Book: Nautch Girls of the RajAuthor: Pran Neville
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 136
Price: Rs 250
Eisha Sarkar
Posted on Mumbai Mirror on Friday, August 06, 2010 at 02:07:42 PM
In Mughal Emperor Akbar's time, Rupmati, a dancing girl of Saharanpur, 'more beautiful than the moon, the tulip and early dawn of the spring', was famous all over north India. After watching her perform in Ujjain, Baz Bahadur, the ruler of Malwa, was so charmed that he took her in to his harem. Hearing of their passionate love affair, Akbar decided to have Rupmati at any cost. He ordered the invasion of Malwa when Baz Bahadur refused to part with her. Rupmati and Baz Bahadur fought bravely but were no match for the mighty Mughal army. Malwa was captured and Baz Bahadur fled. Rupmati chose to end her life by drinking poison rather than be caught alive by the invaders.
A symbol of beauty, grace, dignity, culture and passion, the dancing girl in India has always been an object of fascination and conquest. Pran Neville, in Nautch Girls of the Raj, explores the lives of the once-revered women who're now reduced to pages of history or shunned as prostitutes.
Neville, an ex-IFS officer –turned-Raj researcher, traces the origins of the nautch - the Anglicised form of the Hindi/urdu word nach derived from the Sanskrit nritya through the Prakrit nachcha, meaning dance. Nautch represented cultural interaction between the native and the early English settlers in India.
Stringing stories of dancing girls from various parts of India, Neville traces the rise, the fall and the resurrection of India's classical dances mainly Kathak and Dassi-Attam (now called Bharatanatyam, based on the principles of Bharat's Natya Shastra),
"From time immemorial Indian poets have sung praises of the 'public woman', the professional entertainer. The epics give us a colourful description of her intimate connection with royal splendour. The Puranas highlight her auspicious presence as a symbol of good luck. Buddhist literature also testifies to the high esteem in which she was held in society. She appears through the ages in different incarnations from apsara in divine form to ganika, devdasi, nartika, kanchani, tawaif and the nautch girl."
While dance had always been a part of Indian temples, dance for entertainment became increasingly popular with the Mughal rule, so much so many rulers were accompanied by entourages of dancing girls not just at their courts but even at their battle-camps. The early British settlers in India partook in this kind of entertainment and were often given tawaifs as tokens of welcome or rewards.
Quoting anecdotes from Sir Charles D'oyly's narrative verse Tom Raw the Griffin and notes of artists such as William Carpenter, Mrs C Belnos and Mildred Archer, Neville tries to paint a picture of 18th century India where the nautch girls were the symbols of tehzeeb (elegance) and culture and how young princes were sent to them for an education. It's only after the advent of Western education in India in the mid-nineteenth, with the increasing pressure from the missionaries, did dance get its bad name and was shunned by both the British and educated Indians. Abandoned by their patrons, the dancing girls were often forced to take up prostitution as means of survival.
The book contains paintings featuring dancing girls from various parts of India - of 'Pearee Jan, a dancing woman of Dehlee in the usual undress' dated circa 1815, a drawing by Mrs C Belnos circa 1820 featuring a nautch girl sitting at the feet of two memsahibs, Nautch Entertainment by Man Singh in honour of Lord Clyde in 1859 and a coloured photograph of Hindu nautch girls from Typical Pictures of Indian Natives by F M Coleman, Bombay in 1897 - which give details about the clothes and jewellery the girls wore. Unfortunately, many other pictures in the book are in black-and-white print and serve only as reference notes.
Neville's prose is academic, though it is interspersed with gazals and poems recited by or in favour of the nautch girls. While there is plenty of information in the book about the lives of the women, it fails to elicit any kind of emotional response in the reader. If you're looking to research some of the unknown aspects of British Raj and the last years of the Mughal Empire, you can use this book as a stepping stone. If you're looking for something that will tug at your heart-strings, grab a DVD of Mughal-e-Azam or Pakeezah.
Posted on Mumbai Mirror on Friday, August 06, 2010 at 02:07:42 PM
In Mughal Emperor Akbar's time, Rupmati, a dancing girl of Saharanpur, 'more beautiful than the moon, the tulip and early dawn of the spring', was famous all over north India. After watching her perform in Ujjain, Baz Bahadur, the ruler of Malwa, was so charmed that he took her in to his harem. Hearing of their passionate love affair, Akbar decided to have Rupmati at any cost. He ordered the invasion of Malwa when Baz Bahadur refused to part with her. Rupmati and Baz Bahadur fought bravely but were no match for the mighty Mughal army. Malwa was captured and Baz Bahadur fled. Rupmati chose to end her life by drinking poison rather than be caught alive by the invaders.
A symbol of beauty, grace, dignity, culture and passion, the dancing girl in India has always been an object of fascination and conquest. Pran Neville, in Nautch Girls of the Raj, explores the lives of the once-revered women who're now reduced to pages of history or shunned as prostitutes.
Neville, an ex-IFS officer –turned-Raj researcher, traces the origins of the nautch - the Anglicised form of the Hindi/urdu word nach derived from the Sanskrit nritya through the Prakrit nachcha, meaning dance. Nautch represented cultural interaction between the native and the early English settlers in India.
Stringing stories of dancing girls from various parts of India, Neville traces the rise, the fall and the resurrection of India's classical dances mainly Kathak and Dassi-Attam (now called Bharatanatyam, based on the principles of Bharat's Natya Shastra),
"From time immemorial Indian poets have sung praises of the 'public woman', the professional entertainer. The epics give us a colourful description of her intimate connection with royal splendour. The Puranas highlight her auspicious presence as a symbol of good luck. Buddhist literature also testifies to the high esteem in which she was held in society. She appears through the ages in different incarnations from apsara in divine form to ganika, devdasi, nartika, kanchani, tawaif and the nautch girl."
While dance had always been a part of Indian temples, dance for entertainment became increasingly popular with the Mughal rule, so much so many rulers were accompanied by entourages of dancing girls not just at their courts but even at their battle-camps. The early British settlers in India partook in this kind of entertainment and were often given tawaifs as tokens of welcome or rewards.
Quoting anecdotes from Sir Charles D'oyly's narrative verse Tom Raw the Griffin and notes of artists such as William Carpenter, Mrs C Belnos and Mildred Archer, Neville tries to paint a picture of 18th century India where the nautch girls were the symbols of tehzeeb (elegance) and culture and how young princes were sent to them for an education. It's only after the advent of Western education in India in the mid-nineteenth, with the increasing pressure from the missionaries, did dance get its bad name and was shunned by both the British and educated Indians. Abandoned by their patrons, the dancing girls were often forced to take up prostitution as means of survival.
The book contains paintings featuring dancing girls from various parts of India - of 'Pearee Jan, a dancing woman of Dehlee in the usual undress' dated circa 1815, a drawing by Mrs C Belnos circa 1820 featuring a nautch girl sitting at the feet of two memsahibs, Nautch Entertainment by Man Singh in honour of Lord Clyde in 1859 and a coloured photograph of Hindu nautch girls from Typical Pictures of Indian Natives by F M Coleman, Bombay in 1897 - which give details about the clothes and jewellery the girls wore. Unfortunately, many other pictures in the book are in black-and-white print and serve only as reference notes.
Neville's prose is academic, though it is interspersed with gazals and poems recited by or in favour of the nautch girls. While there is plenty of information in the book about the lives of the women, it fails to elicit any kind of emotional response in the reader. If you're looking to research some of the unknown aspects of British Raj and the last years of the Mughal Empire, you can use this book as a stepping stone. If you're looking for something that will tug at your heart-strings, grab a DVD of Mughal-e-Azam or Pakeezah.
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