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Domesticating the Harem UCLA CSW Update Newsletter Title Domesticating the Harem Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5wn7m9bz Author Carotenuto, Gianna Publication Date 2008-05-01 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Domesticating the Harem RECONSIDERING ZENANA IMAGERY IN NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY INDIA BY GIANNA CAROTENUTO oosely bound with a black ribbon in a now long forgotten gestureL of affection, one hundred and twenty photographs of the women of the Seventh Nizam of Hyderabad’s royal zenana (female household) were discovered in the dark storerooms of the King Kothi palace in Hyderabad, India. One expects these so-called harem pic- Odalisque with Slave, 1841 tures to depict the stereotypical sex- Jean Dominique Ingres ualized image of lounging half nude Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland odalisques smoking hookah pipes. A common misunderstanding is that the harem and the zenana are one and the same; operating as pictorial or semantic designations, MAY08 6 CSupdateW they are most often used inter- century. The Nizam’s court, changeably. The surprise in the firmly rooted in its Indo-Islamic discovery of these photographs heritage, held out during the is their presentation of women nineteenth and early twentieth as wives, sisters, and mothers, as centuries against British efforts well as consorts and concubines, to reform and modernize Indian an uncommon depiction that society and resisted the Indian complicates the conventional National Congress campaign for understandings of what a harem self-rule, insisting upon politi- might be. Rather than eroticize, cal and cultural autonomy from 2 the pictures domesticize the both spheres. Refracting the Indian female, and present the Nizam’s resistance through the possibility for a different un- camera lens, Dayal’s portraits derstanding of the predominant celebrate the zenana women’s 1 definition of the harem. place as an integral part of Taken between 1905 and 1910 time-honored Indian society, Courtesan,photographer unknown, c. 1870 (approximately ) by Raja Deen as opposed to the view that Dayal, court photographer to relegates women of the harem to The Nizam and each woman’s Presented in Dayal’s pho- the Nizam and dignitaries of the exotic deviants. In this context, personal power. The lavish tographs as an ensemble of 44 British Raj, these pictures were the women of the House of Jah, clothing and the excessive jew- courtesans, 22 concubines, 6 produced at a crucial moment legendary for their exceptional elry function as a code that tells premier wives, singular beauties, in the history of India and its beauty, elegance, and refinement, of each zenana woman’s group and mothers with children, the colonial legacy. Hyderabad at symbolize the customary power and individual status, their women confirm The Nizam’s this time was a bastion of tradi- of the Nizam. Their power- hierarchy within the harem, and royal status by their sheer num- tionalist sentiment, squeezed by ful gaze suggests confidence in their relationships to each other ber. The range of female types colonial pressures and modern their rank and authority, thereby and to the Nizam. There are portrayed in these pictures em- forces of Indian nationalism, the refuting notions of disempower- both similarities and subtle signs phasizes the diversity of physical appeal of modernity, and nascent ing subjugation. of individuation in dress and beauty and regional identities of female emancipation move- The spectacular adornment type of jewelry within different the Nizam’s zenana, while the ments of the late nineteenth symbolizes both the wealth of groups of women. various groupings indicate the MAY08 7 CSupdateW varied structure of female roles and cultural paradox of harem tographs of the Nizam’s zenana the pictorial history of the tradi- and familial associations. versus zenana imagery in Colo- indicate, the transformation of tional zenana rather than exclu- In general, the women are nial India (1820–1920). It offers the Indian family. For the late sively through that of the harem, carefully arranged in neat rows a close reading of the photo- nineteenth and early twentieth which contains the larger legacy or posed against stock Euro- graphs discovered in the King centuries, the harem was defined of stereotypes, a more nuanced pean-style painted backdrops; Kothi palace, and other pictures, as a site of female power and understanding of women’s lives they are presented in a sober, painted and photographed, of promoted as a place of Indian during the colonial era becomes classicizing manner that lends a royal Indian zenanas from col- tradition, and is but one of the apparent. sense of noble reserve. The stan- lections in America, Europe, ways that Indian women were While the pictures of the dardized composition reveals and India in order to examine idealized during the colonial Nizam’s zenana attest to the fluctuating levels of conformity the private and public represen- period. But the zenana was veracity and strength of the and individuality within the tation of elite Indian women also an aspect of Indian soci- ancient tradition of female seg- zenana rank and file that alludes alongside the unstable condi- ety that caused great concern regation practiced in the early to the larger flexibility of a tions of colonial Indian female for the colonial British rulers twentieth century by the elite colonial modern female identity. identity. I am primarily con- of the subcontinent, generat- classes of India, they also an- This visual conformity reflects cerned with the sociopolitical ing legislation against widow nounce its decline. I argue that a sense of internal cohesiveness currency of harem mythology, burning, child marriage, and the well-known and powerful that a segregated community the manner in which harem and education of women that ran narratives of the harem, with its of women would exhibit. It zenana images were employed counter to the norms of Indian eroticized images and sexualized also references typical portrai- by both traditional and mod- society. Burgeoning national- connotations, along with inac- ture styles inherited from long ernist factions to define Indian ist and feminist movements of curate notions about the actual standing indigenous painting of womanhood, and the influence the modern Indian nation also boundaries of purdah (female the Mughal Dynasty (1526–1857) of the Orientalist trope of the utilized the zenana as a plat- sequestration), have eclipsed our that produced a vigorous picto- erotic harem upon representa- form of debate that employed understanding of not only what rial tradition of zenana imagery. tions of zenanas in India. pictures of elite Indian women a harem might be in the Indian Reconsidering representa- The discourse around the co- to capitalize on the harem myth colonial context but has also tions of the nineteenth and lonial harem was an important and to reconstruct the definition limited the possibilities for other early twentieth century zenana factor in the development of a of womanhood to serve indig- notions of elite female identity of India, my doctoral disserta- pictorial narrative for Indian enous political agendas. When to emerge—identities that are tion aims to unravel the visual femininity and, as Dayal’s pho- female identity is read through not solely generated through a MAY08 8 CSupdateW Western lens, but from within durai 1997:5). For the Nizam to ...the well-known and powerful narratives Indian culture and in response have his zenana photographed of the harem, with its eroticized images to colonial influences. featuring his wives, children, and Three thematic threads run concubines suggests a choice to and sexualized connotations, along through Dayal’s images that both expose the lived reality of inform the dissertation: first, the zenana, and also display them with inaccurate notions about the the interplay between the as his possessions. European eroticized harem, the As a record of a private royal actual boundaries of purdah (female nationalist reconceptualization zenana in colonial India, these of the harem, and the traditional rare photographs resonate with sequestration), have eclipsed our Indian domestic zenana; second, conflicting realities—on the one the exchange of artistic influ- hand, the photos of the Nizam’s understanding of not only what a harem ences, genres and mannerisms women assembled on carpets of European stylistic trends in the palace garden exhibit the might be in the Indian colonial context and Indian aesthetic practices; exotic notions of the harem com- and third, the shifting image of mon to Western Orientalist fan- but has also limited the possibilities for female identity as the fulcrum tasies. On the other hand, as an other notions of elite female identity to between the Colonial and the intimate memoir of family life, modern eras. these pictures depict a domestic emerge—identities that are not solely The familial nature of the space filled with children, family Nizam’s zenana pictures are hierarchy, and household prac- generated through a Western lens, their most striking attribute tices. For example, the Nizam within these themes. Accord- presents himself casually arm in but from within Indian culture and in ing to Arjun Appadurai, “in a arm with his children at whose sex-segregated colonial environ- feet are seated their various response to colonial influences. ment,” photography was one of mothers, along with the family the “central practices through ayah (nanny). Imaging the non- which
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