COURTESAN CULTURE IN INDIA The Transition From The Devdasi To The Tawaif
COURTESAN CULTURE IN INDIA The Transition From The Devdasi To The Tawaif
Boijee
Author(s): MEKHALA SENGUPTA
Source: India International Centre Quarterly , SUMMER 2014, Vol. 41, No. 1 (SUMMER
2014), pp. 124-140
Published by: India International Centre
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India International Centre Quarterly
MEKHALA
SENGUPTA
Of the women I met, some in the flesh and others who came alive
through the archives, 50 per cent had run away from home and a
considerable number of them were Rajput women who had taken
on Muslim names fearing the wrath of their fathers, husbands
and brothers.
Kidnapping may have been (and perhaps still is) one of the methods
by which girls found their way into the tawa'if households, but it is
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NOTES
1. Umrao Jan Ada (1905) is considered by many as the first Urdu novel. Based on
the life of a renowned Lucknow courtesan and poet of the same name it became
the basis for Umrao JaanAda (1972), a Pakistani film, a Pakistani television serial
(2003) and two Indian films, Umrao Jaan (1981) and Umrao Joan (2006).
2. See Wikipedia sources on gender studies: 'Courtesan Culture: Complexities
& Negotiations', http://www.wikigender.0rg/index.php/C0urtesan__Culture:_
Complexities_and_Negotiations.
3. Gauhar Jan was born Angelina Yeoward in 1873 of Jewish Armenian ancestry.
In her lifetime, she recorded more than 600 records from 1902 to 1920, in
more than 10 languages which included Bengali, Hindustani, Gujarati, Tamil,
Marathi, Arabic, Persian, Pushto, French and English. She would round off her
performances for a record by announcing 'My name is Gauhar Jan'.
REFERENCES
Anand, Anurag. 2012. The Legend of Amrapali. New Delhi: Srishti Publishers.
Burton, Richard E 1962. Kamasutra. Translation by author. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Mayo, Katherine. 1927. Mother India. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. 1990. 'Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans
of Lucknow', Feminist Studies, 16, 2 (Summer), http://www.columbia.edu/itc/
mealac/pritchett/OOurdu/umraojan/txt_veena_oldenburg.html
Peterson, Indira. 2002. The Courtesan's Life as Art in the Viralivitututu, an 18th-Century
Tamil Literary Genre , 22nd European Conference on South Asian Studies (ECSAS,
2012).
Ruswa, Mirza Mohammad Hadi. 1905. Umrao Jan Ada: Courtesan of Lucknow.
Translated by Kushwant Singh and M.A. Husaini. Hyderabad: Disha Books.
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NOTE
*Text and all images from the private collection of Anirban Kazi and Ankan Kazi.
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