Love in South Asia: A Cultural History (University of Cambridge Oriental Publications)

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Love in South Asia A Cultural History

Love in South Asia A Cultural History

ALTER~l·"T!VE .

12::/'L Ii, ',;.:, '/ Edited By

FRANCESCA ORSINI University of C£1mbridRe

UCAMBRIDGE

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UNIVERSITY PRESS

LAW FORUM

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ACC No: .... "%.~..5.$.:.... "....... ""..... ,

Published in South Asia by

Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. Cambridge House 4381 j 4 Ansari Road

Daryaganj, New Delhi - 110002

© Cambridge University Press

First South Asian Edition 2007

ISBN-lO ISBN-13

81-7596-433-2 (Hardback) 978-81-7596-433-4 (Hardback)

This edition is for sale in South Asia only, not for export elsewhere.

This book is in copyright. No reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

This edition of Francesca Orsini / Love in South Asia: A Cultural History is published by arrangement with Cambridge University Press, The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK.

Published by Manas Saiki a for Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. and printed & bound at Raj Press, lnderpuri, New Delhi - 110012, India.

CONTENTS

Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Note on diacritics

page ix XI XII

Introduction FRANCESCA ORSINI

Part I

Love and courtliness

2 Counly love and the aristocratic household in early medieval India

43

DAUD ALI

3 If music be the food of love: masculinity and eroticism in the Mughal mehfil

61

KATHERINE BUTLER BROWN

Part II

Worldly love and mystical love

4 The shifting sands of love

87

CHRISTOPHER SHACKLE

5 Love, passion and reason in Faizi's Nal-Daman

109

MUZAFFAR AlAM AND SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM

6 To die at the hands of love: conflicting ideals of love in the Punjabi Mirza - Sahiban cycle

142

JEEVAN S. DEal

Part III

Love and (colonial) modernity

7 Tagore and transformations in the ideals of love

161

SUDIPTA KAVIRAJ

vii

Contents

viii

8 The spaces of love and the passing of the seasons: Delhi in the early twentieth century VASUDHA DALMIA

Part IV

183

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Shifting paradigms

9 Love in the time of Parsi theatre ANURADHA KAPUR

211

10 Love letters FRANCESCA ORSINI

228

II

259

Love's repertoire: Qurratulain Hyder's River of Fire KUMKUM SANGARI

Part V Contemporary lovescapes 12 Kiss or tell? Declaring love in Hindi films RACHEL DWYER

289

MUZAFFAR ALAM is Professor of South Asian History in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. His most recent book is The Languages of Political Islam: India 1200-1800 (2004). DAUD ALI is Lecturer in Ancient and Medieval Indian History in the Department of History at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of Courtly Culture and Political L~fe in Early Medieval India (2004) and, with Ron Inden and Jonathan Walters, of QUClying the Medieval: Texts and the Histo/}'

of Practices ill South Asia (2000).

13 Love's cup, love's thorn, love's end: the language of prem in Ghatiyali ANN GRODZINS GOLD

303

14 Kidnapping, elopement and abduction: an ethnography of love-marriage in Delhi PERVEEZ MODY

KATHERtNE BUTLER BROWN is Junior Research Fellow in Ethnomusicology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. She has a Ph.D. on 'Hindustani music in the time of Aurangzeb' from SOAS, University of London (2003).

331

YASUDHA DALMIA is Professor of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Nationali:ation of

345

Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Haris'chandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (1997) and, most recently, of India's Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth eentUlY {2(04) with Stuart Blackburn.

Bibliography Index

364

JEEYAN S. DEal is Lecturer in Urdu in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of numerous articles on Punjabi literature and Sikh history. I In the sixth century, a king of the Kadamba family is praised in an elaborate conceit 'as being like a Slln who by the means of his light rays, or daughters. caused the lotus groups or other royal families like the Guptas, surrounded by their bee-like allendant kings, to expand and bloon; showing their filaments of love, respect and affection'.I') On occasion marital ties allowed the natal families of princesses to exert their influence over their conjugal households. In the case of the Pushyabhutis, Rajyashri's marriage provided a pretext for the arrival of Pushyabhuti princes in Kanauj when calamity visited the kingdom. Yet the gift of a maiden could cut both ways, for if a family had no male heirs, the son of a daughter (dauhitra) living in another household could potentially inherit his mother's patrimony, a scenario which has a number of historical precedents. 2o Queens, because they could represent the interests of their children or even their natal houses, were constantly to be guarded against, according to KautiIya. Meetings with queens were to be preceded by examination of the queen's 21 body by older women Joyal to the king. As Kumkum Roy has pointed out, the figure of the queen seems to have enjoyed a greater reputation of 'threat' to the household than the prince, and the shastric literature frequently names kings who perished in intimate moments with their queens?2 The foregoing discussion makes it clear that in early medieval royal households kin and kin-ties formed a source of both strength and weakness. The compulsion to develop political ties through marriage meant that the most powerful aristocratic households were swelled with queens, princes and princesses - who on the one hand provided the house with allies tied by blood, but on the other potentially threatened its stability. If a king's kin were his natural allies, they were also his natural enemies. Managing them thus required arduous strategy and endless consideration. In this context it is perhaps worth considering the lives of other sorts of women who resided within the antahpura. Beyond queens, Vatsyayana recognises three sorts of v.omen who domiciled within the confines of the antahpura, and could thus be enjoyed by him sexually: concubines (punarhlzii), courtesans (\'eSvii) and performers (nii(akfya). Each day, after meeting his queens, the king -was to proceed to successively exterior regions of the antahpura and meet women from 23 each of these categories. Concubines, judging from Yashodhara's definition of .M See, e.g. Mdl1as(ira. '" Epigraphia Illdim 8.5 (t905-6), )). This is probabty not a claim of superiority over these fam. hes. but one of honourable subordination. See the ;lIuminating discussion by Bakker in treating the dynastic history of the fourth century o Vdkdlakas, p. 911. . _. Arthasi'istra 1.20.14. 2(1

I.'

Kama.Hltra 4.2.5, 24.

'0

Art/w.sastra 1.17.4-5.

.7

Artfra.'cistra I. 17.1 rr.

Kumkum Roy, 'The King's Household: Structure/Space in the Sa>lric Tradition', in Uma Chakravaru and Kumkum Sangari (eds.), From Myths to Markets: Essays 011 Gender (Dethi' , Manohar and liAS, 1999), pp. t8-38. . •.' Kdnwsutra 4.2.77-9.

I.'

Kama.Hltra 4.2.5, 24.

'0

Art/w.sastra 1.17.4-5.

.7

Artfra.'cistra I. 17.1 rr.

, Manohar and liAS, 1999), pp. 18-38 . •.' Kdnwsutra 4.2.77-9.

22

50

Love in South Asia

the tenn punarbhu (literally, 'existing again') were women who had already been enjoyed by others, but were now retained (perhaps, but not necessarily, in low or irregular marriage) by the lord of the household. These women may have been widows obtained in war, or self-willed women who chose to leave their husbands. The 'courtesans' of the antahpura are more problematic. We know from the Arthasiistra that the king's agents managed brothels, or 'family establishments of courtesans' ([gmJikiiJku(umba).24 Though some of these women seem to have been on occasion present at court ceremonies to hold royal insignia, it is unlikey that they resided within the antahpura, for the obvious reason that the antahpura was to remain strictly closed to all men but the king himself.25 The courtesans who resided in the antahpura, thus, were probably retained (and stipended) solely by the king to live within the palace in the manner of pennanent concubines - a category which seems to have been recognised by some legal thinkers?6 This also must have been the case with perfonners and actors, and perhaps a much wider range of women who attended the pennanent residents of the antahpura - including maids, ushers, guards, wet nurses, orphans and young girls of noble birth acquired through war who acted as the companions of particular queens.27 Such women of modest origins may have fonned a substantial cadre of the antahpura. A king's infatuation with any of these lower ranking women in the household could have the effect of raising their status within the hierarchy of the antahpura. Royal infatuation with such women could have various results, leading to offspring and, in some cases, even elevation to the status of wife through marriage, as in the famous case of the courtesan Vasantasena in Shudraka's Mrcchaka(ika.2H If women like these could rise in rank through the favour of the king's affections, or through mothering sons, to the extent that some may have been able to claim status among wives, then it is possible to see the antahpura not as a place divided along rigid categories of wife/concubine or queen/servant, but as a graded hierarchy or continuum of

24

25

26

27

28

The superintendent was to arrange a stipend for the man who trained these women in the arts, ensure that they entertained men without ill event, monitor their earnings and take a tax from them on a monthly basis. See Arthasastra 2.27.1 ff. These may be comparable to municipal brothels maintained in early medieval Europe. It is more likely that such brothels were part of the wider palace complex or within the prostitutes' quarter of the city. These courtesans, largely conftated with concubines, are known to lawmakers as 'kejJt' (avaruddhd) women. Women of this status domiciled within their patron's household, could not be enjoyed by other men, and could even claim limited property rights within the family after his decea~e. See the discussion of P. V. Kane. History of Dharnwsastra, Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law in India (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1993) vol. Ill, pp.811-IS. See the extensive list of women (including queens, servants, courtesans, performers and concubines) classified as abhyantara, or 'interior', having intimate contact with the king in the Na(yasastra, ed. Manomohan Ghosh, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Manisha Granthalaya, 1967) ch. 34 vv.31-4. Other examples are cited by Shalini Shah, 'In the Business of Kama: Prostitution in Classical Sanskrit Literature from the Seventh to Thirteenth Centuries', Medieval History Journal, 5.1 (2002): 129-30,

S~~~kri;'Lii~~~iure from th~ Seventh to Thirteenth Centuries', Medieval History Journal, 5.1 (2002): 129-30,

Courtly hwe and the aristocratic house/wId

51

women that was, like the sabha, composed of diverse, shifting and immensely consequential affiliations. From the king's point of view, one of the significant features of these 'lower' women, from widows and orphans to dancing girls and concubines, was that they tended to be relatively 'unencumbered' with ambitious and powerful kin, Such women could provide networks of individuals with few lateral kin-ties to complicate their loyalty, Notable in this regard is the figure of the sakiira, who is weB-known from Sanskrit dramaturgy, and famously portrayed in Shudraka's Mrcchaka(ika?9 Represented as the brother of a low-born wife or concubine, the shakara is generally reviled in courtly sources as a vain, presumptuous, vulgar and ultimately ineffectual man. But in some sources such figures take on a more menacing and malevolent hue, clearly reinforcing warnings against the introduction of low-born elements into a noble house. 3o However, both representations should be understood critically. Court poets and chroniclers - the authors of our sources - represent the nonnative values of aristocratic society with its obvious and apparent predilection for nobility and its need to maintain the status quo by policing the boundaries of 'good society' or, more particularly, the patriarchal household. Beneath their mocking and suspicious tones lies a barely concealed fear of such relations. Here the collective society of the court was potentially at odds with the exigencies of its political centre, a point perhaps underscored by the established legal provisions for low-born concubines, courtesans and slave women mentioned above. I would suggest that though early medieval sources are rather opaque on the matter, relations with women of lower rank may have at ti.mes actually been expedient for rulers. Recent work by Indrani Chatterjee on eighteenth-century Bengal has suggested the importance of 'kinless' women in the politics of lineage based aristocratic households. 31 Though her evidence is drawn from Indo-Persian political culture which had long used natally alienated slaves to fill some of the most important offices of state, the underlying dynamics of such culture were hardly unique to Muslim polity. In a world where tensions between affinal and blood-related kin frequently worked to undennine the s~ability of the household, relatively 'vertical' relationships of loyalty remained highly valued. Such relationships were produced in various ways, but one of these methods is surely indicated by the provision for concubines and courtesans, as 'kept women' (avaruddha) in the antahpura. Though the offspring of such women o~ten had little hope of succession (though not of inheritance), they also had few, If any, other kin loyalties which could prove dangerous to the king. Unfortunately, the historical visibility of such loyalties has been obscured by the F th .. or e nature and qualities of the shakara. see Nd!yaSdstra 13.148-9. See, for. example, KaIhan~'s de~cription of the reign of Chippatajayapida, son of King Lalitapida and a Village concubine,. m which the influence of his five maternal uncles (the brothers of this concubme), rumed the kmgdom. KalhalJa's Rajataraligini: a Chronicle Of the Kings ,f K ' '. t· d' oct . . . . . 7 oJ asmll, ~J rans. ~n mtr. ucllon M. A. Stem (DeIhl: MOlllal Banarsidass, n.d. [1892) 4.676-87. Indram Chatterjee, Gender, Slal'ery and La .... in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford Universl'ty P . 1999). . ress. 29 ]0

.. IUIAIII -1lQ.UII;;IJ~C, Ur:flUr:f. JIUFt:ry unu LUW In l.-OlonlGI Inala luelnlO

1999).

.

Uxtord Un ve t P . I rSI y ress,

52

L01'e

in South Asia

kin-system itself, for such liaisons were deemed 'low' and unsuitable for most courtly genres, most crucially the very inscriptional genealogies which have formed the main sources of medieval history, remaining only in the longer and uncorroborated historical chronicles which purported to portray dystopic realms and corrupted times. On the other hand, to the extent that such liaisons were decisive, they tended to uplift themselves into respectability by erasing their origins.

II It is against these potentially volatile dynamics of the antahpura that we must try to understand the contours of romantic love in aristocratic households. From the outset it is perhaps worth stressing that most of the situations which brought women to the antahpura did not have the character of premarital courtship leading to betrothal. As is obvious from the discussion above, marriages in aristocratic households were typically planned according to political and lineage considerations, being arranged by senior members of the household and/or trusted men of ministerial rank. Even in more modest households, like that of the courtier or rich urban dweller, the preferred form of marriage was the 'gift of a maiden' broke red between families. To this extent, Vatsyayana assumes the context of 'courtship' to be after marriage, in the period of 'wooing' or 'confidence building' (l'isramhha~w) that was to precede the initiation of sexual relations with the newly acquired bride. 32 Like the limited forms of 'premarital' courtship acknowledged by Vatsyayana, the activity of the couple was to take the form of a highly choreographed series of advances and refusals, culminating in union. In wealthier and aristocratic households, this 'courtship' had the added complication of taking place within the context of the dynamilamic Mystical Literature', in Murray and Roscoe (eds.), Islamic Hvmosexualilies, pp. 126-7; cf. O'Hanlon, 'Manliness', 53. Chatterjee, 'Alienation', p. 63. Scott Kugle, 'Sultan Mahmud's Makeover: Colonial Homophobia and the Persian-Urdu Literary Tradition', in Vanita and Kidwai (eds.), Same-Sex LtJ\'e, p. 35; Wafer, 'Vision and Passion', pp.119-20. Two famous examples, the first involving a catamite and the second a counesan: for the story of Sultan Qutbuddin Khalji and Khusrau Khan, see Kidwai, 'Medieval Materials', pp. 132-5; and for the story of lahandar Shah and Lal Kunwar, see Muhammad Hadi Kamwar Khan, Ta;.kiral us-SalaIfn Chaillla, ed. and trans. Muzaffar Alam (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1980), pp. 159--{i7; and William Irvine, Laler Mughals, ed. ladunath Sarkar (Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1971), pp. 192-200.

Books Reprint Corporation, 1971), pp. 192-200.

72

LOI'e ill SOl/th Asia

If music be the food of love

rubbing off. But within the mehfil, musicians were uniquely permitted to mingle in intimate proximity with men of high social status and, in a subversion of social norms, to exert emotional power over them through music. . The me/1fil, therefore, had unusual potential to generate transgressIons of gender and status boundaries. If music was potentially so subversive, why then did the Mughal elite patronise music at all in the seventeenth century? Of course, some chose not to, the most famous amongst them ~in~6 Aurangzeb himself. I argue that, as a known connoisseur and lover of mUSIC, the reason he renounced it was because he was aware of the immense hold it had over him to lead him astray and bring about his political downfall, as exemplified in the tragic tale of his fated love for the courtesan Hira Bai Zainabadi,77 and because music undermined the reputation for piety upon which he built his initially tenuous hold on power.78 But many other amirs were celebrated during Aurangzeb's reign for their patronage of music, most notably his third son Muhammad A'zam Shah, who was the most important patron in the empire. 79 The answer revolves around the place awarded to music in Indo-Muslim tradition. The Mughal elite were able to justify their patronage of music on the grounds that, pursued in strict moderation, it had medicinal and spiritual benefits,1IO The power of music to cure melancholy was a long-standing belief in Indo-Persian culture,81 Music was also an integral part of Sufi devotional ritual in the Mughal empire as a means for attaining ecstatic union with the divine, Nearly all Indo-Persian treatises on music open with a justification of music as a means of realising the truth of God,x2 Qazi Hasan, writing in 1663, clinches his argument by stating that:

The subversive power of music: masculinity. the mehfil and love And this is where the paradoxical nature of the elite mehfil comes in. Music has always been highly controversial in Islamic cuhures. 67 It is no accident that those who played the roles of courtesans and catamites in the Mughal empire were often musician:- and dancers. The Indo-Persian musical treatises argued that music had the power to arouse tranquillity, melancholy, longing, grief, regret, attachment and, most profoundly, feelings of love, desire and ecstasy in the heart of the listener. 68 Because this emotional power was considered raw and overwhelming, music was deemed, like love, to have the potential to rob a man of his self-control and virtue. It was believed to possess the same subversive erotic power as the beloved,69 and like homosexuality was the subject of condemnation by the most conservative streams of Islamic jurisprudence. 7o The important seventeenth-century had;$. scholar Abdul Haqq Dehlavi put this position most succinctly: 'Some have said that listening to music inflames passion. The way of piety is not to listen to it.' 71 Music itself, because of its potentially destabilising emotional power, threatened the mirza's masculinity.72 Moreover, the whole point of the mehfil according to Faqirullah was to seduce the listener and excite ecstasyn - an emotional power knowingly possessed and plIIP?sely exercised over the mir.za b,x men and women of low social status, often m songs of love and long mg. Contrary to the traditional assumptions of music historiography, as we shall see the Mughal elite viewed all musicians as being of low social status. 75 Ordinarily, for a mirza to associate with such classes risked their inferiority 67

M

69

70 71

72 73 74

75

E.g. Lois Ibsen al-FarulJi, 'Music, Musicians and Muslim law', Asian Music 17.1 (1985),2-9; Doubleday, 'The Frame Drum', 103-4; Qureshi, 'Sarangi', 27. Muzaffar Husain, liim-i lahiin-nunw (early 18c.), Patna: Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Librdry (KBOPL), handlisl 1745, fos. 230a-la; Mirza Khan, TolffiJt al·Hind, KBOPL, handlisl882, f. 303b; Ra~ Baras Khan Kalawanl, Shams al-A~YI"iit, HyderJbad: Salar Jang Museum Library, Mus. 9, f. Sb; Mir' Abdul Qadir Bedil, Kulfiyiit-i Bedil (17c.), KBOPL, handlist2551, f. 56a; Qazi Hasan, SarUd alBahr, f. 2b. Fo~ almosl identical modem altiludes in Afghanislan and Muslim Soulh Asia, see especially Doubleday, 'The Frame Drum', 104, 116 and 121-2; and Qureshi, 'Sarangi', 24-7, which includes a delailed description of the inlimate relationship between music, female musician and Ihe arousal of helpless love in the patron. Doubleday, 'The Frame Drum', 103-4. Abdul HalJq Dehlavi, Risala-i Talisa·i Qlir' us·Samij· (1605), KBOPL, handlist 2235, f.62b. Qureshi, 'Sarangi', 27; Brown, 'Hindustani Music', pp. 142-4. FalJirullah, RaR Darpan, p. 79. Qureshi, 'Sarangi', 26; Brian Silver, 'The Ad"h of Musiciam'. in Barbara Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authorit)': the Place of Adab in South Asian hlam (Berkeley: UniversilY of California Press, 1984), p. 323. Silver notes here that male classical musicians deliberalely exercise Ihis power over their listeners in Ihe modem context: 'Musicians feel that music has its own inherent power 10 charm ... 'Abd ai-Karim Khan ... is said 10 have subdued a school full of unruly boys with his singing, knowing as he did that "music presented wilh understanding could control Ihe devil in man".' lahiindiirndma (early 18c.), quoted in Satish Chandra, 'Cultural and Political Role of Delhi, 1675-1725', in R. E. Frykenberg (ed.), Delhi Through the ARes: Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 211.

73

Music is pure (piik) either if its contents dwell on Truth, the worship of God, and other such subjects, or if the contents are worldly but the hearer is godly and (inclined) towards Truth, In such cases, music is lawful and acceptable for every musician who is associated with it, and for those initiated into the ways of mysticism (a~lf-i la~aH'Wl!n, It is even correct for the scholars of had1~! [After all], the science ('ifm) of music is food for the soul and the ears, R3

76

77 78 79 MO

HI

M2

M~

,

to

Faqirullah, Rag Darpan, pp. 199, 207, 209; Bakhlawar Khan, Mir'at-i 'Alam, p. 157; Saqi Musta'idd Khan, Ma'asir-i 'Alamgrri, pp. 45, 313. Shah Nawaz Khan, Ma'dsiral-Umara', vol. II, pp. 806--7. See Brown, 'Hindustani Music', pp. 111-13. Bindraban Das, Saftna-i KhtishRU (1721-34), KBOPL, handlist 225, f. 36a; for a list of olher patrons see Brown, 'Hindustani Music', pp. 105-8. E.g. Muzaffar Husain, lam-i lahan-numd, fos. 230a-Ia This belief first became enshrined in Islamic philosophy Ihrough Ihe work of the ninth-century Arabic scholar Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. 870); see Amnon Shiloah, Music in the World of Islam: a "iocio-Cultural Study (Aldershot: Scolar, 1995), pp. 50-I. See Brown, 'Hindustani Music', pp. 52-S, Qazi Hasan, MiftalJ al-SarUd (1664), Hydembad: Salar Jung Museum Library, Mus. 13, f. 3a. Here Qazi Hasan uses the phrase !:hiza-i rulJ, 'food for the soul'. Qureshi notes that Ihe primary reason of the courtesan's mujra-mehfil for her elite Lucknow audience - 'what [they havel come for ... is mhani Rhi=a (Iilerally: soul food), an essenlial emotional-spiritual nourishment that is inherent in music;' 'Sarangi', 24.

74

If music be the food of love

Love in South Asia

At root, however, the real purpose of patronising music was exactly what Faqirullah said it was 84 - to affect the listener's heart. The adah of the listener in the mehfil (to be knowledgeable) would encourage the perfonner to fulfil his/her adab (perfection in his bodily, emotional and technical execution of the music), and together these would achieve this specific, affective end. 85 The mehfil was thus a space in which the cherished themes of Indo-Persian high culture - love and the grief of separation from the beloved - could safely be perfonned, in an aesthetic rather than a political space, thus diffusing their threat. Moreover, if the mirza perfonned his role as listener and connoisseur correctly, he successfully enacted for the benefit of his peers, who were his political and social judges, his power over people of lower status and over manifestations of feminine power as music. But the danger of transgressing the boundaries was still present. The primary reason Abul Fazl gives for the political downfall of Baz Bahadur, ruler of Malwa in Akbar's reign, was his excessive love of music. The moral of his cautionary tale is this: Prudent and wise persons have sanctioned music at the time of care and melancholy such as are produced by engrossment in worldly matters - with the object ofrecruiting the faculties, but have not approved of making [music or wine] the great objects of life and of ever sacrificing to them precious hours for which there is no exchange. 86

The intimate space of the mehfil, therefore, needed to be painstakingly constructed to avoid real transgressions of the social order flirted with in the heightened moment of perfonnance. Thus, the seventeenth-century texts deliberately codified the roles of patron and musician to create and maintain social and emotional distance between them.

Distancing and role separation: the social construction of the mehfil This distance was effected primarily in two ways. Firstly, the most widely agreed injunction in the Indo-Persian literature was that the mirza should never perfonn the musician's role in the mehfil. Although the nobleman was pennitted to sing infrequently in the company of his social equals, it was disgraceful for him to sing when professional musicians were present, lest he be mistaken for one. 87 Worse, according to the British Library Mirzanama, 'singing can lead to dancing, and that necessarily to other disgraceful and ignominious actions'. 88

Professional male dancers in Indo-Muslim culture were stereotyped as objects of erotic desire. Other than in the Sufi assembly - often an exception to the rules for a male to dance was to indicate his receptivity to erotic attention, a passive erotic behaviour that was unacceptable for a mirza. The consensus of prescriptive and cautionary writings was that singing in public was also potentially feminising, and therefore a role suitable only for the musician in the mehfil. It is here that FaqirulJah's descriptive list first sounds a potentially dissonant note. He names two noblemen who were renowned for their singing, but he gives little other contextual infonnation, describing only their perfonnances in the Sufi assembly for the exhilaration of the dervishes, and not in the courtly mehfil. 89 Secondly, distance was maintained by restrictions on which classes of musicians were pennitted to enter the mehfil. In this case, prestige-differentiations between musicians were of decisive importance in establishing which would enhance a mirza's masculinity, and which would make him look vulgar or effeminate. 90 And it is here that Faqirullah's descriptions disagree most pronouncedly with the British Library Mirzanama. Once again they agree on the principles. Only the highest prestige musicians, whose genres and instruments were considered suitably masculine, were uncontroversial entrants into the mehfil. At the very top of this list were the kalawants, the primary exponents of the highest prestige vocal genre dhrupad,91 and the two most venerated instruments, the bin and the pakhawaj, the latter explicitly gendered in the Mirzanama as masculine.92 The only other musicians fully acceptabie in the mehfil were the qawwiils of Hazrat Nizamuddin, all men, who were the pre-eminent exponents of the most unworldly fonn of khayal. 93 In contrast, musicians like the hhalJcjs who belonged to the vulgar space of the bazaar, or musicians belonging to the female space of the harem, were excluded from the mehfil. 94 What Faqirullah and the Mfrzaniima disagree on is precisely where the boundary of acceptability lay. The main controversy concerned the prestige of the male dhadhis, originally wandering rural musicians 95 and, in the Mughal period, accompanists to female perfonners at the imperial court. The Mfrzanama stigmatises players of the dholak, a small cylindrical drum, and the khanjari, a small frame drum, as both 'effeminate' and 'vulgar'. Both instruments were associated with the bazaar and women's music. The only musicians in this period known to play both instruments in the first context described in the Mfr:allama Faqirullah, Rag Darpan, pp. 199,203-5. I use the term 'status' .to differentiate between communities across the whole of Mughal society; thus the nobles were hIgh status and musicians low status. I use the term 'prestige' to differentiate between communities of musicians; thus kalawants were of low social status relative to the amirs but of high musical prestige and, therefore, permitted into the mehlil. Male dancers from the 91 b~aar, on the other hand, were low status and low prestige and,fherefore, excluded. 92 Mtrza Khan, TolJj'at ai-Hind, pp. 358-9. 9' Ahmad,. 'Mirzanama', 10 I; Mirzandma, f. 90b. - Lahawn, Pddishiihnama, vol. II, pp. 5--{). 94 Ahmad, 'Mirzanama', 101; Miruinama, f. 91a. 95 See Vaudeville, Myths, Saints and Legends, pp. 290-5. :

R4

Faqirullah, Ra!i Darpan, p. 79.

R~ Ahmad, 'Mirzanama', 101; Mirzanama, f. 901>-1a; Qazi Hasan, Sanid al-Ba~r, f. 3b; Faqirul1ah, 86

87

88

Rag Darpufl, pp. 79, 81, 165; see also Brown, 'Hindustani Music', pp. 135-8. Shah Nawaz Khan. Ma' a$.ir al-Umara', vol. I, p. 395. Mirza Kamran, Mirzanama, ed. and trans. Mawlavi M. Hidayat Husain, 'The Mirza Namah (the book of the perfect gentleman) of Mirza Kamran with an English translation', JOl/rnal of the Asiatic Society of Britain 9 (1913), II. Ahmad, 'Mirzanama', 101; Mirzanama, f. 91a.

75

76

Love ill South Asia

at wedding celebrations - were the dhadhis. 96 In contrast, Faqirullah notes with approval the male dhadhis' widespread appearance in elite mehfils at this time."7 This was partly because of the dhadhis' successful employment of strategies for transcending low prestige, by taking up instruments and genres associated with the kalawants and qawwals, particularly the pakhawaj and dhrupadY!i However, at least one miniature painting of Shah Jahan' s reign, depicting the private party of Izzat Khan, governor of Sindh,99 shows the dhadhis performing in their traditional guise in an elite mehtil. More questionable was the prestige of musicians who also perfonned erotic functions: courtesans and male dancers. The combination of sex and the erotic power of music was arguably doubly explosive in the carefully stratified mehfil. The Mirziiniima stigmatises musicians who are known to have offered sexual entertainment as low prestige, and references to eroticism in real perfonnances are conspicuously absent from Faqirullah's high-minded text. In particular, the M;rziiniima censures the patronage of a community of male dancers called the bhands, who danced in the bazaar. 100 In a passage Aziz Ahmad left out of his translation, the Mirziiniima notes that the mirza should shun the perfonnances of the bhands because they lead men astray with their generosity and seductive movements, so tempting men to their disgrace. Moreover, apart from including young male dancers who dressed as women and deliberately adopted homoerotic styles,lOl in a passage Blochmann mysteriously censored from his translation of the A' in-i Akhar;, the bhands perfonned such amazing feats as sword-swallowing, and swallowing marbles and spitting them up one by one, which could hardly be justified on the grounds of medicinal or spiritual value! 102 However, in the case of the courtesans, another commentator. Mirza Kamran, confinns their customary appearance in private male space well into Aurangzeb's reign,I03 as do a number of European travellers, who seem to have had something of an obsession with dancing girls.I04 Faqirullah also obliquely praises one female singer he had heard perfonn who, despite his reticence. was almost certainly a courtesan. 105 96

97 9M

99

HJO Hli

102

IOJ 104

10:1

More specifically, only the male dhadhis - and not their female counterparts who were universally regarded as auspicious - could possibly have been the subject of the Mi r:anama' s censure here; see Brown, 'Hindustani Music', pp. 154-72, for a full discussion of this identification. Faqirullah, Ra!! Oalpan, p. 187. Brown, 'Hindustani Mu~ic', pp. 154-72. Bonnie C. Wade, Ima~ing Sarm": all Ethnomusic%giea/ Study of MlIs;c. An and eullUre ill Mugho/India (University of Chicago Press, 1998), fig. 152. Ahmad, 'Mirzanama', 101; Mir:anama. f. 9Ob-la. Abdul Halim Sharar, Ludnow: the Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, ed. E. S. Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain (Delhi: Oxford Universit'Y Press, 1994), pp. 142-3. Abul Fazl,A' in-i Akbarf,ed. H. Blochmann(Calcuua: Baptist Mission Press, 1876-7), votu. p. 143. Mirza Kammn, Mirztindma, p. 12. E.g. AbbCCarre, The TrUl'e!s ofAbMCorri in India and the Near East. 1672-1674, ed. Sir Charles Fawceu,trans. Lady Fawcett (London: Haklu)'t, 1947), p. 232; see also Katherine Brown, 'Reading Indian Music, the Interpretation of Seventeenth-Century European Travel Acc(lunts in the (Re)construction of Indian Music History', British Journal ofEthnomusicolo!!,Y 9.2 (2000), 16-26. Fa'1irullah, Rag ;;arpan, p. 199.

If music: he the food of love

77

Alternative masculinities under Aurangzeb What the discrepancies between the prescriptive and more descriptive evidence indicate is that some mirzas like Faqirullah were indeed challenging the strictest codes of elite masculinity in the late seventeenth century, something also testi fied to by the anxious tone of the British Library Mirziiniima. O'Hanlon has argued that the late seventeenth-century mirzanama literature may represent an attempt on the part of established mirzas to distance themselves from lower-status upstarts at a time of increasing social mobility and lowered service morale under Aurangzeb. H16 However, as we have already seen in the case of Izzat Khan's mehfil. musical evidence in paintings from Shah Jahan's period (r. 1628-58) suggests that the mirzanamas of Aurangzeb's reign reflect a reactionary position against perceived transgressions of masculine codes prior to 1660 under Shah Jahan, and at the very highest levels. The clearest pictorial transgressions of the Mirziiniimo's dictates are found in the paintings Shah Jahan commissioned for what is now known as the Windsor Castle Piidishiihniima. 107 The portrait of Dara Shikoh's weddinglOi:! constitutes the clearest evidence that male dhadhis were celebrated for playing the dholak and khanjari in the very context censured by the Mirziiniima. Furthennore, the painting of 'The weighing of Shah-Jahan on his forty-second lunar birthday' c.1635 109 is likely to represent the very practice of '[allowing] the Kenchens [kaiicani, courtesans] to enter the seraglio' that Aurangzeb overturned in 1663. II 0 Even more strikingly, one of the male musicians in this painting is playing a quintessentially feminine instrument, the kath-tiiJa.111 Of all the Mughal emperors, Shah Jahan exerted the most influence over what his artists portrayed. 112 I would, therefore, propose that the blurring of earlier, more rigid demarcations of masculine and feminine I 13 may have been a hallmark of Shah Jahan's cultural aesthetic. His reign thus saw a period of tolerance for standards of manliness that had previously been considered, and were still seen by some amirs, as transgressive. It therefore seems that there were two alternative codes of masculinity coexisting in Aurangzeb's reign, one more conservative and anxious about change, the other more liberal and confident, and reflective of the worldview of many of the top amirs. While the British Library Mirziiniima probably does reflect the

"'6 M lOll

109

110 III

112

11.\

O·Hanlon. 'Manlincss', 86. Published in Milo C1cveland Beach and Ebba Koch (eds.), King of all the World: the Pad.l'/Iohnama (London: Azimuth Editions and Washington: Sackler Gallery, 1997). Ibid., PI. 25-6. Ibid., PI. 12-13. Bernier, Tra"els, pp. 273-4. Wade states this is the only known Mughal painting to depict a man playing the kath-tala (fish shaped castanets of stone or wood); they are nonnally seen in the hands of female musicians accumpanying female dancers; Imaging Sound, pp. 184-5. Beach and Koch. (eds.). Kin!! olal/the World, p. 131. O'Hanlon. 'Manliness', 5~. 80.

202

Lo\'(' ill SOllfh Asia

the future. Meanwhile. we have the dry statements of Kripanarayan Sahib in his testament: 'Chhunna and Bhuvan have hought Kothi Number II. Alipur Road, from me. The registration and other important papers are with Tawakkali Sahib' (194). A couple of sentences later, we learn that Chhunna has remarned: I do not see Chhunna and Bhuvan's marriage. performed in Ihe Arya Samaj, as either right or wrong. I have made arrangements for her residence only on the grounds of being her elder brother. Since II Alipur Road was in Kutumb's name, the proceeds trom the sale have been deposited in her name. Saving Bank Account 1436, Imperial Bank. Chandani Chowk. ( 194) Kripanarayan Sahib is at pains to distance himsel~ from bei~g seen as actually favouring the match; he is at pains, as ever. to retain hIS p.ubhc fa~~. Yet, he has claimed responsibility for Chhunna's welfare and her radIcal deCISIons do se.em to have his moral sanction and his practical support: he makes pOSSIble her free lifestyle at home, her teaching and ultimately her re-marriage.

Winter and a farewell to the old city Winter rain and fog permeate the pages of the final chapter, which wi." end i~ death. Kripanarayan Sahib has withdrawn entirely into the depths.of ~ts haveh. He lies on his deathbed, ill with rage and disappointment. 'OutSide It was the colour of neither night nor day. The sky had turned the colour of slate. Vakil Sahib stole his eyes away from such mournful weather.' His sister. Chhunna, aware of the bounds of convention which he has observed, aware of hiS sense of resignation and despair, keeps him company in his last moments: ... from false notions of honour, the insides of the heart swept clean. This is what happened to Dadda, after all. There was head-on confrontation and one fine day, Kutumb Bhabhi won this battle. How it hurts when lovers part. Dadda IS III. Badru comes by morning and evening on some pretext. But Mahak Bhabhi has no time to come. Khan Sahib must keep her busy. What can one say, people stay the same, but with ti.me they become distant voices. Not an echo to be heard ... Who knows what the deep Silence of his heart has to sav to him these days~ He has gathered up some deep ache and he lies th~re. He knows, ~hat happened should not have happened. When he wakes from sle~p. his gaze goes to the door at once. Waiting for whom') For a person for whom on~ walts and waits. The colours of muhabbat, love. This is how he had 10 acknowledge hIS fate, accept it but what dishonour he had to suffer finally. It had to lead to separation. One could well ask, what's the usc of wallowing in this ocean of sorrow now? Who can bndge the chasm that yawns between them') Khan Sahib stands between the two of them. obstructing them. Think of it as an obslruction ... He has pulled the cover at hIS ~ieep hurt tightly over his head ... How can we explain this to him') Sahib, Mahak Bhabhl has long crossed your bounds. Now bear up to it. ( 176-7)

For more on the bungalow. see the section on 'India t600-1980', in King. Colonial Urhan Dn'elopmtnt, pp. 14-M.

The spaces of love and the passinR of the seasons

203

In a multi-focal narrative, it is not clear whether Chhunna's reading of the relationship, which ascribes his present state of resignation and despair to the loss of love, was shared by either Kripanarayan or Mahak or, for that matter, by the modern reader. Kripanarayan had kept the relationship firmly in its place, as subordinate to his life and standing in the haveli, and Mahak had come to recognise it as exploitative, though parting and death bring their own emotionality and cast a retrospective glow on the uneven path of the most troubled relationship. The cycle of seasons begun with warmth, fine cuisine and love on a winter evening at the house in Farashkhana is drawing to a close. 'Dadda, the clouds have thickened. It looks like rain.' Kripanarayan did not speak. He said quietly to himself, 'Let the clouds pour rain or not, I'm no longer amongst them' (177). Oblivious of the rain that begins to pour, Kripanarayan begins to wander in the lanes of his youth. A flashback to Masuma's wedding night when Mahak had suddenly joined the ceremony, shaming Vakil Sahib into the public acceptance of her person. And then back to his deathbed. The cycles of the seasons have taken their circular course. The winter evening brings together the two lovers once more. Kripanarayan Sahib does not have to make his way to Mahak through the brightly lit lanes of Chandani Chowk. At Kripanarayan's wish, Mahak has come to him, accompanied by Khan Sahib. Vakil Sahib greets her with a courteous laugh, though he is near tears. Her clothes have remained dry, Khan Sahib's are dripping wet. They exchange words after many months. Her departure brings back memories, he remembers the special perfume, the love of which he shared with Mahak: the fragrance of wet earth, along with the brilliance and radiance of Chandani Chowk, filled into a vial by Jugal Attar, who had a corner shop in Dariba. Thus the coupling of their relationship with the smells and sights of the fragrant old city. It is their final parting. The close of the seasonal cycle converges with the closing of the life cycle, adding poignancy and depth to a story of love gone awry and yet preserved in memory as a lingering fragrance. The epilogue consists of Kripanarayan's will and testament, the final paragraphs of which again speak of the experience of the changing of seasons in the urban landscape. It is a farewell to the old city but also to old ways of love: Strolling to the Clock Tower on winter afternoons, moving slowly towards Chandani Chowk on summer evenings, watching the clouds hover flirtatiously over the lama Masjid; the different sights which are strung together to make the city. This city clinging to the banks of the Yamuna has for centuries called out to people, drawn them to herself and treated them like children and nurtured them with its earth and water. May God see to it, that it is never deserted. (197) 'Ishq and muhabbat had their place within the universe Kripanarayan inhabited. He loves and suffers in the code known to him, which in the 1920s is fast becoming a thing of the past. And it is to this past, which had its own aesthetics, its own moments of fulfilment, that Kripanarayan Sahib bids goodbye. With wisdom and insight, and with the full sense of his responsibility as a proud

204

Luve ill South Asia

patriarch, Kripanarayan Sahib dispenses his world Iy remains in his will and testament. Besides his more substantial gifts to the immediate members of his family, he will make legal training in England possible for Badrinarayan (no longer called Badruddin), and of course the bungalow in Civil Lines for Chhunna. Thanks to his support for it. Masuma, the third in line of beautiful women. will have a 'proper' marriage, based on something like love at first sight but then appropriately negotiated and transacted by the extended family, through Kripanarayan will pay dearly for her marriage. which will be the catalyst for his own final separation from Mahak. But, he manages to retain and communicate his sense of dignity to his family and friends and even in the most emotionally violent moments. the bounds of courtesy that he and Mahak observe with each other. are not overstepped. Yet the complexity of feelings cannot be bound by the code of his haveli alone. however often Kripanarayan Sahib repeats and rehearses it and seeks to impress his wife and mistress with it. Though it provides the frame for his self-narrative to the last, it cannot really account for his loss of control nor compensate for his sense of loss. When he bids goodbye to the old city and its ethos, he is also bidding goodbye to its code of intimacy. In this love triangle, however, the transgressions as also the resolutions remain well within the bounds of known social and affective patterns. The women find their modes of survival along paths already trodden. Kutumb Pyari binds her husband to the have Ii by means of charms and threats. Mahak finds another partner and protector, though admittedly this happens within a newer mode of partner choice. Kripanarayan abides entirely by his mode: he remains head of his household and retains his moral authority by doing so. Though the loss of youth and the public acknowledgement of his relationship to a woman descended from it well-known line of courtesans and the termination of this relationship lead him to lose his own grip on life, his notions of muhabbat remain fixed and unbending. Love is 'a code of communication according to the rules of which one can express, form and stimulate feelings, deny them, impute them to others and be prepared to face all the consequences which enacting such a communication may bring with it'. It is a model of behaviour which 'provides a point of orientation and a source of knowledge,?6 Kripanarayan can never admit and allow a way of life which denies the rights of the haveli. However, in spite of the double standards to which he is accllstamed and which he continues to apRly till he can no longer command Mahak to do his bidding, the narration while exposing his double standards remains sympathetic to him. As a connoisseur of the arts, of poetry, music, cuisine and beautiful artefacts, and as lover, he is treated with delicacy and subtlety of touch, not with hostility.27 He is a product of his times, a man of the old world, with all 2h 27

Luhmann. LOI',' (IS P(lssiol1. p. 20. I find myself in ~omplcte agreement with Anamika who reads the novel as primarily concerned with women's subJectivities, yet refusing to treat Kripanarayan Sahib as the villain of the piece; Anamika. 'Mukt karti' hunl tumheril mere bhi~an bhaiya:, Hans (January 1999), 17. Gagan Gill

The spaccs uf lore and the passil/g ()f the

.\(,USOIlS

205

its chann, courtesy. exploitation and lack of insight into the new. The narrative adopts a broad perspective when it grants Kripanarayan the space to rellect on his own emotions and rationalisations and to make credible his own tensions and suffering. But if not himself a new man, he marks the beginning of the extension of the haveli into the Civil Lines, into the modem with its emancipatory potential. There has come about a decisive shift from the extramarital code of love Kripanarayan Sahib has known and followed to the placing of it within the marital, a shift which he himself silently sanctions and supports in the case of his sister Chhunna. Reading the behaviour of the men and women in the novel from a perspective formed and constituted by present expectations and standards and evaluating them only according to these would mean the kind of short circuiting which 28 precludes awareness of earlier codes. We do need to note that though the narrative is situated in the walled city of Delhi in the first decades of the twentieth century, the perspective it adopts would be hard to imagine without the women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s. It weaves the lives of Kripanarayan and the three women into the changes that the city undergoes and it views their interiorities and their interactions from a perspective that can find crystallisation only in retrospection. Kutumb Pyari's query, whether any rights have been foreseen for the women in the haveli, Bauaji's words, that men can only afford the lives they lead because they enjoy economic independence, Mahak's discovery that she can put on her slippers to go out into the world, Chhunna'~ realisation that widowed daughters-in-law will continue to be abused if they do not take mailers into their own hands, reflect contemporary concerns with women's empowennent. Then why the focus on the figure of Mahak. at all times being comered into representing the courtesan, rather than Kutumb Pyari or even Chhunna? And why the fascination with the figure of the courtesan, even if only represented by the mother, Nasim Bano, whose legacy looms large over the lives of the women in the hOllse in Farashkhana? As we have seen, 'ishq and muhabbat were largely realised in extramarital relationships, even in the early modern period, which on the subcontinent stretched till well into the twentieth century. The figure of the courtesan. as the prime object of desire, of beauty and of love, of refinement in the arts of dance, music and poetry. had long embodied the fulfilment of love.

2X

and Rakesh Kumar in otherwise perceptive reviews (both pUblished in 1995) have chos~n 10 see the novel as a more narrowly conceived feminisl statement; Gagan Gill, 'Alone in Her Sex'. Th" Book Rl'I'ic,,' 19.7 (July 1995). 43-4; Rakesh Kumar 'Ve titan nahi'm mIung rahlln', (1a/ls (January 1995),94-5. Arvind Jain finds Rakesh Kumar's evaluation of Kripanarayan as a 'new man' entirely unacceptable; Arvind Jain, Allral. (lsliil'(I (IIII' (lsmila: Mahi/(,·Iekh(ln iJ, samal-,iLI/rlm (/(Ihm\,(ln (Delhi: Saransh Prakashan, 2000), pp. 17-18. White it is true that Kripanaray~n doe:, nothi;lg' for his two women which could be considered even mildly progressive, and cannot be considered a 'new man' in any absolute sense, his intermittent recognition of the hurt he is causing them betokens the new, as also his support for the steps Chhunna takes. It would surely be anachronistic to expect fiery feminism from someone still so firmly anchored in the old.

206

She continued to represent both a promise, because this is where realisation of love could lie, but also a threat, both to men and women. To men, because under the conditions which were favourable for her - beauty, youth, a reputation in the arts and financial means - she had the possibility to choose her lover, and could thus exercise the kind of power only men enjoyed otherwise, and to women, because she could entice away their men. The courtesan has been resurrected many times in the Urdu/Hindi novel and many times laid to rest. She has served many ends, of embodying the traditional ideal of beauty and desire but also of the modem ideal of the emancipated woman, thus the importance of repeatedly tracing the process, particularly in the period of transition from the traditional to the modem, which allowed her to free herself from the social stigma which was attached to her calling. 29 In tracing the emancipation of one such woman, Mahak Bano, from the constraints of her situation, as a woman writer who has tussled with the mother-daughter relationship in much of her writing, Krishna Sobti offers a view of the central shifts of interpretation in the model of love, from the extramarital to the possibility of finding a space within the marital, of historicizing not only the figure of the courtesan as she seeks social acceptance in new roles but also historicising marital love itself. Love within marriage and love leading to marriage is still a distant dream for many and it is still being socially negotiated. Though muhabbat and 'ishq now find themselves increasingly located within the marital union, the terms themselves continue to carry connotations of the forbidden, of romance which is socially out of bounds. Not surprisingly then, the word used for the new forms of love is often the English word 'love', rather than the old pair muhabbat/'ishq, as in the term 'love-marriage' or in the scenes of declaration of this feeling in Hindi films, as Rachel Dwyer shows in her essay in this volume. For, 'what characterizes an epoch may not necessarily be "new" in the sense of appearing for the first time ... what is so characteristic of the deeply rooted structural shifts of early modern times is that they drew on a stock of quotable ideas from a longstanding tradition, the only difference to that past being an increase in the accessibility, adaptability and selectivity of meaning'?O Love will not only be an elite pastime, it will be domesticated in the middle classes, it will seek new legitimacy, propelled by modernist notions of free choice of partner based on the need for individualist fulfilment. Film after film continues to deal with the theme of lovers caught in socially. conflict-ridden configurations: poor/rich,

JO

A long chain of tradition of courtesan novels runs through modem Hindi/Urdu literature. Beginning with the empathetic Umrao Jan in the late nineteenth century to Premchand's reformist but extremely complex novels, Se\'asadan and Gaban, and the popular novels of the 1930s and 1940s, Citralekha and Vaisiilr kf NaRar\'adhu, the figure of the courtesan-dancer in 'classical times' becomes the receptacle of the ideological concerns of the day. There is an equally long and even more vital genealogy of courtesans as prime protagonists in Parsi theatre and Hindi films; see Sangari in this volume. Luhmann, LOI'e as Passion, p. 42.

JO

Luhman-n, LOI'e as Passion, p. 42.

29

The spaces ot/ol'e and the passil1R of the seasons

Love in South Asia

207

caste/non-caste Hindu, Muslim/Hindu and, neWly, also diasporic and non-diasporic Indian. Women still struggle to find space for their feelings and for their needs, just as men still clothe their physical and emotional needs in socially authorised and sanctioned guises. They profess their' love' in a new language. The lingering nostalgia for the old and the fascination for the lifestyles in the walled city and the pain of parting from them participate in this modulation of the new: 'the double edged boon of modernity, gain and emancipation, loss and nostalgia'. And there continue to be nagging doubts about the absolute value of the freedoms which have been gained. 'But the primacy of dialogue in the ongoing life of modernism means that modernists can never be done with the past: they must go forever haunted by it, digging up its ghosts, recreating it even as they remake their world and themselves. If modernism ever managed to throw off its scraps and tatters and the uneasy joints that bind it to the past, it would lose all its weight and depth, and the maelstrom of modem life would carry it helplessly away. It is only by keeping alive the bonds that tie it to the modernities of the past - bonds at once intimate and antagonistic - that it can help the modem of the present and the future to be free.' 31 The havelis built to house several interconnected nuclear households have long since split into many segments, to house many disconnected family units.32 Those who strove after new lifestyles and could afford the luxury, moved into the bungalows. But older notions of love and family linger into the new and continue to tamper with fantasies of fulfilment in the companionate unions of couples. The song of the seasons has also come a long way; it is no longer the song of lament of the woman alone, who suffers from being parted from her lover through the changing seasons of the year, remembering moments of togetherness and separation; it is also the song of the man, who succumbs finally to the grief of parting, whose narrative frames the beginning and end of the novel. But if the very essence of modernity is 'an attitude of questioning the present', 33 the next question to be asked would have to do with the sustainability of romantic love anchored within marriage or, to put it yet another way, of marriage anchored in romantic love, as it is realised in South Asia.

Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: the Experience of Modernity (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1988 r 1982]), p. 346. 32 Jyoti Hosagrahar documents the changes in the 'traditional' haveli culture of the walled city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; 'Mansions to Margins: Modernity and the Domestic Landscapes of Historic Delhi, 1847-1910', Journal of the Societv of Architectural Historians 60.1 (March 200 I), 26--45. Even here, lifestyles changed along with the archilectural. " Dilip P. Gaonkar, 'On Alternative Modernities', in D. P. Gaonkar (ed.) Alternatil'e Modernities (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 13. 31

IV Shifting paradigms

9 Love

In

the time of Parsi theatre

ANURADHA KAPUR

It still bears restating that technologies - for instance those that make mechanical reproduction of sound and image possible, those that occasion stage appearances and disappearances, those that cause stage illumination by gas, lime or electricity and thereby manufacture rhythms of light and shadow - alter the way in which narratives are read and emotions fabricated. Parsi theatre, an assemblage of European techniques and local Indian forms that flourished roughly between 1850 and 1930, is a configuration that actualised a whole new set of protocols for itself by importing and adapting stage machinery that was being put to use in closed theatre spaces in Europe at that time. t These representational inventions changed the conditions of performance, in urban India at least, and fashioned new theatrical contracts as also new viewing subjects. They also appreciably altered the way love narratives (among others) were scripted and experienced. As a corollary to this new visual regime, a relay of innovations was set up - in the scripting and plotting of love and action, in the use of music, orchestration, instrumentation and singing, and in the manner of acting - all of which were to be enormously influential in creating a modern Indian lexicon of performance for the theatre and, later, the cinema. These new stylistics were in the melodramatic mode and their defining features were a structure of excess or extravagance at the level of scenography, stage effects, music, sound, language, suspense and colour.

I

Roughly marked between the 1850s and the 1930s, Parsi theatre was, as the name suggests, subsidised to a great extent by the Parsis. Zoroastrians of Persian origin who had settled on India's western coast. The Bombay Theatre, built in 1776 as a copy of London's Drury Lane, was bought up in 1835 by a Parsi, Sir Jamshedjee Jeejabhoy. In 1846 the Grant Road Theatre was acquired by another prosperous merchant, Jagannath Shankarseth, and began hosting plays in English, then in Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi. By the 1890s, Parsi companies employed full-time writers and troupes of salaried actors, built their own theatres, and also began publishing their plays. The companies could have Parsi financiers, patrons, actor-managers or actors, but they were by no means exclusively Parsi. There was a lot of cross-region and even cross-language movement of artists, writers and performers. Though Parsi theatre survived all the way till the 1940s, a large number of theatre companies began to transform into cinema studios once the Indian cinema industry took off in the 1920s. For more details, see my 'Parsi Theatre', in The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre, ed. Ananda Lal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). See also Somnath Gupta, Parsi Thiyetar: Udhhav aliI' Vikas (Allahabad: Lokbharti Prakashan, 1981); Lakshmi Lal, Parsi-Hindi Rarigmanc (Delhi: Rajpal and Sons, 1973); and Ranvir Singh (ed.), Parsi Thiyetar (Jodhpur: Rajasthan Sangit Natak Academy, 1990).

211

212

By investing the stage with a surplus of pleasures, and by creating narratives that plotted love in taut opposition to higher fonns of duty (towards one's firtm.1 ~ crm

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