by RAHMA ALI
Pakistan’s tawaifs [courtesans] occupy shadow spaces in the country’s social fabric. It might seem natural for women belonging to this pesha [occupation] to hold the status they do, but the truth of the matter is that once upon a pre-colonial time, their position was far more elevated.
Over time — dating back to the times of the colonial intervention in India — different forces in power, including the Mughal Empire, India’s feudal lords, the British and the rising nationalists of India and Pakistan, competed for primacy in determining social attitudes towards the tawaifs. These forces have actively sought to ‘delete’ the figure of the tawaif from our imagination. This process to evict tawaifs from the acceptable realm of society — and in time, our collective memory (both oral and in writing) — was initiated in the Indian Subcontinent by the British Raj.
Before and after the British
The period between the 15th and 21st centuries in India (referred to as ‘modern India’) is perhaps the most essential time to assess the major ruptures in the Indian Subcontinent’s courtesan culture.
While the tawaifs were patronised by the Mughal royal courts or the Nawab of Lucknow, they enjoyed great esteem. They were considered powerhouses of Indian aesthetic and spiritual culture. They exercised a magnetic stronghold over the minds of the Indian royalty and nobility, commanding dignity and reverence for their professional training in aesthetics, etiquette and the performance of dance and music.
In Mughal India, Hindu wives imitated the fashion choices of the tawaifs. They fashioned their hair, clothes and jewellery in ways that were noticeably borrowed from the ways of the tawaifs. In early modern articulations of culture, social etiquette and social influence were synonymous with professional training in the musical and literary arts. And the Indian tawaif epitomised the ideal in this regard.
However, the British arrival changed the high stature of the tawaifs. While the British coloniser’s initial reaction to the courtesan was a combination of intrigue and revulsion, active campaigning against the courtesan soon began in the late 19th century.
This was when they came to recognise the social power held by the tawaifs due to their mastery in cultural practices — such as dance, etiquette and music — along with their being in the highest tax-paying bracket in Lucknow at the time. The latter is argued by Veena Talwar Oldenburg in her paper ‘The Case of the Courtesans in Lucknow, India’, published in 1990.
To challenge their power, the British started to campaign against them, by first reducing the once culturally empowered tawaif to a mere ‘female entertainer’ whose purpose was to please the man. This was in contrast to how the British initially considered them. In the initial years of the British arrival in India, Englishmen developed a fascination for the naach [dance] of the Awadhi Royal Court. British officers, and especially soldiers, began hiring ‘nautch girls’ frequently for dinner parties and evenings of amusement.
Pallabi Chakravorty, in Bells of Change (2008), quotes from a British army officer’s journal: “[I was] met by his friend Major MacNeal who was preceded by a troupe of nautch girls.” The latter encircled his palanquin, dancing until he entered the Major’s house in Arcot.
In their attempt to imitate the lifestyles of the Mughal nobility, Englishmen began adopting some of their manners and customs. They started keeping their own troupes of ‘nautch girls’ for the purposes of entertaining English dignitaries. And following the dismantling of the Royal Mughal Court, the patronage of the music and arts (most strongly associated with the tawaif) shifted to the hands of the British.
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