Beneath the Red Dupatta

266 Pages·2015·7.12 MB·English

DOCTORAL DISSERTATIO(cid:12)

Beneath the Red Dupatta: an Exploration of the Mythopoeic
Functions of the ‘Muslim’ Courtesan (tawaif) in Hindustani cinema

Farhad Khoyratty

Supervised by Dr. Felicity Hand
Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Germanística
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2015
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements iv

1. Introduction 1

2. Methodology & Literature Review 5

2.1 Methodology 5

2.2 Towards Defining Hindustani Cinema and Bollywood 9

2.3 Gender 23

2.3.1 Feminism: the Three Waves 23

2.4 Feminist Film Theory and Laura Mulvey 30

2.5 Queer Theory and Judith Butler 41

2.6 Discursive Models for the Tawaif 46

2.7 Conclusion 55

3. The Becoming of the Tawaif 59

3.1 The Argument 59

3.2 The Red Dupatta 59

3.3 The Historical Tawaif – the Past’s Present and the Present’s Past 72

3.4 Geisha and Tawaif 91

4. The Courtesan in the Popular Hindustani cinema: Mapping the Ethico-Ideological and
Mythopoeic Space She Occupies 103

4.1 The Argument 103

4.2 Mythopoeic Functions of the Tawaif 103

4.3 The ‘Muslim’ Courtesan 120

4.4 Agency of the Tawaif 133

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4.5 Conclusion 147

5. Hindustani cinema Herself: the Protean Body of Hindustani cinema 151

5.1 The Argument 151

5.2 Binary Narratives 151

5.3 The Politics of Kissing in Hindustani Cinema 187

5.4 Hindustani Cinema, the Tawaif Who Seeks Respectability 197

Conclusion 209

Bibliography 223

Filmography 249

Webography 257

Photography 261

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Dedicated to
My Late Father Sulliman
For his unwavering faith in all my endeavours

It is customary to thank one’s supervisor and sadly this has become such an automatic tradition
that I am lost for words fit enough to thank Dr. Felicity Hand to whom I owe everything, from
the inception of the project to constant timely support throughout the various difficulties I faced,
and even at the delivery end of the project.
I also thank:
Bilall Jawdy, for help and kindness, and for everything else, and for keeping my middle-ageing
grey cells on their toes.
My mother Fareedabee, always by my side – under all climes and seasons and for being my first
and last inspiration working in Hindustani cinema.
My brother Shahnoo, ever ‘le p’tit dernier’ showing so much promise.
My uncle Abdool Kader and Tia Dulce Maria Moosbally,
My uncle Goolhamid Khedoo, my Aunt Laura and their ever-so-congenial tribe,
Demetris Rafti, his mother and sister, for their friendship and support,
Dr. Savita Bailur, of the London School of Economics, for being a constant support and help,
Professor Vijay Mishra of the University of Murdoch for being my first inspiration for this topic.
Associate Professor Kumari Issur, light of the department of French Studies at the University of
Mauritius for being a beacon at every point, and for educating me on Urdu civilization.
Associate Professor Amit Kumar Mishra, Director of the Centre for Study of Indian Diaspora,
University of Hyderabad, now at the University of Harvard, who gave me full access to his
centre, offering generous and open help, especially for being just that sort of person.
Prof. Makarand Paranjape encouragement, his help, his bright-eyed friendship and guidance as a
guru.
Prof. Brij Lall, for words of wisdom.

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Dr. Sara Martin of the Autonomous University of Barcelona with her own knowledgeable,
down-to-earth way of setting me straight on the right tracks,
Dr. Isabel Alonso of the University of Barcelona and her own knowledgeable, warm way of
setting me straight on the right tracks
Prof. Eileen Williams-Wanquet of the Université de La Réunion for her unfailing support and
friendship.
Prof. Tejaswini Niranjana, Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Culture & Society, Bangalore,
Visiting Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Lichtstern Visiting Professor,
Anthropology, University of Chicago, for helping me connect my ideas to musicology and for
general inspiration.
Salvador, fellow-traveller his friendship and for loving his great city so much.
Chris Merill and folks of the Iowa Writing Program for so much support and love.
Administrative and academic staff who provided help in one form or another at Libraries at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Cambridge University, School of Oriental and African
Studies (SOAS) London, London School of Economics, University of Hyderabad, University of
Mauritius, University of Iowa, Library of Congress, D.C., University of Cape Town.
The nameless many who have helped me so selflessly along the difficult path of composing this
Ph.D.

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1. Introduction
The tawaif haunts Hindustani cinema almost continuously between the 1920s and the late 1990s.
With its heyday in the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s, the courtesan as motif starts ebbing away
in the new century, but keeps re-appearing, sometimes obliquely and sometimes directly. She
resurfaces as postmodern revisiting (Dedh Ishqiya, Chaubey 2014) brief ‘cameo’ (such as with
the immensely popular song sequences “Kajra ré”, “Billo Rani”, “Ram Chahe Leela”, “Ghagra”,
respectively from Bunty aur Babli (Shaad Ali 2005), Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal (Agnihotri 2007),
Goliyon ki Rasleela Ram-Leela (Bhansali 2013), and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (Johar 2013);
as nostalgic clin d’oeil in Saawariya (Bhansali 2007), Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle, 2008) and
the film Kajraare (Pooja Bhatt, 2010) below) or as a remake of an older courtesan classic,
replete with nostalgic dimensions: Umrao Jaan (J.P. Dutta, 2006), a remake of Umrao Jaan
(Muzaffar Ali, 1981); Devdas (Bhansali, 2003), a remake of various earlier versions, notably of
Bimal Roy in 1955; both Umrao Jaan and Devdas in turn adaptations from even earlier novels.
Yet, although the manifestations might alter, the structures underlying the ‘world’ of the
courtesan film persist, spectrally.1
The persistence of the myth of the courtesan follows over decades - from the 1920s but
especially in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, with a gradual disappearance as from the mid-1990s
except as occasional nostalgic references. The courtesan’s presence/absence uncovers the
dynamics of her performance by the Hindustani cinema text, her function in the filmic text and
more generally in the social context. In fact, one can argue, the courtesan is present through
representations of women and patriarchal structures in Hindustani cinema but more generally, in
terms of relations of power. The historical tawaif pre-dates Hindustani cinema, but somehow the
tradition of entertainment she carries informs the narrative structure of Hindustani cinema for
instance in terms of the song-and-dance elements. Hindustani cinema’s ethico-ideological
stances also show many mise-en-abyme correspondences with the world of the courtesan as
entertainers in both cases.

1 See Derrida, 1994
1
In the second chapter I essentially carry out an overview of existing scholarship on the subjects
of Hindustani cinema, feminist identity construction and film reception and film theory when
concerned with spectatorship and identity-construction. Then follows an assessment of the
various methodologies that have been used to analyse the subject at hand, with the delineation of
the rationale behind the choice of Cultural Studies, as complemented by phenomenology,
feminist film theory, and other critical theories. Chapter 3 proceeds to explore the tawaif in
line with de Saussure (1959), and subsequently Derrida (1967) regarding how things are
definable in terms of what they are not, and in line with Butler (1990) who proposes identities
not as a being but as a becoming.
The courtesanness of the courtesan is explored in this chapter. One isn’t born a courtesan but
becomes one. As such, the courtesan is located as context and function. Contextually, she is
located in terms of a politics of gazing. I proceed by exploring the life of the historical tawaif and
the various ways she was received, especially by the British. I compare her existential with that
of the geisha, in an attempt to nuance our understanding of each.
In chapter 4 I discuss how the space occupied by the courtesan in Hindustani cinema is
approached phenomenologically as a locus of nostalgia, a temporal relationship of
natality/morbidity. The courtesan inhabits a mythopoeic space of contradiction and uncertainty
and a morally hybrid dimension, one that is both subversive and bourgeois.
The dynamics and function of the courtesan in the Hindustani cinema text are related to the
scapegoat, the ‘goat’ offered to sacrifice for the good of the polis. These need to be repeated and
ritualised so as to perform the myth (Butler’s iterability, from Derrida) of the courtesan. The
functions of real-life Laknawi courtesans will be compared to the Hindustani film function.
The main focus will be on the figure of the courtesan and the temporal sources of her being in
terms of her chronological existence (Temporalität) and the temporal relationship to the morbid,
then to natality and to ecstasy (Zeitlichkeit). In opposition to the terrorist’s hypermasculinity, the
womb-like closedness of the courtesan’s world makes her a hyperfeminine counterfoil; the world
of the courtesan also represents a secular ‘Islamic’ space as a counterpoint to currently more
assertive Islamic religious spaces.
2
Chapter 5 examines Hindustani cinema as a body as performance (as a doing, not a being).
Above all, as with all bodies, Hindustani cinema is performed continuously (doing, not done)
and therefore definable only differentially (becoming, not being). Thus, Hindustani cinema
herself is a mujra, a performance, with “men” watching (gazing at?) a space of relative
liberation, yet somehow limited by the strictures of its inscription into cultural contexts.
Ethically, Hindustani cinema stands for a portmanteau of both Hindu and Muslim moral values.
All along the tawaif had been the manifestation of a deeper structural dynamic at work in the
Hindustani film text.
Thus, the final part of the argument considers Hindustani cinema ‘herself’ as a courtesan, as an
entertainer that needs to please, which informs on the nature of its natality. It seeks to investigate
the new avatars of the courtesan in Hindustani cinema.

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2. Methodology & Literature Review
2.1 Methodology
…sexuality becomes a scene of cultural struggle, improvisation and innovation, a domain
in which the intimate and the political converge, and a dramatic opportunity for
expression, analysis and change (Butler 1989: 98).
The objective of this dissertation is not nostalgic of the profession of the tawaif. As well as
dangers connected with physical violence and disease, prostitution divests a person of agency
and is indicative of a gendered power relation that has been made normative. My aim is to
consider myths constructed around the tawaif as cultural positionings. Engaging with these
varied positionings allow for a phenomenology of the tawaif that disclose the successive worlds
she is thrown in while teasing the hermetic nature of each of these worlds. In line with
phenomenological practice and Butler’s own phenomenology, there is no essence in identity to
be discovered, but narratives that represent timely and shifting strategies. According to Carver
and Chambers, Butler grounds her ethics in the unknowability of the self. Butler’s politics is thus
rooted in agonism, rather than in any position or predilection that is ‘for or against’ the law.
Contradictions and correspondences that emerge for instance between myths surrounding the
historical tawaif and the cinematic tawaif tell of differences among various clusters of narrative
about her (e.g British colonials, Muslims, Hindus, feminists) or zeitgeists (e.g medieval India,
early 20th century, post-independence India, the contemporary global world). Altogether, they
reveal that all one can expect is perpectives of an identity and the only deconstruction is – in
genealogical Foucauldian terms – the multiplication of perspectives and the constant revisiting of
these perspectives again to undermine essentialism as far as possible. The dupatta is adopted
here as a deliberately complex and elusive symbol, inter alia as deliberately ambiguous play
with Islamic edicts of modesty about covering the female body, that acts as an analytical tool to
expose notions of purity, so fundamental to the production of the tawaif as category, as unstable.
More generally, it acts as a symbol of a game of concealing and revealing that is at once
physical, metaphorical and epistemological allowing a phenomenological uncovering. In order to
understand the Being-there (Dasein), Being needs to be grasped as Being-in-the-world (In-der-
Welt-Sein), the way in which a Being encounters the world. Access to “truth” will be based on
Habermas’s “constructivist” model with the conjunction of the subjective (intuition, solipsism,
and especially scepticism) and the objective (absolutes). The former is to help suspend the thesis
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