In June 1857, when Indian soldiers laid siege to Cawnpore (now Kanpur), enclosing British East India Company officials, they were accompanied by a courtesan. In the midst of the confrontation, as shots whizzed around, the courtesan was seen by at least one eyewitness armed with pistols.
Azeezunbai’s fascinating story finds no mention in history textbooks. If it survives today, it is mainly in archival reports, local legends, and a paper written by Lata Singh, an associate professor at the Centre for Women’s Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University. Going through these resources can be like leafing through a flip book. Scattered across them is a picture of a woman who made a pivotal contribution to the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, at the forefront and behind the scenes, working as an informer, messenger and possibly even a conspirator in the Kanpur chapter of the rebellion.
A courtesan from Lucknow, Azeezunbai moved to Kanpur at a young age. There, as Singh writes, she grew close to the sepoys of the British Indian Army, particularly one Shamsuddin Khan. Testimony given to the British inquiry into the rebellion described Azeezunbai as being “intimate with men of the second cavalry” and “in the habit of riding” with armed soldiers on horseback. She was also spotted “on horseback in male attire decorated with medals, armed with a brace of pistols” during the mutiny.
The tale of Azeezunbai is one of the many forgotten stories of India’s courtesans that were examined during a seminar held at Mumbai’s Royal Opera House on April 27. Tehzeeb-e Tawaif, organised by Manjari Chaturvedi’s The Courtesan Project, in collaboration with Avid Learning and the Royal Opera House, brought together historians, writers and researchers for a day-long symposium to discuss the legacies of India’s performing artists of the 18th to the 20th centuries. The panellists included Singh, historian Veena Talwar Oldenburg, musician Shubha Mudgal, cultural writer Veejay Sai, cinema scholar Yatindra Mishra, academic and political science professor Sanghamitra Sarker and bureaucrat-historian AN Sharma.
The event followed a similar iteration in Delhi in March and is one of many ways in which Chaturvedi, a Kathak dancer and founder of the Sufi Kathak Foundation, is trying to change the contemporary perception of courtesans.
Pushed to the margins
History has famously marginalised the voices of women, but even within that paradigm, India’s female entertainers have received a disproportionately bad rap.
Known variously as tawaifs in the North, devadasis in the South, baijis in Bengal and naikins in Goa, these professional singers and dancers were dubbed as “nautch girls” during the British rule, and their profession was conflated with prostitution in the late 19th century. As a result, their contribution to India’s classical arts was scrubbed out of the collective consciousness and their stories found little place, even in the margins of history.
In their glory days, the courtesans were at the centre of art and culture in India, proficient in both music and dance. Author and historian Pran Nevile, an authoritative voice on the subject, drew a link between these public entertainers and the apsaras of Indian mythology. In his book Nautch Girls of India: Dancers, Singers, Playmates, Nevile described how the tawaifs of North India enjoyed wealth, power, prestige, political access, and were considered authorities on culture. Noble families would send their sons to them to learn tehzeeb, or etiquette, and “the art of conversation”.
The tawaifs reached their zenith under the Mughal rule. “The best of the courtesans, called deredar tawaifs, claimed their descent from the royal Mughal courts,” wrote Nevile. “They formed part of the retinue of kings and nawabs...many of them were outstanding dancers and singers, who lived in comfort and luxury...To be associated with a tawaif was considered to be a symbol of status, wealth, sophistication and culture...no one considered her to be a bad woman or an object of pity.”
There is no definitive research on the extent to which sex was a part of what the courtesans offered. What is clear, however, was that their lives could not be covered by a broad brush stroke. These were women of wealth and agency, and any sexual relationship they may have had with patrons was likely consensual. Moreover, there were hierarchies within the performing artists, and the tawaifs were at the top, a class distinct from street performances and prostitutes.
With the arrival of the British began a gradual decimation of their livelihoods. Their royal patronage waned as the territory under the East India Company grew, but it wasn’t until the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny that the institution was eroded.
By this time, the Mughal empire had already been in decline for decades. Leaving Delhi behind, many tawaifs had moved to Lucknow in Oudh State, where the nawabs still supported their art. But it didn’t take long for their fortunes to turn even in Lucknow. The British annexed Oudh State in 1856, and suddenly the tawaifs found themselves in an ideal vantage when the mutiny started brewing. Discontent against the East India Company was growing, and the tawaifs responded by playing an active role in the revolt from behind the scenes. Their establishments called kothas became meeting zones and hideouts for rebels. Those who had accumulated wealth provided rebels financial support.
The power and influence they exerted are detailed in Veena Talwar Oldenberg’s essay Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow. Her examination of civic tax ledgers from 1858 to 1877 shows that the tawaifs were in the highest tax bracket, with the “largest individual incomes of any in the city”. The essay also notes the systematic crackdown on the institution following the mutiny. Oldenburg writes:
“The courtesans’ names were also on lists of property: (houses, orchards, manufacturing and retail establishments for food and luxury items) confiscated by British officials for their proven involvement in the siege of Lucknow and the rebellion against British rule in 1857. These women, though patently noncombatants, were penalised for their instigation of and pecuniary assistance to the rebels. On yet another list, some twenty pages long, are recorded the spoils of war seized from one set of ‘female apartments’ in the palace and garden complex called the Qaisar Bagh, where some of the deposed ex-King Wajid Ali Shah’s three hundred or more consorts resided when it was seized by the British. It is a remarkable list, eloquently evocative of a privileged existence: gold and silver ornaments studded with precious stones, embroidered cashmere wool and brocade shawls, bejeweled caps and shoes, silver-, gold-, jade-, and amber-handled fly whisks, silver cutlery, jade goblets, plates, spittoons, huqqahs and silver utensils for serving and storing food and drink, and valuable furnishings.”