in his essay, Upon the Subdominant, talks about the role All India Radio played in “integrating Indian Culture
and raising standards". One of the first acts of the interim government of 1946 was to bar singers and musicians
from the “courtesan” culture- anyone whose private life was a public scandal. Thus to an extent the nationalist
discourse seems to replicate certain logics of exclusion, like in the case of courtesan women, that are to be
found in colonial discourse, which thus undermines the nationalism of a higher political community created
around the idea of a national culture. But just as colonial practices did not simply do away with the courtesan,
the place of the courtesan in nationalist discourse was not premised on simple inclusions/exclusions. Vikram
Sampath cites an incident in which Gandhi himself approached Gauhar Jan and requested her to organize a
concert and help raise money for the freedom movement in 1920. Notwithstanding this, when courtesan women
organized themselves into groups and wanted to be a part of Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement in 1921, the
proposal was rejected as being morally objectionable. While Gandhi seems to exclude courtesans of one kind,
he is willing to associate with another aspect of courtesan culture, in a different place and context. Thus, we can
see how the figure of the courtesan becomes an important site in contestations around the constitution of the
modern woman in and between colonial and nationalist discourse, where positions are constantly negotiated.
The arrival and growth of the new imperialism and the establishment of the colonial government brought about
a change in the relationship of the courtesan subject to the state. The erstwhile patronage and benevolence was
replaced by the desire to control these women’s bodies and restrict them spatially. Through various decrees,
such as the Contagious Disease Act of 1864, the courtesan women, grouped as prostitutes, were brought into the
fold of state control. The white man saved the brown women from diseases and unhygienic living conditions in
return for their services—domestic, sexual and other entertainment. These women are desired both by brown
and white men. At the same time, there is a simultaneous decline in the cultural aspects of courtesan
performance, due to increasing standardization of music and dance and codification of moral conduct for
women in general and women performers in particular.
But new media, like the film and gramophone industry, become alternate career options. While there have been
women like Jaddan Bai, who made a successful transition into the film industry, or Gauhar Jan, whose was the
first Indian voice to be recorded for the gramophone, these opportunities were not available to most. The
relationship of the courtesan subject and modernity is not a simple one. While the gramophone recordings were
made for western consumers to begin with, they also made their way into the Indian market. As Amanda
Weidman argues in her book, Singing them Classical, Voicing the Modern, the new medium of gramophone
recording essentially disassociates the voice from the body and makes is available for repeated and personal
consumption. And while this enables the survival of a number of courtesan-centric cultural forms, it also opens
the way for the rise of classical performers like M.S. Subhalakshmi, whose persona and musical career have
been shown by Weidman to be articulated around this dissociation of the body of the performer—which was no
longer part of the performance- and the voice. Even dance performances become highly codified and structured,
devoid of the interactions and flirtatious adaa, the mehfil that characterized the gatherings of the courtesan
performer and her audience.
There are further reasons which may have provided some motivation for the elimination of the tawa'if. These
include cultural chauvinism, and simple jealousy on the part of British women. Although the social purity
movement appears to be the strongest motivation for the elimination of the tawa'if, with political considerations
a distant second, we must not discount these other forces.

Cultural chauvinism must be considered when we search for other motivations to eliminate the tawa'if. The
th
British who lived in India at the end of the 19 century were convinced that European culture, especially
English culture, was the absolute pinnacle, and that any other culture was automatically inferior. The tawaifs
represented a major reservoir of Indian culture. Therefore in the British mind, the tawa'if represent a form of
cultural "degeneration" that, like the more physical forms, must be eliminated.

One other reason which certainly must have been considered by some British, especially the British women
th
living in India, was the potential threat posed by the tawa'ifs. Toward the later part of the 19 century,
improvements in transportation, coupled with improvements in public health (at least in the British cantonment
areas), made India much less hazardous. The result was that there was a substantial rise in the number of
British women living in India. The presence of the tawa'if could not help but be viewed as a competition for the
amorous attentions of their men folk. After all, the presence of the Anglo-Indian community stood as a silent
testament to this sort of thing.

British memsahib in India

We have already said that in order for the anti-nautch movement to be successful, there had to be both the
desire to eliminate the tawa'if as well as the the ability to do so. We have discussed at great length many of the
reasons which created the desire to eliminate them. Now we must look at many of the events which lead to the
ability to eliminate the tawa'if. In the next section we will look into many of the events which empowered the
British to eliminate the tawa'if.
th
By the late 19 century, many things had changed in regards to British living in India. Whereas a century
earlier, social intercourse between Indians and British expatriates had been extensive, in the Victorian era, this
tended to be frowned upon. Earlier generations of British freely married Indian women and merged with the
local population. But in Victorian India, interactions were carefully proscribed by etiquette. Any Britisher who
went beyond the necessary interactions might be accused of "going native". This was of course a great social
sin and caused the offender to be subjected to extreme ostracism. While earlier generations of British knew
very well that they were economically and technologically no better than their Indian counterparts, later British
were completely convinced that British culture was superior to Indian culture in every regard. This mindset
created a widespread disdain for the local culture and traditions.

Such disdain for the local culture was easily demonstrate in the deteriorating relations between the British and
tawa'ifs. In the early days of the East India company, it was very normal for British to hire nautch-girls (many
th
of whom were tawa'ifs) to dance at their social functions. However by the later part of the 19 century, social
functions tended to be more of the ballroom dancing that one might find in England. Indian dancing started to
be frowned upon.

Official function with traditional nautch

The rising unacceptability of Indian dance and its practitioners is illustrated by an incident that occurred in
1890. Prince Albert visited India and was entertained to a traditional Indian dance. Visiting dignitaries had
been entertained to traditional Indian dance for as long as anyone was aware; however this time things were
little different. There were protests from many quarters, especially from a Christian missionary by the name of
Reverend J. Murdoch. He printed a number of publications strongly condemning these "nautch parties" and
called for all British to refrain from attending them. The persecutions of Indian dancers by reverend Murdoch
was just a small indication of a social phenomenon that was emerging. This was the spread of the Social Purity
movement from Great Britain to India. As it turned out, once the Social Purity Movement spread to India, it
would assume a character that in some ways was different from its original British form. The large number of
missionary based publishing houses was one reason for the rise of the anti-nautch movement. The Christian
missionaries controlled a very significant portion of the publishing houses in the subcontinent. Initially this
publishing infrastructure was devoted to the publication of bibles in the various indigenous languages.
However as the capacity of these publishing houses increased, they very quickly branched off into other
directions as motivated by issues of the day. By the latter part of the 19th century, Indian dance was considered
to be one such issue. One of the early agitators against Indian dance was the "Madras Christian Literature
Society"; they printed a fair amount of anti-nautch literature. The views of many of these Christian missionaries
were at times extreme. Many Christian publications went so far as to say that simply looking at an Indian dance
was sufficient to arouse unchristian feelings. But it was not just British and Indian Christian converts that were
behind the Anti-Nautch moment, the Indian bourgeoisie was also involved.

Considering 1892 to be the birth year of the anti-nautch movement. This was the year that an an appeal was put
forth by the "Hindu Social Reforms Associations" simultaneously to the Governor General of India and the
Governor of Madras. The official replies from both the Viceroy and the Governor of Madras were polite, but
clearly denied any connection between devdasis, dance girls, and prostitution. However, religious zealots have
never been ones to allow facts to interfere with their thinking. They were resolute in their efforts. Since they
were unable to get any official action on this matter, they started to directly target individuals who hired dancers
to entertain at their social functions. They called for the British to boycott dance girls and functions where
"nautch-walis" were hired. The anti-nautch movement very quickly spread from the devdasis of the South, to
the tawaifs in the North. As social purity organisations were established in Northern India, the tawa'if became
the target there. In the next few decades, organisations such as the "Punjab Purity Association" (Lahore), the
"Social Service League" (Bombay), and a host of others were established. One publication from the "Punjab
Purity Association" quotes the social reformer Keshub Chandra Sen as saying that the nautch-girl was a
"hideous woman...hell in her eyes. In her breast is a vast ocean of poison. Round her comely waist dwell the
furies of hell. Her hands are brandishing unseen daggers ever ready to strike unwary or wilful victims that fall
in her way. Her blandishments are India's ruin. Alas! her smile is India's death."

Salvation Army in India (Sarcastically)

Another example of the extreme zeal of many who pursued the anti-nautch moment may be seen in the case of
miss Helen Tennant. She truly believed that it was her assignment from God to abolish dance girls. She came
all the way from England to India for this purpose. The efforts of the anti-nautch activists continued unabated
for years. It spread out of the circles of missionaries and social purity reformers, and into the mainstream. It
finally reached a point where in 1905, contrary to tradition, it was decided not to have an Indian dance at the
reception for the Prince of Wales in Madras.

At this time, the situation of the tawa'if was very bad. The social expectations created by the anti-nautch
movement had become a self fulfilling prophesy. Decades of persecution and a boycott of their arts, created an
environment of desperation for the tawa'ifs. They were unable to pursue their arts due to social pressures;
therefore there became little incentive to maintain artistic standards. In such desperate circumstances, the
tawa'ifs had no recourse for survival other than the common prostitution for which they had been accused.
In this environment, there were serious concerns whether their art-forms would survive. The kathak dance, the
thumree, the gazal,and dadra, were all under serious pressure. But as we will see, there was a curious and
complex chain of events which transpired which rescued the art-forms, even though the tawa'if tradition itself
was beyond being saved. From the standpoint of the tawa'ifs, the social dynamics were changing fast. This was
a transitional period in Indian history, and at times things were quite complicated.

There were interactions between freedom fighters and the tawa'ifs; but this did not represent an endorsement of
the tawa'ifs. Individual tawa'ifs were known on occasion to support the Indian National Congress with financial
contributions; but there was really no reciprocation of support by the independence movement. It was clear that
as a matter of policy, the Indian National Congress considered the tawa'ifs to be a social evil; one, like sati (self
immolation of widows upon husband's funeral pyre), child marriages, and restrictions on widow remarriage,
needed to be eliminated.

Let us look at a two remarkable tawa'ifs:

Jaddanbai (1892-1949) - Jaddanbai was a tawaif who by all accounts was an extremely remarkable woman.
She is mostly remembered as the mother of the Bollywood film star Nargis, and grandmother to Sanjay Dutt.
However in her time, she was a master music composer, singer, actress, and even film maker. It is interesting to
note that there is a persistent rumour that Jaddanbai was the illegitimate daughter of Motilal Nehru by way of
her mother, the famous tawaif Daleepabai of Allahabad.

Jaddanbai (extreme right) with Dilip Kumar, Nargis, and Mehboob.

Begum Akhtar (1914 - 1974) - Finally we must also not forget the late
Begum Akhtar. She may be considered one of the last of the tawa'ifs.
She gave her first public performance at the age of 15; we are fortunate
that she lived recently enough that a large number of her gazals, dadras
and thumris could be preserved in recordings. Her influence over the
musical world cannot be overstated.

Begum Akhtar
 Conclusion
The passing of the tawa'if's arts to the middle class was not an easy job. It could not have been done without
the sacrifice, and hard work, of many people. This included tawa'ifs as well as members of the middle class.
This process required the middle class to submerge themselves into the kotha culture of musicians, poets, and
tawa'ifs; take their arts; and then use modern approaches to preserve and propagate them. Such endeavours
involved combinations of modern musicology, gramophone recordings, publication of books, and a wide range
of activities. Although we consider such activities normal today, they were unknown to many of the tawa'ifs,
and considered to be revolutionary at the time. There were a number of arts that had a strong association with
the tawa'ifs. Dance was the focal point of the anti-nautch movement. Very obviously the dancers themselves
suffered the most, and the dance itself was under considerable pressure. It is interesting to note that the extreme
pressure placed upon kathak and its exponents caused this dance to bifurcate into two genres. There is the
kathak and there is the mujara. A movement on the order of the anti-nautch movement would be expected to
cause a considerable amount of collateral damage. Remember that the nautch was not merely an Indian dancing
girl, but represented a large and more complex social, artistic, and economic entity. If the tawa'if suffered
socially and economically, then her musical accompanists also suffered, the tailors that specialised in their
refined expensive, yet very specialised clothing also suffered. Furthermore, it is not just people who suffer, but
entire musical and dance genres suffer. The rise of the harmonium and the decline in the sarangi are directly
attributable to the anti-nautch movement. The sarangi had become so closely identified with tawa'if, that
sarangi players found it extremely difficult to find work. The stigma attached to the sarangi was so great and
st
lasted so long, that it was only around the turn of the 21 century, that we have seen any major resurgence in
interest in this instrument. Tabla is another instrument that, like the sarangi, became linked to the tawa'if. The
result was that during the height of the anti-nautch movement and even for a long time afterwards, there was a
tremendous stigma attached to both the tabla as well as tabla players. The term "tabalchi" (i.e., one who plays
the tabla), became synonymous with a drunk, a pimp, or a vulgar member of society. Today the tawa'ifs are
virtually gone. The word has become redefined so that today, it is applied to a common prostitute. These
prostitutes have nothing in common with the tawa'ifs of old. But in a sense the tawa'ifs live on. They live on in
everyone who is either Indian or has some connection with Indian music. Just as a person is defined by their
soul and not their body, it is the artistic soul of the tawa'if which is still strong, even though their physical
presence is virtually gone.
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 "Fall of a culture". Tribune India. Retrieved 22 January 2012.

 "Courtesans resisted male dominance". Times of India. 29 December 2002. Retrieved 22

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 "Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow"(1990). Feminist

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 Tula, Meenal and Pande, Rekha (2014). Re-Inscribing the Indian Courtesan: A
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