Trust an Englishwoman to delve into the history of dance in India and demystify the heady cocktail of artistry, sexuality, religion and livelihood which female, male and transgender have packed in their performances over the last century.
Anna Morcom’s breathtaking book, “Courtesans, Bar Girls and Dancing Boys: The Illicit World of Indian Dance” (Hurst Publishers), is based on extensive field interviews and archival research which lays bare the marginalisation and stigmatisation of traditional performers in stark contrast to social acceptance of upper-class, upper-caste women monopolising the classical performing arts and the film industry even as a Bollywood dance and fitness craze has swept middle-class India off its feet.
Morcom is a senior lecturer in the Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London. I can personally vouch for her command over Hindi, which she began learning way back in 1993 after spending a few months in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, as a volunteer English teacher. India cast such a spell on her that she studied Hindi and ethnomusicology as an undergraduate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and later for her doctorate. A passionate Indophile, she has spent many years researching music and dance in a nation once ruled by her ancestors.
Before examining the shadowy world of dance, she authored “Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema”. Morcom says that the first time she saw Hindi films and heard Hindi film music, her reaction was no different from other Westerners who found them unrealistic. Later, she became curious — if such a large number of Indians were hooked to these films and music, she thought, she was surely missing something. Hence she began to explore them and try to understand their appeal, and became a keen fan.
According to Davesh Sonji, one of India’s foremost living experts on dance, Morcom’s new book “masterfully bridges discourses on class, gender, globalisation, economics, morality, and aesthetics; it effectively foregrounds the forms of inequality and power at work in the production, consumption, and politicisation of dance in today’s India”.
The underlying objective of Morcom’s scholarly work is probably to undo the vilification of courtesans, ranging from devadasis to tawaifs, who are the forerunners of modern classical dance but are treated with disdain bordering on contempt. “For instance”, Morcom writes, “the Incredible India series [published by the Indian government to attract tourists] makes no mention of devadasis in relation to Bharatanatyam or of courtesans in relation to Kathak.” Hence the author’s determination to tell untold stories and lift the veil off unseen cultures.
Weekend Review spoke to Morcom about her book and more. Excerpts:
Will you please share with me the most interesting or unforgettable incident while researching your book on dance in India?
I think the most unforgettable moment in researching my book, which shaped the entire project, was a conversation that took place on the Mumbai suburban railway with the Indian Bargirl Union leader, Varsha Kale, as she was taking me to visit some bargirl families in Mira Road. She mentioned, among other things, that most bargirls were “khandani nachnewalis”, hereditary female dancers. A window to the past was opened, and in 2005 I started to see the deep and complex connections of Mumbai’s bargirls and the tawaif and other female professional dancers that stretch back into India’s ancient history, and that they were so intensely stigmatised and marginalised by the anti-nautch campaign that started in the 19th century.
There is no mention of Begum Hazrat Mahal in your account of the colourful-yet-shadowy world of courtesans. Hazrat Mahal came to the court of the last king of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah, as a dancer and became his mistress. But more famously, Hazrat Mahal fought the British after Wajid Ali Shah was forced into exile. She refused to surrender, ultimately seeking political asylum in Nepal, where she is buried. She is a nationalist heroine.
My book addresses the situation of hereditary performers [including lineages of famous tawaif] and transgender female dancers in the present day, linking this to a longer modern history of marginalisation, so it does not specifically focus on historical performers. There are vast amounts of research still to be done on India’s courtesans, to tell their history, to outline their contribution to Indian culture, and to explore the dramatic decline of all hereditary female performers from the late 19th century onwards.
Would you agree that Victorian prudery [during British colonial rule] drove a thriving and socially accepted art form like dance underground, resulting in dancing being bracketed with prostitution?
Victorian prudery bracketed courtesans and devadasis with prostitutes, and was a moral and social logic that was incapable of understanding a category of women that were neither wives nor prostitutes, but skilled artistes who had largely long-term relationships with noblemen. Thus these dancers were conflated with prostitutes and declared immoral. However, the level of moral intolerance to courtesan culture was, more broadly, a result of a move to a more bourgeois ‘modern’ family norm, where it is not acceptable for men to [openly] have extramarital relationships. Even more broadly, as bourgeois nationalism grew, and India was formed as a nation state, all Indians became a part of one group [the nation], and hence the behaviour of previously liminal groups such as courtesans who had non-mainstream social norms affected the identity of the whole. So Victorian prudery played a key role, but there is also more to it than that.
I never knew that the performers in dance bars which mushroomed in Mumbai in the mid-1980s were hereditary dancers. How far back and to which parts of India were you able to trace their lineage?
I was able to trace lineages back to a number of communities across north India, which also have branches in Pakistan and other south Asian countries. These female hereditary performing communities [many of whom are now to a large extent involved in sex work] were previously semi-nomadic tribes [not castes, strictly speaking], and all seem to be interlinked, and also include groups where the menfolk performed too. They were also involved in other occupations, and are linked to communities where the women did not dance. The status and identities of these groups have changed over the years. I was able to trace most of the groups to which bargirls belonged to the 19th century and earlier by looking at secondary sources. However, detailed research on these communities — which would tell us much about the modern history of Indian performing arts, its sociology and its politics — is severely lacking.
What has accorded dance more legitimacy and respect in India — Bollywood or middle- and upper-class interest in classical dance forms such as Bharatanatyam, Odissi or Kathak?
I see the Bollywood dance craze that emerged in middle-class India and NRI communities in the 1990s as a continuation of a much longer embourgeoisement of performing arts in India, or their appropriation by the middle classes [the vast majority of female and male traditional performers belong to groups and castes at the lowest or lower end of the social hierarchy, and this is still the case with many folk traditions]. This began with the pioneers who “revived” dance forms such as Bharatanatyam in the early part of the 20th century after they had been stigmatised and marginalised by the anti-nautch purity campaign to the point of near demise. I don’t think the Bollywood dance craze could have happened without the reformed classical performing arts, which pioneered new strategies to make dance a respectable, middle-class activity.
You have dealt at length with Meena Kumari cast as Sahib Jan in “Pakeezah”. But as a Bollywood-cum-dance historian, who are the other actresses whose dancing impressed you?
There are a great many wonderful dancers among Hindi film actresses, some of whom were, of course, from courtesan backgrounds [though that is generally not discussed openly]. Madhubhala is a wonderful dancer and actress. From the recent years, Madhuri Dixit is a favourite of mine, and Helen was, of course, Hindi cinema’s outstanding and long-serving dancer. Among male dancers, Govinda is absolutely superb, and — although with a very different image — Hrithik Roshan is also a really talented dancer. Since the 1990s, when the visual era and the dance craze kicked in, all heroines and heroes have had to be extremely good if not exceptional dancers.
Do male dancers, particularly those who masquerade as women, have to cope with psychological problems and need counselling?
I certainly would not say they suffer from “psychological problems”, as these exist across society, and it is important not to make sweeping statements, in particular, of marginal communities, since they become defined by them, quite unfairly, and this becomes a negative feedback loop. It is, without a doubt, true that the transgender female performers face immense pressure and conflicts in society, and my research has shown that the social/cultural space they existed in has been squeezed in modern times, perhaps especially in recent decades, though at some levels of society there is increased openness and acceptance with the spread of LGBT rights. In addition, men who have sexual relationships with other men are at high risk of contracting HIV/Aids, and the transgender community, including hijras, and, of course, the middle-class or upper-class men who would self-identify as “gay” rather than “kothi” or “hijra”, have all seen a lot of disease and death, which is sad and traumatic. Counselling is offered at the various organisations dealing with MSMs, as well as peer support, which is generally very beneficial.
How would you sum up the status of dance as an art form in today’s India?
I would say that the status of dance as an art form in today’s India is greatly split. Among those from the middle class involved in classical dance forms and Bollywood, dance has never had a higher status, with more and more girls from “good families” able to learn dance or even practise it as a profession without objection from families or social approbation. However, at the same time, the hereditary female performers [including the courtesans] and the transgender female performers have never been so marginalised and stigmatised, and are struggling more and more to maintain a livelihood, and increasingly involved in prostitution. This is, tragically, a vicious circle.
S. N. M. Abdi is a noted Indian journalist and commentator.
