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Margins: A Journal of Literature and Culture
77
‘My Love of Thee Overflows in the Music of my
Gestures’: The ‘Dancing Girl’ in Modern Indian
Theatre
P. Murali Sharma
Silicon Institute of Technology, Sambalpur
Abstract This paper looks at the representations of courtesans in late
nineteenth century and twentieth century Indian theatre to trace the
shifts in the identities of Indian woman performers as they became
implicated in the changing discourses of colonialism and nationalism.
In doing so, the paper also makes an attempt to study the historically
simultaneous movements of social reform and the revival of performing
arts and their implications on plays like Gurajada Appa Rao’s
Kanyasulkam, Rabindranath Tagore’s Natir Puja, and Tripurari
Sharma’s San Sattavan ka Qissa: Azizun Nisa. This paper seeks to
understand these texts vis-à-vis the social history of dance in India in
order to examine how modern Indian theatre perpetuates certain
dominant perceptions about the courtesans at different moments of
history.
The nationalist project of cultural regeneration aimed at relocating
the dance practices of hereditary performers like the devadasis and the
baijis, thereby restoring respectability to the art forms which eventually
came to be identified as ‘classical’. The ‘Anti-Nautch’ movement which
originated in the southern part of the subcontinent reduced the identity
of the devadasi to that of a prostitute and her cultural practices came to
be perceived as an overt expression of sexuality. This movement aligned
itself to the project of ‘sanitization’ of dance initiated by Rukmini Devi
Arundale in the South and Madame Menaka in the East. The element
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of sringara, as reflected in dance items like padams and javalis in the
devadasi repertoire and thumris associated with the baijis, was done
away with in the process of revival and reconstruction of dance forms
like Bharatanatyam and Kathak. Dance was given a devotional base
by the use of Sanskrit texts for compositions and the dancer was
resurrected as an emblem for the nation.
This paper locates these ideological shifts and cultural re-orientations
in plays like Gurajada Appa Rao’s Kanyasulkam, Rabindranath
Tagore’s Natir Puja, and Tripurari Sharma’s San Sattavan ka Qissa:
Azizun Nisa. Each of the plays mentioned above constructs the
courtesan as the ‘other’ of the ‘chaste’, ‘monogamous’ wife, and as a
woman who embodies unrestrained sexual desire. The paper thus seeks
to examine the ways in which the sanitization of the courtesan and her
performance practices by the redemptive figure of a man emerges as a
recurrent pattern in all the plays. The supposedly ‘sinful’ courtesan is
purged of her sin through her contact with a social reformer(as in
Kanyasulkam), a saint(as in Natir Puja), and through her
transformation in to a ‘virangana’ and her ultimate resurrection as an
emblem for the nation in San Sattavan ka Qissa. In studying these
patterns and their implications, the paper would also attempt to
understand how the changes in the social history of performing arts
continue to inform the ways in which courtesans are represented in
post-independence Indian theatre.
Keywords: Courtesans, devadasis, social reform, Indian women
performers, Anti-Nautch Movement, non-conjugal female sexuality.
This paper looks at the representations of courtesans in
late nineteenth and twentieth century Indian theatre to trace the
shifts in the identities of Indian woman performers as they became
implicated in the changing discourses of colonialism and
nationalism. In doing so, the paper also makes an attempt to
study the historically simultaneous movements of social reform
and the revival of performing arts and their implications for plays
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79
like Gurajada Appa Rao’s Kanyasulkam (1892), Rabindranath
Tagore’s Natir Puja (1924), and Tripurari Sharma’s San Sattavan
ka Qissa: Azizun Nisa (1998). This paper seeks to understand
these texts vis-à-vis the social history of dance in India, with a
special focus on coastal Andhra, Bengal, and Lucknow, in order
to examine how
-modern Indian theatre perpetuates certain dominant
perceptions about the courtesans at different moments of history,
-the theatre, which came to establish itself as a national
cultural institution by the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, redefined the sexuality of women,
-this redefinition changed its perceptions of non-conjugal
female sexuality and urged playwrights to adopt various strategies
to represent it on stage.
The movements for social reform of women performers
like the devadasis and courtesans, which originated in the 1890s
in many parts of Tamil Nadu and the coastal districts of Andhra,
gathered momentum with the involvement of prominent social
reformers like Kandukuri Viresalingam. These movements
voiced the need to abolish the performance practices of the
devadasis, which by then had come to be perceived as unabashedly
erotic and overtly obscene. These movements constituted what
by the end of the nineteenth century was famously referred to as
the ‘Anti-Nautch Campaign’. The devadasis were a community
of temple ritual performers who were ‘dedicated’ to the temples
at an early age so as to facilitate their training in the arts of dance
and music. They were ‘married’ to the presiding deity of the
temple through a series of rituals like the ‘pottukattu’ or the tali
tying ceremony, which also declared them available for services
in the temple. This was often followed by the ‘sadanku’ ceremony,
which celebrated their attainment of puberty. This ceremony
initiated the devadasi in to the profession and proclaimed her a
‘nitya sumangali’ or an ‘eternally auspicious’ woman. Since the
devadasi was married to God, she could never be widowed. These
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ceremonies also advertised her availability for sexual liaisons with
a patron, although she was by no means obliged to maintain his
household. By virtue of her status as a professional woman, she
also enjoyed a certain economic autonomy otherwise denied to
the women of the time. In return for her services to the temple,
she was gifted with a number of acres of land, which could be
inherited by her progeny (Srinivasan 1985 : 1869 : 71).
While social historians and anthropologists have
popularised the story of the disenfranchisement of the devadasi
in the period following social reform activities, they fail to
recognize the differences between the devadasis of Tamil Nadu
and Coastal Andhra. Not all the devadasis who came from the
southern part of the subcontinent were ‘dedicated’ to temples.
There were communities of devadasi-courtesans who performed
both in the temple and in public places. The history of salon
dance performed by courtesans at places other than the temple
remains largely ignored in the work of historians and
anthropologists. As stated by scholars like Soneji, these
courtesans held private soirees either at their establishments or at
the houses of rich patrons. Recent scholarly work on the devadasis
attempts to counter such homogenizing tendencies inherent in
the work of scholars on the subject. To put it in the words of
Davesh Soneji:
The use of the Sanskrit term ‘devadasi’ as an
umbrella term referring to women with temple
associations throughout various parts of South India,
Maharastra, and Orissa, is rooted in colonial attempts
to classify data on such communities…the use of the
term devadasi in particular is problematic in that it
connotes a pan-Indian tradition, evoking Sanskritic
categories over vernacular ones. (2004 : 32)
The devadasis from Coastal Andhra came from the
communities of Kalavantula and Sani and were generally referred
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to as bhogam vallu (pleasure women). In the opinion of Davesh
Soneji, devadasi performances in nineteenth century Andhra
took place primarily in three contexts – the temple, where the
performance was known as gudi seva or temple service, the royal
court, where the performance was called kacheri, or concert, and
the homes of feudal landlords and other wealthy patrons, where
the performance was called mejuvani from the Urdu word
‘mezban’, meaning ‘host’ or ‘landlord’ (2004 : 32).
The Anti-Nautch movement protested against all public
performances by the devadasis and voiced the need for devadasi
reform. It was precisely the devadasis’ inability to conform to the
conventional sexual roles set for women that drew the attention
of the reform lobbyists like missionaries, doctors, journalists,
administrators and social workers, who failed to acknowledge
the diversity of this institution, and perceived them as ‘unchaste’
women or prostitutes. The existence of these forms of nonconjugal female sexuality threatened the moral integrity of the
newly imagined nation, which in turn fuelled the vociferous AntiNautch campaign.
The movement urging the abolition of all ceremonies and
procedures by which young girls dedicated themselves as
devadasis to Hindu temples, was articulated in the first instance
as an Anti-Nautch campaign. The very use of the term ‘nautch’ (a
corruption of the Hindi term nach which was performed by a
more common class of northern dancing girl) suggested the smear
campaign that was to follow.
The Anti-Nautch supporters, largely educated
professionals and Hindus, began their attack on the devadasis’
dance in 1892 using the declamatory and journalistic skills at
their disposal to full effect. Collective publication took the form
of signature protests and marches to the homes of the elite who
refused to heed the call for boycotting the dance at private
celebrations. At the official level memoranda urging legislative
action and a ban on the dance were presented to the Viceroy of
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India and the Governor of Madras who were assured that these
performances were “of women who as everybody knows are
prostitutes and their Excellencies hereafter at least must know to
be such.” After much pressure and recrimination both from the
missionaries and the lobbyists the government agreed to take
sides and by 1911 a despatch was issued desiring nationwide
action to be taken against these performances (Srinivasan 1985:
1873).
The last decades of the nineteenth century also saw the
advent of print media in the Southern part of the subcontinent,
and it was through print that certain views and debates around
the devadasis took shape. It is interesting to note how the newly
emergent print culture participated in the victimization of the
devadasis. Many Tamil and Telugu authors composed poems,
satires, plays and novels which depict the devadasis as moneyhungry courtesans, and view their performance practices with
disfavour. Such works were generally written by men, and
projected their notions of ‘chaste’ womanhood. These
representations constructed the devadasis as the objects of moral
reform. These texts also depicted the devadasi as a corrupt woman
who ensnares young men and robs them of their wealth, thereby
devastating any possibilities of their rehabilitation in to the
domestic sphere. Thus, they voiced the need to protect young
men from the evil influence of the dasis. This kind of literature
has a rich genealogy in South India, as Davesh Soneji has pointed
out:
These early Tamil and Telugu print materials produced
in Madras by men – which include poems, tracts, and
novels – thus facilitated new urban representations
of devadasis as worthy targets of moral and aesthetic
reform. These literary representations of devadasis in
Madras embodied masculine anxieties about the
shifting sexual and moral economy of late nineteenth
and early twentieth century India….In most of this
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writing, the culture of the salon is pitted directly
against that of the home and conjugal unions. (Soneji
2012 : 94)
It was around this time that men like Viresalingam began
taking an active participation in movements for the reform of
social evils in Coastal Andhra. Viresalingam raised his voice
against various forms of discrimination meted out to women.
He critiqued social practices like child marriage, bride price and
advocated widow marriages in Rajamundry. The introduction
of the printing press coincided with the beginnings of social
reform movements in Coastal Andhra, and Viresalingam’s journal
Viveka Vardhani became the instrument of socio-cultural change
in Andhra. With the arrival of the printing press, the possibilities
of the dissemination of ideas through print were opened up, and
literature began to be seen as capable of articulating the ideas of
reform. Viresalingam saw the reformation of the Telugu language
itself as crucial for it to contain ideas of social reform, and urged
writers to use the spoken dialect for their compositions. Inspired
by the example of Viresalingam, creative artists like Gurajada
Appa Rao began redefining Telugu literary language in terms of
its reformist function. It was argued that in order for literature to
be able to voice the need for reform, it had to reach the masses.
Gurajada composed his plays and poems in the spoken dialect
and not in the Sanskritized idiom that was popular by then. His
preface to the first edition of Kanyasulkam (1897) establishes
the spoken dialect of Telugu as the best possible medium in
which dialogues could be framed. In his opinion, the prevalent
literary dialect of Telugu was ‘doubly dead’ by the insertion of
literary devices borrowed from Sanskrit. He acknowledges the
civilizing functions of the reformed literary dialect of Telugu.
Kanyasulkam is the first Telugu play to be composed entirely in
the spoken dialect. Gurajada’s reformist zeal is also manifested in
his recognition of the social function of the Telugu theatre.
Referring to the large number of Sulka marriages (marriages
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where bride money was offered by the groom to the bride’s father)
that were recorded in Vizagapatnam, he asserts that one must
look up to the theatre for the propagation of the ideas of social
reform:
Such a scandalous state of things is a disgrace to society
and literature cannot have a higher function than to
show up such practices and give currency to a high
standard of moral ideas. Until reading habits prevail
among masses, one must look only to the stage to
exert such healthy influence. These considerations
prompted me to compose Kanyasulkam. (Appa Rao
“Preface to the First Edition” np)
Kanyasulkam was an instant success amongst the people
of Andhra and this encouraged Gurajada to come up with a
revised version of the play in the year 1909. In the opinion of
critics, the revised version of the play is rich with the rare charm
that the dialogues possess, and it is unparalleled in Telugu
literature in terms of its characterization (Narayan Rao 260).
Gurajada’s preface to the second edition argues a case for the
revivification of Telugu theatre in terms of establishment of
theatre groups, recruitment and training of professional actors,
and employment of the spoken dialect for composition.
Gurajada’s contempt for the performances of the touring
Maratha troupes finds expression in this preface. He identifies
the Hindi plays performed by these troupes as obscene and
foregrounds the importance of Telugu theatre in raising
awareness about social evils:
When I wrote the play, I had no idea of publication. I
wrote it to advance the cause of Social Reform and to
combat a popular prejudice that the Telugu language
was unsuited to the stage. Itinerant Maharata troupes
staged Hindi plays in the Telugu districts and made
money. Local companies copied their example and
audiences listened with delight to what they did not
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understand. The bliss of ignorance could not be more
forcefully illustrated. Kanyasulkam gave little scope
to vulgar stage attractions such as flaring costumes,
sensuous dances, bad music and sham fights; yet it
drew crowded houses and vindicated the claims of
the vernacular. (Appa Rao “Preface to the Second
Edition” np)
It is against the background as outlined above that I wish
to study Kanyasulkam (1909) translated as Girls for Sale by
Velcheru Narayana Rao. Gurajada Apparao’s Kanyasulkam is a
scathing critique of colonial modernity and the civilizational
functions attributed to English education in India. The play
revolves around the story of an old Brahmin Lubdha Avadhanlu
searching for a bride. He fixes a match with Subbi, the youngest
daughter of Agnihotra Avadhanlu, another Brahmin from
Krishnarayapuram. Although Agnihotra Avadhanlu is bent on
getting his daughter married to Lubdha chiefly for the huge
amount that the match would fetch him as bride-price, his wife
is against the proposal because she fears that Subbi might be
widowed like their eldest daughter Buccamma. Agnihotra
Avadhanlu’s brother-in-law Karataka Sastri helps his sister by
forming a plan where his student, disguised as a girl, accompanies
him to Lubdha Avadhanlu’s place. He fixes the match for the
boy in disguise with the help of Madhuravani, the clever and
accomplished courtesan who manipulates her lovers and executes
the plan successfully. After the wedding, the boy in disguise runs
away from Lubdha and he is falsely accused of the murder of the
young bride. This story is intertwined with the love affairs of the
English educated dandy Girisam, who boasts of his active
involvement in the projects of widow remarriage and the ‘nautch’
question. He refers to himself as the ‘Napolean of anti-nautch’
and is an ardent advocate of the abolition of nautch-practices
from India even as he is associated with Madhuravani, the
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devadasi-courtesan. The play is a critique of Viresalingam’s
ideology of reform. It questions the appropriateness of devadasi
reform when the English educated middle class men perpetuate
these traditions through their involvement with nautch-girls.
The character of Girisam debunks the notion that it is the
English educated urban middle class men who are the agents of
reform. Madhuravani is a clever courtesan, who is often referred
to as a pleasure-woman in the play. Her talent in dance and music
is mentioned, which shows that she belongs to the community
of devadasis who also performed in public places like weddings
and privately at the homes of their patrons. She is perceived
primarily as a money-hungry prostitute, who earns her livelihood
by freely associating with men from the upper castes. Even though
she is a courtesan, she is not without morals. Other characters in
the play perceive her as embodying an aberrant sexuality because
she is engaged in relationships with more than one man. She
refers to her unconventional sexuality, which sets her apart from
other women, “Why should I hide anybody? I’m neither a wife
nor a widow. The man who visits me comes like a prince, openly”
(Appa Rao Kanyasulkam: 22). On another occasion, Girisam
refers to the chastity of a widow and the deceitful ways of the
courtesan:
GIRISAM: From the moment I saw her, I have nothing
but hatred for dancing girls and city women. I
positively abhor them, their cunning words, and their
deceitful ways. Damn it. They are all insincere. I
wonder how I was such an ass and fell in to
Madhuravani’s trap. There is no comparison between
Madhuravani and this woman. Madhuravani is a
cheap piece of coloured glass, and this woman is a
pure diamond…This woman is Buccamma! She is a
pure, chaste widow. WIDOW written in golden
letters! (Appa Rao Kanyasulkam: 74-5)
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Woman’s chastity, as critics like Tanika Sarkar have argued,
acquired a political value in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, a time of strong anti-colonial resistance, when
the nationalists appropriated it as a sign that marks them off
from the colonizers. The ‘unconditional chastity’ of the Hindu
woman was appropriated as a claim to cultural superiority.
Girisam’s comments place a lot of weight on a woman’s chastity
and appropriate it as a claim for superiority. In her book Hindu
Wife, Hindu Nation, Tanika Sarkar proposes that the purity and
chastity of the Hindu wife does not merely have symbolic value:
The absolute and unconditional chastity of the
Hindu wife, extending beyond the death of her
husband, was equally strongly grounded by this
discourse in her own desire. This purity, since it is
supposedly a conscious moral choice, becomes at once
a sign of difference and of superiority, a Hindu claim
to power. The politics of women’s monogamy then is
the condition for the possible Hindu nation: the one
is often explicitly made to stand for the
other…Woman’s chastity, then, has a real and stated,
not merely symbolic, political value. (Sarkar 41)
As opposed to the man who has succumbed to the effects
of colonization, the Hindu wife, by virtue of her chastity, protects
the honour of the Hindu race:
The Hindu woman’s unique steadfastness to the
husband in the face of gross double standards, her
unconditional, uncompromising monogamy, were
celebrated as the sign that marked Hindus off from
the rest of the world, and which constituted the
Hindu claim to nationhood. The chaste body of the
Hindu woman was thus made to carry an unusual
political weight since she had maintained this
difference in the face of foreign rule. The Hindu man,
in contrast…had allowed himself to be colonized and
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surrendered his autonomy before the assaults of
western power-knowledge. (Sarkar 91)
Since the body of the ‘chaste’, ‘monogamous’, ‘respectable’
Hindu wife became the inviolable centre which could represent
the Hindu nation in its equally pure and pristine state, the
courtesan’s body, which has been subjected to sexual relations
with more than one man, is abhorred. Even sensible people like
Saujanya Rao, the lawyer in the play, perceive the ‘nautch-girl’ as
unchaste and the widow as chaste.
The very idea of the courtesan ensnaring wealthy men
and manipulating them for the fulfilment of her desires invites
reference to Muvalur Ramamirthammal’s Web of Deceit (1936),
a novel based on devadasi reform, where the dasis are depicted as
deceitful and corrupt. Kanyasulkam is also embedded in the
debates on devadasis in colonial India. Through a series of
interconnected episodes, the play presents an interesting dialogue
between Saujanya Rao, the social reformer, and Madhuravani
(who is disguised as a man because Saujanya Rao would never
allow a nautch-girl in to his house), where she highlights the
double standards of the supposedly ‘respectable’ men who
advocate social reform:
STRANGER: To marry a widow and to be antinautch – are these two things necessary for a person
to be a good man, sir?
SAUJANYA RAO: Marrying a widow depends on a
man’s likes and dislikes, but a man who has
connections with a nautch-girl can never be called a
respectable man.
STRANGER: Is that all sir, or are there other
requirements- like never seeing a nautch girl, never
talking to her, never attending a nautch dance, and so
on?... if you don’t call the nautch girls to dance, how
do they make a living?
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89
SAUJANYA RAO: They can marry and that takes
care of it… but why can’t nautch girls get a good
education, live by other professions, and lead a moral
life?”
STRANGER: If they did, would people like you marry
them, sir?
SAUJANYA RAO: What kind of a question is that?
I will never marry a nautch-girl. I won’t even touch
one – not even if a pile of gold as high as I stand is
offered to me.
STRANGER: What if you should touch her by
accident?
SAUJANYA RAO: (Laughing.) I will chop off that
part of my body. You are asking strange questions.
STRANGER: Pleasure women may be bad as a caste.
But sir, as you yourself have said, isn’t there some good
in everything bad? And isn’t good acceptable,
wherever it is found? (Appa Rao Kanyasulkam 23234)
The debate referred to above focuses on some of the issues
that came to be foregrounded in relation to the reform work
undertaken to root out the cultural practices of the nautch girls.
Saujanya Rao’s dialogues are embedded in the rhetoric of devadasi
reform. For reformers like Saujanya Rao, a ‘chaste’ widow is more
acceptable than a nautch girl. The devadasis were considered to
be a potential threat to the moral health of the newly imagined
nation because of the supposed belief that they could ensnare
young men and thus lead them astray, especially at a time when a
new role was being carved out for them in the project of nationbuilding. The dialogues quoted above also focus on the stigma
that was associated with the profession. Saujanya Rao would chop
off that part of his body which came in contact with a nautchgirl. Even Madhuravani, who seems to be arguing a case for the
social acceptance of nautch-girls in this episode, internalises the
fact that nautch-girls are bad as a caste. She also exposes the double
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standards of a patriarchal set up which treats them simultaneously
as wives of god and as unchaste prostitutes:
MADHURAVANI: The Bhagvad Gita. Sir, is this
the kind of book good people read?
SAUJANYA RAO: This is a book that converts bad
people in to good people.
MADHURAVANI: What does it say, sir?
SAUJANYA RAO: Those who read it find an
invaluable friend.
MADHURAVANI: Who is that friend, sir?
SAUJANYA RAO: God Krishna.
MADHURAVANI: Will Krishna make friends with
a nautch-girl, sir?
SAUJANYA RAO: Krishna will make friends with
anyone who believes in him. God does not
discriminate against anyone.
MADHURAVANI: So, Krishna is not anti-nautch?
(Appa Rao Kanyasulkam 241)
Madhuravani strikes at the root of the problem. It is an
orthodox Brahminical patriarchy that has set up this institution
and now demands its abolition to further its agenda of social
reform. Interestingly, terms like ‘nautch-girls’ and ‘anti-nautch’
appear in English in the play, hinting at the colonial framework
within which such notions are rooted. However, nautch-girls
who have reformed themselves through education and through
their marriage could be accommodated in the newly emerging
social order. Saujanya Rao suggests the Bhagvad Gita as a remedy
for purifying the ‘sinful’ soul of the courtesan. She is not merely
reformed, but also sanitized through her association with Lord
Krishna, who, she is told, will befriend her. Her body will be
purged of its eroticism and desire through her acceptance of God.
Kanyasulkam also anticipates the debates that were to
develop around the figure of the devadasi in the early decades of
the twentieth century, with the involvement of prominent
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women activists like Muvalur Ramamirthammal, and
Dr.Muthulakshmi Reddi. Its emphasis on the rehabilitation of
the devadasis and its establishment of companionate marriage as
the only option for reformed dasis prompts the reader to study
the text vis-a-vis Ramamirthammal’s Web of Deceit. Women
activists like Annie Besant and Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi, who
were the founding members of associations like Women’s Indian
Association (1917) and All India Women’s Conference (AIWC)
were also instrumental in voicing the need for devadasi reform
in South India through their initiatives to uplift Hindu women.
However, this movement was embedded in a larger nationalist
framework, from which it derived its world view. In the words of
Teresa Hubel:
To elite men and women who had the greatest say in
what constituted the new Indian nation, the devadasis
were an embarrassing remnant of the pre-colonial and
pre-nationalist feudal age and, as such, could not be
permitted to cross over in to the homogeneity that
the nationalists hoped would be postcolonial India.
(Hubel 161)
Feminists and woman activists privileged women’s roles as
mothers and dutiful wives in their speeches and writings, and
this discourse of an ‘enlightened’ womanhood completely erased
the identities of the devadasis as women. Feminists saw the
devadasis as embodying an aberrant sexuality, and took it as a
moral responsibility to ‘reform’ the degraded devadasis. It is not
a mere coincidence that all the three women have familial
connections with the devadasi community. It is interesting to
note that while Muthulakshmi Reddi addressed the issue of
devadasi reform and proposed legal measures to be taken for
them, she dismissed the agitations of devadasis themselves as
meaningless demands made by prostitutes. In the year 1927,
Muthulakshmi was instrumental in passing a bill for the abolition
of the institution. Her untiring efforts paved the way for the
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Madras Devadasis Prevention of Dedication Act of 1947 which
prohibited the devadasis to continue the practice of dedication
in temples.
The ‘Anti-Nautch’ movement, which had its base in the
southern part of the sub-continent quickly spread to the North,
where the tawaifs became the objects of social scorn. Social Purity
Organisations like the ‘Punjab Purity Association’ of Lahore and
the ‘Social Service League’ established in Bombay gave a severe
death blow to the performances of the tawaifs and baijis. Dance
and music genres like Sadir, Dasiattam, Thumri and Ghazals,
which formed an inextricable part of the repertoire of devadasis
and baijis, came to be perceived as overt expressions of erotic
desires. These ideological reorientations also influenced the
‘reformation’ of the social space of the theatre, where the
prostitute actresses were being replaced by ‘respectable’ women
from ‘good families’. The presence of ‘immoral’ women on the
stage came to be perceived as a potential threat to the moral health
of the nation. A certain need to ‘sanitize’ the theatre was
increasingly felt by the middle class, which assumed the
custodianship of the performing arts in the twentieth century.
Involvement of the ‘chaste’, ‘monogamous’ Hindu wife was seen
as purging the theatre of its supposedly erotic associations with
the prostitute actresses. In her essay on Marathi theatre, Neera
Adarkar contextualizes the debates on the relationship of women
to the Marathi theatre and shows how kulin educated women
replaced the prostitutes and women from lower castes as actresses.
Most of the men who supported the initiative argued that the
entry of the kulin educated women was essential for the
‘revivification’ of the ‘art’ of the theatre (Adarkar 89). In her book
Performing Women, Performing Womanhood: Theatre, Politics,
and Dissent in North India Nandi Bhatia asserts, “only a particular
kind of theatre that distanced itself from ‘immorality’, ‘obscenity’,
and sexual desire and had a regenerating rather than a corrupting
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influence (especially on women) was allowable in the eyes of
middle class nationalists….(Bhatia xiv)”
These debates coincided with the movement for the
revival of performing arts in India, initiated by cultural
modernists like Rukmini Devi Arundale, E. Krishna Iyer,
Rabindranath Tagore, Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, and Vishnu
Digambar Paluskar. The ‘Anti-Nautch’ movement aligned itself
to the project of cultural regeneration and dance revival initiated
by nationalists like Rukmini Devi Arundale, who aimed at
restoring respectability to the dance practices of the devadasis,
which eventually came to be identified as ‘classical’. The first
quarter of the twentieth century was a time when performing
arts in South India were being radically re-shaped to accommodate
the changes in pedagogy and performance of certain art forms. It
was a time when musicians and dancers moved to the colonial
city of Madras, where music sabhas and institutions like the
Madras Music Academy were being set up. The
institutionalization of music and its redefinition as ‘Carnatic’
music also involved the marginalization of the communities of
traditional performers like the devadasis. Innovators like Rukmini
Devi Arundale and E. Krishna Iyer realized that in order to make
dance available as a symbol of national heritage, it had to be
purged of its associations with the supposedly ‘unchaste’
devadasis. The contribution of Rukmini Devi Arundale to this
process of redefinition of art forms merits attention. She was
instrumental in reviving ‘Sadir’, a dance form associated with the
devadasis as ‘Bharata Natyam’. This initiative classicized Sadir
and purged it of its associations with the body of the devadasi. In
the North, V.N. Bhatkhande and V.D. Paluskar classicized
Hindustani music and gave it a devotional, respectable base by
involving married women in it. In the field of theatre, these
ideological re-orientations are reflected in the need for the reconstruction of the public space of the theatre. Theatrical forms
like the Nautanki, mostly performed by women from lower castes
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in North India were ‘revived’ as part of the cultural heritage of a
newly independent nation, while the Nautanki actresses were
largely viewed with disfavour because of the belief that these
women exhibited unconventional sexuality on stage. In his essay
on women’s popular culture in nineteenth century Bengal,
Sumanta Banerjee notes how popular performance genres like
jhumur, tarja, panchali, jatra, and beshya sangeet were relegated
to the margins by the English educated Bengali middle class which
perceived women performers as morally dubious (Banerjee 13233). Such changes did not have any direct impact on the devadasi
dance practices of places like Assam, since they retained the
element of devotion and remained confined mostly to temples.
The movement for the ‘revival’ of theatre as a national
cultural institution also necessitated the redefinition of existing
gender roles as represented on stage. The courtesan was treated as
an outcaste in a theatre that thrived on the preservation and
dissemination of moral values through the figure of the chaste
and monogamous wife. A certain reformist function was
attributed to the theatre, and the Hindu woman was made to
perpetuate these morals through her presence on the stage. In
places where upper-caste women were not easily available to
perform on the stage, the prostitute actresses were accepted only
on the condition that they would transform themselves to
‘respectable’ housewives through marriage. The social uplift of
these actresses through education and marriage was seen as the
only way of reclaiming respectability to the theatre. There were
various ways in which prostitute actresses were recast as respectable
women on stage. They were made to enact the roles of chaste
women from Hindu mythology. This is true of actresses like
Binodini Dasi, who did not merely perform, but also excelled in
such roles. Presenting these women as saintly figures on the stage
became a strategy for middle class custodians of the ‘art’ of theatre
to establish theatre as part of a national culture. These initiatives
were by no means exclusive only to theatre. Prominent women
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vocalists like M.S. Subbulakshmi, who was a devadasi herself,
was made to internalize the logic of revival, as her husband
Sadasivam sought to present her as a singer-saint. Her appearance
on the stage as a respectably married Iyer woman was made possible
only by the erasure of her identity as a devadasi. For her
performances, she often wore the nine-yard madisar saree, worn
especially by married Brahmin women in Tamil Nadu. In his essay
“Rewriting the Script for South Indian Dance” Matthew Harp
Allen suggests:
The term ‘revival’ is a drastically reductive linguistic
summary of a complex process – a deliberate selection
from among many possibilities – which cries out to
be examined from more than one point of view. While
the ‘revival’ of South Indian dance certainly involved
a re-vivification or bringing back to life, it was equally
a re-population(one social community appropriating
a practice from another), a re-construction (altering
and replacing elements of repertoire and
choreography), a re-naming(from nautch and other
terms to Bharatanatyam), a re-situation(from temple,
court, and salon to the public stage), and a restoration(splicing together of selected ‘strips’ of
performative behaviour in a manner that
simultaneously creates a new practice and invents a
historical one. (Allen 63-4)
Revival is therefore, a process that involves the
appropriation of an art form traditionally belonging to one social
group or community by another.
These changes in the social history of performing arts in
India had an indelible impact on an artist like Rabindranath
Tagore, who was a part of this movement and became a key figure
in the renaissance of art forms in Bengal. He embraced this kind
of a cultural revivalism and his attempts were geared towards
inventing a new language of dance which would perfectly depict
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the emotion contained in his poetry and music. Written in 1927,
Tagore’s Natir Puja, (The Dancing Girl’s Worship) is informed
by the revivalist rhetoric of dance which sought to found a
spiritual base for dance forms like Bharatanatyam and Kathak.
Natir Puja may be read in the light of Rukmini Devi’s redefinition
of Bharatanatyam as a devotional form of art, with its roots in
Bharata’s Natyasasatra. In this play, dance does not celebrate
sringara rasa, or erotic love, but becomes a medium for the
expression of devotion.
Rukmini Devi’s refashioning of Sadir as Bharata Natyam
pointed to the textual origins of the dance in general, and to
Bharata’s Natyashastra in particular. She also introduced
significant changes in the repertoire of the dance form. Her
position on the inclusion of sringara rasa in performance is too
well known to need mention. She persuaded her students not to
perform erotic love songs like the padam and the javali, which
formed an indispensable part of the devadasi repertoire. Dance
came to be defined as spiritual in its content, and the dancer was
expected to depict devotion in her performance as kirtanams
became the base on which dance items were choreographed. She
also introduced the practice of using Sanskrit texts for
performance. In one of her essays titled “The Spiritual
Background of Indian Dance” Rukmini Devi tries to redefine
dance in terms of the new aesthetics:
Indian dance being spiritual, it is suited only for
spiritual expression…We tried apparently to rescue
the art from the corrupt, but because we lack devotion,
dedication and sincerity, we are gradually corrupting
art itself. There is a general lowering of standards and
the decline has been so fast that one dreads what is in
store for the future. Will the dance have to go through
another death before it regains its own glory? As
dance is part of life itself, the nation and its
consciousness will have to go through a revolutionary
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97
change in character. Indian arts have been slowly
deteriorating because crudities have crept in.
(Arundale 194-5)
These comments made by Rukmini Devi are suggestive
of her stance on the dance practices of the devadasis and the need
to cleanse them of perceived obscenities in performance. On the
one hand, she laments the deterioration of performing arts in
India, suggesting that there was a time when they flourished in
their glory. The art forms have become corrupt because of
‘crudities’ which have crept in, that is the influence of the devadasis.
After these efforts at space-clearing, she assumes the role of the
rescuer who has restored the art form and has tried to reinvent
the glory that it had lost. Rukmini Devi’s attempts are directed
towards a legitimization of her stance as a revivalist, and she does
that through the use of a discourse of self-justification. She also
defines dance as spiritual, and argues that Indian dance in its
‘pure’ form was an expression of devotion. She rejects the dance
practices of the devadasis and their celebration of sexuality in
genres like the padam and javali. Rukmini Devi’s views on dance
and her attitude to bhakti received severe criticism from
Balasaraswathi, a devadasi and a contemporary of hers, who
strongly resented the idea that dance is merely a form of devotion:
In Bharata Natyam too, when it comes to abhinaya,
shringara has been the dominant emotion. I
emphasize this because of some who seek to ‘purify’
Bharata Natyam by replacing the traditional lyrics
which express shringara with devotional songs…
Shringara stands supreme in the range of emotions.
No other emotion is capable of better reflecting the
mystic union of the human with the divine. I say this
with deep personal experience of dancing to many
great devotional songs which have had no element of
shringara in them. Devotional songs are, of course,
necessary. However, shringara is the cardinal emotion
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which gives the fullest scope for artistic
improvisation, branching off continually, as it does,
in to the portrayal of innumerable moods full of
newness and nuance…Indeed, the effort to purify
Bharata Natyam through the introduction of novel
ideas is like putting a gloss on burnished gold or
painting the lotus. (Balasaraswati 198-201)
Natir Puja is deeply embedded in the revivalist discourse
of dance and Tagore’s portrayal of Srimati may be studied in the
context of the debates referred to above.
Natir Puja and Chandalika stage Tagore’s belief in the
regenerating influence of Buddhism. Natir Puja takes us back to
the court of Ajatsatru and presents the ideological conflict
between Bimbisar and Ajatsatru in terms of a kind of religious
radicalism that was taking shape in their kingdom. Tagore’s choice
of a dancing girl for staging ideas of religious resentment bears a
close examination. Srimati, the palace dancing girl in Ajatsatru’s
court is the object of ridicule for the princesses Ratnavali and
Lokeswari because of her ‘lowly’ profession. She refers to herself
as a ‘fallen’ woman, an expression which is full of suggestions.
She says, “To present oneself before Him is to bring as offering
to His altar; I was impure, my sacrifice not ready” (Tagore 30).
The dancing girl was conceived of as a morally dubious woman
because of her involvement with dancing, which was perceived
as an expression of sensuality. In another place, she rebukes Malati
for her choice of learning songs from her:
SRIMATI. Why do you come, child? Was time so
heavy on your hands? There you were like an altar
flower, and the gods were glad. Here you will be a
blossom in pleasure’s garland, and the evil spirits will
laugh-. You come to learn songs? Is that what you
hope for? (Tagore 15)
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In the play, Buddhism is severely critiqued by Queen
Lokesvari, who believes it has deprived her of the love of both
her husband and son. She brings out her vehemence on Srimati,
whose offerings are readily accepted by the bhikshus.
QUEEN. This dancing girl your teacher? That is
indeed where this religion leads us. The fallen shall
come with the message of salvation! So Srimati
blossoms in to a saint? When Lord Buddha came to
our garden, and everyone pressed to see him, I took
pity on this girl and asked her to come too. But the
wretched creature refused. And now, they say, when
Bhikshu Upali comes for alms, he avoids the princesses
descended from kings, and only accepts this woman’s
gifts. Ah, foolish girls, you are yet willing to accept
this religion which would level with the dust the seats
of the mighty? (Tagore 26-7)
Buddha is known to have accepted women like Amrapali,
a palace dancing girl from the Vaishali of Bimbisar’s time, as
disciples. This act of his was often critiqued by upholders of
orthodox Hinduism, which is why the queen rebukes the
followers of Buddhism. Srimati’s involvement in the worship of
Buddha at the altar in the palace garden of Bimbisar is seen as a
violation of the sanctity of the place. Ajatsatru, who is a follower
of Devadatta, orders Srimati to dance at the altar of Buddha at
the time appointed for worship. He believes that desecrating the
place by the depiction of sensuality inherent in the dance of a
fallen woman would be an insult to the followers of Buddha.
Srimati transforms the seemingly profane act of dancing in to a
mode of worship as she dances to the song in praise of Buddha:
For when I remember thee, O matchless one,
My soul melts in to streams of dancing,
Which overflow my body.
The cry of my limbs is a hymn in rhythm that sings
thy praise.
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My love of thee overflows in the music of my gestures…
My heart throbs with a divine pain, that quivers
through all my being.
In waves of rhythm surges up a sea of peace, on the
bosom of which beauty is born.
All my senses, all my sorrows are bringing their last
sacrifice.
Shame me not by refusing my offering.
My love of thee overflows in the music of my gestures.
(Tagore 86-7)
Dance is no more a celebration of the erotic, which is what
other characters in the play believe it to be. The mention of the
“cry of the limbs” which gets transformed in to a hymn in praise
of Buddha and the “divine pain” that is expressed through the
body of the dancer bear testimony to the fact that this is a serious
attempt at redefining dance as a form of devotion. It is “all my
senses” which are being sacrificed through dancing. The
expression “My love of thee overflows in the music of my gestures”
has several implications. Dance, which is often a depiction of
shringara, or erotic love, is here being used as a strategy for the
subversion of its function, that is, the rejection of the erotic. It
celebrates the dancer’s love for the divine. The dancing girl is
transformed into a saintly figure through the redeeming
influence of Buddha. Her worship of the Buddha ‘sanitizes’ her
of the burden of the ‘sin’ of dancing and of being born into this
lowly profession.
Tripurari Sharma’s San Sattavan ka Qissa: Azizun Nisa
(1998) translated as A Tale from the Year 1857: Azizun Nisa
presents yet another perspective on the profession of the dancing
girl. The play is a creative rewriting of the history of the Revolt
of 1857. The play documents the unwritten history of the
courtesans’ participation in the revolt. The central character
Azizun, an accomplished courtesan from Lucknow shifts to
Kanpur, where she sets up a kotha, or an establishment to entertain
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her clientele. Inspired by the example of the sipahis who visit her,
Azizun shuns her profession to join them in their struggle for
independence. Azizun’s relocation in Kanpur in the play has
several implications. In the late nineteenth century, many
accomplished courtesans of Lucknow had to relocate themselves
because of the lack of courtly patronage. Social and political
conditions became hostile for the courtesans to continue their
profession in Lucknow. Veena Talwar Oldenberg asserts:
The British usurpation of the kingdom of Awadh in
1856 and the forced exile of the king and many of his
courtiers had abruptly put an end to royal patronage
for the courtesans. The imposition of the contagious
diseases regulations and heavy fines and penalties on
the courtesans for their role in the rebellion signalled
the gradual debasement of an esteemed cultural
institution in to common prostitution. 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 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….(260)
Novels like Hasan Shah’s Nashtar (The Dancing Girl),
written in 1790 and Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa’s Umrao Jan
Ada, written in 1899 provide interesting insights in to the culture
of the courtesans of Lucknow in the pre and post-mutiny periods.
Umrao Jan Ada, in particular, is set in both pre and post-mutiny
periods, and depicts the withering away of the institution in the
period following the Mutiny. This notion of the decadence of
the courtesan culture finds expression in the comments of the
English Officer in San Sattavan, who falsely accuses Azizun of
being a prostitute. Azizun asserts her position as a cultured
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courtesan: “I am not a prostitute. I’m a dancer. I’m an artiste. I do
not wear the veil but I’m not a public woman. People in the
city…acknowledge me as a courtesan, a poet-lyricist. I am not in
the flesh trade” (Sharma 131).
San Sattavan is an interesting study of anti-colonial
resistance and the role of the marginalized in fuelling this
sentiment. Tripurari Sharma’s plays subvert the stereotypical
representations of women in plays written by men, and San
Sattavan is a step in that direction. By her depiction of the tawaif
as the chief agent in anti-colonial resistance, Sharma makes an
intervention in the gendered imaginings of colonial history.
Critics like Nandi Bhatia have studied the play as a feminist
rewriting of the history of the revolt,
For playwright-directors like Tripurari Sharma, the
dramatization of history, therefore, involves a
conscious subversion of not just elite forms of
production but entails a reworking of historiography
in ways that enable an interruption of both dominant
and alternative narratives that gloss over the stories
of women who exist on the margins of history. (Bhatia
101)
The period following independence saw a significant
change in the very terms by which courtesans and devadasis were
referred to. They were now perceived as preservers of culture, as
practitioners of art forms which were handed down to us through
generations. It was a common practice to refer to these women
with the suffix ‘devi’ added to their names so as to avoid making
a mention of their ambiguous sexuality. This was precisely the
time when women born in to devadasi and tawaif communities
gained recognition as ‘national’ artists. Although people had
continued the practice of viewing dancing girls with disfavour,
they reclaimed them as perpetuators of a national tradition.
Women born in to devadasi and tawaif communities saw these
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103
changes as crucial for them to achieve success as artists, and
accommodated themselves to the changing times. The
transformation of the courtesan in to a virangana who readily
sacrifices her life for the nation in San Sattavan may be seen as a
symbolic reclamation of the courtesan as a national icon. In
privileging Azizun’s role as a soldier over that of a courtesan, the
text makes possible her relocation from the feminine space of
the ‘kotha’ or ‘salon’ to the predominantly masculine space of the
battlefield. In one of the scenes, Zubaida, another courtesan,
rebukes her:
ZUBAIDA: …A dedicated artist should close all the
curtains and till the milieu changes for the better,
engross herself with the composition of new songs.
AZIZUN: A bloodbath may rage outside, but the ink
must flow inside! (Sharma San Sattavan 146)
Since the moment of her transformation to a sipahi,
Azizun declines all the requests made to her for dancing. In
another place, Azizun derives pleasure by watching Rowshni
perform a mujra or a salon dance. She strives to identify herself
with the soldiers and becomes a part of the male audience for
which she used to perform. By the complete erasure of her identity
as a courtesan, the play also sanitizes Azizun of the eroticism and
unrestrained sexual desire that the courtesan is seen to represent.
The battlefield is evocative of the ideas of sacrifice, selfannihilation, and selfless service – values that were valorized by
nationalists and patriots. Azizun’s transformation in to a
virangana may be seen as an act which leads to her repositioning
from the margins to the centre in the newly imagined nation.
The texts discussed above show how the figure of the
‘dancing-girl’ came to be accommodated in the public space of
the theatre and was symbolically assimilated to the cultural life
of the nation. This ideal, in most cases, was achieved through a
mechanism of sanitization, which necessitated the courtesan’s
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contact with the redeeming figure of a man who relieves her of
her ‘sin’ and facilitates her ‘rebirth’ as a respectable woman. With
her emergence as a reformed/transformed woman she is accepted
into the newly imagined social order, which eventually establishes
her as its uncontested representative. However, this is made
possible only by the redefinition or complete erasure of the
sexuality of the dancing girl. In Gurajada Appa Rao’s
Kanyasulkam, the sexuality of Madhuravani is redefined by
Saujanya Rao when he asks her to marry a single person. Saujanya
Rao represents the upper caste male reformer, who tries to
persuade her to accept the monogamous sexuality of the
housewife. In Natir Puja, Srimati’s dancing, which was perhaps
the only means by which she could celebrate her sexuality, is
transformed into a form of worship. Tagore re-casts her as a
dancer-saint, who discards all aspects of her stigmatized profession
and adorns herself in the yellow robes of a nun. San Sattavan ka
Qissa: Azizun Nisa is a feminist resurrection of the dancing girl
as a rebellious figure and a national icon. Azizun resists all attempts
that categorize her sexuality as non-conjugal, and ultimately
transforms herself to a virangana in an act where all aspects of her
femininity, including her non-normative sexuality are completely
erased.
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