I have spent 15 years recreating the songs and dances of tawaifs and telling their stories — all in an attempt to build respect for their art and remove the stigma associated with them. So it is heartbreaking to write this article in 2024.
With a big promotional budget, the backing of one of the biggest OTT platforms and production houses, Heeramandi promotes a particular version of the lives of tawaifs to an audience who have little idea of their history.
But, first, let’s talk about the good things about the Netflix series — opulent sets, great lighting, a profusion of velvet, silk and zardosi embroidery, all worked to perfection, including a narrative on the freedom movement.
Let’s then get to the content. The director, the brilliant Sanjay Leela Bhansali, paints his imagined characters to his whims, for he is also the scriptwriter and music director. The only thing you remember after watching the eight episodes is women who drank and smoked excessively, sang and danced and were forever scheming to claim a “sahab” for sexual favours and wealth, or looking to get married. If by doing all these, they did become powerful, they only executed their power to scheme against each other, even kill. We never see them discussing a thumri, a poem or dadra. We see no ustads ever teaching them.
Where is the artiste in them? Historically, there were different forms of entertainment: Bhands, nakkals, behrupiya, tawaifs, mirasins — each of these was a different category. The tawaifs represented the highest form of art, catering to the elite. And just as there are A-grade film stars, B-grade and C-grade, they can’t all be clubbed together. But, like the British, the filmmaker clubs the singers, dancers, sex workers all under one umbrella – “tawaif”.
The tawaifs worked hard to perfect their performance arts. It took years of learning, which only a dancer or a singer will be able to tell, to perfect a raag, a taal, a tukda. The famous dadra composition “phool gendwa na maro” of Jaddan Bai as well as Rasoolan Bai is reworked and used, without giving them due acknowledgement. The dances are nothing to talk about. In the absence of content, elaborate sets, heavy outfits and circular camera panning on many/single dancers is used to create a dazzle, a grandeur. Ironically, the tawaifs of those times were solo performers. The culture of Awadh, its nawabs, their mannerisms, language, elaborate outfits have been juxtaposed in the milieu of Lahore. One doesn’t know whether we are watching women of Lucknow or Lahore.
The tawaifs were well-read women of their times, educated and accomplished. However, this series strangely shows them in a derogatory light. It leaves people with the impression that they were illiterate women scheming for mere sexual favours. Ironically, while the fictional character of Mallika Jaan is a conniving huzoor, if only they read history they would know that there was a real Malka Jaan, an accomplished poet.
In an interview, the show’s director famously said that he refers to history only up to a point and then it’s his imagination that comes to play. Well, it’s fairly obvious that in his imagination tawaifs are merely useful for sexual gratification. He seems obsessed with the ritual of “nath utrai” (selling of virginity). Even the dance songs, which are traditional raag-based classical forms, are merely used to tease and titillate. The great art of thumri, ghazal, dadra, chhota khayal, kathak that was associated with them is lost in between the decadence. This is when there was a Jaddan Bai, running a production house and making films, a Gauhar Jaan who was the queen of gramophone records, and, a few years later, Mukhtar Begum from Lahore, who was the queen of Parsi theatre and Hindi cinema.
As a young Kathak dancer summed up yesterday after my class, “Didi, you speak about the dignity of the dance and music of the tawaifs and say they performed Kathak and thumri. But, after watching Heeramandi, the general audience will call us (Kathak dancers) sex workers.”
Sadly, that is what this series will leave us with. Such a thing happens when you give creative liberty to tamper with history, that too, the most sensitive histories of women. The series gives a strategic disclaimer that its characters are fictional even as the promotional tours have repeatedly talked about showcasing history.
Great directors and artistes reclaim lost histories to give credit to the vilified and the misrepresented, not to reinforce unfair stereotypes and cliches. Bhansali would have achieved something remarkable if he had examined and portrayed the beauty, grace, talent and uniqueness of the tawaifs in order to inspire a revision in the public mind of their true merit, giving women wronged by ignorance and prejudice their rightful place in Indian cultural history. Instead, he has cemented an injustice.
(Chaturvedi is the founder of The Courtesan Project)