Seema Bhalla’s ‘Ganika’ is a colourful history of nautch girl

Sreevalsan Thiyyadi

A year after KL Saigal’s death in Jalandhar, the Hindi film industry faced another blow when Partition in 1947 saw an array of singers shifting to nascent Pakistan. Movies of the time had for two decades been featuring courtesans. Nautch girls on the silver screen gave people “soft pleasure” even as the freedom struggle climaxed. As mehfils and kothas were altering in character, certain dancer-musicians migrated from such recreational space to cinema as actresses. Some pioneers on gramophone discs metamorphosed into sensational faces in talkies.
A book on this slice of history traces women of the Devadasi tradition up till contemporary Hindi cinema portraying its extensions. ‘Ganika in the Visual Culture of the 19th-20th Century in India’ compiles eight studies that unveil largely the cinematic threads within the courtesan legacy. Also called tawaifs, many of them were immensely talented and culturally refined poet-dancers. In the peak of fame, their status equated to the Ganika women of high social standing mentioned in the Vedas. The only writer who has contributed two articles in the 162-page work is the editor, Seema Bhalla, who was the curator of an eponymous exhibition in Delhi in October 2022.
Bhalla delves into the development of miniatures. Their flourish during the Mughal period (16th-18th centuries) went on to generate Raj-era Company paintings that incorporated European aesthetics. Found currently at international repositories abroad in a big way, this genre effectively documents Imperial India’s “people, flora, fauna, architecture and culture”. The chapter throws light on Devadasi traditions, the nautch dance off-shoot, their textiles and costumes, besides other paraphernalia amid a thriving Bibi-Sahib culture.
Soon, as nautch girls found place on textile labels, the business minds in Britain identified a selling potential among smokers. Photos of these dancing women appeared as albumin prints for the cigarette cards. The idea spread to matchbox covers. For instance, the Ravi Varma-painted sari-clad ‘Mohini on a Swing’ (1894) worked as bait. Of new use were lithographs as matchbox labels: Hira Jan, Taj Mahal Begum, Ahilya, The Sundari and Jajire Gohr, to name some.
The opening chapter essays in detail the jewellery of Deccan’s Sadir dance ahead of its reinvention as Bharatanatyam in the 1930s. This piece, by Swarnamalya Ganesh, reveals how the accoutrement had even earlier gained eclecticism. For instance, the 1658 exit of the Portuguese from the Tuticorin coast led the Dutch to enter into a treaty on pearl fishery with Madurai’s Nayak king. Shortly, local goldsmiths began studding ornaments with the shiny beads. The contributor “familiarises us with the vocabulary”, notes Bhalla, who, however, consistently misspells the dance as ‘Sadri’.
In a similar pattern, the editor chooses to write ‘nrataki’ in place of the generally-seen ‘nartaki’. Whatever, by the 1940s — unlike in the present age of social media and digital marketing — calendar art was the predominant mode of film advertising. It found representation in hoardings, illustrated film booklets, posters, lobby cards and show cards. Sumant Batra recalls at length how posters of the 1940s’ films were a montage of certain essential components: archetypal characters, star actors and semi-classical music. Many courtesans of that time moved to Bombay with an “arsenal of skills”: Kathak, mujras, dadra, thumri and Urdu poetry. This chapter shows how publicity material for films of the 1970s and ’80s were “designed for the male gaze” — posters, leaflets and lobby-cards of eight such movies vis-à-vis 16 Company period miniatures.
Stills from ‘Pakeezah’ (1972), ‘Umrao Jaan’ (1981, 2006), ‘Tawaif’ (1985) and ‘Jawani Ka Dushman’ (1988) form a major presence in the previous chapter. Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen title it ‘Islamicate Courtesan Film’, considering the “imaginative interpretation” of the religion and its culture. Shweta Sachdeva Jha traces the Arabic origin of ‘tawaif’, and the political compulsions for the movement of these women. Travelling eastward from Awadh’s nuances, AK Das speaks of Kalighat paintings of the early 20th century and the ‘other woman’ that was common in Bengal society of the times. Yatindra Mishra’s is the note on the dawn of Hindi film music and bygone courtesans. A take on popular sensibilities embracing not just art and crafts but performing traditions and even cinema is rare.