Homepage >> History >> Tawaifs >> This Page

THE TAWAIF, THE ANTI - NAUTCH MOVEMENT, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NORTH INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC:

Part 3 - Evolution of the Will to End the Tawaifs

by David Courtney

 

For the var­ious groups to er­adi­cate the tawaifs, it is very ob­vious that there had to be two con­di­tions met.  First, there had to be a will to er­adi­cate the tawaifs.  Se­condly, there had to be the ca­pa­city ac­tually do so.  The "will" to er­adi­cate the tawaif sprang from nu­mer­ous sour­ces.  These in­clu­ded po­li­ti­cal, cul­tural, Chris­tian evan­gel­ical, and per­sonal rea­sons; how­ever, the most major motiva­tion came from the rise of the So­cial Pur­ity move­ment and its trans­plan­ta­tion into the In­dian sub­con­ti­nent.  This will be the major topic of dis­cus­sion for this page.

The Rise of Evangelicalism

The 19th cen­tury was a time of rising Chris­tian evan­gel­icalism in Great Bri­tain.  The com­bi­na­tion of evan­gelism, evan­gel­icalism, and im­pe­rial­ism would have dire so­cial, po­li­ti­cal, and eco­nomic con­se­quen­ces for much of the world.  There were two per­iods of re­li­gious re­vi­val­ism that share re­spon­si­bility for the anti-nautch move­ment.  These two move­ment are often re­fer­red to as the "The Se­cond Great Awa­ken­ing" (1790- 1840's) and the "Third Great Awa­ken­ing" (1880-1900).

The "Second Great Awa­ken­ing" swept Great Bri­tain du­ring the early part of the 19th cen­tury.  This was re­spon­sible for creat­ing the struc­ture that would be used for the anti-nautch move­ment.  Most not­ably it was the pres­sure of the evan­gel­ical Chris­tians upon the Bri­tish Par­lia­ment that that crea­ted the Mis­sion­ary Clause in the 1813 re­newal of the East India Com­pany's char­ter.  This clause opened up India to mis­sion­ary ac­tivi­ties.  It was the in­crea­sed pre­sence of these mis­sion­aries that would prove cru­cial to the exe­cu­tion of the anti-nautch move­ment seve­ral de­cades later.

There was an­other wave of re­li­gious re­vi­val­ism that spread through Great Bri­tain from about the 1880s through the first de­cade of the 20th cen­tury.  Some refer to this as the "Third Great Awa­ken­ing" but there is not a great agree­ment as to this term; Some sug­gest that this is merely an ex­ten­sion of the "Second Great Awa­ken­ing".  Re­gard­less of what we wish to call it, this was the wave that was ac­tually re­spon­sible for the anti-nautch move­ment.  By the time this re­vi­val­ism set in, the pre­sence of Chris­tian mis­sion­aries was well es­tab­lished in India.  Fur­ther­more, the con­trol over the In­dian sub­con­ti­nent was sub­stan­tial.  There­fore, when these mis­sion­aries some­how de­cided that watch­ing In­dian dance would bring des­truc­tion to the moral fabric of India, they were well placed to carry out their per­se­cu­tion.

Rise of the So­cial Pur­ity Move­ment

The anti-nautch move­ment in India is in­ext­ric­ably linked to the rise of the so­cial pur­ity move­ment in Great Bri­tain.  There­fore, it is neces­sary to have some under­stand­ing of this move­ment in order to gain a per­spec­tive on the anti-nautch move­ment.

As is typical of most so­cial pheno­mena, the so­cial pur­ity move­ment rep­resen­ted the out­come of a num­ber of dif­fer­ent con­cepts, theo­ries, con­ceptions, and mis­con­cep­tions of the era.  In other words, it was in­ext­ric­ably linked to the zeit­geist of the 19th cen­tury.  In this case, we will see that it was a logi­cal out­growth of a growing Chris­tian puri­tani­cal move­ment, sup­ported in part by scien­ti­fic hypo­theses which have since been dis­counted.

The "scientific" basis of so­cial pur­ity was sum­med up by Max Nordau's (1849-1923) con­cept of "de­genera­tion".  Ac­cor­ding to this theory, a pre­occu­pa­tion with gamb­ling, al­cohol, sex, and the other vices as de­fined by the Chris­tian chur­ches, led to a decay of the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem.  Such decay in turn led to fur­ther in­dul­gence and licen­tious be­hav­iour, which again leads to fur­ther neuro­logi­cal decay.  Ac­cor­ding to the La­marc­kian theory of evolu­tion that was pop­ular at the time, such "de­gener­ate" char­acter­is­tics would be trans­mit­ted to the next ge­nera­tion.  The cas­cad­ing nature of de­ge­nera­tion would in­evit­ably lead to a break­down of all civil so­ciety.  It was clear that in order to save so­ciety from this dire fate, it was essen­tial that such vices be elimi­nated.  Among the myriad of vices that so­ciety was prone to, the sex­ual vices were con­si­dered the most ser­ious.

In the 19th cen­tury, a num­ber of so­cial pur­ity organ­isa­tions arose in great Bri­tain.  These were the Nat­ional Vi­gil­ance As­socia­tion, the White Cross Army, The Sal­va­tion Army, The Church of Eng­land Pur­ity So­ciety of the White Cross League (CEPS), and a host of others.  These groups would roam the streets and har­ass, at­tack, or cause the ar­rest of any man or wo­men that was en­gag­ing in ac­tivi­ties that they deemed to be im­moral.  The pur­suit of pros­ti­tutes, and men pat­ron­ising pros­ti­tutes, seemed to be their main ac­tivi­ties.

Women of the Sal­va­tion Army

Today, it is easy to dis­miss the de­ge­nera­tion theory and the so­cial pur­ity organ­isa­tions.  How­ever, we must re­mem­ber that the peo­ple who lived in the 19th cen­tury were not stu­pid; they just lived with a dif­fer­ent set of con­di­tions and world views.  The scourge of neuro­syphilis and ter­tiary syphilis were pain­fully clear to them, as were the ef­fects of al­coho­lism, and opium ad­dic­tion.  The near ab­sence of safe, ef­fec­tive treat­ments, meant that Vic­tor­ian Eu­ro­peans were left with no al­ter­na­tive other than the so­cial, pre­ven­tive ones.  This par­tially explains the sup­port that the so­cial pur­ity move­ment was re­ceiving even from peo­ple who were not re­li­gious zea­lots.

Tertiary ef­fects of syphilis

We have seen how the so­cial pur­ity move­ment pro­vided the major im­petus for the anti-nautch move­ment.  But this was not the only fac­tor.

Political Considerations

For many peo­ple, the elimi­na­tion of the tawaif had po­li­ti­cal con­si­dera­tions.  Just as the Masonic lodges ac­quired the re­pu­ta­tion for be­ing cen­tres of se­di­tion in the Ameri­can Re­vo­lu­tion­ary war, and coffee houses ac­quired the re­pu­ta­tion for be­ing the places where the Rus­sian re­vo­lu­tion was hatched, in a si­mi­lar man­ner, the kothas of the tawaifs had the re­pu­ta­tion of be­ing be­hind the Up­ris­ing of 1857.

Uprising of 1857

This up­rising was defin­itely a not­ably event in both In­dian his­tory as well as Bri­tish History.  This event is var­iously re­fer­red to as the "Indian Re­bel­lion of 1857", the "First War of In­de­pen­dence", the "Great Re­bel­lion", the "Se­poy Mu­tiny", and a host of other names to suit your par­ti­cu­lar po­li­ti­cal per­sua­sion.  Years of Bri­tish pre­sence and med­dling in the lo­cal po­li­ti­cal af­fairs, re­sulted in a great deal of re­sent­ment among the lo­cal popu­la­tion.  After the an­nexa­tion of Awadh (Oudh) in 1856, ten­sions were run­ning es­pec­ially high.  Nort­hern India broke out in re­bel­lion in 1857.  This up­rising was sup­pres­sed in 1858.

The con­nec­tion bet­ween the kothas of the tawaifs and the up­rising is well known.  From the ear­liest days, the close so­cial inter­action bet­ween the tawaifs and the feudal lords, meant that tawaifs were no stran­gers to court in­tri­gues.  It was only natu­ral that in the 1850's, these same kothas should be cen­tres of po­li­ti­cal de­bate, some of which re­sulted in the Up­ris­ing.

After the Up­ris­ing, the Bri­tish re­ta­lia­ted ag­ainst the tawaifs.  Many had their pro­perty seized.  Many zon­ing laws were enac­ted that ad­ver­sely ef­fec­ted them.  When the anti-nautch move­ment star­ted in the late 1800s, this not so dis­tant piece of his­tory could not have been for­got­ten.

Other Motivations for the Eli­mi­na­tion of the Tawaif

There are fur­ther rea­sons which may have pro­vided some motiva­tion for the elimi­na­tion of the tawaif.  These in­clude cul­tural chau­vin­ism, and simple jea­lousy on the part of Bri­tish wo­men.  Although the so­cial pur­ity move­ment ap­pears to be the strongest motiva­tion for the elimi­na­tion of the tawaif, with po­li­ti­cal con­si­dera­tions a dis­tant se­cond, we must not discount these other forces.

Cultural chau­vin­ism must be con­si­dered when we search for other motiva­tions to elimi­nate the tawaif.  The Bri­tish who lived in India at the end of the 19th cen­tury were con­vin­ced that Eu­ro­pean cul­ture, es­pec­ially Eng­lish cul­ture, was the abso­lute pin­na­cle, and that any other cul­ture was auto­matic­ally in­fer­ior.  The tawaifs rep­resen­ted a major re­ser­voir of In­dian cul­ture.  There­fore in the Bri­tish mind, the tawaif re­pre­sent a form of cul­tural "de­ge­nera­tion" that, like the more physi­cal forms, must be elimi­nated.

One other rea­son which cer­tainly must have been con­si­dered by some Bri­tish, es­pec­ially the Bri­tish wo­men liv­ing in India, was the po­ten­tial threat posed by the tawaifs.  Toward the later part of the 19th cen­tury, im­prove­ments in trans­por­ta­tion, coup­led with im­prove­ments in pub­lic health (at least in the Bri­tish can­ton­ment areas), made India much less hazar­dous.  The re­sult was that there was a sub­stan­tial rise in the num­ber of Bri­tish wo­men liv­ing in India.  The pre­sence of the tawaif could not help but be viewed as a com­pe­ti­tion for the amor­ous at­ten­tions of their men folk.  After all, the pre­sence of the Anglo-Indian com­mu­nity stood as a si­lent tes­ta­ment to this sort of thing.

British memsahib in India

We have al­ready said that in order for the anti-nautch move­ment to be suc­cess­ful, there had to be both the de­sire to elimi­nate the tawaif as well as the the ab­ility to do so.  We have dis­cus­sed at great length many of the rea­sons which crea­ted the de­sire to elimi­nate them.  Now we must look at many of the ev­ents which lead to the ab­ility to elimi­nate the tawaif.  In the next sec­tion we will look into many of the ev­ents which em­powered the Bri­tish to elimi­nate the tawaif.

© 1998 - 2021 David and Chandrakantha Courtney

For comments, cor­rections, and sug­gestions, kindly contact David Courtney at [email protected]

SEARCH

SITE LINKS

RELATED PAGES

Introduction to In­dian Music

Introduction to In­dian Dance

Kathak

Bollywood Dance

Sarangi

Tabla

Works Cited

MISC.