000			01630nam a22002057a 4500
999			_c343428 _d343428
003			0
005			20201014102656.0
020			_a9789388689816
082			_a305.40954 _bDEW
100			_aDewan, Saba
245			_aTawaifnama
260			_aChennai _bWestland _c2019
300			_a606p.
520			_aThis is a history, a multi-generational chronicle of one family of well-known tawaifs with roots in Banaras and Bhabua. Through their stories and self-histories, Saba Dewan explores the nuances that conventional narratives have erased, papered over or wilfully rewritten. In a not-so-distant past, tawaifs played a crucial role in the social and cultural life of northern India. They were skilled singers and dancers, and also companions and lovers to men from the local elite. It is from the art practice of tawaifs that kathak evolved and the purab ang thumri singing of Banaras was born. At a time when women were denied access to the letters, tawaifs had a grounding in literature and politics, and their kothas were centres of cultural refinement. Yet, as affluent and powerful as they were, tawaifs were marked by the stigma of being women in the public gaze, accessible to all. In the colonial and nationalist discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this stigma deepened into criminalisation and the violent dismantling of a community. Tawaifnama is the story of that process of change, a nuanced and powerful microhistory set against the sweep of Indian history.
650			_aDancers-India
650			_aWomen entertainers
650			_aMarginality, social
650			_aCourtesans
942			_cB