Contentious (Socio-spatial) Relations: Tawaifs and Congress House in Contemporary Bombay/Mumbai

Abstract

This article explores the lives of tawaifs, baijis or courtesans (the terms used interchangeably) in a contentious space marked by the location of Congress House in Bombay/Mumbai through the 20th century. The tawaifs' kothas are interestingly in the vicinity of Congress House, which was the hub of the Indian nationalist struggle from the 1930s onwards, the two sites coming into existence almost simultaneously and coexisting for many decades as this article demonstrates. However, there were various efforts during the last decades of 20th century to remove the presence of tawaifs from this neighbourhood, through the heightened interest of real-estate players in urban gentrification, and increased surveillance by the police and the citizens' forum. Given this contemporary situation, the attempt of this article is (i) to historicise the performance of mujra in Bombay and explore the contribution of courtesans to the enrichment of Hindustani 'classical' music and (ii) to spatialise the presence of tawaifs in the nationalist hub of Bombay and reflect on the Indian Journal of Gender Studies 23(2) 191-217 politics of their economic and cultural deprivation. This article, thus, reflects on the contested meanings of the space inhabited by the courtesans with its continued devaluing, disciplining and restructuring as well as the increased stigmatisation, criminalisation and marginalisation of the women. It also reads into newer modalities of regulation and the hegemonic processes of urban renewal.

‘No Country for Old Women’: Female Aging in Bollywood

“…who enriched early Hindi cinema with their skills which encompassed kathak (a classical dance form), mujras (dance performances), the skills of ada (bodily expression), nakhda (feminine tantrum) and sawal-jawab (debate) perfected at qawwali s 4 and mushairas . 5 They taught actors/actresses how to sing dadras and thumris properly, and the ability to recite Urdu rekhti poetry and dastans (Bhasin, 2019; Thatra, 2016, pp.198–206). That is why Ruth Vanita calls tawaifs the ‘voice[s] of indigenous modernity’ (Vanita, 2017, p. 3), crediting them with an enormous contribution to the making of the aesthetic aspects of the cinema of the new nation.…”