000			01915 a2200229 4500
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020			_a9789395073592
082			_a305.40954 DEW
100			_aDewan, Saba
245			_aTawaifnama
260			_aChennai: _bContext, _c2022.
300			_a628p.: _bpbk.: _c23cm.
504			_aIncludes bibliography, notes and acknowledgment.
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. https://www.amazon.in/Tawaifnama-Saba-Dewan/dp/938868981X
650			_aCourtesans - India - History
650			_aHuman Trafficking
650			_aDance - India - History
650			_aColonial and Nationalist Discourse
650			_aNon-Fiction
650			_aSocial and Cultural Life of Northern India
942			_cTD _2ddc
999			_c61416 _d61416