Setting the scene: the emergence of Rampur as a centre of music and dance

Foreshadowing some of the developments and disruptions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Delhi already ceased to be the predominant musical centre of the Mughal world during the late eighteenth century. Especially the years between 1739 and 1761 witnessed a substantial ‘scattering’ (tafriqa) of the Mughal capital Shahjahanabad (now ‘Old Delhi’), as many Hindustani court musicians sought alternative patronage at emerging regional courts in Awadh, Rohilkhand, Rajasthan, the Punjab, Nepal, or the Deccan.Footnote ¹⁰

Situated on the upper Gangetic plains, Rohilkhand (or ‘land of the Rohillas’) was settled by upwardly mobile Afghan military and mercenary communities during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century in search of service and status under the Mughals. Having consolidated their power and established several Rohilla chieftaincies in the region, the leaders of these Afghan Pashtun migrants quickly recognised the high cultural value and prestige accorded to the performing arts at the Mughal court as a key marker of elite social status and political authority.Footnote ¹¹ In 1737, ‘Ali Muhammad Khan (d. 1748), their charismatic leader, was granted the title of nawwāb (governor, viceroy) by the Mughal emperor, cementing their political standing. By the time Rampur—an ally of the British East India Company—emerged as the sole surviving Rohilla-led principality in the region after the First Rohilla War of 1774, it had already begun to attract a distinguished cohort of poets, scholars, artists, musicians, and dancers circulating between various centres of patronage.Footnote ¹²

Until the mid nineteenth century, however, the region’s musical scene remained dominated by Awadh with its capital Lucknow, and even Shahjahanabad continued to be renowned for a courtly culture that survived in a somewhat transformed form.Footnote ¹³ This radically changed with the British annexation of Awadh in 1856 and the final dismantlement of the Mughal throne after the Uprising of 1857. With the loss of their main patrons, competition among the remaining female professional performers rose while semi-independent princely states like Rampur gained a significant boost. Being loyal allies of the British, Rampur’s nawabs not only ensured their survival as the only remaining Muslim-ruled principality in erstwhile Rohilkhand (or what became the United Provinces of British India), they also turned their court into a genuine refuge for musicians, dancers, and poets.Footnote ¹⁴

Under Nawab Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan (r. 1865–1887), Rampur’s reputation as an authentic North Indian Muslim centre of artistic and scholarly life reached its pinnacle. Among the state’s most prominent court musicians at this time were the rabāb and sursingār player Bahadur Husain Khan (d. 1879) and the vocalist and bīn player Amir Khan (d. 1880), both representing the senīya lineage of hereditary professional musicians—that is, those claiming descent from Emperor Akbar’s foremost court musician, Miyan Tansen (d. 1589). As respected master-musicians (ustads), they performed primarily in the setting of the North Indian maḩfil (assembly)—intimate gatherings of connoisseurs and musicians in elite male spaces—and instructed the nawab and his younger half-brother, Haidar ‘Ali Khan (d. 1903), in the art of music, thereby exerting significant influence over many professional court performers.Footnote ¹⁵

Since the 1840s, with the exception of Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan, all rulers of Rampur adhered to Shi‘i Islam, as did the Nawabs of Awadh. Among the latter, Wajid ‘Ali Shah (r. 1847–1856) was especially associated with a court culture in which rulers frequently married tawa’ifs as temporary mut‘a (pleasure) wives—a form of marriage permitted under Shi‘i law.Footnote ¹⁶ Several members of the Rampur royal family likewise entered into such unions with courtesans, reflecting the social liminality of female performers as an occupational class capable of crossing boundaries into higher-status spaces that were otherwise impenetrable to women of lower rank.Footnote ¹⁷ Nawab Yusuf ‘Ali Khan (r. 1855–1865), the father of Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan, for example, married the tawa’if Tuti Jan—an accomplished singer and poet who assumed the title Sardar Dulhan Begum—as his third wife.Footnote ¹⁸ Their son Haidar ‘Ali Khan, a well-educated connoisseur and patron of music, later married the singer Lali and transmitted his passion for music to his own offspring, especially Sa‘adat ‘Ali Khan (d. 1922), a close associate of Nawab Hamid ‘Ali Khan (r. 1889–1930).Footnote ¹⁹

While some musicians and dancers were able to secure stable positions and remain attached to a particular court for long stretches of time, many professional performers—both men and women—led itinerant lives, moving between alternating centres of patronage. Beyond working in the salons (koṭhās) of urban centres such as Lucknow, mobile tawa’ifs sought appointments at regional courts, where they performed at ritually auspicious events, religious festivals, and state ceremonies, or trained women of the zenana in music, poetry, and dance.Footnote ²⁰ Lower ranking women often remained in relative seclusion, appearing only rarely outside the private quarters of elite households, and some were even regarded as ‘property’ that could be lent or gifted to other patrons.Footnote ²¹

If the patronage of Hindustani music was considered ‘central to the notion of what it meant to be a mirza or nobleman’,Footnote ²² the ability to host the most accomplished and beautiful female performers of song and dance served as an important signifier of cultural capital and power.Footnote ²³ Yet, echoing the observations of the medieval Iraqi polymath al-Jahiz (d. circa 868 CE) in his Epistle on Singing-Girls (Risālat al-Qiyān), tawa’ifs were both revered and feared for their ability to appeal simultaneously to the eye, the ear, the sense of touch, and the heart.Footnote ²⁴ While the status of tawa’ifs as purveyors of multiple sensory pleasures to elite men began to erode under colonial modernity, the question remains how this transformation affected continuities within the ‘paracolonial’ space of the princely state.Footnote ²⁵

Travelling female performers, princely patrons, and public festivals

Previous scholarship has tended to characterise princely states like Rampur, Hyderabad, and Bhopal as sanctuaries of the arts in which Indo-Muslim courtly culture was ‘preserved’.Footnote ²⁶ A closer examination, however, reveals that princely patronage, cultural production, and preservation were neither static nor insulated from developments beyond their borders. A distinctly modern public space in which the multisensory appeal of tawa’ifs came to fruition in princely Rampur was the Jashn-e benaz̧īr (Incomparable Festival), an annual fair established by Nawab Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan in commemoration of his accession to the throne in 1866.Footnote ²⁷

Inspired by late Mughal and Awadhi examples of public gatherings as well as colonial-era industrial exhibitions, the Benazir fair not only boosted economic and cultural production and trade in the state, but it also gave Rampur’s rulers a stage for the demonstration of royal authority and splendour. As Amanda Lanzillo recently stated, princely ‘state elites sought to create material and industrial cultures that emphasised their authority as Indian rulers […, which] often meant engaging with claims on religious pasts and specific, locally rooted courtly cultures that exceeded colonial state authority’.Footnote ²⁸ I suggest that this was enacted, among other things, by hosting an impressive assembly of artistes, entertainers, and poets performing before audiences composed of regional elites, merchants, the general populace, and representatives of the colonial state.

Capable of providing multisensorial experiences across social boundaries, talented tawa’ifs were key figures in these public-facing events—at least until shifting social mores, new performance venues, and the rise of the gramophone and radio (in addition to theatre and film) around the turn of the century altered their social status and also introduced ‘a new set of male controllers and gatekeepers’.Footnote ²⁹ As will become clear, many of the female dancers and singers performing at the Benazir fair were recruited from outside the princely state, largely gaining their livelihoods by being ‘on the road’.

Despite its local specificities, organising a state-sponsored fair that emphasised both cultural and religious authority was not unique to Rampur. Indeed, some scholars have identified the emergence of a veritable ‘exhibition culture’ during this period.Footnote ³⁰ Beginning with the Madras Exhibition of 1855, agricultural and industrial exhibitions were inaugurated throughout the 1860s in towns and cities across British India. In addition, pre-existing religious festivals and trade fairs (melās) were revived, transformed, and expanded.Footnote ³¹ Many exhibitions and festival-fairs shared the common feature of providing public spaces in which audiences could engage in novel sensory experiences. On this level, Rampur competed with both emergent colonial exhibitions and pre-existing pilgrimage fairs. What distinguished the Jashn-e benaz̧īr from many agricultural and industrial exhibitions, however, was that the nawab—in emulation of Mughal noblemen—continued to value and support both male and female performers of Hindustani music and dance.Footnote ³²

An important text introducing us to the range of performers present at the first iteration of the Benazir fair—from Rampur’s male court musicians and accompanists to the cross-dressing or transgender dancer ‘Ali Jan (d. circa 1879) and several female performers—is the Musaddas tahnīyyat-e jashn-e benaz̧īr (Musaddas: felicitations for the Incomparable Festival), a generously illustrated commemorative rekhti poem composed around 1867 by the local Urdu poet Mir Yar ‘Ali Jan Sahib (1810–1896).Footnote ³³ Making every effort to present his princely patron as a just and benevolent ruler, Jan Sahib describes the nawab as a highly cultured connoisseur of the arts wealthy enough to host and reward the best musicians, dancers, artisans, storytellers, and poets available in the region.Footnote ³⁴ Moreover, the poem’s ‘ethnographic mode’ shows us how cultural activity in the princely state was not restricted to the elites and the physical space of the court, but that it included all varieties of people, the rich and the poor, who mingled in the bazaars, streets, gardens, and fairgrounds.Footnote ³⁵

Musicians and dancers assembled at the festive fairgrounds performed on small make-shift stages and in tents. Setting their performing bodies apart, Jan Sahib differentiates between the distinct characteristics of individual tawa’ifs and alludes to nuances in social standing or occupational specificities, be it by emphasising the quality of their singing voices, the refinement of speech and manners, the level of physical beauty, or notoriety based on repertoires and place-related identities. For example, he writes:

Of note is that Jan Sahib not only uses the term ţā’ifa (troupe/company of a courtesan) interchangeably with ranḍī (prostitute), but he also qualifies the latter with the (seemingly contradictory) term bā-tamīz (cultured). We can therefore assume that he understood ranḍī as an ‘unmarried [but respectable] woman’, as was common before the late nineteenth century.Footnote ³⁷ In a similar vein, the poet ranks the tawa’ifs Chunno, Mammi, and Allah Rakhi among the most cherished and cultured female performers available:

Described as highly cultivated and possibly also providing sexual companionship to elite patrons, Mammi and Chunno seem to have been relatively well-off courtesans who could clearly be distinguished from other women of the bazaar, their mother being a ḍeredār ţawā’if with her own fixed abode.Footnote ⁴⁰ Likewise, the poem highlights the elite courtesan Daroga (lit. ‘keeper’) Mahbub Jan (d. around 1891), a long-time resident in Rampur who acquired a significant respectability and intimacy with Nawab Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan, even accompanying him to Mecca in 1872.Footnote ⁴¹

Jan Sahib’s poem also indicates that many female performers travelled from one engagement to another. While it does not directly engage with the theme of mobility, it nonetheless notes that numerous performers in Rampur came from Lucknow. Covering the longest distances to reach the princely state for the annual festival was Nanhi Kalkatte-wali who, as her name’s nisba (attribution) indicates, hailed from the colonial capital of Calcutta (see Figure 1). Her appearance illustrates not only how the regionally distinct khemṭā dance genre associated with her gained popularity across northern India but also the willingness of lower-status performers, seeking social mobility, to travel far and wide.Footnote ⁴²

Figure 1. Nanhi Kalkatte-wālī and accompanists in Rampur, circa 1866. Source: M. Y. ‘A. Jān, Musaddas tahnīyat-e jashn-e benaz̧īr, Urdu Illustrated Manuscript 1229, fol. 25v, Rampur Raza Library.

Negotiating female performers’ terms of employment

For all its artistic and ‘ethnographic’ value, including a certain class and gender consciousness, Jan Sahib’s Musaddas remains the work of a male poet writing to please his princely patron. To gain a more nuanced perspective on the patronage of mobile tawa’ifs in post-1857 Rampur, we need to engage with a different set of primary sources and archives. Let us therefore turn our attention to several unpublished petitions and letters written by or about female musicians and dancers to the royal court during the reign of Nawab Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan, preserved in what survives of Rampur state’s Dār al-inshā’ (Department of Official and Diplomatic Correspondence) records. I contend that this change in perspective helps us recuperate some of the commonly occluded aspects in the relationships between patrons, middlemen, and performers.

In August 1865, a female envoy of the nawab—modestly referring to herself as a humble maidservant (kanīz), but likely a senior courtesan—sent the following report from Lucknow to the Rampur court, detailing her efforts to recruit talented female performers:

Although the author remains anonymous, the letter appears to have been written by a high-ranking courtesan commissioned by Nawab Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan to identify, assess, and, where appropriate, dispatch talented tawa’ifs to his court, presumably in connection with the coronation celebrations of 1865 and the subsequent Benazir fair. Displaying a well-trained eye and a discerning ear, as would befit a senior tawa’if, she describes her efforts to gain an overview of the finest courtesans available in the koṭhās of Lucknow, having them perform sample mujrā Footnote ⁴⁵ sessions of song and dance while rating or classifying the women according to their quality of voice, their singing and dancing skills, their physical beauty, as well as their manners and social etiquette.

Though clearly objectifying the female performers’ bodies, the letter’s descriptions appear to reflect a long-established convention of evaluating the qualities of tawa’ifs. In Dargah Quli Khan’s eighteenth-century Muraqqa‘-e Dihlī (Delhi album, 1738–1741), for example, courtesans are similarly assessed according to their physical beauty, body shape, age, and demeanour, while the effect they had on the eyes of the (male) beholder is weighed against their talents as singers and dancers.Footnote ⁴⁶ Moreover, as Katherine Schofield has observed, selecting the right kinds of musicians and dancers was of utmost importance for a nobleman ‘to prove to his peers, who were his social judges, his mastery of elite male etiquette’.Footnote ⁴⁷ In other words, the mission to search for talented courtesans in Lucknow was a serious undertaking, and the author of the letter seems to have been regarded as a trustworthy agent by the nawab.

The fact that only one or two courtesans met with her approval suggests either a genuine scarcity of high-quality performers in post-1857 Lucknow or the author’s exceptionally high standards as an evaluator. Moreover, it confirms that many courtesans travelled from one patron to the other, often across considerable distances. Gorakhpur, for example, whence Haingan tawa’if was summoned, lies around 300 miles east of Lucknow. Other passages, especially those referencing Mir Hasan Ja‘far and the sudden arrival of the nawab’s half-brother, Haidar ‘Ali Khan, by mail coach, underscore the importance attached to securing desirable performers and reflect the competitiveness of elite male patronage. This demonstrates that skilled courtesans continued to serve as vital markers of social prestige and cultural capital among certain elite circles.Footnote ⁴⁸

In a passage omitted from the translation above, the letter abruptly shifts to the challenges of acquiring several consumer goods for the nawab—such as a water pipe, tobacco, mango saplings, fine rice, and a particular kind of lentil (dāl).Footnote ⁴⁹ This casts light on the complex economy of patronage, connoisseurship, and princely maḩfil culture, in which luxury, artistic performance, and everyday household supplies were closely intertwined. While patrons may have objectified the tawa’ifs’ bodies, treating them almost like commodities, the performers nonetheless retained social esteem and cultural value, even as their profession ensured that they remained of lower social rank than the elite they served.Footnote ⁵⁰

It is noteworthy that several of the names mentioned in the letter—Zohra, Mushtari, Sundar, Haidar, Wazir, and Amir Jan—also appear in the early photographic album, The Beauties of Lucknow (1874).Footnote ⁵¹ The album’s introduction claims that some of these women had performed at Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s court prior to the 1856 annexation, yet most appear too young for that to be true. As Kathryn Hansen suggests, this retrospective framing sought to preserve their social prestige by linking them to a lost era of royal patronage, rescuing them from a colonial present marked by ‘moralistic censure and legal regulation’.Footnote ⁵²

Of all the tawa’ifs mentioned in the letter, only Haingan reappears in Jan Sahib’s poem, indicating her presence at the Benazir fair in 1866 (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The tawa’ifs Haingan Lakhnawi (right) and Bande Jan in Rampur, circa 1866. Source: M. Y. ‘A. Jān, Musaddas tahnīyat-e jashn-e benaz̧īr, Urdu Illustrated Manuscript 1229, fol. 27v, Rampur Raza Library.

Haingan’s young female body comes across here as sensuous and sexually attractive to the male gaze, her appearance as energetic and flirtatious. The couplets allude to the way in which the performer incited not just the sense of hearing and sight but also that of touch by arousing carnal desire. By contrast, her counterpart Bandi Jan seems to have been admired for her refined manners (tamīz), suggesting a capacity to arouse more than mere physical pleasure or a longing for intimate sensory experiences.Footnote ⁵⁴

Female performers’ petitions to the court appear at regular intervals in the princely state’s records. Tawa’ifs would seek permission to enter the state in search of employment, ask for financial assistance in matters of urgency such as the passing of a close relative or head of the household, or submit complaints and claims concerning payments denied by a patron (e.g. in the form of jewels), inheritance disputes, and other such issues.Footnote ⁵⁵ A particularly rich example is the following petition, written by the Lucknow-based tawa’if Haidar Jan in response to an offer from the Rampur court to perform at the nawab’s robe-of-honour ceremony (jashn-e khil‘at), along with several other female performers. Dated 7 October 1865, the letter is written in Persian on a paper dotted with rectangular gold plates. It reads:

Haidar Jan was most likely a high-status courtesan with a permanent residence (or koṭhā) in Lucknow, writing to negotiate her salary directly with the Nawab of Rampur. By the nineteenth century, several tawa’ifs owned property in the city and derived income from it, reflecting their economic and cultural influence.Footnote ⁵⁸ Acting as head of a household, Haidar Jan represented not only herself but also several ensembles of tawa’ifs invited to perform in Rampur by the nawab’s agents, Lady Fajja and ‘Ali Jan. Written just seven weeks after the above-cited letter by an anonymous servant of the nawab, it is possible that Lady Fajja was the same agent mentioned earlier. Interestingly, Haidar Jan addresses the nawab directly rather than negotiating further with the court’s envoy, who appears to have lacked the authority to approve salary increases. A seal bearing her name (see Figure 3) suggests that she regularly communicated via mail, likely with the aid of a professional scribe, underscoring her authority and established position within the elite patronage networks of the period.Footnote ⁵⁹

Figure 3. Seal under tawa’if Haidar Jan’s petition to the Nawab of Rampur, 7 October 1865. Source: UPSRAA, Rampur State Records, Dar al-Insha Fort, Correspondence with Ruling Princes and Others, Nawab Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan, 1865, Bundle No. 64, File No. 265.

Based on the extant response, written on 12 October 1865 in Urdu, it is evident that the court took Haidar Jan’s petition seriously enough to raise the salary from 200 to 250 rupees:

Imploring the tawa’if to accept these conditions and to leave immediately so as to reach Rampur on time, the letter stresses how important it is that she participate in the festivities marking the nawab’s accession to the throne. Not entirely certain that she would accept the offer, the writer also deemed it expedient to remind her that the court always richly rewarded performers with gifts and tips.Footnote ⁶¹

While some well-established female performers had the ability to negotiate their terms of employment via written petitions, most travelling musicians seeking engagements with the wealthy nobility in the region were dependent on middlemen. The following petition signed by the gemstone and curiosities dealer Alexander Malcolm Jacob (d. 1921) is a good example in this regard. It also provides unique evidence of female musicians from the Ottoman empire travelling and performing across the subcontinent in the nineteenth century (see Figure 4).Footnote ⁶²

Figure 4. A petition by Alexander Malcom Jacob to the Nawab of Rampur, 16 November 1874. Source: UPSRAA, 1874, Bundle No. 99, File No. 455.

Acting as their agent in 1874, Jacob invites Nawab Kalb-e ‘Ali Khan to engage a father and his three talented daughters from Constantinople:

Jacob’s petition shows us that musicians from the Ottoman empire, and especially good Arabic singers, were rare to come by in British India. With their unique background and impressive multilingual repertoire—one might even say ‘exotic’ in the sense that it did not include Indian vernaculars—the sisters can certainly be regarded as a ‘curiosity’ worth Jacob’s time. He clearly believed that they would appeal to the nawab, knowing that he was not only literate in Arabic but also emphasised his connection to the language of the Qur’an as a marker of his piety and Muslim identity.Footnote ⁶⁴

But, perhaps in view of prominent ‘Eurasian’ singers born and raised on the subcontinent such as Malka Jan and her famous daughter Gauhar Jan (d. 1930), this proposal was apparently not attractive enough. After all, Gauhar Jan (who eventually became one of India’s first gramophone celebrities), was also known to be able to sing in a variety of languages, including Bengali, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Marathi, Persian, and English. In the end, the nawab politely declined Jacob’s offer.Footnote ⁶⁵

Increased mobility, new artistic trends, and emerging public spheres

Successful tawa’ifs could be relatively wealthy and vulnerable at the same time, part of which had to do with the mobile nature of their trade. ‘As itinerant professionals carrying plentiful jewels and cash’, Schofield writes, ‘they were clearly at risk of attack even when they travelled together in large troupes.’Footnote ⁶⁶ Indeed, we find several reports of tawa’ifs being ambushed, robbed, kidnapped, or murdered while on the road during the colonial period.Footnote ⁶⁷ Even marriage processions (bārāt) were occasionally looted.Footnote ⁶⁸ And in other instances, royal patrons made sure to send out instructions to the gatekeepers of their forts and palaces to let the performers in without any hassle upon arrival.Footnote ⁶⁹

In any case, the evidence cited above alludes to the fact that female performers active in the second half of the nineteenth century often had to undertake long, arduous, and time-consuming journeys to reach their patrons. A typical means of transportation for female performers and their accompanists since the Mughal era was the ox-drawn cart (bahal), even as the railway network expanded (see Figure 5). Though around 200 miles south-east of Rampur and no longer a city with a functioning court, post-1857 Lucknow nevertheless not only seems to have retained some of its reputation as a centre of cultural refinement but also remained an important recruitment ground for tawa’ifs catering to the needs of wealthy landed elites in the region.Footnote ⁷⁰

Figure 5. ‘Nautch girls’ travelling by bullock cart, circa 1922. Source: George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-00377.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, transformations in the musical, technological, and infrastructural landscape across the subcontinent had an increasing impact on the labour market for travelling female performers. This was an era marked by the growth of Indian nationalism and anti-colonial mass movements, which were amplified by the introduction of new sound recording and transmission media, as well as the proliferation of brass and military bands and the employment of European bandmasters in Indian princely states. Moreover, the increasing mobility of Rampur’s elites during this time, coupled with a massive influx of new kinds of commodities and ideas from industrialised countries, had considerable effects on the patronage and practice of music.

While itinerant tawa’ifs continued to find patronage in Rampur during the reign of the princely state’s second-last ruler, Nawab Hamid ‘Ali Khan (r. 1889–1930), these changes and modernisation efforts also impacted their social standing and relevance in the princely state. Like his predecessors, Hamid ‘Ali Khan remained loyal to the British Crown while offering generous support for Muslim cultural institutions and educational modernisation projects across the country, such as the campaign for a Muslim university at Aligarh.Footnote ⁷¹ Being the first ruler of his state to visit Europe and North America, he revamped fairs like the Jashn-e benaz̧īr with the aim to promote the princely state as a site in which Rampur’s Indo-Islamic heritage would merge with and contribute to industrial modernity. This involved an emphasis on important innovations and new trends in the performing arts, including guest appearances by the increasingly popular Parsi theatre groups.Footnote ⁷²

In February 1894, shortly before Rampur was connected to the railway line (see Figure 6), the young nawab celebrated his marriage (jashn-e ‘arūsī) to Sultanat Ara Begum (d. 1925), daughter of the Nawab of Jaora. What role both court musicians and travelling female performers played in such festivities can be gleaned from the published descriptions of the event by the Rampur state employee Muhammad Firoz Shah Khan ‘Firoz’. Narrating how musicians and dancers crowded in front of the groom (comparable to the illustration in Figure 7), Firoz highlights the flash-of-lightning-like dance of the Lucknow tawa’if Bi Jiddan, the tinkling of ‘dancing girl’ Bi Haidar chune wali’s ankle-bells (‘chūne wālī’ denoting her characteristic white make-up), and the ever-present sounds of tabla strokes. Illustrating how the singing and dancing reached a colourful and ecstatic climax, he also lists the musical genres performed on the occasion (including ṭappa, ṭhumrī, tirvaṭ, tarāna, dhrupad, and khayāl), suggesting an eclectic mix of Hindustani music and dance.Footnote ⁷³

Figure 6. Nawab Railway Station, Rampur, circa 1911. Source: The British Library Collection, photo 36/(47).

Figure 7. A bridegroom (seated) and wedding guests watching the performance of a tawa’if ensemble. Source: S. ‘A. Khān, Sarmāya-ye ‘ishrat ma‘rūf Qānūn-e mausīqī [A treasury of pleasure, known as the Law of Music] (Delhi, 1875), p. 175.

Firoz’s account indicates that the nawab’s week-long wedding celebrations much resembled the entertainments at the yearly Jashn-e benaz̧īr, with dance performances (maḩfil-e raqş) in the evenings and military demonstrations, games, or wrestling competitions during the day. In addition to the salaried musicians of Rampur’s music department (arbāb-e nishāţ), many mobile tawa’ifs were hired from places as remote as Calcutta, Bombay, Lucknow, Benares, Agra, Jaipur, Nainital, Kanpur, Bareilly, Moradabad, and Kashipur, to make sure that there would at least be four to five unique performers every night. And in between, the new state-owned military brass band played marches and anthems.Footnote ⁷⁴

But the distinctly modern and mobile character of the event is perhaps most evident in the fact that the marriage party took a train from Moradabad to Agra for the bārāt (i.e. the groom’s wedding procession to the bride’s house), where they were welcomed with a dance performance by members of the arbāb-e nishāţ in a tent set up for breakfast next to the railway platform. Travelling on via Ajmer, the bārāt arrived in Jaora, where domnis (female musicians generally performing in seclusion for women) sang ferociously in the palaces, while groups of lower-status courtesans (ranḍīyoñ ke ţā’ife) danced outside in the streets, contributing to a festive atmosphere in the entire city. Cheerful singing, dancing, and ‘permissible magic’ (siḩl-e ḩalāl), we are told, set the tone of the festivities. Ensuing the nikāḩ ceremony presided over by a qāẕī (judge of a shari‘a court), court musicians intoned a congratulatory song, followed by a military band and another raga-based music session in the evening. Once the joyous bārāt set off for the return journey, fanfares blared at every halt. Three days later, upon arrival in Moradabad, a colourful group of elephants, horses, and camels brought the party home from the station to the streets of Rampur, where crowds eagerly awaited the procession.Footnote ⁷⁵

Both the actual celebrations of Hamid ‘Ali Khan’s marriage and the publication of this officially sanctioned description of its sights and sounds along the journey certainly had the intention to promote a positive image of the nawab as a generous ruler and Rampur as a ‘modern’ and magnificent ‘house of pleasure’ (dār-us surūr).Footnote ⁷⁶ It is significant to remember the reconceptualisation and modernisation of public fairs and exhibitions in this context.Footnote ⁷⁷ In the case of Rampur’s revamped Jashn-e benaz̧īr, the main objective was to put the state’s industries and crafts (especially handicrafts, trade, and agriculture) on a path of ‘progress’ (taraqqī). In 1894, the old festival was therefore suspended, and the foundations of a new kind of fair (numā’ish) were laid, intended to feature elements believed to have the potential to benefit the entire country (mulk) and nation (qaum). Entertainments (tafrīḥ-e ţab‘) and sports spectacles (khel tamāshoñ), while no longer of central importance, nevertheless retained their function to attract and amuse visitors.Footnote ⁷⁸

Prominent among the new cultural trends introduced at the fair were daily performances by the New Alfred Theatre Company (est. 1891 in Bombay). The increasing presence of travelling Parsi theatrical companies across northern India (including the princely states) had a lasting impact on the labour market for mobile performing women.Footnote ⁷⁹ Except for its managers, most actors and musicians of the company hailed from Gujarat and the United Provinces, and its popularity across northern India was ‘aided by the fact that Urdu had become the prevailing language of the Parsi stage’.Footnote ⁸⁰ During the Rampur fair, the company’s performances—their stories, colourful costumes, songs, and dances—seem to have been a particular highlight among visitors.Footnote ⁸¹

Interestingly, the rise of Parsi theatrical companies went hand in hand with an increase in the levels of public stigma attached to travelling female performers. An article in the short-lived Urdu Music Gazette of India (1910–1911), edited by the harmonium teacher Sutikshan Ray Qamar Dehlvi, straight-out characterised tawa’ifs employed as actresses in travelling theatre groups as immoral and untrustworthy seductresses, explicitly cautioning young men about the perils of becoming infatuated with them and the subtle ways in which they could manipulate the senses:

Emphasising sonic and visual aspects, especially those that can be deliberately concealed or artificially enhanced, the author warns the male readers (and main clients) of travelling Parsi theatre companies to stay away and shield their hearts from the deceitful allure of actresses. Such derogatory and discriminatory portrayals of actresses and tawa’ifs who switched into this line of work out of economic necessity was relatively widespread in British India, especially since the ‘anti-nautch’ campaign had gained momentum in the 1890s.Footnote ⁸³

Operating in a male-dominated world and at a time when the words ţawā’if and ‘actress’ came to be associated with immorality and prostitution, Parsi theatrical company owners were apprehensive about employing female performers as actors. At the same time, their status as ‘public women’ suggested that the profession of the performing artist was not suitable for respectable women.Footnote ⁸⁴ As Hansen has argued, ‘a new social conservatism emerged in companies such as the New Alfred, marked by stern adherence to traditional gender norms’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Reflective of the increasing stigmatisation of tawa’ifs, the New Alfred at some point even prohibited actresses from appearing on stage. Nevertheless, the allure of female performers remained an integral component of theatrical performances, which the company navigated creatively by relying on artistic female impersonations and cross-dressing. At least some tawa’ifs who made it onto theatre stages (and later into the film business)Footnote ⁸⁶ as actresses succeeded in becoming new celebrities of a growing commercial entertainment industry.Footnote ⁸⁷

While several articles in the Music Gazette painted tawa’ifs in a negative light, the paper paradoxically also featured favourable pieces that defended the rights of tawa’ifs, so much so that several readers began calling it a ‘prostitute’s newspaper’.Footnote ⁸⁸ In light of the number of journalists already subscribing to the view that tawa’ifs and the performance culture they embodied required reform, this is important to note.Footnote ⁸⁹ For example, while several newspapers complained on moral grounds about the performances of tawa’ifs and gramophone celebrities at the 1911 Allahabad Exhibition, the Music Gazette of India enthusiastically announced that the famous ‘dancer’ (raqqāşa) Gauhar Jan was coming to the exhibition from Calcutta.Footnote ⁹⁰ Addressing his critics, editor Qamar Dehlvi felt that any music lover ought to be excited about this unique opportunity to see and hear her sing and dance, stating:

Qamar Dehlvi not only defends Gauhar Jan as a highly skilled tawa’if and nationally recognised celebrity performer, he also makes a more general case for allowing dancing women to perform on stage at colonial industrial fairs on the national level. Citing both Hindu gods and goddesses renowned as dancers, as well as social reformers who themselves could not resist the pleasurable effects of sound and rhythm on their senses, he upholds the practice of dancing as entirely natural and the exhibition as an inclusive public space.Footnote ⁹² Seeing in her one of the country’s best and most respectable musician-dancers, the secular-minded editor similarly expressed the hope that Gauhar Jan be invited to the Delhi Durbar of 1911, which scholars have rightly called a ‘sonic spectacle of Empire’.Footnote ⁹³

Some tawa’ifs were certainly able to redefine themselves as early recording artists and even film actresses, yet most ‘hereditary female performers of dance were legislated and shamed out of existence’, while ‘hereditary male performers, the Kathaks, were taking their place on the stage’.Footnote ⁹⁴ In sum, careful examination of turn-of-the-century Urdu print sources shows us that at least a few voices stood in solidarity with the increasingly marginalised female Muslim performers of North India, even if constrained by the observance of certain proprieties and the need for male patrons to keep their senses, hearts, and bodies in check.Footnote ⁹⁵