Don't Make Devis Out Of Us

Hindi films paint the tawaif as pitiable, but history shows she was more radical and spirited

- Shreevatsa Nevatia

Set in 1945, Kalank (2019) uses pre-Partition India as its backdrop, when religion mattered more than national unity. In this film, it's a Muslim tawaif, Bahaar Begum (Madhuri Dixit), who first emerges as a secular hero, singing paeans to Rama and decorating her kotha with a Natraj statue. She is not hapless. She owns her scenes.

Madhuri had played a courtesan, Chandramukhi, in Devdas (2002), and in Khalnayak (1993), becoming the “most famous tawaif ” when she danced to Choli ke peechhe. Madhuri, her own predecessor, perhaps, never needed to draw inspiration from the genre of courtesan films—Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Pakeezah (1972), Umrao Jaan (1981).

Having watched the courtesan portrayed in all of 235 Hindi films, Ruth Vanita, author of Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema, believes that Hindi films have rarely depicted the tawaifs as decadent. They have instead shown them as “educated, self-employed, even wealthy, modern women, who are agents of desire, and often single mothers”.