REGD. NO: KARENG/2009/29264 ISSN 0975- 5810 ArtConnect A

An IFA Publication r An IFA Publication tConnect Volume4,Number 1 January-June 2010 Volume 4 Number 1 Contents January-June 2010 Rs.100 Editorial 3

INCESSANT SEARCH FOR LANGUAGES: SOME THOUGHTS ON HINDI POETRY TODAY Teji Grover V

6 ol u IN SEARCH OF THE OTHER SONG: m TRAVELS AMONG THE TAWAIFS OF BANARAS e4,N Saba Dewan u

21 m be

THE SCRAMBLE FOR SOUND r 1 Vibodh Parthasarathi 40

SOCIETY IN MINIATURE: DASARA DOLL DISPLAYS Annapurna Garimella 56

A STRANGE CROSS-CULTURAL INFANCY: J

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE NINETEENTH CENTURY BENGAL a n

Gargi Gangopadhyay u

70 a r y- J

KELAI DRAUPADI! u n

(LISTEN DRAUPADI!) e 2010 Sashikanth Ananthachari 86

India Foundation for the Arts ‘Apurva’ Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross Raj Mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block, Bangalore-560 094 Phone/Fax: 91- 80 - 2341 4681/82 Email: [email protected] www.indiaifa.org MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 1

Contents

EDITORIAL 3

INCESSANT SEARCH FOR LANGUAGES: SOME THOUGHTS ON HINDI POETRY TODAY Teji Grover 6

IN SEARCH OF THE OTHER SONG: TRAVELS AMONG THE TAWAIFS OF BANARAS Saba Dewan 21

THE SCRAMBLE FOR SOUND Vibodh Parthasarathi 40

SOCIETY IN MINIATURE: DASARA DOLL DISPLAYS Annapurna Garimella 56

A STRANGE CROSS-CULTURAL INFANCY: CHILDREN’S LITERATURE NINETEENTH CENTURY BENGAL Gargi Gangopadhyay 70

KELAI DRAUPADI! (LISTEN DRAUPADI!) Sashikanth Ananthachari 86 MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 2

ArtConnect An IFA Publication Editorial Volume 4, Number 1 How does an artist internalise the spirit of older artistic forms while also keeping her art alive to e contemporary context? And, as Frantz Fanon asked 50 years ago, how, in post- January-June 2010 colonial societies such as ours, might the artist engage with traditional culture in a dynamic instead of reflexive way? Shanta Gokhale considers this question the starting point of her novel Tya Varshi, from Editor which we carry an excerpt in this issue. In her introduction to the excerpt she writes that one of Anjum Hasan the events that set her thinking about how art is and is not transfigured by its times, was the publication of a collection of bandishes composed by an established vocalist. The artist claimed that they were new, “yet they were all of them variations on the old themes of love and Design separation and were also written in the old language.” Gokhale takes the opposite approach— the title of her novel is Marathi for ‘In That Time’ and Gokhale sees it as an attempt to capture Mishta Roy a specific cultural moment. “I was writing a time, I was writing situations arising out of this particular time and how this time was affecting the lives and creative processes of my artist characters.” Printed by B Narahari, published by Anmol Vellani on behalf of India Foundation for In his introduction to an interview with dancer-choreographer Astad Deboo, Sunil the Arts and printed at Manipal Press Ltd., Press Corner, Tile Factory Road, Manipal, Shanbag describes the first time he saw Deboo perform, and the strange excitement of the new. Udipi, Karnataka – 576 104 and published at India Foundation for the Arts, “What emanated from the loudspeakers were sounds, not music, and what the dancer was doing on stage was not dance as I knew it… If what I was familiar with was dance, then this surely ‘Apurva’, Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross, Raj Mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block, was anti-dance.” The interview goes on to establish how in Deboo’s case ‘contemporary’ dance Bangalore – 560 094. Editor – Anjum Hasan implies an open-ended, flexible approach to one's resources and contexts, a deliberate 3 suspension of prior assumptions about what the body can create in a space, and a constant search for challenge. In Clare Arni’s photographs of the old-time trades of Kolkata, and in Oriole Henry’s accompanying essay, the old and the new are considered in the context of the economic changes Photo and Text Credits sweeping through our cities. The piece shows how Kolkata’s old business establishments present Teji Grover, Saba Dewan, Krishna Kumar Rastogi, Daya Kumari, Vibodh both an ethical and aesthetic contrast to the impersonal façades of the corporate world. Historian Indira Biswas describes the career of a pioneering radio artiste—Jogesh Parathasarathi, Annapurna Garimella, Art, Resources & Teaching Trust, Bangalore, Chandra Bose—who, in the 1920s, started the first children’s radio programme in India and who Tasveer Ghar, Gargi Gangopadhyay and Sashikanth Ananthachari used the medium of radio to create a persona for himself as an affectionate, absent-minded, grandfather-like teller of stories. Galpadada, as Bose came to be known, married the new freedoms of early broadcasting and progressive ideas about children’s education and Cover Image recreation, with the traditional image of a storyteller. This carefully constructed image made him one of the country’s earliest media personalities as well as someone who “for the first time Unknown tawaif. Image from the collection of Krishna Kumar Rastogi. imagined a space for children in the media”. We also carry essays by Surojit Sen and Janaki Abraham on, respectively, the fakirs of Bengal and the social role of photography among the Thiyyas of Kerala. I hope you enjoy the issue! All efforts have been made to contact and receive permission from all copyright holders. Any source not acknowledged will be credited in subsequent issues. Anjum Hasan [email protected] MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 4

Contributors

Teji Grover is a Hindi poet, fiction writer, translator and painter. She has published five Parthasarathi is the recipient of a 2002 IFA grant to study the early recording industry and collections of poetry. Her first novel, Neela, appeared in 1999 and a collection of her short music culture in India. stories, Sapne Mein Prem Ki Saat Kahanian, in 2008. Her poems have been translated into a number of Indian and foreign languages. She has translated and edited an anthology of Annapurna Garimella is a designer and art historian based in Bangalore. She heads 22 Swedish poets, Barf Ki Khushboo (2001), as well as the works of Norwegian novelist Jackfruit, a research and design organisation which works in the arts, and is the founder of Knut Hamsun and playwright Henrik Ibsen. Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, a not-for-profit organisation that gathers resources and promotes research and teaching in art and architectural history, archaeology, crafts, design, Grover’s first solo exhibition of paintings was held in the National Institute of Advanced and other related disciplines in academic and non-academic fora. Her publications include Studies, Bangalore in 2005. She has been a teacher of English literature in a college in work on the medieval city of Vijayanagara, modernism in India, contemporary religiosities Chandigarh for two decades and is now a fulltime writer and painter based in and art, and the politics of tourism and heritage. Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh. In 2000, Garimella received an IFA grant to research and document the religious art and Saba Dewan is a Delhi-based filmmaker whose work has focused on gender, sexuality, architecture of Bangalore. 4 culture and communalism. Her notable films include Sita’s Family (2001), Barf (Snow, 1997) 5 Khel (The Play, 1994), Nasoor (Festering Wound, 1991) and Dharmayuddha (Holy War, Gargi Gangopadhyay is a full-time lecturer of English at Ramakrishna Sarada Mission 1989). Vivekananda Vidyabhavan, Kolkata. Currently working on a doctoral thesis on children’s print culture in the context of British imperialism, she also teaches a course on ‘Children’s For the past few years she has been working on a trilogy of films on stigmatised women Literature’ at Presidency College, Kolkata. Besides an academic interest in childhood performers. Delhi –Mumbai –Delhi (2006), on the lives of bar dancers, was the first film of studies, she nurtures a passion for publishing for children, viewing picture and storybooks as the trilogy; the second, Naach (The Dance, 2008), explored the lives of women who dance powerful mediums for achieving a parallel and alternative education. in rural fairs. The third and final film of the trilogy is The Other Song (2009) which is about the art and lifestyles of the tawaifs or courtesans. All three films have been screened Gangopadhyay is on an IFA grant to research the social and historical ‘formation’ of widely to critical acclaim. indigenous children’s literature in nineteenth-century Bengal. A web archive of this research will soon be available online. Dewan received two IFA grants (2002 and 2005) to research and make The Other Song Sashikanth Ananthachari is a graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Vibodh Parthasarathi maintains a multidisciplinary interest in communication theory, media He has worked as a cinematographer on over a 100 films including Aparna Sen’s Yugant policy and comparative media practice. He is one of the editors of the Sage series on and Soudhamini’s Invisible Flame. He has also directed fiction films for television. ‘Communication Processes’ which so far includes the volumes Media and Mediation (2006) and The Social and the Symbolic (2007). He has taught courses in communication theory at Ananthachari is currently on an IFA grant to make a film on a village festival in Tamil Nadu various universities in India. Parthasarathi’s latest film, Crosscurrents—-a Fijian Travelogue that is a unique celebration of the Mahabharata. . (2002), explores the many faces of ‘reconciliation’ after a decade of coups in the Pacific nation. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 6

The Incessant Search for Languages: What are the different streams that have fed the language we today call ‘Hindi’ and how have poets extended the range of Hindi poetry Some Thoughts on Hindi Poetry Today by drawing on these older tongues? Leading poet Teji Grover shares her own journey into Hindi poetry, via Punjabi, Urdu and English, talks Teji Grover about the history of Hindi poetry and presents some of the challenges and opportunities facing the scene today.

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Paintings on this page and pp. 12, 13, 18 and 19 by Teji Grover MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 8

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 4, Number 1 Teji Grover – Incessant Search for Languages

s a practising poet in Hindi, I gave up. And we settled down with a with many Urdu writers; many poets on our return. Would people again be am sometimes asked the split in our wildly beating hearts. and raconteurs visited our home. He thronging the lane, enjoying the Aquestion? “How come you This ‘split’ poverty didn’t seem also edited a literary magazine called spectacle? never wrote in your mother tongue, unreal in those days; it does now. My Nigarish. I was often requested by my My friend, the Hindi writer Punjabi” This is a question that father had a sizeable library in the father to recite the poems written by Udayan Vajpeyi, has been reading the annoys me considerably; it sounds like house, a telephone, five newspapers his visiting friends, especially Faiz Granth Saheb for many years now. an indictment more than anything every morning and journals of various Ahmed Faiz, who wasn’t yet the When he engages me in talk about else. I haven’t given this issue much kinds. But our next meal was always legend he has now become. The this text, I can’t forget this image— conscious thought as I have a rather uncertain. If some money came to pleasure of the thing not understood Grandfather being shouted at to swear weird relationship with Punjabi; I Mother from her stitching work, we was the first thing about poetry that I with his hand on the Granth Saheb avoid speaking it except with my got our food, not otherwise. I studied understood. I don’t know why but I that he hasn’t given us any money. He parents. If forced to speak the in an English-medium school and put never felt the urge to go to the would swear false oaths, after having language with others I begin to feel up with humiliation every day for meanings of incomprehensible words. given us a one anna coin now and compromised, exposed. I don’t really wearing torn shoes and not paying the The demand for meaning was then. Later he even gave us four anna know why. fees on time. The fear that a peon something I never made from poetry. coins and more false oaths followed. Perhaps I need to take a closer would materialise from the office to Hindi, in particular, had earned the False oaths should definitely be taken. look at the child who became inform my class-teacher that there immunity to exist beyond the realm of They have the pleasure of writing. Or 8 estranged from her immediate were two or three culprits in the class meaning for me, and Hindi writers, writing has the pleasure of false oaths. 9 surroundings by processes she never who hadn’t paid their dues is still the who had no place in our Urdu- I’m not surprised that my understood. This was in Amritsar subject of my nightmares. The poverty English-Punjabi household, acquired mother tongue revolted me—the where she spent her early years seemed unreal for this reason too: the magnetic pull of intimate language in which all domestic battles steeped in poverty of a kind that was right below our crumbling barsati my strangers. Perhaps it is still the same. were fought and shameless bargaining illumined by glowing riches from the grandfather kept a considerable house. Writing in Hindi, I still don’t belong took place with people who seemed inside. The instinct, as always, is to But for some reason, my parents, my to the ‘scene’. even poorer than we were. No word of talk about her in the third person. Let brother and I were not entitled to any My mother and my father Punjabi had range; the language me drop this for once and see what share in his prosperity. Breadwinning belonged, it seemed, to two different lacked the call of the unknown. I had happens: We were poor but we had did not occupy any place in my father’s planets. We had a home built of a sense of belonging to it, yes—it style. We had books, we had music, mental make-up and his health was screams, the crashing of porcelain and offered a lot of warmth and no dearth and I had an artistic upbringing, so to mostly bad. Given to the vices of glass, the telephone smashed again of meanness either. But it was speak. My ancestors had moved twice: reading and writing, he sought the and again, and inconsolable sobbing— altogether lacking in enigma. It was a once from Burma and then from company of poets. For months on end a home that was perhaps fit only for language in which I could be face-to- Pakistan; they had been reduced to he would be away on monk-like treks. poetry. Trembling with fear, my face with neither death nor a lover. indigence from extreme prosperity For my brother and me, his life was brother and I would go to school and Nor could I kill myself for the love of twice in their lifetime. In the end wrapped in mystery. It still is for me. return home, trembling with fear. a word, a single word. Even a everyone, especially my father, just My father had deep friendships Who knew what the scene would be thousand miracles, if performed by MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 10

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 4, Number 1 Teji Grover – Incessant Search for Languages

your mother, do not make you without letup, but I was not the least ‘Hindi’ poetry is written in Khari Boli. instrument that can acquire music and miracle-struck but more into bit interested in knowing their It’s an ironic reversal that all heat, light, colour and texture from a something of a miracle habituate— meanings. For me the delirium of those wonderful indigenous mothers variety of sources. this was what my relationship with my sound was meaning enough. In this of Khari Boli should now be regarded The prosody of Khari Boli is in mother tongue was like. delirium I began to write. as dialects of so-called ‘modern’ Hindi. itself nothing much to speak of in a Urdu was a language of the oral Later, I would plant myself in These are actually fully developed country boiling over with more than a tradition for me, a tongue made of the so-called Hindi-speaking areas, in language systems with cultural couple of thousand languages, voices very near and interesting to me. small towns and villages, and discover features signifying distinct ways of life, according to a rather conservative I never thought of writing or reading time and again that ‘Hindi’ was a myth and are languages spoken across what estimate. We live in a richly-endowed it. I could only hear it. The magic of I barely understood. Far too many is regarded as the ‘Hindi’ belt language landscape where you hear the my father’s voice filled it and the fantastic mother languages had fed comprising several Indian states. So various haunting percussions of drugged voices of his poet friends. into Khari Boli, the dialect with which this ‘Hindi belt’ is something of a Dravidian languages, the ice melting And I remember with bitter joy the modern Hindi is equated. And so I myth, since the 200 million-odd into hilly rapids echoed by Himalayan big fire I made out of my diaries filled allowed Bundeli in particular, and humans who are supposed to be languages, or languages like Mizo in with verses written in English! The Malwi to some extent, to intertwine Hindi speakers are in fact speaking which meanings vary according to the point was to get as far as possible from their distinct worldviews into the voice their own languages, languages not tones of spoken words or sentences. the stifling world created by the I was constantly weaving for myself. necessarily comprehensible to the That is precisely why a Hindi poet 10 mother tongue, but English wasn’t the speakers of what I am here referring to who has an ear and a craving for the 11 way out for me. It had to be a sibling *** as Hindi. These source languages are music of languages will have to play language, which could somehow mostly regarded as oral languages with and on Hindi in such a way that accommodate itself within the One way of attempting to map the though there is a substantial body of the melodiousness that it seems to linguistic world into which I was born. complex terrain of contemporary published works in them including lack will at last be heard. It’s like Of the languages I had learnt Hindi poetry is to go back to the Tulsidas’s epic Ramcharitmanas, which bringing back the breath of the tree to the only one left now was Hindi, with origins of modern-day Hindi. Khari was written in Avadhi. It is the flute fashioned from its wood. In which I had no literary contact. The Boli is the dialect equated with the noteworthy, however, that there is Khari Boli, despite this severe void was one day suddenly filled by Hindi language that I write in. It is hardly any prose published in these limitation I perceive as a poet, you can Nirala’s poems, which I read in school; the dialect of a particular region (the so-called ‘oral languages’ even though still hear the most enchanting music then Mahadevi Verma’s story ‘Gheesa’; New Delhi and Meerut area), and was any number of poetic texts appear. that poets have created through the and, as if descended from the sky, my widely adopted to express the spirit of Khari Boli is a relatively flat language use of different poetic strategies. A first Hindi novel Ve Din, by Nirmal the age, to bring a linguistically compared with the rich and highly cursory reading of the poets Agyeya, Verma. Hindi’s initial strangeness cohesive force to the prolonged musical languages (including, of Shamsher, Amrita Bharati or Shrikant filled me with longing for it. For me, struggle for freedom from the British course, Urdu, Persian and Sanskrit) Verma will make this audible to a poetry meant running madly behind Empire. It is today the official from which it derived its present form. musically-inclined ear. words. In a Nirala poem, words like language of India, though not the But all the same Khari Boli is an One way to look at the ‘pulin’, ‘trin’, ‘nirjhar’ haunted me national language. Most contemporary extremely useful and highly dynamic development of modern Hindi poetry MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 12 MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 14

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 4, Number 1 Teji Grover – Incessant Search for Languages

is, therefore, to consider the language Malwi, for instance, the associations that tradition had refined impact on the nurturing of poetic relationships different poets have had expression for death is ‘to go into over several centuries. The two talents, but they have also led to a with Khari Boli and how they left their peace’. In Bundeli, it is ‘coming to an streams that fed poetry in the completely unexpected imprint on the body of this fast- end’ or ‘finished’. Similarly, the flower preceding centuries were those of development—a tendency on the part evolving language. Many Hindi poets of the mahua tree, from which both bardic and devotional poetry (bhakti), of extremely gifted poets to withdraw came or come from regions in which liquor and food are obtained, will and the poetry of courtly love, with from the polemically-charged Khari Boli isn’t spoken at all. In many carry great significance in poetry from elaborate descriptions of the erotic atmosphere of contemporary Hindi cases, poets have had altogether the Gond adivasi regions, where a beauty of various kinds of heroines literature. There are a substantial different mother tongues, and the new newborn infant is placed on the earth (nayikas). Historically, the times under number of poets writing in Hindi Hindi was an acquired language. Thus, and a mahua flower placed on her the British regime gave an edge to today who pursue their difficult art in for instance, a poet like Trilochan brings body. The ritual signifies that the poetic practices because poets felt a void or a vacuum, which in some imprints of his mother and father earth and the mahua are the first obliged to make room for nationalism cases might qualify as solitude. A few tongues (Avadhi and Bhojpuri) and a mothers of the baby. When a poet and social reform. The adoption of years from now, a historian of Hindi host of other languages into his Khari from the mountainous Garhwal region Khari Boli was important because it poetry may find it hard to believe that Boli poetry, languages he acquired as a says he must go home to his children, gave a single linguistic platform to this poets who had the most unusual and penniless vagabond traversing the they’re alone, he could very well mean enterprise, but at the same time led to singular voices, and who withstood length and breadth of India. His poem that his wife is alone at home. I once a lack of true melodiousness, and a the influence of all received notions, 14 ‘Champa’ comes from such an bought books as gifts for these non- break from the cultural associations of have been lying in utter obscurity for 15 experience. The poem incorporates the existent ‘children’ when I heard a poet poetry written in languages like Braj, so long. The ‘unearthing’ of such voices dialect spoken by the little girl Champa, friend saying this. I had no idea Maithili and Avadhi. This produced a has been undertaken consistently in and it symbolises for me the poet’s shyness could go to such extremes real vacuum that had to be addressed. the past by poets like Agyeya and incessant search for languages and tones among the people of my own country. My hunch is that this lack led to Ashok Vajpeyi. in his poetry. In the context of Hindi, In many respects, most of us are a feeling of poetic insecurity, making Interestingly, this most one can legitimately speak of ‘languages’ proved complete, though intimate, several poets take recourse to one or conspicuous preoccupation with in this manner. strangers in this land comprising the other ideology. At the same time, ideological categories in contemporary A deep adventure with Khari innumerable lands and it led to a proliferation of individual Hindi poetry also brought into Boli is of necessity a vagabondage, cultural/linguistic practices. and eccentric voices. Though this brew existence profoundly moving poetry both literally and metaphorically, an might have been different elsewhere in by poets who felt they were under enterprise in which several Hindi *** the country, the result was more or attack. An example is Agyeya’s poem poets are engaged, one way or the less the same—an intense polarisation ‘On the Grass for a Moment’ in which other. Let me give you some The beginning of the twentieth between poetry regarded as socially even a tender moment with his interesting examples of how drastically century marked a distinct break in committed, and poetry defined beloved brings this sadness and sense even worldviews shift from one Hindi poetry from the melodiousness pejoratively as ‘elitist’, ‘aesthetic’ and of loss into the poet’s mind. Similarly, language to the other even within the of the poetry preceding it, a curve ‘socially irresponsible’. Some of these Shailendra Dubey, one of the least supposedly ‘Hindi’ zone. In the away from a wealth of cultural pronouncements have had a marked published and highly prolific poets of MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 16

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 4, Number 1 Teji Grover – Incessant Search for Languages

the present scene, wonders in one of poets, and one very keenly aware of platforms for diverse literary known Hindi novelist, said of her: his poems whether he should sit the craft of writing poetry. In their expressions to something less “Amrita Bharati is probably the most facing society in his poems. And what sheer pursuit and mastery of various facilitative. It is not surprising, alone signature in Hindi poetry. Alone if society happens to be facing in his languages, Agyeya, Trilochan and therefore, to come across schools of and unique.” Similarly Kamlesh and direction, how then will he be able to Shamsher brought innumerable fish among Hindi poets, seeking out Shirish Dhoble have both been write? He asks this simple question nuances to their Khari Boli poetry, new waters with temperatures singularly lacking in worldly ambition charged with the anguish of an though Trilochan continued to write conducive to all of them. And while and have eschewed the limelight as anonymous poet writing in a in his native Avadhi too. the vacuum within the poetic scene well as participation in a debate that frightening void, away from any gaze, Regarding the unearthing of seems to be deepening in some ways, seems futile to them. They have both publicity, debate or dialogue. One can manuscripts and the rehabilitation of fresh currents of air rush in from written poetry that brings an edge to only hope that some poets writing poets in the recent history of Hindi unexpected quarters. Hindi poetry has everyday experience by drawing on today and going unnoticed will be poetry, the most assiduous work has found a host of scholars and Puranic and mythological texts. Then recognised later, like Nirala and been done by the poet, cultural activist translators from all over the world there is the prolific but unpublished Muktibodh, who did not achieve any and administrator, Ashok Vajpeyi. who engage individual writers in Shailendra Dubey who is prone to recognition during their lifetimes. Like Whereas Agyeya’s influence has been dialogue, culminating in serious serious inner turbulence and who Nirala, Muktibodh, too, has now been within the fold of literature, Vajpeyi publications from university presses turns his hallucinatory mode of accepted across the ideological camps has been officially in a position to abroad. A major internet journal perceiving reality into poetry that 16 as a monumental literary figure whose bring various art forms in proximity (Pratilipi) has been launched by two could well remind you of Rimbaud’s 17 poetry brought existential dimensions with one another by helping to set up young poets, one of whom writes in engagement with literature. into play and an almost surreal institutions that became cultural hubs English and other in Hindi. Major Miranhshah writes in English but is imagery in its wake. Shamsher and for the entire country, the most English language publishers like known only to a few Hindi poets who Trilochan too have been placed above notable among them being Bharat Penguin and HarperCollins have have read him in my translation. He the polemics of the scene, though Bhavan in Bhopal. This bringing started to publish in Indian languages, has been an aspiring natural farmer Marxist critics were never happy with together of various art forms has including Hindi. And mainstream inspired by the Japanese farmer the intense worship of experiment and enriched not only Hindi poetry but Hindi publishers are growing bigger, Masanbou Fukuoka. I’m deeply aware beauty in Shamsher. For instance, his poetry in other Indian languages too, even if Hindi writers are getting of the responsibility placed on me as longing to be ‘laid on mountains of by providing culturally exciting, poorer by the minute! the sole possessor of the unpublished thirst’, and his love for the abstract sharable platforms. If it had not been Yet there are Hindi poets today manuscripts and handwritten would hardly find any leftist admirers, for Vajpeyi’s involvement in the Hindi whose art is refined by shyness and notebooks of some of these reticent and yet he is the one of those hailed as literary scene, the polemically-charged silence. One of the most intriguing fellow poets. ‘the poet’s poet’ despite (or because atmosphere I have described would contemporary figures is Amrita of?) his peasant background and have taken a much bigger toll. Bharati, a reclusive woman who never extreme childlike naiveté and The last few years have also seen surfaced on the Hindi scene and is openness. Shamsher is the most the disappearance of major literary leading a quasi-spiritual life in boldly experimental of all Hindi magazines or their passage from being Pondicherry. Nirmal Verma, the well- MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:00 PM Page 18 MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:01 PM Page 20

Over the course of an eight-year journey, filmmaker Saba Dewan has delved deep into the history and present conditions of the tawaif, the courtesan of north India. Her recently-completed film, The Other Song—which won the Macenet prize for the best international documentary at the Pusan International Film Festival 2009—traces the memories, physical spaces, novels, poetry and music associated with the tawaif, and the politics that over a century led to her gradual In Search Of the Other Song: erasure from public memory. In the following essay, Dewan shares with us some of the discoveries she made during the course of her research Travels Among the and describes her encounters with the present-day inheritors of the Tawaifs of Banaras tawaif legacy. Saba Dewan MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:01 PM Page 22

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 4, Number 1 Saba Dewan – In Search of the Other Song

ne warm summer afternoon Satisfied with my ignorance about stigma attached to ‘respectable’ women sure Rasoolan Bai had never sung the in Banaras four years ago, ‘Lagat jobanwa ma chot’, Shashtriji being out in the public gaze, accessible jobanwa version again since no one OShastriji asked me a settled into the comfortable routine of to all. It was this ambiguous place that with the happy exception of himself question— “Have you heard of a one-sided conversation that had the tawaif occupied within pre-colonial seemed to be aware of its existence. Rasoolan Bai’s thumri ‘Lagat karejwa developed between us over the many patriarchy which I was interested in Breaking my reverie, Shastriji ended ma chot, phul gendwa na mar’ (My heart years that I had been visiting Banaras exploring. by playfully posing a challenge—let’s is wounded, don’t throw flowers at to research and later shoot for a film This space of the tawaif was, see, he said, if you can find this me)?’ I was a bit surprised that he that would journey through history, however, to be recast in a major way forgotten song. should ask since ‘Lagat karejwa ma chot’ memory, physical spaces, cultural and from the late nineteenth century I am not sure whether at that is identified closely with Rasoolan Bai, archival texts to locate the arts, lifestyle onwards. A major aspect of my time I was interested in finding out the famous thumri singer from and sexuality of the tawaif or courtesan research was to analyse the processes more about the song. The significance Banaras. Quite sure that Shastriji had within the cultural, social and political by which the cultural, social and of the seemingly minor difference something more up his sleeve, I landscape of late-nineteenth and sexual space occupied by the tawaif between the two versions of the hesitantly replied in the affirmative. twentieth-century North India. was not only marginalised but also thumri was not apparent to me. His next question confirmed my I was interested in exploring art stigmatised as ‘deviant’ and ‘obscene’. In Shastriji, usually so voluble, had not suspicions. “Have you heard its forms traditionally associated with the particular, I was interested in been forthcoming and I had been too variation, also recorded by her— tawaif. Thumri, dadra and ghazal exploring the ideological discourses sleepy to probe. In my literal 22 “Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phul gendwa singing through the nineteenth and that fuelled nationalist responses to understanding of ‘jobanwa’ as ‘yauvan’ 23 na mar (My ‘jobanwa’ is wounded, well into the mid-twentieth centuries pre-colonial female sexualities and or youth, youthfulness, I could see don’t throw flowers at me)?” were intrinsically seen as the tawaif’s aesthetics. Finally, the project aimed to nothing particularly noteworthy, let In his early eighties, Shiv Kumar domain. What was the tawaif’s explore the state in which women alone reprehensible, in the jobanwa Shastri comes from a family of vaidyas contribution to these cultural from tawaif backgrounds survive in version sung by Rasoolan Bai. Yet and is himself a renowned Ayurvedic expressions? How did these forms in contemporary India. despite the lack of enthusiasm, I did practitioner, a musician and also turn render and construct the tawaif? That afternoon, however, the accept Shastri ji’s challenge for want of grandson of the well-known Hindu Besides being a professional musician, mandatory tall glass of sweet lassi at anything better to do. nationalist leader, Madan Mohan the talents required of the courtesan Shastriji’s home had taken its toll— I was already three years into the Malviya. Fond of posing questions, reflected her multiple roles as a heavy-eyed with sleep I was only project and had come to an unforeseen Shastriji is happier still to answer companion, entertainer and lover to vaguely in touch with the concerns halt after making initial progress with them himself. male patrons, who vied for the that had brought me to Banaras in the archival and field research. My canvas attention of well-known tawaifs. first place. Hazily, I heard him talk was vast since the research was As a professional performer, the about the jobanwa record that dependent on retrieving and reading tawaif was sought after and even belonged to his father but had fragments. The history of the arts, celebrated, and yet she was also marked subsequently got lost. Shastriji especially music, in India depends to a out as a social ‘outlaw’, given her non- couldn’t remember the year in which large extent on oral memory and marital sexuality and the patriarchal the record had been released but was material traces. The histories of tawaif

Daya Kumari (one of the tawaifs featured in The Other Song) during her phase as a theatre actor (left and on pp. 29, 34 and 37) and photographs of unknown tawaifs (previous page and on pp. 27, 32 and 39) from the collection of Krishna Kumar Rastogi MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:01 PM Page 24

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artistes, not surprisingly, people that thronged the concerts elegant furniture, rich furnishings and the emotions experienced by the are even more fragmentary organised by religious bodies on the gilded mirrors. woman in love, and the celebration of since these are histories of ghats of the Ganga and everywhere Patronage for the tawaifs of the romantic play between Radha and a community that has received one answer—the tawaif is these kothas came from the triumvirate Krishna. The virtuosity of a tawaif always stood on the dead. She sings no more those of the ruling elite in Banaras—the singer’s performance was judged to a margins of patriarchy and beguiling melodies that made innocent Bhumihar king, the merchant great extent by her ability to tease out therefore, necessarily, its men forget their way back home. aristocracy, and the gosains or priests the differing perspectives and multiple historiography. The process of who controlled the vast resources of meanings embedded within any given retrieval gets more complicated since *** the rich temples over which they phrase of a thumri. This she would the history of the tawaif and her arts presided. There was not just social achieve through voice modulation and over the last century-and-a-half is also There were, however, some residents acceptance of romantic alliances with abhinaya, which included dance a history of erasure and silencing. of Banaras who were more tawaifs, it was considered a matter of gestures and facial expressions. The I got ample taste of this through forthcoming. I met with Krishna some prestige. Several men were, in tawaif’s mehfil allowed for intimate eye my journeys in Banaras, home till Kumar Rastogi, a music collector who fact, known by the names of their contact between the performer and roughly the mid-twentieth century to a has an extensive collection of early famous tawaif mistresses such as her select audience—all men—some large community of tawaifs, and the gramophone recordings including ‘Chandrakala wale’ Babu Yadunath of whom might also share a sexual centre of bol banao thumri, hori, chaiti those made by tawaif singers. He has Prasad—a wealthy merchant whose liaison with the singer. 24 and dadra of the purab ang, practised also collected hundreds of mistress was Chandrakala, a famous As self-made women, tawaifs 25 and preserved by women singers almost photographs of tawaif musicians of the tawaif of the city. had to cultivate, in order to be exclusively from courtesan late-nineteenth and early-twentieth Ta w a i fs were invited to perform successful, a range of skills that backgrounds. The city continues to see century. In recent years, Rastogiji has at the court on various occasions, at included, besides music and dance, itself as a centre of Hindustani music, also revived Kashi Sangeet Samaj, a family celebrations in the homes of the ilme majlisi or knowledge of the validated no doubt by the regularity of once-influential music society. His merchant princes, in prominent intricacies of social etiquette, as also concerts organised here in both formal music archive is now housed under the temples, and on the ghats of the grounding in literature, politics and and informal settings, along with the auspices of this society. Ganga during important religious the arts of erotic stimulation. Amritlal presence of a large number of well- Along with him and several functions. Ta w a i fs sang of ecstatic Nagar, in his accounts of the tawaifs in known, mostly male, musicians, others, I was able to map the city of passion, pangs of separation, sexual Banaras, mentions Vidyadhari Bai, wealthy patrons (both institutional and Banaras during the time that tawaifs, longing, jealousy, anger, flirtation and one of the most respected thumri individual), countless music schools, quite literally, occupied the central rejection—emotions that imbue the singers of the city in the early decades and local music societies. Where did space—the Chowk and its adjoining poetry of thumri and its associated of the twentieth century, who, along the tawaif live in the city’s memory, I mohallas, Dal Mandi, Nariyal Bazaar, forms like hori and chaiti. Thumri has with Rajeshwari Bai, aunt of wondered, as I tried to trace her in Raja Darwaaza and Aas Bhairon. often been called the ‘feminine voice’ of Siddheshwari Devi, had, for instance, musical mehfils hosted by wealthy Many wealthy tawaifs owned extensive Hindustani music. The poetic text of had spent several years studying the merchant families in the opulent music property in these areas and their thumri is articulated from a feminine Kamasutra from Goswami halls of their homes. I inquired of kothas, I was told, were fabled for their perspective and is usually centred on Damodarlal. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:01 PM Page 26

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I will always be most grateful to aristocratic patrons and were amongst everyone in Banaras who so the wealthiest women in the city. They generously shared with me details did not usually have, at a given time, about the culture associated with more than one patron with whom tawaifs. I did notice, however, that they shared a sexual relationship, but most of these narratives fed into a they were free to perform in mehfils romantic nostalgia about the ‘great’ either within their kotha or at the tawaif singers of Banaras, who had homes of a select few. The financial been patronised by the elite and risen security provided by wealthy patrons to the highest echelons of wealth, fame enabled these tawaifs to invest in the and prestige through their music, best available teachers in music and social skills and learning. But what of dance, as also in expensive clothes and the larger number of tawaifs in the jewellery, so essential to ensure their community who did not have access to success and popularity as performers. the resources or skills that would It was also reflected in the luxurious catapult them into the rarified ambience and services that the kotha environs of the courts and music could provide. This in turn attracted 26 halls of aristocratic homes? to it well-known male musicians, A broad stratification of poets and other members of the tawaifs based upon the class of literati, marking it as a musical and patrons they entertained, as also cultural institution of the city. their musical and other cultural Placed lower were tawaifs from talents, is to be found in some early- castes like the Baisi, Ramjani and twentieth-century accounts. The Sahban who, though skilled categories were fluid in nature and musicians, did not have the resources narratives reflect how a poor tawaif to be as discriminating about their could, through her beauty and talent, choice of patrons. Though they did along with luck in getting a rich sing thumri as well as tappa, in the patron, climb up the ladder of success. main their repertoire consisted of Narratives about fall in fortunes to popular ghazals, dadras, folk music, penury are also as plentiful. songs performed in Parsi theatre, and At the highest rung were placed later even film songs. It is the the Hindu Gandharva and Kinnar, repertoire of these tawaifs that often and Muslim Dereydar tawaifs, who finds disparaging mention in early- entertained an exclusive category of twentieth-century accounts for being MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:02 PM Page 28

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 4, Number 1 Saba Dewan – In Search of the Other Song

‘vulgar’ but hugely popular with the lovers of music, of the anxiety- My subsequent research revealed that Hindu women respectively) was ‘common’ people in the bazaar. Still provoking sexuality that the term between the late 1950s and mid- underway. lower in the hierarchy one finds ‘tawaif’ seems to be charged with. 1960s, large numbers of tawaif mention of Gonaharins and Magiyas, Clearly, in the cultural families vacated Dal Mandi and its *** tawaifs who danced at weddings, dispensation of modern India, the adjoining mohallas, where they had religious processions and other public tawaif’s arts have been rendered traditionally lived. Why and how had the tawaif become spaces, considered taboo by the acceptable only after being separated Moving back in history, in a national embarrassment? In a small higher-placed courtesans. from the sexuality and lifestyles of 1946, Sardar Patel, veteran Congress one-column article tucked away in an As practitioners of a popular their earlier practitioners, who in leader and Minister for Home and old edition of Aaj, dated 31 June, culture associated with the bazaar and archival accounts are increasingly Information and Broadcasting in the 1921, I read an account of a meeting a threatening polygamous sexuality, transformed into women on the run, interim government, banned women of tawaifs in the city that had been women performers placed in the lower hounded by the State and society for artistes whose “private lives were a organised by Husna Bai, the rungs of the tawaif community were being prostitutes. Piecing together the public scandal” from singing on All choudharayin of the community in dismissed by a majority of my fragments in the jigsaw puzzle of the India Radio (AIR): only ‘respectable’ Banaras. Presided over by a framed informants as ‘mere prostitutes’— tawaif’s history, I came across, for women were to be allowed to photograph of Gandhi, the meeting outside the league of the elite instance, a series of reports that perform. This rule in effect ensured had sworn allegiance to the nationalist Gandharva, Kinnar and Dereydar appeared through the summer of 1958 that AIR was left with almost no cause and had decided on the 28 musicians whose art practice defined in Aaj, a Hindi newspaper published female Hindustani music singers formation of the Gayika Sangh, an 29 the ‘high’ culture of Banaras associated from Banaras. These are accounts of since most came from courtesan association of ‘singing and dancing closely with the ruling elite. the introduction in that year of the backgrounds. girls’. It had concluded with a Those tawaif practitioners who anti-prostitution law, the Suppression Though Patel’s ruling was resolution proposed by Vidyadhari Bai were able to make a name for of Immoral Trafficking Act, in the city. subsequently revoked, I got to hear to weed out themselves in the postcolonial cultural They report the frequent police raids of tawaifs in Banaras who immersed obscenity in music economy are feted, and their on the houses of tawaifs, followed by their musical instruments in the and to promote invaluable ‘service’ to music celebrated, arrests—part of the State’s drive to Ganga and stopped singing nationalism by but they are, simultaneously, also rescue women from prostitution. altogether. Many others, dependent singing patriotic removed in subtle ways from their Ta w a i fs seem to have responded on the radio for a regular income, songs at all venues tawaif backgrounds. I noticed, for through legal petitions and letters to entered into marriages, mostly with where the courtesans instance, that several people avoided newspapers asserting their identity as their accompanist sarangi and tabla were invited to using the term tawaif in connection performing artistes and not players, so as to become suitably perform. with them. Instead, the preferred term ‘prostitutes’. There are also reports of respectable for the State-controlled When I was ‘gayika’, woman singer, which attempts by tawaifs to form groups airwaves. The transformation of the mentioned the news- while being valid enough in a limited and associations of ‘singing and Bai (term of address for tawaif) into report to Shastriji he kind of way, is reassuringly free, for dancing girls’ in order to protect Begum and Devi (forms of address sighed, folded his the middle-class practitioners and themselves from police harassment. for ‘respectable’ married Muslim and hands rather MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:02 PM Page 30

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dramatically at the painting of Gandhi Sahib did not sound misplaced, but ‘prostitute’ tawaif. Internalising this Not surprisingly, hanging on the wall opposite, and both were perhaps running too far Victorian moral code, nationalist given this history, few said, “What a great man he was but I ahead of the sequence of events that discourse, too, seems to have cast the contemporary musicians have to admit that he destroyed our had shaped the cultural history of tawaif’s kotha as a site of hazardous that I met in Banaras, musical culture which was so closely Banaras. A series of crudely-drawn and illicit pleasure that sapped including sarangi and tabla linked to the great tawaif musicians of cartoons lampooning the tawaif, masculine vigour. players who had begun this city.” published in late-nineteenth and early- One of the early issues taken up their careers performing with tawaif Rai Anand Krishna, belonging to twentieth-century Hindi pamphlets by Hindu nationalist leaders such as singers, admit in public to any past an old aristocratic merchant family and and newspapers, tell the story of a city Madan Mohan Malviya, which link with courtesans. I also met with a scholar of art and Hindustani music, which had in that period reverberated polarised the city on the basis of several middle-class women musicians, also voiced similar sentiments. He to the rallying cry of—“Chahu jusko religious identity in the early twentieth some whom have gained recognition shared stories about the music mehfils nij kalian, to sab mili Bharat santan, century, was the demand that Hindi as exponents of thumri, hori and chaiti. that were regularly organised in his Japau nirantar ek zabaan, Hindi, be declared the official language as I found many displaying a great home during the time of his father, the Hindu, Hindustan” (“Those who opposed to Urdu. The tawaif as the anxiety to distance themselves from late Rai Krishna Das. By the 1920s, desire personal salvation should personification of the ‘other’ within the earlier practitioners of art forms however, his father had stopped the together as children of India chant in Hindu nationalist discourse is that they now call their own. practice of inviting tawaif singers to one voice—Hindu, Hindi, Hindu revealingly articulated in the above- A sentiment that was often 30 these mehfils. Rai Anand Krishna nation”). mentioned series of popular cartoons expressed to me was that the value or 31 located this transition in the puritanical The rise of Hindu nationalism, as ‘Begum Urdu’; the tawaif becomes integrity of the tawaif’s music was morality advocated by Gandhi and based on the mobilisation of a the embodiment of the alien, exotic, compromised because of the centrality embraced fervently by an English- collective Hindu identity, articulated untrustworthy, decadent, morally placed on sexuality in her educated middleclass that had little the anxieties of a subjugated corrupt Muslim ‘other’ in contrast to performance. Part of the logic of this previous connection with, or patriarchy. A major concern within the ‘Mother Devanagari’, the upper-caste, argument lies in the ascendancy of an appreciation of, the tawaif’s arts. This discourse was the need to regulate respectable, honest and homespun ascetic Gandhian morality; a greater important new class of political players existing female sexualities and control mother of every true Hindu son. part lies embedded in that great castigated the practice of patronising spaces of ‘dangerous excess’. For the The Anti-Nautch Movement of invention of the early twentieth tawaif musicians as ‘degenerate’—their newly-emerging Hindu nationalists, the early twentieth century had a century: a national tradition of music influence was such that large sections colonial morality became, ironically, strong presence in Banaras. It attacked cast in a spiritual, Hindu mode. With of the old aristocracy that formed the the parameter by which they were to the tradition of organising ‘nautches’ an increasing sense of nationalism cultural elite in Banaras felt compelled define and differentiate the ‘moral’ (dances) and the open presence of came the need for a music that was to disassociate themselves from from the ‘immoral’. After the war of tawaifs on public occasions. This was classical, morally uplifting and courtesan performers. 1857, colonial authorities had spared matched with demands for changes in reflected India’s great cultural heritage. Gandhi being the poster boy of no effort to construct Indian princes municipality bylaws that regulated the The problem, however, was that the morality brigade, the accusation as effete and profligate, steeped in tawaifs’ place of residence to certain Hindustani music practice at the turn directed at him by Shastriji and Rai decadent pleasures symbolised by the specified areas of the city. of the twentieth century did not quite MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:02 PM Page 32

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conform to these notions. The Puluskar, and drew inspiration from antiquity of most of its major genres the nation-building discourse of these like khayal and thumri could not be Hindu cultural nationalists. The traced beyond a few centuries, and its mainstay of Kashi Sangeet Samaj’s close links with court-based patronage activities was the organising of regular imbued Hindustani music practice, in Hindustani music concerts within the eyes of middle-class nationalists, elite homes and on public platforms. with bawdy associations and an Rastogiji, the present secretary of the unacceptable morality based on music society, read out for me the pleasure seeking. meticulous records of the Samaj that Reasons had to be found and list the names of all the musicians blame apportioned to explain the invited to perform in the 60 years that disjunction between an idealised past it has been active. It is a revealing and a far from perfect present. exercise: all the names are of Hindu Locating Hindustani music in ancient male musicians with not a single shastra-based principles and modes mention of a Muslim performer or of learning, early cultural of any singer from a tawaif nationalists like Vishnu Narayan background. 33 Bhatkhande and Vishnu Digamber Despite these developments, Puluskar focused their attack on women from middle-class family the corrupting influence of its backgrounds have had to wage present practitioners—tawaif singers intense personal struggles through the and Muslim ustads—both of whom twentieth century to publicly perform were seen as interlopers in a sacred Hindustani music, given the tradition. association of professional music Alongside, music learning, performance with the now stigmatised practice and performance now moved tawaifs. There has, therefore, been an out into newly-established music anxiety to delineate a public persona schools and colleges, music societies distinctly rooted in the ideals of a and public concerts largely patronised ‘respectable woman’. Nowhere is this by the middle classes. Kashi Sangeet more evident than in the delinking of Samaj in Banaras, for instance, was the performance from the sexuality of established in 1906 with the active the performer. This is especially true encouragement of Vishnu Narayan for women singers who perform Bhatkhande and Vishnu Digamber thumri. Eye contact with the audience MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:02 PM Page 34

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and the use of abhinaya or drama the spiritual coexisting, overlapping the last thing they want is an chances of finding acceptance here through facial expressions and dance and providing meaning to each other. unknown filmmaker turning up at proved next to impossible in the initial movements are a strict no-no in the their doorstep, raking up a past now period of my project. decorous presentations of thumri, a *** best forgotten. It was while I was politely being task made easier by the impersonal However, the descendents of less shown the door by most tawaif and distant space of the auditorium Even when, through the efforts of well-off tawaifs have had to make families that I met Saira Begum, a within which most contemporary some people, I was able to contact different life choices. There has been practicing thumri, ghazal, hori, chaiti music concerts take place. women from tawaif families, my first an economic compulsion for such and dadra singer based in Banaras. Attempts have also been made challenge was introducing the subject women to continue earning for the Much to my happy surprise, Saira, a to cast thumri within a devotional, of my research, given that the term family, though they have lacked the soft-spoken woman in her early fifties, spiritual mode. The explicit or implied ‘tawaif’ has become a rude expression resources or patronage to receive the was more welcoming than the others presence of Krishna in a large number not to be used in polite company. In intensive training in music of the in the community. I sensed that her of thumri texts is put forward as proof deference to the morality of the earlier generations. Over the past initial openness was motivated to a of the ‘inherently’ devotional nature of cultural elite, the tawaif community century, the severing of links between great extent by a curiosity about me thumri. In several instances, seemingly refers, in its public discourse, to tawaif sexuality and her arts, though and the research I was doing. minor changes have been made within courtesans as ‘gaane waali’, singing never complete, pushed a large Saira had begun her career as a thumri texts, replacing especially woman. So did I but it did little to number of these women into tawaif performer at weddings and 34 modes of address to the patron/lover diffuse the palpable anxiety that arose rendering mostly sexual services, other family celebrations of the upper- 35 with a suitable epithet for Krishna, once I explained to the women the besides performing in their kothas a caste landlords in Bihar and eastern and in the process road-rolling the scope of my project. Our meetings transformed repertoire of Hindi film Uttar Pradesh. However, due to the wonderful ambiguity that exists would usually end soon after. The songs and dances, sometimes even prevailing stigmatisation and pressure within thumri texts—the erotic and present generations of Gandharva, popular ghazals and Bhojpuri folk from her extended family of male Kinnar and Dereydar tawaifs, as also songs for a male audience that wanted cousins, nephews and sons-in-law, all the more affluent sections from the the trappings of a feudal culture but engaged in ‘respectable’ professions, Baisi and Ramjani castes, have over not its aesthetics. In the last 25 years Saira has consciously distanced herself the past decades generally moved into though, kothas in Banaras have shut from her tawaif past. the lifestyle associated with middle- down altogether and girls from these Saira was initially vague about class ‘respectability’. The girls of these families have moved on to perform in her family background, hinting at a families are not exposed to any the better-paying dance bars of bad marriage which forced her into training in music or dance and have Mumbai and Bangalore, in orchestras the kotha. It was a story I was to mostly been married off. The sons, that perform at family and other become familiar with over the course because the families had the resources celebrations, especially in smaller of my research; I repeatedly came to afford it, have been educated and towns, and in dance troupes. Their across attempts by tawaif performers encouraged to seek jobs or even begin families prefer to stay miles away from to trace for themselves ‘respectable’ their own businesses. Understandably, anyone connected with the media. My non-tawaif origins. With minor MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:02 PM Page 36

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variations, the script would revolve feminine virtues of modesty and self- years, Saira stopped performing research with her had forged a around the predictable narrative of the denial, she is the obverse of all that altogether. It was not a happy decision relationship of trust and affection daughter from a poor but respectable girls of ‘good’ families were trained to given her love for music, and neither between us. Caught in a predicament, family finding her way through a be. This reversal of socially-sanctioned was it a practical one, since she had no Saira asked me for time to think series of catastrophes into the kotha. gender rules has been studied by some other source of income. Saira resumed through her decision. I had, therefore, The best-known and perhaps earliest feminist scholars in their exploration singing but her efforts have been to no choice but to wait and hope that literary source of this narrative is of the tawaif lifestyle within the kotha. move away from venues like wedding eventually she would decide to be part Mirza Mohammed Hadi Ruswa’s Within the tawaif community, celebrations, traditionally associated of the film. celebrated late-nineteenth-century the birth of a daughter was celebrated with tawaifs, to ‘respectable’ platforms It was at this point that Shastriji novel Umrao Jan Ada, based on with far greater enthusiasm than that like the radio, television and concerts. told me about Rasoolan Bai’s biographical accounts of a tawaif in of a son, who was viewed as an This move has many times entailed rendition of ‘Lagat jobanwa ma chot’. Lucknow who went by that name. economic liability. Property passed heartache and even humiliation, once Having time on my hands, I decided Over the subsequent period of from older to younger women, and the her tawaif background has become to find out whether indeed the song interaction, Saira dispensed with this head of the family vested with public. She has not taught music to was lost, as he claimed. My enquiries cliché. She had been born into a well- decision-making powers was always any of her three daughters, preferring within Banaras itself and even known family of Baisi tawaif singers the senior-most matriarch or ‘nayika’ to marry them off into ‘respectable’ elsewhere, to archivists and music from Bhabhua, Bihar, who were of the house. There seems to have families. Saira’s choices are in many collectors, drew a complete blank. The 36 known by their family name, Koeli been intense competition among ways reflective of the ways in which version finds no mention in any 37 (nightingale). There were several daughters to be chosen for the tawaif musicians have had to reinvent discography of Rasoolan Bai’s women in her family, including her expensive training and grooming themselves through euphemisms, recorded music. mother, aunts and elder sister, who necessary to become a successful lifestyle changes, manufactured I was surprised, too, with the began their careers as tawaifs in tawaif. Only girls who showed signs of mythologies and silences: a process discomfort and even Bhabhua and who had subsequently having the requisite musical talent or crucial to ensuring that some of them evasiveness that I made their way to Banaras and set up beauty would be selected. The rest at least survive and others perhaps go perceived in kothas. Saira is extremely proud of her would be married off to boys within on to achieve success as performers in many people ancestry and yet her initial attempts to the community. the changed cultural economy of post- with the term locate herself within the fiction of a Saira rose to become an Independence India. ‘jobanwa’, w h i c h I patriarchal family point towards the extremely sought-after tawaif Even though Saira agreed to greater stigma associated with tawaifs performer and yet her career choices be part of my research, wherein born into the tradition. were tempered with the need to her identity would be protected, The ‘tawaif’s daughter’ is a figure survive stigma. Once her children she had always been apprehensive charged with a dangerous sexuality in were born, she stopped performing about being in the film, which early-twentieth-century accounts. within Banaras, preferring instead to would bring her tawaif Willful, self-obsessed, confident and sing outside the city where few people background to the fore. On the practical, with little respect for the knew her personally. Later, for several other hand, the long period of my MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:03 PM Page 38

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had assumed meant youth, Banaras; the other celebrated tawaif sexual prime. Soon enough musicians from the city came mostly I realised that in poetic from Gandharva families. Few people, usage and in colloquial use including musicians contemporary to ‘joban’ or ‘jobanwa’ also her, seemed familiar with the details of refers to breasts, especially her life, however. young women’s breasts. “Lagat Rasoolan’s rise as a popular jobanwa ma chot, phul gendwa naa tawaif coincided with the attempts by maar” would therefore mean “My nationalist discourse to censor and breasts are wounded, do not throw control practices linked to gender, flowers at me”. There is a direct sexuality and culture, wherein tawaif drawing of attention to the arts and lifestyle increasingly came performer’s physicality, her sexual under hostile scrutiny on grounds of appeal as a young woman, which is sexual deviancy and obscenity. A offset in the better-known version. reading of Rasoolan’s life and art “Lagat karejwa ma chot, phul gendwa practice lent itself, I felt, to an naa maar” means “My heart is exploration of not only the story of 38 wounded, do not through flowers at tawaifs and their music, but of the me”, a version in which the tone is major shifts in the history of the romantic and the wound is received at tradition to which she belonged. And a more subliminal level. thus began yet another journey to As I searched for the lost thumri, make a film around the search for I also began to get intrigued by Rasoolan and her lost other song. Rasoolan Bai, who remains an enigmatic and mysterious figure in the [For the record, we were able to locate the jobanwa version. Amlan Dasgupta, who teaches tawaif history of Banaras. At a basic at Jadavpur University and is also an archivist, level, responses to my questions tracked down for us the broadcast label recording of 1935. Saira Begum too, after much thought, relating to the contribution of tawaif decided to be part of my film. This film—The singers included an almost ritual Other Song—was completed in 2009 and has since been screened at different venues in the incantation of Rasoolan’s name. country.] Hardly surprising, since she, along with Siddheshwari Devi and Kashi Bai, formed the triumvirate that defined Banarasi thumri in the twentieth century. She is also the only Muslim tawaif singer of renown from MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:03 PM Page 40

Along with travelogues, autobiographies and copious documentation, Occidental travellers during the Raj left behind the lore of ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’. Most travelled in the service of the British Empire; but starting from 1902 some were sent by European and American recording companies on the mission of capturing the voice of ‘Indian’ singers. The travelogues of such recording engineers are tucked away in autobiographies, trade journals and in the house magazines of recording companies. They provide a personalised account of the scramble for sound that marked the early business of recorded music in South Asia. These recording engineers started off as auxiliary technicians in the oldest The record companies in Britain, the United States and France during the 1890s. Many of them had a passion for music, some were even amateur pianists. Scramble With the expansion of the business in recorded music by the turn of the century, these engineers developed commercial acumen. As the demand for for new records grew across North America and Europe, the worth of recording 41 engineers rose exponentially. By the first decade of the twentieth century, Sound when they were racing across Asia, Africa and Latin America to record local music, they had become the prime catalysts of global business in and Vibodh around the Gramophone. Parthasarathi My research on this first ‘new media’ of the last century has sought to capture the interplay between the dynamics of creativity, culture and commerce. The travelogues of recording engineers provide an apt entry point to understanding the formative configurations of recorded music in British India. However, making sense of these configurations also entails accounting for the travelogues themselves. This necessitates a careful reading of these specific narratives in the light of the wider regimes responsible for their creation MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:03 PM Page 42

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n October 1902, the year Bade in Asia and the Far East. Although the Back” accompanied by fourteen brass in the capital city. In doing so, he Ghulam Ali Khan was born, CJ Orient was a different, if not difficult, instruments all playing in unison. I sought to gauge the tastes of IHopkins, who was in charge of territory for this American-born had yet to learn that the oriental ear connoisseurs and patrons of music; Columbia Records’ export business, engineer, he was full of a missionary- was unappreciative of chords and single-minded as he was, Gaisberg felt embarked on a year-long journey to like zeal. As he and his team set sail, harmonic treatment and only that from among this affluent section market their catalogue and make new Gaisberg wrote: “I felt like Marco Polo demanded the rhythmic beat of the of Indians would emerge the recordings. Sailing first to South starting out on his journeys.” accompaniment of the drums. At this consumers of his company’s Africa, he went up the east coast of Gaisberg, 30, arrived in Calcutta point we left.2 recordings. Attending performances at the continent, and on to Sri Lanka with 600 blank discs and a helper in Gaisberg was musically inclined theatres, private parties and fêtes in and India. Although the British colony “young George Dillnutt” who was in and could play the piano; he had a different pockets of Calcutta, he began was not high on the American firm’s the last year of his teens. The reputation for sensing musical talent, a short-listing singers to be recorded. agenda, Hopkins found, much to his recording team carried a falling-weight reputation earned during the early That evening we heard another surprise, that Talking Machines of driven motor, specially designed for 1890s while working for the records celebrated singer, Goura Jan, an Armenian various formats were “as well-known the trip, to dispense with the need for producer Charles Tainter in the US. Jewess who could sing in twenty languages as in Europe and the States” amongst heavy storage batteries and clock Soon after familiarising himself with and dialects. Her great hit that evening was Indian buyers. In India, Columbia was springs. What attracts greater the musical landscape of Calcutta, the an adaptation of “Silver Threads Among selling more cylinder-machines—that attention than this technological American realised that the British the Gold”. Her fee was 300 rupees per 42 could record and playback music— innovation is the manner in which the staff of GTL’s local office were clueless evening….When she came to record, her 43 than their recently launched disc- Gaisberg ‘sourced’ potential singers about Indian melodies—both about suite of musicians and attendants appeared machines, capable of only playing pre- and musicians in the colonial capital. their musical quality and their even more imposing than those who recorded music. I met the Superintendent of the commercial value. accompany Melba and Calvé. As the proud The natives make their own records Calcutta police, who placed at my One had to erase all memories of the heiress of music traditions she bore herself and there is consequently a big demand for disposal an officer to accompany me music of European opera houses and concert with becoming dignity. She knew her own blanks. The records so made are nearly all of to the various important halls; the very foundations of my musical market value, as we found to our cost when 4 them of a religious character and nearly all entertainments and theatres in the training were undermined. I soon we negotiated with her. vocal. Needless to say they are in the native Harrison Road. Our first visit was to discovered that the English, whom we Among the numerous singers dialect. There are several dealers in Bombay the native “Classic Theatre” where a contacted and who were acting as our agents recorded by the American, in an making these records, and each native dealer performance of Romeo & Juliet in a and factors, might be living on another improvised studio in a city hotel, the has his own repertoire. They charge five most unconventional form was being planet for all the interest they took in Indian most prominent were Gauhar Jan and rupees each for them, about six-eighths of given. Quite arbitrarily, there was music. They dwelt in an Anglo-Saxon Lal Chand Boral. In all, Gaisberg your money.1 introduced a chorus of young Nautch compound of their own creation, isolated made 500 recordings on wax masters, girls heavily bleached with rice 3 A few months earlier, Frederick from India. which he then shipped to GTL’s powder and dressed in transparent William Gaisberg was sent by The Taking matters into his own records pressing unit in Hanover, gauze. They sang “And Her Golden Gramophone and Typewriter Limited hands, Gaisberg attempted to identify Germany. Gaisberg was aware that Hair Was Hanging Down Her (GTL) from London to record music the most admired singers performing these singers, prominent in Indian

1 An Ambassador of Commerce: Charles Hopkins of Columbia’, Talking Machine News, Vol.11 (March 2 FW Gaisburg, Music Goes Round (London: Arno Press, 1942), pp. 54-55. 1904), pp. 243-44 3 Ibid, pp. 55-56. 4 Ibid, pp. 55-56. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:03 PM Page 44

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for Japan. These seven and ten-inch discs, larger in size than those retailed in India during the previous decade, sold exceedingly well in Calcutta and Bombay. But these discs continued to be inscribed with recordings only on one side.

***

Why did Frederick Gaisberg cities, were unknown entities for the tour India precisely in 1902? technicians in Hanover. To provide To answer this question we have them accurate, ‘recorded’ to step back from recounting documentation for the paper labels on Gaisberg’s adventures and impressions the finished discs, he asked the singers of foreign lands and sift through the to announce their names at the end of early history of recorded music in at their songs. Most records canned least three regions: in Britain, from during his visit had ‘Made in where Gaisberg was sent to India; in Germany’ printed on their label and America, where Gaisberg started his the signatory announcement by the career, and in British India. singer at the end of their renditions, GTL’s origins go back to 1892 often rapidly uttered lest the disc ran when Emile Berliner, a Jewish out of time: “Mera Naam Zohra, immigrant from Hanover to the US, Mukaam Agra”, or the oft quoted incorporated the United States “Mera Naam Gauhar Jan”. L i t t l e d i d Gramophone Company in the engineer know that his practical Washington DC. With an eye on the solution to the problem of growing market, overwhelmingly documentation would turn into a dominated by cylinder records, stylistic signature, even a fad, in the Berliner realised it would be easier times to come. and more efficient to replicate The finished and labelled numerous copies of a flat disc from a records were shipped from Hanover, master-disc—akin to a negative in via London, to India in the spring of photography. In 1893 he began selling 1903, three months after Gaisberg left his disc-based ‘Gramophone’ player MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:04 PM Page 46

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and seven-inch discs made of hard Hanover. It was here that in 1898 the The export business overwhelmingly rubber. Replacing this with shellac was first ‘Indian’ records—of ‘Hindu’ and derived value from selling ‘hardware’ Gaisberg’s innovation in 1895, after he ‘Islamic’ chants recorded in London— (machines & blank cylinders) rather left Tainter’s company to join Berliner. were pressed. In 1900, wanting to than ‘software’ (recorded music). Despite these superior discs, Berliner expand into another mechanical Two factors altered these and Gaisberg had a handicap: their media, Owen gained the primordial conditions. Retailers in Gramophone machines were hand- manufacturing rights for the Lambert India, sensing a gradually growing powered, and were thus limiting sales. Typewriter Company, renaming the demand for ‘Indian’ music by the The search for a spring-motor led firm ‘The Gramophone & Typewriter beginning of the twentieth century, them to Eldridge Johnson in Ltd.’. 6 began pressing their overseas suppliers neighbouring New Jersey; Berliner But GTL had a miniscule for a greater variety of local music. On entered into an agreement with presence in British India. In the fading their part, exporting firms gradually machines. Like elsewhere in the world, Johnson to supply the United States years of the nineteenth century, recognised that selling discs or this proved a major competitive Gramophone Company completely advertisements for Talking Machines cylinders containing local music could barrier in India for GTL and other assembled, spring-powered in the newspapers of Bombay and be a fruitful way to push the sales of exporters of the disc-machines— Gramophones.5 With innovations in Calcutta were as unusual as the their machines. These twin scenarios machines that could only play discs and disc-machines, Berliner was availability of the machines were not unique to India, as the recorded music. Consequently, we find ready to make inroads into America’s themselves. The earliest retailers, preference for local music was also that the technological rivalry between 47 domestic market, still dominated by predominantly large dealers of sensed in southern Europe, frontline the two formats of Talking Machines the rival cylinder-machines. Western musical instruments, did not Russia and elsewhere in Asia. For exponentially amplified the In 1897 Berliner sold the emphasise the differences between the instance, Pathe’s recordings with commercial rivalry between the many overseas rights of his patents to the cylinder and disc formats. The Parisian accents did not sell well even exporting firms. British Gramophone Company fledgling machine market in India was in French-speaking pockets of For the European and American founded by William Barry Owen and dominated by the cylinder format Belgium. firms trading with India around 1900, financial investor Trevor Williams in manufactured either by American To record and vend highly the singular objective was to sell London. The following spring, firms like Columbia and Edison, or localised music—and thereby propel machines; selling discs or cylinders of Gaisberg was shipped across from the their biggest competitor Pathe, the the sale of their machines—GTL Indian music was not on their agenda. US to establish the British leading producer of cylinder-machines resorted to a new modus operandi: it Firms remained content with Gramophone Company’s studio at in Europe. Cylinder-machines were organised ‘Recording Expeditions’ to replicating a uniform set of recordings Maiden Lane, London. And to create attractive since they enabled buyers to, countries where it felt a market could for sale all over the world—given the a European manufacturing hub, besides playing pre-recorded music, be tapped. Its first Recording advantage of scale this brought. As a Berliner installed a small records make home-recordings on blank Expedition, in 1899, was from Berlin result, most discs and cylinders pressing unit at the telephone factory cylinders; such blanks were often sold to Russia. By the end of 1901, GTL’s vended in India were ‘English airs’— of his brother, Joseph, in his native at discounted rates along with new Russian branch gathered that if well- snatches of comic shows, acts of known local musicians were recorded, mimicry, songs and dance melodies. 5Benjamin L Aldridge in Frederic Bayh (ed.) The Victor Talking Machine Company (Camden and NJ: RCA Sales Corporation, 1964) p. 11.

6 ‘Talking Machine Talks: No.4—The Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd.’, Talking Machine News, No. 4 (August 1903), p. 59. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:04 PM Page 48

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these discs could be sold to the Tsarist second Recording Expedition to India aristocracy at higher prices than in 1904-05, led by William Sinkler competing cylinders, manufactured by Darby who had led the company’s Pathe, playing French songs. maiden expedition to Russia. Based on this approach, GTL Precisely because of GTL’s replayed its strategy in another innovation, competing firms were market. In the spring of 1902, it sent forced to alter their strategy in India. Fred Gaisberg to Italy to convince Nicole Freres from London sent a some established singers hitherto recording expedition to Calcutta in hesitant to record. Gaisberg was 1904 led by John Watson Hawd— particularly keen to travel to Milan to who had been the Calcutta Branch hear a young singer who was creating Manager of GTL—and Stephen Carl a sensation; but Enrico Caruso, aged Porter. From across the Atlantic, in This dispatch, in the foremost 28, demanded the unheard 1905, The American Talking Machine trade magazine published from New consideration of £100 for ten records. Co. sent a recordist to India, who York, also illustrates the importance Despite GTL’s London office refusing arrived here after touring China. The given to German trade opinion. For, to authorise this, the engineer took race was on amongst firms to can by the middle of the first decade, the 48 the gamble. Released in March of greater amounts and varieties of German records industry was rapidly 49 1902, Caruso’s records sold at double ‘native’ music in what was rapidly expanding overseas. British the reigning price, and GTL made an being acknowledged as the potentially newspapers, including some in their immediate profit of £15000, largest market in Asia. colonies, constantly talked about the 7 ‘German Peril’ in the records and vindicating Gaisberg. A correspondent of the ‘Zeitschrift other industries. The leading German Following its Italian sojourn, By the time Gaisberg’s für Instrumentenba’ points out that records firm was the International Talking GTL was bursting with confidence recordings were being vended in India, in the form of five different Indian languages Machine Gmbh of Berlin; it was and wanted to unleash this GTL had learnt two traits of ‘foreign’ command a ready and permanent sale; he better known by its ‘Odeon’ record commercial innovation outside markets. First, British India was an also advises record companys to record the label, readily identified by the logo of a Europe. And so, later that year, important, and possibly gigantic, songs of the Indian dancing girls. In support classical dome—a logo still visible in Gaisberg was packed off on a ‘Far potential market on the horizons not of his advice he explains that the sales to the eponymous cinema halls of our cities. Eastern Recording Expedition’, the just of GTL but also its rivals. European population are very much more By 1907, Odeon sent an expedition first and most vital stop being British Second, the recording expeditions to limited than to the indigenous peoples, and and released its ‘South Indian’ India. Russia, Italy and far-flung India bore even if the Western nations refuse to class the catalogue—thereby establishing itself immediate, and exceedingly profitable, screams and cries which pass for Indian songs as the principal rival to GTL in India. *** results. The success of the first as music, it must be remembered that they The Odeon-GTL rivalry was expedition led GTL to invest in its gratify the taste of the majority of record paticularly intense in India since these buyers in India.8 7 These records were not only the biggest contributor to GTL’s success during these years but equally potent for the singer’s career—the record ‘E Lucevan Le Stelle’ fetched him his first contract with the Metropolitan 8 ‘India a Fertile Country’, Talking Machine World, Vol. 3/4 (April 1907), p. 1. Opera Company in New York. (See P Martland, Since Records Began: EMI the first 100 years (London: Batsford, 1997). I thank the author for two long conversations.) MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:04 PM Page 50

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two were the biggest firms exporting born of Armenian parents in 1870 in photo of William—clad in a colonial You must remember that we went out both machines and discs. Azamgarh, exemplifies such a journey. safari suit and a wide hat—with his to India to furnish records for the natives, and Nevertheless, profits from ‘foreign She moved to Varanasi around 1880 crew. Modestly captioned “We leave not for Europeans, so that during our whole catalogues’ of all firms contributed when her parents separated and her Calcutta”, this visual aptly tour we were associated practically entirely immensely to their coffers, as mother, Victoria, married a Muslim encapsulated the spirit of what was with the natives, and during this first party of illustrated best in GTL’s balance connoisseur of music, taking the name going to be an expedition within the ours our bungalow was crowded with natives. sheet. In 1906, when its net profits Malka. In Varanasi, mother and Expedition. European chairs were not used; we all had to stood at £246,733—up from £53,885 daughter trained in music, the The American’s years in London sit on our haunches. Just try this for ten in 1901—a staggering 60 per cent daughter showing more potential than had shaped more aspects of his being minutes and see how painful it is!9 came from outside Britain. the mother, who was known as Badi than just his colonial attire. Outside the shadow of his And this was before Fred Malka since there were many singers Punctuated with the English revered sibling, William Gaisberg was Gaisberg’s younger brother, William, who went by that name. Keen to chart obsession—the weather—his account determined to take the race for Indian was sent on a recording expedition to out Gauhar’s career, her guardians chronicles the expedition’s difficult ears, and pockets, into the unknown India in 1906—GTL’s third foray in trained her under Kalu Ustad, a conditions of travel and lodging, and hinterland. The United Provinces and four years. vocalist, and Ali Bux, the famed their trysts with ‘native’ music and parts of Punjab, reeling under the Kathak dancer of Lucknow. Still in musicians. But it is difficult to partial failure of monsoons, were *** her teens, Gauhar’s first major public pinpoint whether it was the weather, central to William’s itinerary in the 50 appearance in 1887 was further down the music, or the music culture that North. From the late nineteenth the Ganga, before the Maharaja of was most torturous for the The language in Lucknow is century we observe a pattern in the Darbhanga. The stage was set for bespectacled recording engineer. Hindustani. The most appreciated singers migratory flow of musicians from Gauhar to move to Calcutta in search are the young women with very high voices. regions contiguous to the mid- of new and more generous patrons The male artists are not great favourites, Gangetic plains—i.e. western Uttar and further training. and their part generally consists of teaching Pradesh to eastern Bihar. Having William Conrad Gaisberg, 28, the girl singers their songs and making up gained success in cities like Lucknow was extremely conscious that GTL’s the orchestral accompaniment….One rarely and Varanasi, the crest of recognition previous expeditions to India had hears a male singer, except when his voice carried singers down the Ganga, recorded singers only in Calcutta and resembles a woman’s. I know of one case accumulating fame and legitimacy Bombay. And that, henceforth, profits where a male artist was exceedingly popular through performances at the courts of for his firm depended on him in India, and we made many records by smaller principalities, before ‘arriving’ adventuring out of Calcutta, against him—his name was Peara Saheb—and one at the capital, Calcutta. It was like the flow of the Ganga, towards the could not tell his voice from a woman’s.10 paying dues, not to the sacred river, princely states and muffasil towns of Aided by George Dillnutt—now but to the connoisseurs and feudal the Doab. The first page of his formally designated as ‘recording patrons along the tracts contiguous to travelogue, reproduced in GTL’s in- assistant’—William Gaisberg’s efforts the river. The early life of Gauhar Jan, house magazine ten years later, has a

9 William C Gaisberg, ‘The Romance of Recording’, The Voice, Vol. 2/1 (January 1918), p. 6.

10 Ibid. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 52

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were doubly significant. They short tutorial on Indian music managed to record a wider repertoire Gaisberg acknowledged. of those singers whom GTL’s second Indian music is divided into 80 52 expedition, under Darby, had canned. Rags (this must not be confused with the 53 These included Amir Jan—thereafter U.S.A Ragtime music, which is simply a increasingly recorded by GTL—and tempo). Each Rag has its numerous Raginis. Darting into the Deccan, at the “entirely different tone of voice”; he Pyare Saheb, identified by his falsetto. Many of the Rags and Raginis have been borders of the kingdom of harvested over 300 discs in Tamil, Equally crucially, William’s expedition forgotten or lost, owing to the fact that the Hyderabad, William’s travelogue Telugu and Canarese. This created ‘discovered’ new singers like Janki study of music in India has degenerated into laments the twin delays caused by GTL’s vital ‘South Indian Bai—the latter’s pining ‘rasili tori the hands of the lowest and most ignorant customs officers inspecting his heavy Catalogue’—a repertoire challenging ankhiyanre jiya’ [GCR/HMV P235] people of the land, and also that there are no storage batteries and clock springs, that released by Odeon a few months being an exceptional rendition. Janki publications.11 Bai became a regular with GTL until and plague-inspection doctors earlier. After a few days in Lahore, the 1931, a distinct number of renditions suspicious of the recording troupe heat finally got to the Londoner and being in Bhairavi. arriving from the recently declared *** he detoured to Mussorie where, to Further north, in Ferozepore, “infected port” of Bombay. The his amazement, the nights were “cold the entourage recorded about 200 expeditionaries made another 200 Not to be undone by GTL’s enough to necessitate using two or titles, in two languages, over three records in Telugu, ‘Canarese’, Marathi, repeated forays or Odeon’s successful three blankets”. Not on holiday, he weeks. To identify local singers, Arabic and Persian—a clear sign of inroads, the other German firm, Beka was forced by his itinerary to Delhi, William was aided by the English- the city’s cosmopolitan character. dispatched its maiden expedition in which was “like an oven”. speaking Bakshi Ram Singh—whose Pushing further south to Madras, 1907-08. Beka undertook a William was quick to note the substantial gamble by entering a

11 Ibid, p. 7. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 54

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British colony where its national rival, Upping the ante yet again, GTL Odeon, had a head start. But Beka’s sent its fourth recording expedition in 400 records met with success, not in the early summer of 1908. Instead of small part due to the large number of the Gaisberg brothers, the firm relied songs from popular proscenium on the enthusiasm of a technician theatre. This vacant niche in the making his third visit to India. At 25, market had not been exploited by the George Dillutt became the youngest earlier expeditions of GTL and roving recordist to lead a GTL others; Beka was the first to spot the expedition. But cumulative demand untapped commercial potential— for Indian records had reached such beginning with a recording session an extent that later in the year GTL with Bal Gandharva that included his decided to establish a manufacturing rendition of Mira’s famous lyrics facility in India—at Sealdah, then a ‘Gokul e lai chalo odhavraj’. Wh i l e t h i s suburb of Calcutta. Dillnut was asked expedition propelled a new genre of to relocate to India, and appointed the recorded music—Drama Songs, or resident recording engineer of this Stage Songs—Beka’s sales motivated it first records factory in the colonised 54 to subsequently focus on other world. The scramble for sound had unrecorded genres, especially in been settled. languages besides Hindustani. This A special thanks to Michael Chanan, imparted an edge to Beka over both its Narendra Shrimali and Dwijendra Tripathi for national rival Odeon and the British, putting up with my unannounced visits, and my American and French firms. In 1906, grant administrator at IFA, Madhuban Mitra. GTL had produced the largest chunk of records retailed in India; but the late-mover Beka amassed 1,000 ‘native’ titles by 1908—the same as GTL’s cumulative repertoire. 12

12 ‘Notes from India’, Talking Machine News, Vol. 6/77 (June 1908) p. 148. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 56

Society in Miniature: Dasara Doll Displays

Annapurna Garimella

“When I received a grant from IFA in 2000 to study contemporary religiosities in Bangalore, one of my research questions concerned how women and men entered and participated in civic, public or quasi-private religiosity. I realised that one of the few spaces in which women asserted themselves as makers, not just as patrons, supporters, devotees or viewers, was during Dasara, when 56 they made doll displays and publicised their creations. I was curious to understand the demographics, the aesthetics and the politics of these doll displays, as a way of searching out and theorising how religiosity and ritual make our urban lives.” MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 58

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 4, Number 1 Annapurna Garimella - Dasara Doll Displays

any urbanised, upper-caste creating something. In History homes of upper-caste groups as a and class Hindu When I received a grant from marker of high culture. Mhouseholds in Andhra IFA in 2000 to study contemporary The practice of Dasara displays has The colonial Mysore state Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil religiosities in Bangalore, one of my evolved and become consolidated at exemplifies continuities with the past Nadu, and people from these research questions concerned how different places and moments, though and the creation of new political and communities living abroad, display women and men entered and a full history is yet to be written. visual regimes. Public Dasara dolls (Tamil: kolu, Kannada: golu, participated in civic, public or quasi- During the Vijayanagara period festivities included wrestling or kusti, Telug u: koluvu) during the ten-day private religiosity. I realised that one (ca.1335-1565 CE), Dasara festivities elephant fights, dancing, grand Dasara festival. Women and girl of the few spaces in which women seem to have been an opportunity for processions and doll displays, all children make the displays using asserted themselves as makers, not remaking the kingdom’s order with conducted under the watchful gaze of wooden, clay, glass, ceramic, papier just as patrons, supporters, devotees grand displays of power, wealth and gods, kings and colonial authorities. maché and plastic dolls (which in or viewers, was during Dasara, when art. One traveller’s account of a Dasara The murals in the Kalyana Mandapa turn are made by artists elsewhere), they made doll displays and in Hampi allows us to imagine how in Amba Vilas, the Mysore city palace, or using images made at home with publicised their creations. I was tiered structures, such as the painted in the mid-twentieth century, skills learned in hobby art classes. curious to understand the Mahanavami Dibba, were the setting function as a kind of Dasara doll Such displays can be small or can demographics, the aesthetics and the for tableaux vivants1. Divinities, allies, display in which Mysore is presented include as many as 400 dolls. politics of these doll displays, as a officers, performing and servant as the model state deserving both 58 My interest in these dolls way of searching out and theorising women, forms of weaponry, modes of ancient feudal loyalty and modern 59 began at a young age when as a girl- how religiosity and ritual make our warfare and art forms were grouped civic pride. The artist shows citizens child, I was given opportunities to urban lives. However, from the time and structured in a hierarchy that and guests from different communities work on the displays. It would start photographer Clare Arni and I placed the Vijayanagara ruler and his and religions, European and Indian, with the religious rituals of Navaratri collaborated on the project, what gods at the top. Through the Nayaka observing the pageant of musicians, as conducted in an upper-caste captured my imagination were the period (1600-1800 CE), the Dasara decorated animals, bureaucrats and household but after that all sorts of look and feel of these objects, display continued in regional courts, officials, religious leaders and military possibilities for invention became especially the colours and themes as as historical accounts from Tanjore, bands. Throughout each possible. Cutting branches to create well as the strange combination of Ramnad and Madurai inform us. neighbourhood are groups of people trees, sprouting seeds to get grass for nostalgia and novelty intrinsic to the Nayaka kings used Dasara to display standing near a garlanded painting of the miniature park, bending palm dolls and their displays. This essay connections with the glory of Hampi the Mysore king, dressed in a sherwani leaf strips to make dolls, sewing their then is an attempt to integrate and and Vijayanagara by establishing the and turban, and modestly clothing and buying dolls became a link my personal fascination to a ritual in their courts. Gradually, as ornamented. This civic utsava presents major seasonal activity. During larger historical narrative and many other social arrangements were the king as an ideal leader whose events such as these, it was difficult collective experience. realigned in colonial India and new presence is firmly desired in the streets not to measure the sense of elites emerged in both interior royal by the people who in turn organise authorship women and we girls felt. capitals and coastal emporia, the themselves to allow him to experience It was rare to feel so in control of Dasara display must have entered the the order, wealth and integration of

1 See Domingo Paes’ narrative in The Vijayanagara Empire: Chronicles of Paes and Nuniz (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1991). MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 60

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the city. Mysore appears as a very creativity, applying techniques from wide, even transnational space, with store design or theme parks to Shell, Lipton and foreign missionaries heighten the theatricality of the all prominently represented. The display. bodily experience of the viewer The objects can be a mimics the experience of walking in combination of older dolls, such as the parade, and the spectator almost those given to a bride by her mother automatically begins to seek familiar or mother-in-law, and new ones, along images or places in Mysore. The with acquisitions purchased on a murals are rendered to cultivate recent trip abroad or some new silver nostalgia in their viewers; their objects obtained over summer textured, realist style is mediated by vacation in India. Figures of divinities photography, specifically of well- are placed on top, in the middle tiers Indian artists, doll- students to do scenography for the known events such as the Delhi are important public figures, and makers too have displays. In many cities, competitions Durbar of 1911, and by popular below are scenes of work and play. expanded their and prizes for the best Dasara exhibit styles, especially calendar art. The Potters and other doll-makers keep repertoires. They now have become part of the festivities. royal durbar and procession, with its cosmological and caste/class include entire cricket It is when the doll displays go 60 pomp, exoticism, political authority, hierarchies intact as they make these teams, all-girl public and become part of community 61 religiosity and everyday public life is dolls, perhaps aware that buyers, while marching bands, relations exercises or Internet-based the most prominent inspiration seeking innovation, do not want to scenes from Hindu socialising, where people of South behind the creation of domestic challenge social codes. For instance, in rituals, distinctive Indian origin connect virtually and Dasara displays across southern India. one Ramayana scene image dating temple urbanscapes, discuss issues, that specific political from circa 1950, Guhan the boatman and Ganeshas using cell phones and concerns or ideological issues are Making the Displays is differentiated from Rama, Sita and computers. Artisans are expanding highlighted. Temples, municipal Lakshmana by his dark skin while their range, using brighter colours transport organisations and even The displays begin with flat or tiered Rama’s divinity is highlighted with with a glossier finish to suit urban platforms covered with a white sheet green. women who seek more industrialised or a light-coloured silk sari. Much like Till about 20 years ago, potters (polished) finishes and globalised a contemporary art gallery, women who made most of these dolls had a (novel) imagery. And in the last five favour a light background since it fixed repertoire of images including years, buyers are also more showcases their objects. The tiers take deities, mythological scenes, buildings, consistently seeking to build their the form of a historical building such national leaders like Gandhi, Nehru collection of dolls from other parts of as the Mahanavami Dibba in Hampi, and MG Ramachandran, and figures India and the world to make ever the Mysore palace or a temple chariot. such as the Buddha, Mirabai and the more inventive arrangements. Rich Women strive to demonstrate their Air India Maharajah. But like other households even hire fine arts MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 62

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display faces questioning. One the other aspects of the agrarian society creations, which combine handicraft, website (www.indiavarta.com) or community living like potters, industrial kitsch and homemade declares that raising women’s blacksmiths and soldiers, are seated in hobby art. Miniaturisation is at the consciousness is the purpose the descending levels.”Preeti Nagaraj, core of the display’s aesthetic order. As behind the display and ‘Dolled up for Dasara’, Susan Stewart has written in her book surrounding festivities: Deccan Herald, 16 October 2007. On Longing, the miniature is a specific The whole essence of the “Today’s parents do not have time to way of relating to labour, time, navaraathri celebration is to remind all really teach their children traditional narrative and, indeed, the world at the women that they are the guardians knowledge and wisdom.” ‘Keeping large.2 The truncated size of an object of the family, culture and national Traditions Alive’, directly refers to pre-industrialised integrity, to take lead in times of crisis to Deccan Herald, 19 October 2007. labour, particularly handicraft, even guide the humanity towards the path of Dasara displays are fiction and when it is made through industrialised social justice, righteousness, equality, theatre, designed to present a tableau production. That is why in Dasara women empowerment groups turn the love, and divinity. of society in miniature, particularly of displays there is both a fascination Dasara display into an opportunity to Yet the author adds a disclaimer moments of grandeur such as darbar with larger-than-life figures such as promote issues like women’s rights, about the possibility of empowerment or processions. The festival itself has the gods and artisanal and peasant self-employment schemes, traffic rules by saying: this purpose; historically, it was an labour. 62 or environmental concerns. Perhaps All that is fine but to what extent event in which rulers asserted their Deities must be at least partially 63 the manageable scale of the Dasara that gets translated into real power is cosmology as supreme and valid in unimaginable (the scale is too gigantic doll event provides the ideal space for questionable because today’s women do front of the gods and their to describe) in order for them to be activism, which can be successful in not have the weapons that was [sic] contemporaries. The whole kingdom divine. But they must also be imagined this limited sphere where the festive generously conferred on the Devi but was made and remade in the idealised, at a smaller scale in order to represent mood allows for old agendas to be they have to do only with their inner smaller context of the court. It is their world as well as to make them revived or new ones to be born. strength which can turn them into therefore unsurprising that display inhabit our world. This is the fiction Activism of this sort is related to the weapons themselves. It is on such makers are keen not just to make that displays visualise obsessively. If an public interest campaign and occasions like Dasara that symbolically something creative and beautiful but artist shows the Ras Lila of Krishna consumer exhibition— useful in that a encourages women to worship the Devi also to render aspects of their society kolu-based event attracts a diverse and have fun and also get empowered in miniature form. enough middle-class public but is and become the Shakti themselves. Grihani (‘ideal housewife’) pitched to not challenge their aesthetics, a term I use to describe the aspiration, concerns and habitus. Tableaux and their Meanings sensibility of the Dasara displays and It is during this moment of their mode of representation, making the domestic public that “...dolls are arranged in five levels with consolidate an upper-caste/class the women-centric devotionalism the King and Queen seated at the household’s good taste and high and consumersim of the Dasara topmost level. Dolls, perhaps signifying culture through these small-scaled

2 Susan Stewart, On Longing (Durham, N.C. and London: Duke University Press, 1993). MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 64

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perfectly capture the perfection of the of craft objects, and why they most and the gopis or the naming ceremony 3 than a spiritual one”. miniature world, where enumeration often choose to learn and appropriate of Rama with a full cast of epic Display makers also buy and of detail in reduced scale produces an historic craft styles rather than invent characters, women make a install images of artisanal or peasant altered temporality, even a sense of new ones. Indeed when reading the miniaturised Brindavan with trees labour in progress—potters, timelessness. The world of the display popular literature on Dasara displays, made of paper or vegetables or carpenters, cobblers, blacksmiths and and the household in which it exists it becomes clear that it is the fantasy sprouted wheat or insert real fruit and farmers are favourite subjects. The seem uncontaminated by the gigantic of the display that is important—in sweets in the Rama narrative. As enchantment and preciousness scale and the consequent stresses of every account the artist is displaced or display makers take these miniatures endowed on these handcrafted lives industrialised work, at least during the diminished by the presence of the and elaborate the narrative with detail and images is in direct contrast to the duration of the festival. The tableau display maker, except when artists are (e.g. adding cotton for Himalayan daily domesticity of most homes, arrests time and provides a total view presented as producers of the ‘raw’ snow), the mythic-scape becomes which either are mechanised or of the world in its stillness, even materials. In this context, they become domesticated. Most god narratives depend on undervalued human labour though most genre scenes involve authors in relation to the desire of only focus on gentle, sweet or benign provided by the domestic worker. The activity. Working with miniatures and their buyers. For example, one source moments, suitable for a home value placed on this genre is also in making a miniature environment. contrast to the lives of the artists— world relieves the For instance, an artist makes a most would not be able to afford their pressure of industrial Himalayan-scape, with Karthikeya at own products and certainly do not time or elongates it, 64 the centre and Brahma, Vishnu and 65 make displays in their homes. one of the main goals Maheshwara offering him their For urban buyers, the lure lies in of any contemporary worship. The mountains are soft, lumpy the scale of production implied by the celebration or festivity. silver mounds and, placed in such an handcrafted object, the figure of the Like a potter’s home, elevated setting, the boy god is made artisan and the display itself. Dolls which is oriented worthy of the trimurti’s devotion. The representing craftspeople most around his occupation, angry Devi at the heart of the Dasara the display becomes the central work associated with a well-known story is usually worshipped as an icon of the household, particularly for the handicrafts store in Mysore is quoted and not located in a narrative. housewife who makes it. There is even in a newspaper article stating, Domestication is not about making a temporary identification between the “Karnataka-based artists completely the home an otherworldly space but housewife’s creativity and the artist’s dismiss our suggestions. They are not rendering the other world as part of labour, and in turn the household’s willing to accommodate any changes the everyday. In this way, Dasara and identification with the display maker’s in their work. But artists from other many other festivals become work.4 states seek suggestions from us and secularised; for this reason, Usha It is perhaps for this reason that implement them in a jiffy.”5 writes: “often I feel the Hindu festivals housewives who attend hobby art One other aspect of the dolls is have a stronger ‘socializing’ element classes are the largest new producers fascinating. If doll and display makers

3 http://usha123.livejournal.com/3143.html#cutid1 4 http://agelessbonding.blogspot.com/2007/10/in-defense-of-imperfection.html 5 Deccan Herald, 16 October 2007. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 66

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choose objects and themes to create fascination with wealth and nostalgia. At a time when many south tableaux which arrest time, at what These qualities are, of course, as Indian middle- and upper-class moment has the historical clock Stewart writes, the ‘dominant motifs’ families are straddling the Indian and stopped? A majority of objects of the dollhouse (On Longing, p. 61) the global, the rural and traditional reproduce architecture and social and are evident in the grihapravesham. function to smooth over and bridge relations found in India of the mid- In this scene, a cow is ready to be differences, reminding people here and twentieth century in a style associated given to a Brahmin, a form of there of common origins and utopian with popular calendar art and Amar presentation no longer active today in moments, even as they make Chitra Katha. One artist made a urban settings, but which here relationships in other places. The grihapravesam or housewarming scene functions as a sign of remembered possibility exists, in these changed in house form that was current in class-caste origins, most likely those of circumstances, that the display itself south India about 50 to 70 years ago, the display maker. will be wrested from the purpose of when the home was imagined Nostalgia for life just after making or asserting Indian tradition primarily as a space for joint family Independence is perhaps as important Independence also represent a time and instead serve NRI domesticity. living. It is hard to find an ‘apartment- to the display as the miniature is: it before the nationalist victory became The latter cannot be conflated to the warming’ scene, though this is the type was at this moment when many fractured and even delegitimised by former since NRI homes often create of home in which many middle- and upper-caste families left their villages caste and community struggles. hybrid domesticities that allow for 66 upper middle-class people live today. and traditional occupations and The transcendence the zones of ‘Indianness’, say in food, a 67 The mixture of rural and urban sought to remake their wealth and miniature offers and hence the image puja room or a handwoven rug, but decorative elements, modes of dress status in cities. It is also a period of the world the display presents, are a also have zones of ‘Americanness’, and social relations between men and before urbanised ambitions product of grihani aesthetics, which ‘Canadianness’ etc., such as in the women, among generations within the fragmented the joint family life celebrates social order and tradition, family, and between the family and valorised in these displays. And on a not social commentary and critique. service/labour providers, represent larger political map, the years just after Indeed, scenes of processions and events affectionately incorporate Brahmins and the constabulary, both of whom represent the continuation of social and state power. Even when such displays are put to use for some civic activism, as in the municipal displays I discussed earlier, the social message is contained within the fold of upper-caste, middle-class values.6

6 Women are told to pursue maternal health or citizens exhorted to plant trees (to offset vehicular emissions and unmanaged growth) but the structures of patriarchy, consumerism or development itself are never questioned. The messages during such occasions are feel-good panacea presented to a public that is in transit, which rarely reflects on the medium or the messenger, but instead takes in the display and the surrounding discourse as urban spectacle. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:05 PM Page 68

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children’s room and the formal dining successful. When the protocols of the Page 61: Page 63: Top row, from left to right: Buddha, circa Bottom: Ras Lila, 2004, terracotta. Purchased room. Especially in the US, where Dasara display and comportment are 1950s, plaster of Paris; Yashoda and Krishna at Malleshwaram Market, Bangalore. NRIs form one of the wealthiest extended beyond the familiar, women (?), circa 1950s, plaster of Paris; Mother India, ethnic groups, the making of the like Kamala write such comments on 2004, terracotta, all purchased at Gandhi Page 64: Bazaar, Basavanagudi, Bangalore; Ganesha Kartikeya and the Trimurti, 2005, terracotta. domestic sphere is a complex their blog: with cell phone, 2004, terracotta. Purchased at Purchased at Malleshwaram Market, negotiation between their class and Saratoga is one of those quaint Malleshwaram Market, Bangalore. Bangalore. Collection of Art, Resources & Teaching (A.R.T.), Bangalore. caste origins in India and their class little towns in Silicon Valley […] that is Middle row: Bharatiyar (Subrahmania Bharati). aspirations in their adopted filled with Tamilians. I am not sure how S Boopathy, Thanjavur, 2008, plaster of Paris. Page 65: homeland. Women often parlay this came to pass, but there is a huge Craftspeople—Basket weaver and Bricklayer, Bottom row: Women at water tap, 2007, made circa 2007, mixed media, made in Benaras or markers of tradition, not just to concentration of people from the Tamil in Tamil Nadu. Purchased at Saraswati Mahal, Kolkata. Purchased at Ramsons, Mysore. nostalgically celebrate a specific community who celebrate all the festivals Thanjavur. Page 66 and 67: practice but also to compete in a tight with great gusto….I discovered that Page 62: Grihapravesham—Young Family, Grandparents, circle of peer NRI households. In a there is a whole kollu circuit that the Top, Guhan, Rama, Sita and Lakshmana, circa Purohit and Cowherd with Cow, 2005, terracot- society where colour and ethnicity Tamilians in Bay Area travel during 1900, terracotta. Purchased at Oriental ta. Purchased at Malleshwaram Market, Haveli, Bangalore. Bangalore. define upward social mobility, NRI these nine days, and many travel 100- women also invoke heritage, art and 150 miles over the weekend….The All dolls from the collection of Art, Resources & Teaching Trust, Bangalore. craft as status symbols, which allow conversation did not vary much and this 68 them to enter a wider social sphere in kollu celebration was a tailor-made 69 the host country. If a Dasara display at opportunity for them to catch up on home was a domestic ritual, in the which company was going IPO, what host country it is projected as a long- stocks are doing well, who has started standing familial commitment to Art. what company, and who made how The shift from domestic ritual to Art much money etc….While it was nice to or heritage is a remaking of the past to go around and see kollu celebrated in create the present; it is an active Silicon Valley, I somehow preferred the attempt by NRIs to demonstrate to way it was celebrated in Madras, which socially influential people and groups had a touch of sincerity and innocence.7 that they are not mere third-world

migrants or technocrats but come [A version of this essay first appeared on from a class which has long been www.tasveerghar.net] aware of more lofty things. For many grihanis, who live between here and there and have not entered the transactional economy of the host country, the shift is often not

7 http://kamlasindia.blogspot.com/ 2005/10/kollu-dasshera-dusshera-navararti.html MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:06 PM Page 70

A Strange Cross-cultural Infancy: Children’s Literature in Nineteenth-Century Bengal

Gargi Gangopadhyay

Into a milieu where children were schooled at pathshalas and madrasahs, participated in kathakata and panchali performances, and enjoyed a rich tradition of folktales, fairy-stories and nursery rhymes, arrived a print literature for children in early- nineteenth-century Bengal. This was meant to disseminate Western pedagogies and Christian values and to supplant the popular forms that hitherto underlay a child’s education. Responding to this ‘alienation’, Bengali intelligentsia sought to give native children a literature of their own and in the process developed a rich, indigenous tradition. Gargi Gangopadhyay, who received an IFA grant in 2008 to study this swadeshi children’s literature, tells us more in the following essay.

Chakmahi Baksha (The Tinderbox) 1867 MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:06 PM Page 72

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he journey of Isvar Chandra systems of education and allied trades. Digdarshan, a Vidyasagar, the great A print literature for children in monthly periodical Tnineteenth-century social and Bengal was thus established in the edited by John educational reformer, from his native early nineteenth century when Marshman and village to Calcutta in November 1829, Western education under the British published in 1818 by as an eight-year-old in search of an dominion and the newly imported the Serampore education, is a well-known one. The printing technology was fast Baptist Mission, story, told as an exemplary tale of his supplanting the existing indigenous claims the credit of extraordinary perseverance and systems. Designed to graft the science being the first title for memory, recounts how by the end of of the West on an Eastern stem, to children in Bengali this long journey, which he undertook bring in the ‘light’ of Western vernacular. Aimed at by foot, Isvar Chandra had learnt all thoughts and philosophies, this new “the instruction of the English numerals from the literature in print was a far cry from youth”, the volumes wayside milestones. The anecdote is the prevalent popular carnivalesque carried a miscellany of also emblematic of the socio-political culture pulsating with the myths, articles on life science, changes taking place in British- legends and faiths of earthy, organic geography, short dominated Bengal at the time, as the communities. Schooled at the histories and voyages. 72 old systems were rapidly giving way to pathshalas, tols and madrasahs, the pre- With the 73 the new. Vidyasagar’s eagerness to nineteenth century child in Bengal establishment of the learn the English numerals as well as participated in lively mass cultures Calcutta School Book his father’s choice of an ‘English’ and folk practices like kathakata and Society in 1817 and school in the city for his son rather panchali performances. Children also the School Book than the village tol reflected the new enjoyed a rich tradition of vibrant folk Society in 1818, and priorities of an empire under a foreign tales, magical fairy-stories and with a growing dominion. colloquial nursery rhymes. number of schools, Bengal was the first province to The new ‘foreign’ culture largely there was a spate of

feel the full weight of the British displaced, especially in the urban Cheleder Tyagrahi (The Boy’s Satyagrahi) children’s books, both presence in India. It became a areas, the earlier cultures of childhood in vernacular and in stronghold of the Empire since the and changed the very fabric of the English. The School Regulating Act of 1773 that elite and middle-class society for Book Society aimed established Calcutta as the seat of the generations to come. ‘Child’ and bred on a wide pre-print culture, the for “Preparation, Company’s central government. ‘children’s literature’ were re-formed children growing up in the Bengal of publication, and cheap and gratuitous Emerging as what some consider and reinterpreted in the cultural and the 1820s were the ‘reading’ supply of works useful in schools”. India’s first colonial city, Calcutta soon intellectual climate of colonialism. In generation, schooled in printed books Within a short time it had published became the nodal centre for the new sharp contrast to their predecessors from the new presses. six school-readers and by 1828 its MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:06 PM Page 74

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contained 19 short jackal, the bear, the elephant, the literature, a knowledge of the tales in all, some of rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the rudiments of those sciences which which are introduced tiger and the cat, with the front pages effect the well-being of man in his through little prefatory carrying an excellent woodcut of each. everyday pursuits… to spread abroad a verses. ‘The Source of In 1824, Little Henry and his Bearer, a better appreciation of moral and Pleasure’ begins with story by Mrs Martha Sherwood, ethical truth’’. By commissioning native one such: appeared in a Bengali version. A piece writers to translate or adapt Riches cannot true bliss of Evangelical writing, it tells of little representative works from English impart to thee Henry, a devout Christian, who into Bengali, and by making the thin, As is the mind so shall ‘civilises’ and ‘saves’ his caretaker paper-bound volumes affordable, the thy pleasure be through conversion, by convincing him society sought to create a popular Regard not outward that some religions and cultures are literature suitable for women, children show, but search the right while others are wrong. The and peasants. Madhusudan mind book concludes by telling its readers: Mukherjee, the Society’s most prolific The spring of joy and “Little children in India, remember author, produced a dozen tales for the grief in all to find. Henry L——, and go and do VLS’s Bengali Family Library between Hitapadesha, published likewise.” 1858 and 1867. Some of them were 74 in 1820, was probably The publication of Vetalpanchabinshati adaptations of the English moral- 75 the first translation in 1847 marked a new phase, school writings such as Sandford and from Aesop meant for signalling new tendencies in Bengali Merton or The Ignorant Boy while children. Later children’s books. An adaptation by others were translations of Hans versions include Esop’s Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar from the Christian Andersen’s fairy tales: The Fables by JC original Hindi, it narrated a series of Little Mermaid, The Tinder Box, The Marshman (1834) and tales concerning the good King Chinese Nightingale, The Ugly Duckling Chhobi-o-Galpa (Pictures and Stories), 1897 Kathamala or Select Vikramaditya. Though conceived as a and so on. Shushila’s Upakhyan, a Fables from Aesop by college textbook, the hugely popular female bildung, was meant as a model Vidyasagar (1856).1822 tales escaped the classroom to appease lesson for girl readers. titles covered “almost every subject of saw the first illustrated the appetite of story-craving children. periodical for children—Pashvabali (A The Vernacular Literature Society elementary education”. Applying *** Locke’s famous principle of Catalogue of Animals), possibly (VLS), formed in 1851, wished to drawn from books like John Bunyan’s promote “a sound and useful ‘Instruction and Delight’, But the vibrant colloquial mass Devine Emblems or Thomas Boreman’s Vernacular Domestic Literature for Manoranjanetihash (1819) told cultures relating ancient traditions to A Description of Three Hundred Bengal”. Its purpose was “to place “Pleasing tales or stories designed to the everyday lives of the common Animals. Its six parts describe the within the reach of all, through the improve the understanding and direct people did not just disappear with the habits and habitats of the lion, the agency of a cheap and popular the conduct of young persons”. It advent of print and foreign MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:07 PM Page 76

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pedagogies. The residues of the pre- gathered from the humble pages of the child readers themselves. Through the print era continued to exist Bat-tala the vernacular versions of the pages of Abodh-bandhu (The simultaneously with the new culture great Indian epics, traditional songs Innocents’ Friend,1866), Jyotiringan of children’s books. The oral and ballads narrating popular (The Firefly,1869), Balak-bandhu narratives, banished from the mythologies, religious poetry like (The Child’s Friend,1878), Shakha boundaries of official print, found a Geetgovinda, the popular romances of (The Friend,1883), Balak (The fresh lease of life and resurfaced in the Biddah and Soonder, and fairytales like Child,1885), Shathi (The form of cheap Bat-tala books. By the Yusuf and Zulekha translated from the Companion,1893) and Mukul (The second half of the century the native Urdu and Persian originals. Bud,1895), in a short stretch of six to Bat-tala (a locality in the heart of This widespread popularity of seven years Bengali children’s literature Calcutta) presses were doing brisk the Bat-tala culture also generated moved beyond the limited confines of trade by selling cheap and popular numerous genres of original writings textbooks and ‘Moralities’, and began publications. Bringing into affordable in the vernacular. The first original to mould itself as a distinct literary print the old mythologies, legends, ‘novella’ or ‘tale’ written for youth was genre. Shakha was the first journal to romances, fairytales, popular dramas, the story of Bijay-basanta (1859), introduce a ‘Girls’ page’ as one of its songs and ballads, almanacs, which notes the necessity of an regular features. This was addressed to educational literature, manuals of ‘entertaining’ literature for young the female readers and would bear 76 various kinds and other ephemeral people in its preface. The weariness of recipes in one issue and knitting 77 genres, these small booklets sold like studying heavy books of Grammar, patterns in another. hot cakes and by far surpassed the Geography and Physics, the author As the new print genre of limited and expensive output of the observes, has often driven literate Bengali children’s literature passed ‘respectable’ presses of the city. adolescents to the forbidden through its strange cross-cultural Though the consumers came from temptations of immoral and bawdy Bhut-patrir Desh (Fairyland), 1915 infancy, it started negotiating the diverse social groups, wayward youths Bat-tala romances like Kaminikumar limits of this imposed ‘alienation’. By and schoolboys, who used to save up and Rasikranjan. Narrating the story the latter half of the nineteenth their pocket money to buy Bat-tala of two young princes and their wicked century, authors writing for children in books on the sly, were often singled stepmother, the novella marked a shift the form of periodicals, and the latter the vernacular began questioning the out for attack in newspapers for being from dry learning and sought to create decades of the century saw a steady norms of Western pedagogies and addicted to the ‘trash’ culture. more pleasurable reading for children. flow of them. They contained an array their validity in the native culture. The By the 1860s the niche of writings ranging from short fiction, profound urge, in the face of such an Such widespread evidence of the publishing market was mature enough serialised adventure stories, horror estrangement from one’s roots, was popularity of Bat-tala books among to demand, over and beyond school stories and lives of pioneers, to poems, towards a recovery of the ‘self ’, towards children and youth becomes texts and moral instructions, light and essays on science and literature, defining a national identity by important in establishing the fact that entertaining reading matter for political pieces, book reviews and reclaiming the lost heritage. The their reading was not limited to children. This was supplied mainly in occasionally original contributions by ‘popular’ that had for the previous few ‘official’ pedagogical literature. They MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:07 PM Page 78

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As early as 1838, the they repeatedly relive and anonymous author of Gyanchandrika recollect the nostalgia of those wrote an article titled ‘Swakiya desher ‘ideal’ childhoods in their parti sneha’ (‘An Affection for One’s memoirs, autobiographies and Own Country’). He urged his boy other non-fictional writings, they readers to “love one’s own land even if also often assimilated and it is lowly and despicable, to praise integrated folk motifs and plot one’s own country even though it be variants in their original writings but a desert land”. The first issue for children. In his preface to Folk (1866) of Abodh bandhu (The Tales of Bengal (1883), Reverend Innocents’ Friend) began with a Kanka Batir (1893) Lal Behari Day mentions a patriotic poem: ‘Shambhu’s mother’ from whom, To work for the nation, for the as a little boy, he had heard motherland’s good thousands of fairytales. To the best of our abilities, try we Rabindranath Tagore in should patriotism. Abanindranath Tagore’s Chhelebela and Jibansmriti fondly A glorious history is of utmost Rajkahini (Tales of Kings, 1909) recaptures the absurd yarns told to 78 importance in defining a nation and presents a fascinating history of him by Abdul the fisherman and the 79 many authors started to trace and Mewar, of its braveheart queens and magical tales of Tinkari dashi. build the yet unwritten history of fiery kings. Chitor-gourab (Chitor’s Abanindranath draws upon the India in their writings for children. Pride,1921) a drama based on the characters, motifs, events and elements They recounted the tales of heroes— fight between Mewar and Delhi is of the whimsical world of nursery Chhotto Ramayan (Little Ramayan, 1919) from epics, myths and legends and imbued with high nationalist fervour. rhymes (Chhelebhulano chhara, from the ancient and recent past. Biratwe Bangali (Heroism in Bengalis, anthologised by Rabindranath Rajanikanta Gupta, writing of the 1929) is a rare collation of heroic himself) to create a land of little boys dauntless Rani Lakshmibai in his chapters from Bengali history, ancient in his literary fairytale Khirer putul decades been labelled backward and Aryakirti (The Deeds of the Aryas, and modern. (The Cheese Doll,1896): vulgar, came to be seen as containing 1883) intended to arouse a noble Apart from formulating such It was a novel land, a dream ingredients that were truly indigenous, aryabhav in his juvenile readers. patriotic discourses, ardent efforts to kingdom![...] There lies besides the deep authentic and uncontaminated. Instances of unflinching courage and construct a ‘deshbodh’ (idea of a nation) black waters of the dighi a jungle of reeds Rejecting the form, content and the extraordinary martial valour of the can be seen in the persistence with and beyond that the unending stretches language of the ‘Western vernacular’ Rajputs and the Marathas in the face which late-nineteenth century of moorlands merging with the far juvenile literature, the elites and the of Muslim invasions were often children’s writers sought to recover the horizon. After that, dense groves of intelligentsia of contemporary Bengal extolled by the Bengali writers as popular oral literature of their mangoes and jackfruit trees—their sought to give the native children a examples of heroic strength and forgotten childhoods. Not only did branches crowded with long-tailed literature of their own. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:08 PM Page 80

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parrots; the round-eyed boal (Evening Treats,1919), Udal- fish in the river and clouds of buror Shaotali Galpa mosquitoes in the arum (Santhali stories by Udal- plants… buro, 1921), Ho-der Galpa His imagination rides (Stories of the Hos,1921), on nostalgia as he Thakurdadar Rupkatha fabricates, for the very first (Grandpa’s Tales, 1922), time in Bengali children’s Buno Gappa (Wild literature, a ‘fictional’ and Yarns,1922), are all lovingly ‘authentic’ Bengal filled nostalgic about the lost with its native folklore and tradition of oral storytelling legendary landscapes. and they deliberately try to Notably, Abanindranath preserve that intimate and Nandalal Bose made colloquial ‘voice’ while important contributions as tranferring these stories to illustrators in creating the print. accompanying visual texts Epics, legends and 80 and translating these ‘lost’ mythologies too began to be 81 landscapes and fantastic retold for children in characters into printed abridged forms. After pictures. Shishuramayan in 1884 and Hemendraprasad Shishuranjanramayan in Ghosh in Ashare Galpa 1891, we have (Fanciful Tales,1901) laments Mochak (The Beehive), Baisak, April-May, 1920 Keet-Patanga (Insects), 1925 Upendrakishore’s Chheleder that with the advent of Ramayan (The Children’s English education, children Ramayana,1907) and Chhotto are losing touch with the Ramayan (Little indigenous folktales that form a part significance: “Could there indeed be foreign, the new writings for children Ramayana,1919). Jagindranath Basu’s of the cultural history of any nation. anything quite as swadeshi as this radically broke from the formal Ramayaner Chhobi o Katha in 1909) When Dakshinaranjan Mitra Thakurmar jhuli? But alas! Nowadays rigidities of ‘written Bengali’ (shadhu narrates the epic in simple rhymes, Majumdar brought out the first ever even fairytales are being sent to us bhasha), trying consciously to imitate while Kurukshetra and Lanka-kanda anthology of Bengali fairy tales—the from the factories in Manchester....” oral speech patterns in their (both published in1909) by Thakurmar jhuli (The Grandmother’s Rejecting the ‘Christian or narratives. Upakatha (Folktales,1907), Jagindranath Sarkar are captivating Bag: Fairy Tales of Bengal) in 1907, Englishman’s Bengali’ which was Hindusthani Upakatha (Folktales from books with dramatic, fast-paced Tagore succinctly summed up its unnatural, unidiomatic and necessarily Hindusthan,1912), Shanjher Bhog narratives and breathtaking MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:08 PM Page 82

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literature had clearly changed. varied writings by the most renowned Remarkably, as the years progressed, a authors of the day and carrying substantial section of children’s books coloured prints of famous paintings by turned out to be a potpourri of the great Western and Indian artists, the Western and the indigenous. periodical urges the children to have a Khukuranir Khela (The Little taste of its ‘honey’: Miss’ Play, 1919), an oversized book The hive is filled with honeyed rhyme by Baradakanta Majumdar, presents a Its smell enchants the air happy mix of the desi and the foreign. In thoughts idle don’t waste your time While the pleasing illustrations Oh Come! Do come without a care! alternate between Western and Indian Its science and information styles, the contents are a segments, often in anecdotal form, companionable blend of both. In one invite youngsters to read on by episode Khukurani washes her china introducing the subject through doll in a tub and dresses her in a blue- captivating tales. Enlivened with striped penny while another narrates haunting rhymes by Satyendranath the elaborate preparations for the Dutta, and hinting of the afar in its wedding of Khukurani’s doll to a tales from Tibet, Finland and Sweden, 82 Khukuranir Khela (The Little Miss’s Play,1919) 83 ‘groom’ belonging to a friend. The little Mouchak is truly alive with the girl’s play becomes, without any buzzing spirit of the hive. Chheleder conflict, a space for cross-cultural Satyagrahi (The Children’s contact and assimilation. Another Satyagrahi,1922), an intriguing illustrations of monsters and ogres. construct an independent identity and poem ‘Bhai-bon’ (Brother-sister) rings assortment of contents, includes single Sandesh, the popular children’s to etch out a national culture, it was, with the same tone: page ‘stories’ like ‘Khadderer Poshak’ magazine from the house of U Roy in actuality, part of a more widespread When we visit the shahibs (The Khadi Garment), and ‘Deshi and Sons, published a series of stories swadeshi movement against British In pretty frill and cuff Shaban’ (The Desi Soap)—which are, from the four puranas that were later rule. This is not to suggest that other With their boys and girls in effect, advertisements for the shops collected and published as Puraner forms of writings like informative We play blind-man’s buff. or factories selling/manufacturing Galpa (Tales from Mytho- texts, books on natural sciences, Though we learn their manners these goods. The book market doubles logies,1921). adaptations and translations from And their foreign fashions as a consumer market here, the text To fashion an ‘authentic’ Bengal Western originals did not continue to At home, donning dhoti and sari displaying an interesting medley of out of the lost oral tales and nursery be published in the new century. But We follow desi notions. ideology and commerce. rhymes, to build an indigenous with the rapid influx of these ‘new’ Appearing in 1920, Mouchak Children’s books have, almost tradition of children’s books, is a folktales and fairytales, both (The Beehive), made its presence felt universally, been seen as frivolous and unique phenomenon in Bengal’s social traditional and literary, the spirit and at once. Laden with wonderful and ephemeral. Even in Bengal, where history. A protracted project to the nature of Bengali children’s MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:09 PM Page 84

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children’s literature shares quite a crumbling from decay, are still books number of authors with the of outstanding beauty. They are made mainstream and has a rich 200-year- with loving thought and care, designed old print history, it has been grossly and printed with perfection. It will be neglected in research and a pity to lose them. documentation. In an attempt to fill My research aims to build up an this lacuna, this research has been a encyclopedic web archive of such journey into the past, into musty Bengali children’s books from their stories and mouldering books. And infancy to the early decades of the like any journey, it has yielded twentieth century. Through rewards. Some of the books discussed bibliographical documentation and in this essay are well known and still digitisation of a few images from each remembered; others have scarcely been book, the archive hopes to trace the mentioned in records or reviews; while trajectory of children’s literature in others still are ‘lost’ from print, Bengal, to bring to light many old and documentation and cultural memory. forgotten texts scattered in various Surviving copies of originals like libraries or personal collections, and to 84 Jogindranath Sarkar’s Hashi-khushi or help preserve some evidence of those 85 Abanindranath Tagore’s Bhut-patrir books that are under severe threat of desh or Ashitkumar Haldar’s Ho-der perishing. Galpa, with their yellowed pages

REFERENCES

GHOSH, ANINDITA. ‘An Uncertain “Coming of the Book”: Early Print-cultures in Colonial India’. Book History, Vol. 6 (2003).

SCHWARZ, HENRY. ‘Aesthetic Imperialism: Literature and the Conquest of India’. Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 4 (December 2000).

ROY, MODHUMITA. ‘“Englishing” India: Reinstituting Class and Social Privilege’. Social Text, No. 39 (Summer, 1994).

[All translations from the Bengali by Gargi Gangopadhyay.]

Biratwe Bangali (The Tradition of Bengali Herosim), 1929 MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:09 PM Page 86

Sashikanth Ananthachari is making an IFA-supported film on the Draupadi Amman Mahabharata Koothu festival that is celebrated in over 200 villages in Tamil Nadu every year. In the following pages he Kelai Draupadi! (Listen Draupadi!) explores a fascinating aspect of this festival—namely its portrayal of human identities and values as fluid and permeable. In the Draupadi Sashikanth Ananthachari Amman festival, Draupadi speaks through five Kauravas—even though they belong to the enemy camp; the festival has both Shaivite and Vaishnavite elements; and each ritual in the festival is sponsored by a different caste. Through its inclusiveness and its play with identity, the festival becomes “simultaneously, a celebration of one’s caste, community, gender and economic identity, and its transcendence”. MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:09 PM Page 88

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very year, in over 200 villages itself becomes Hastinapura. enthusiastic villager might secretly fly are drawn from three castes in the in Tamil Nadu, a festival with Invariably, the first therukoothu a flag near the temple. This the village—the Konars, the Velalar and Ethe Mahabharata at its core is play performed in most festivals is Vil villagers call the ‘false’ flag (the first the Vanniyars. The group of five is celebrated. This, the Draupadi Valaippu (The Bending of the Bow) step in announcing a festival in a called the Samayam Ganachari Amman Mahabharata Koothu festival, where Arjuna, in disguise as a village is the hoisting of the ‘true’ flag Kumaravargam and from that day on is a post-harvest festival celebrated in Brahmin, wins the hand of Draupadi in the Draupadi temple). The ‘false’ till the end of the festival, they live in the months of April, May and June, at her swayamwar. flag is the village enthusiast’s way of the temple and function as the when people pray for good rains and a The notion of identity and trying to persuade the village elders to instruments of the deity. They become good harvest the following year. The disguise is a major area of play in this hold the festival that year. Soon other the medium through which Draupadi duration of the festival varies festival; in all the rituals performed in villagers could voice the same speaks, and every function in the depending on the affluence of the the village, characters from the eagerness as the original enthusiast festival has to be initiated by them and celebrating village: it can range from Mahabharata are seen in disguise: and the village council would be terminated by them at the deity’s ten to 40 days. Draupadi Amman is Arjuna first as a Brahmin and later as forced to convene a meeting to decide behest.(In the village I documented, the presiding deity of this festival, and the eunuch Brihannala; Bhima whether the village can afford to hold the group of five men expanded to 13 the Mahabharata is narrated as a story, disguised as a Brahmin when he kills a festival that year. All these to give greater representation to enacted as therukoothu theatre and Bakasura; Draupadi herself as a gypsy negotiations happen around various families in the village.) performed as ritual for her. During the fortuneteller when she narrates the November-December and a firm Who these Samayam Ganachari 88 festival, the entire village becomes a Mahabharata to the Kauravas to warn decision has to be made by the end of Kumaravargam are is only revealed at 89 stage for various performances. An them of the impending danger. December as it takes about six months the end of the festival: they are the last icon of Draupadi is first carried to the During the day, the storytellers to organise a festival. five Kauravas alive at the end of the site of the performance and then the sing the Mahabharata in Srivilliputhur Once the village economics have war. They have been deputed by performance begins; Draupadi is the Alwar’s fourteenth century Tamil been worked out, preparation for the Gandhari to guard Duryodhana from primary audience for this festival and rendition, and expound on the verses; festival begins. The villagers identify Bhima till he says the Sanjeevini no performance can take place without all through the night, the therukoothu the pair of storytellers and the Mantra and brings his entire army her consent. performers enact that episode of the therukoothu theatre group they want back to life. Interestingly, this story is In the first few days of the epic which has been narrated as a for the festival. Once that is done, an purely local and is not found in the festival, the Mahabharata is narrated story during the day; in between some auspicious date for the start of the Sanskrit Mahabharata. The five as a story, from Adi Parva to the point key episodes are performed as ritual in festival is fixed, depending on when Kauravas are Bhismacharya, in the narrative where Draupadi the village. For about 20 hours a day both the storytellers and theatre group Kripacharya, Kritavarman, enters; at this stage the rituals centred for almost 20 days, audiences hear, see are available together. Ashwatthaman and Sanjayan. So the on Draupadi are performed in the and live the Mahabharata! On the appointed starting date five people who are the principal village and the theatre begins. The The festival is celebrated by of the festival, the ‘true’ flag is hoisted devotees and oracles of Draupadi are festival in its full-blown form begins popular demand. If, for some reason, a and five men from the village take also the key figures in the enemy only when Draupadi becomes the festival has not been performed for their vows to be the caretakers of the camp! bride of the village and the village two or three years in a village, an Draupadi temple. These five people *** MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:09 PM Page 90

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This doubling of identity and time he realises this it is too late; he profusion of identities, including has to either kill his own brother or disguises, false identities, mistaken be killed by him. The play Karna identities and lost identities, leading Moksham is the emotional climax of to a state of transcendence where the festival, and a hush descends one acquires one’s ‘true’ identity, is a over the audience as Karna laments region of active play in this festival. his ignorance about his origins. The festival becomes, The interrogation of identity simultaneously, a celebration of can also occur in a humorous one’s caste, community, gender and fashion. It is customary for each economic identity, and its character to announce transcendence. Yadu becomes herself/himself by name and rank important in this festival as he was on entering the stage. When cursed by his father Yayati and lost Duryodhana announces himself as his Shatriya caste status. The himself, the kattiyakaran or Konars, who are one of the major sutradhar mocks him by asking him custodians of this cult, are a Yadava whether he really is Duryodhana or 90 community who trace their ancestry someone trying to pretend to be to Yadu and call themselves Duryodhana. Yadavakula Shatriyas. ( The As MD Muthukumaraswamy, pantheon of deities of this cult are, a scholar who has worked on this other than Draupadi, all Yadavas, cult, says, this festival and the other deities being Kunti, therukoothu, the theatre form, Balaram and Subhadra.) Arjuna is portray ‘identity’ and ‘ethical values’ important in this festival as he is as polarities. To fight for and to Sabhasachi or the person who is in preserve one’s identity as king, touch with his ‘left’ or ‘feminine’ self; father, landlord or wife, one has to during the festival rituals he appears give up one’s values. And the as Brihannala, a eunuch dance hardening of identities leads teacher (and he is, finally, an avatar immediately to conflict, which leads of Shiva). Draupadi herself is an to a further erosion of values. So avatar of Durga. And Karna the question the festival and the becomes an important figure as he theatre pose concerns what one does not know he is the eldest really desires. The choice is between Pandava. His tragedy is that by the a world of ‘ethical values/fluid MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:09 PM Page 92

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identities’ and peace, and a world of To understand or at least to speculate the Draupadi Amman festival, certain this is not in practice now. rigid identities and war. on why this position gets privileged in divergences from the Sanskrit version (In the village Ecchur, which I This anti-conflict/antiwar the festival, one has to go back to its become clear. In the invocation song documented, the festival is relatively position is ingrained in the festival, origins and there are two possible to Draupadi, she is constantly new, having only been performed for and in all the interviews I conducted origins. In the eighth century Pallava addressed as Durga and the sister of the last 60 years. In this village, the with the participants, the answer to temple at Kurram, a village near Vishnu; and Arjuna is identified as an younger Dalits were conspicuous by my question—as to why this festival Kanchipuram, there is a bland avatar of Shiva. So the festival has their absence in the festival, while was performed other than to inscription which says that the Pallava both Shaivite and Vaishnavite themes their fathers participated. The propitiate the rain gods—was the King Mahendravarman first donated with both communities participating younger Dalits were also the most same: to promote samarasam (unity money for the reading of Bharatham equally in its celebration. One of educated people in the village, and harmony) and to promote (Mahabharata). Mahendravarman, a Draupadi’s two chief bodyguards is working as white collar vittukodutthal (to Shaivite king, was a great patron of called Potturaja, which is a distinctive professionals—college teachers, bank understand, to the arts and crafts who has left his title bestowed by the Pallava kings. employees etc.—while their give and take, to legacy in the various temples he Looked at in this way, the contemporaries from other castes learn to yield). built and the artists he festival seems like an attempt to create were relatively uneducated, working patronised. His period was an inclusive civil society which could mostly as plumbers, electricians, *** also characterised by violent resolve its caste, community, property masons or car drivers in the religious conflicts and and religious differences amicably and neighbouring towns. When I 93 struggles for power with the involvement of the entire interviewed these young Dalit men, between the Vaishnavites community. Even now, the they were clear about not and the Shaivites, while his outstanding land- and water-related participating in the festival and also kingdom was also disputes which plague agrarian disliked the fact that their fathers threatened from the communities are resolved during this participated; however, they did not north by King Pulikesin period and new kinships created. want to go on record about this, as to whom he had already Each ritual in the festival is sponsored they said that they have been living in lost a major battle. by a caste, for whose identity the harmony and they did not want to If against this episode being celebrated functions as disturb this.) background one a marker: the Konars sponsor all studies the version rituals and theatre performances of the involving Krishna, and the Vanniyars Mahabharata sponsor events related to Arjuna. It performed in appears that in earlier times the play Karna Moksham would be sponsored by a community which is traditionally the custodian of the cremation grounds, an ‘untouchable’ caste, but MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:09 PM Page 94

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The festival seems like an The second possibility of the cult’s attempt at creating a ‘village republic’ origin is connected with the region which can internally resolve its called Senji in Tamil and Gingee in differences, whatever the conflicts of English. With the collapse of the the larger world. This line of Chola Empire, Senji seems to have reasoning gains ground if one gained a measure of autonomy in considers the other bodyguard of the late thirteenth century under the Draupadi: Mutthala Ravuttan, a Kon dynasty, a line of ‘shepherd’ Muslim soldier who joins the (Konar) kings Their descendents pantheon of the deities in the claim that their royal ancestors built thirteenth or fourteenth centuries the fort at Senji and also the first with the entry of Islamic rule in this Draupadi Amman temple at part of the country. Both Potturaja Melaccheri, a village which at that and Mutthala Ravuttan have time was called old Senji. The mythologies of their own in this descendents of this dynasty are also cult, and both are equally honoured one of the three castes which are the in this festival. There are records of current custodians of this cult. Muslim landlords patronising this Draupadi in the invocation song is 95 festival when this region was under addressed as ‘Senji Pathiyale en the Nawab of Arcot. Later, when the amma nee’, or ‘Our mother who region came under the sway of the resides in Senji’, and there is an British, there are records of the elaborate mythology concerning her British also being included in the second birth from fire at Senji. The festival’s mythology. In Alandur in festival as it is celebrated right now Chennai there is a Sri Artilari is tightly woven around this Dharmaraja temple supposedly built mythology of the second coming of by an Englishman—Colonel Draupadi. Artilari—who had a ‘vision’ of According to legend, when Draupadi. What is clear is that this King Cunitan, a great grandson of region came under the sway of Arjuna, was ruling at Hastinapura, various rulers, to whom the village his kingdom was threatened by a had to defer, while at the same time demon called Rochakan. This negotiating a certain kind of demon, a grandson of the demon autonomy. Baka who was killed by Bhima, wanted revenge on the descendents *** MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:10 PM Page 96 MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:10 PM Page 98

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of the Pandavas. Rochakan was hundredth head, Potturaja was there powerful as he had two boons from to catch it. Potturaja took a vow that Brahma: of his 100 heads, 99 could he would never drop Rochakan’s be cut off, but if someone tried to cut head, and that he would always stand his central head and the head fell to guard outside her temple holding it. the ground, the person who cut the So Potturaja, who stands outside head would die; the second was that Draupadi’s temple, is the first figure only a person born of fire could kill to whom respects are paid in this him. festival, “for without him there would Cunitan was advised by his be no festival”. 1 ministers that only Draupadi could The Mahabharata celebrated in kill Rochakan, and that Cunitan the Draupadi Amman festival as an should immediately search out the antiwar text starts from the exile of two immortals who had performed the Pandavas and ends after the war the original fire sacrifice which with the crowning of the ‘just’ king resulted in Draupadi’s birth and ask Dharmaraja. It simultaneously them to re-perform the sacrifice for recounts the trials and 98 her to be born again. Cunitan tribulations of the Pandavas searched all over the land for the two and their final success as sages, Yachan and Upayachan, and well as the trials and finally located them at Senji. The tribulations the people sacrifice was performed and Draupadi went through during was born again. When Draupadi was the Chalukya war, told about Brahma’s boon regarding and the final the hundredth head of Rochakan, she triumph of the asked Cunitan to locate Potturaja, an people. And ardent Shiva devotee who ruled Potturaja stands guard Kalinga; she said that only Potturaja outside promising could hold the hundredth head of eternal peace. Rochakan for eternity and prevent it

from falling on the ground. Then Subject consultant: there was a great battle between MD Muthukumaraswamy (Director, National Folklore Support Centre, Draupadi and Rochakan, and when Chennai) Draupadi cut off Rochakan’s

1Alf Hiltebeitel, The Cult of Draupadi (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991). MAINIFA ArtConnect-3-1:Layout 3 12/29/2009 6:10 PM Page 100

ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 3, Number 2

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