The Memory of Ritual: Tawaif Practices and Their Legacy

Abstract

Tawaifs, more than other kinds of performers, cultivated cultural systems of classical dance, music, poetry, and artistic refinement while catering to elite patrons. Victorian morality, which shaped colonial governance, and the subsequent Indian nationalist movement attempted to regulate women. In this process, tawaifs were seen as an aberration, an anomaly. Hence, they were placed in the closest understood category of prostitutes, reduced to ‘randis’.  Tawaifs were erased gradually from mainstream society and historiography by the state and by ideology. During contemporary times, they are exoticised in films, songs, and a few literary texts.

Saba Dewan’s Tawaifanama tells a different story. It talks about an old woman, Aapa, one of the few living tawaifs who treasures her past and worries about the future of her community. This paper will analyse the role of various rituals, especially the ritual of thanksgiving performed by the tawaifs at the Dargah of Baba Court Shaheed in Bhabua, Bihar. The performance of the ritual reveals how tawaifs forge their memories and sense of self. This specific ritual enacts not only devotion and remembrance, but is a testimony to the enduring nature of tawaif culture, which was delegitimised by power structures. My paper will examine ritual as a site of resistance and an act of consolidating memory, history, and tradition.