Courtesans in Colonial India

Representations of British Power through Understandings of Nautch-Girls, Devadasis,

Tawa’ifs, and Sex-Work, c. 1750-1883

by
Grace E. S. Howard

A Thesis
presented to
The University of Guelph

In partial fulfilment of requirements

for the degree of
Master of Arts
in
History

Guelph, Ontario, Canada

© Grace E. S. Howard, May, 2019
 ABSTRACT

COURTESANS IN COLONIAL INDIA

REPRESENTATIONS OF BRITISH POWER THROUGH UNDERSTANDINGS OF
NAUTCH-GIRLS, DEVADASIS, TAWA’IF, AND SEX-WORK, C. 1750-1883

Grace E. S. Howard Advisors:

University of Guelph Dr. Jesse Palsetia
Dr. Norman Smith
Dr. Kevin James

British representations of courtesans, or nautch-girls, is an emerging area of study in

relation to the impact of British imperialism on constructions of Indian womanhood. The nautch
was a form of dance and entertainment, performed by courtesans, that originated in early Indian
civilizations and was connected to various Hindu temples. Nautch performances and courtesans
were a feature of early British experiences of India and, therefore, influenced British gendered
representations of Indian women. My research explores the shifts in British perceptions of Indian
women, and the impact this had on imperial discourses, from the mid-eighteenth through the late
nineteenth centuries. Over the course of the colonial period examined in this research, the British
increasingly imported their own social values and beliefs into India. British constructions of
gender, ethnicity, and class in India altered ideas and ideals concerning appropriate behaviour,
sexuality, sexual availability, and sex-specific gender roles in the subcontinent. This thesis
explores the production of British lifestyles and imperial culture in India and the ways in which
this influenced their representation of courtesans. During the nabob period of the eighteenth
century, nautch parties worked as a form of cultural interaction between Indian elites and British
East India Company officials. However, over the course of the nineteenth century the nautch and
nautch-girls became symbolic to the British of India’s ‘despotism’ and ‘backwardness,’ as well
as representative of the supposed dangers of miscegenation and Eastern sensuality. By the mid-
nineteenth century, nautch-girls were represented as commercial sex-workers and were subject to
the increasing surveillance and medical intervention of the British colonial state. In addition, this
representation perpetuated the belief of the British ‘saving’ Indian women as a way to justify the
continuation of colonialism in India. My research explores how British conceptualizations of
courtesans were fundamental to the justification of the imperial project in India, as well as
representative of changing British perceptions of their own political and territorial power in the
subcontinent.
 iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the continued and
varied support of numerous people, who all had a hand in the making of this work. I would like
to extend my deepest gratitude to my entire committee for their helpful comments and astute
observations throughout the writing process. I could not have done this without their kindness
and encouragement. Dr. Jesse Palsetia, thank you for your continued support throughout this
process and for encouraging me to pursue a Master’s, before I had ever considered it myself. To
Dr. Norman Smith, thank you for your understanding and influential classes that were so
fundamental to this research. Dr. Kevin James, thank you for your constant support throughout
this process and throughout my time at Guelph.
Dr. Renée Worringer and Dr. Stuart McCook, thank you for the continuous support you
offered me throughout this process and the encouraging hallway chats you always had at the
ready. To all of the above professors, as well as others throughout my degrees at Guelph, thank
you for pushing me to question my own assumptions, supporting my learning in various ways,
and opening new doors of personal and scholarly interest. You have not only been seminal in
shaping this thesis into what it is but have fundamentally influenced who I am as a person, and
for that I cannot thank you enough.
To my dear friends Kirsten, Chelsea, Mandi, Heather, Sydney, Amy, Kerin, and Kima,
thank you for being there for me through it all. Thank you for listening to me no matter what,
even though you had definitely heard it all before, far too many times. This process would have
been far more difficult without you all, thank you for the hugs, the laughs, the study sessions, the
face-time and real-time chats, funny snaps, hangouts, and all the love. You are my people and I
could not be more grateful.
To Mum, Dad, Emma, and Graham, often those who do and mean the most are the
hardest to properly thank. I cherish everything you have done for me more than words can
adequately express. Or, at least, I am not articulate enough to convey the love I have for all of
you and the honour with which you have bestowed on me with your unwavering support
throughout this process and so much more. A lifetime is not enough to thank you, but I will try.
Lastly, Andy Ranachan, this one is for you. I cannot thank you enough for all that you
have given me. Thank you for teaching me to question everything and to always look for whose
voices are missing. I know the class analysis in this thesis would not have been critical or in-
depth enough for you, I promise I tried, and that I will always keep trying to do better. I will
always learn from what you have taught me. Rest easy friend, for you have made this world a far
better place and your presence will never be forgotten.
 iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 1: Courtesans in Pre-Colonial India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Chapter 2: Courtesans, Nabobs, and British Power in Eighteenth-Century India . . . . 28
Chapter 3: The Shift away from the Nabob, c. 1757-1790 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Chapter 4: The Memsahib and the Courtesan, c. 1790-1857 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Chapter 5: Courtesans in Cantonments, c. 1857-1883 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
 v

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1: Akbar’s court dancers performing at the celebrations of the birth of Salim from the
Akbarnama / 21

Figure 2.1: Possibly William Fullerton seated, surrounded by his Indian servants, smoking a
huqqa / 36

Figure 2.2: Captain John Foote in ‘Oriental’ dress / 37

Figure 2.3: Major William Palmer with his second wife, the Mughal princess Bibi Faiz Bakhsh /
42

Figure 2.4: A Dancing-Girl with a Huqqa / 44

Figure 2.5: Sir David Ochterlony in Indian dress, smoking a huqqa, and watching a nautch in his
house in Delhi / 46

Figure 3.1: The Bow to the Throne, alias the Begging Bowl / 63

Figure 3.2: Count Roupee, supposed to be Paul Benfield of the East India Company, in Hyde
Park / 67

Figure 4.1: Mahadaji Sindhai entertaining a British naval officer and military officer with a
nautch / 107
 1

Introduction

In spite of the disadvantages attendant upon the colour of the skin, perhaps no part of the world
can present more perfect specimens of feminine beauty than are to be found in Hindostan.1

The above quotation from The Essex Standard newspaper encapsulates much of what this

thesis explores around British representations of Indian women through their understandings of

gender, ethnicity, and class. A fascination with the ‘Oriental’ woman, her erotic and exotic

beauty and sexual availability, along with her inferiority based on her positionality within a

rigidly classist, heteropatriarchal colonial society was constructed through British narratives.

This thesis explores the shifts in British perceptions of Indian women, and the impact this had on

imperial discourses, from the mid-eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries. The time

frame is employed to explore how British imperialism constructed representations of gender,

ethnicity, and caste in the subcontinent. Over the course of the colonial period examined in this

research, the British increasingly imported their own social values and beliefs into India. These

British constructions of gender, ethnicity, and class in India altered ideas and ideals concerning

appropriate behaviour, sexuality, sexual availability, and sex-specific gender roles in the

subcontinent. This thesis explores the production of British lifestyle and imperial culture in India

and the ways in which this influenced the construction of Indian women, particularly courtesans,

in the colonial period.

This research examines how the British represented and perceived Indian women and

their sexuality from the nabob period in the eighteenth century through the late nineteenth

century. ‘Nabob’ was the term that the British applied to British men who stayed in India and

took on ‘Orientalized’ lifestyles and culture during the eighteenth century. Nabob culture, or

nabobism, was an expression of the close cultural interaction and collaboration that occurred

1 “The Women of India,” The Essex Standard, January 15, 1836, Issue 263.
 2

between British and Indian societies during the early decades of imperialism in India. At the

same time, it was an expression of the unequal relationship between the British and Indians

under imperialism. Nabobism reflected both the British fascination with, and apprehension of,

their new imperial project in India, as well as the impact their Indian empire would have on

British culture and norms. British nabobs were eventually criticized in metropolitan Britain for

their perceived corruption and decadence, and the more duty-based sahib that embodied

idealized notions of Britishness replaced them as a cultural ideal in the early nineteenth century.

In addition, the representation of British women, or memsahibs, is examined to conceptualize the

dichotomous representation of British and Indian women in a colonial context. Therefore, this

thesis examines gendered and racialized representations of Indian women during the sahib period

in the first half of the nineteenth century, through the Rebellion of 1857, and into the direct rule

of the British Crown. This thesis concludes with the representations of Indian women produced

under the Contagious Diseases Act and its repeal in 1883. Thus, I explore how nabobs, sahibs,

memsahibs, and the British Crown were influential in the production, alteration, and perpetuation

of gendered and racialized perceptions of Indian women.

Courtesans and nautch performances are a feature in this research to more fully

understand British gendered perceptions and representations of Indian women. The nautch was a

form of dance and entertainment, performed by courtesans, that originated in early Indian

civilizations and was connected to various Hindu temples. This form of dance became more

secular in the northern regions of the subcontinent as Islamic rulers established empires, and

courtesans became associated with courts and palaces instead of religious temples.2 During the

early colonial period of the eighteenth century, nautch parties worked as a form of cultural

interaction between Indian rulers and British East India Company officials. However, over the

2 Pran Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj (New York: Penguin, 2009), p.16.
 3

course of the nineteenth century the nautch and nautch-girls, as the British came to call them,

became symbolic of Indian ‘despotism’ and ‘backwardness,’ as well as representative of the

supposed dangers of miscegenation and Eastern sensuality. By the mid-nineteenth century,

nautch-girls were represented as commercial sex-workers and were subject to the increasing

surveillance and medical intervention of the British colonial state. In addition, this representation

perpetuated the belief of British men ‘saving’ Indian women as a way to justify the continuation

of colonialism in the subcontinent.

British perceptions of nautch-girls and performances over the course of this period

illustrate the changes that occurred in the British imperial project in India. This thesis argues that

the British perception of courtesans altered as the power dynamics of the British Empire in India

changed over the course of the mid-eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. The British

became increasingly powerful in the subcontinent over this period and they were subsequently

less receptive towards sharing and experiencing Indian culture and traditions. This correlated

with the shift from the British nabob to the sahib as the ideal British ruler in India during the

early nineteenth century. Ideals of proper forms of Britishness, gender roles and behaviour,

Victorian and Evangelical morals, and the rise of liberalism altered how the British interacted

with India and perceived courtesans. Nautch-girls, and Indian women more generally, were

originally portrayed as hyper-sexualized beings, while simultaneously being represented as

available for British men’s sexual consumption. However, this shifted throughout the nineteenth

century to a narrative of nautch-girls as dangerous figures of sexual temptation and of the British

‘rescuing’ Indian women and improving their lives. Both of these, at times conflicting, narratives

worked to justify, to the British, Britain’s continued colonial presence in India. This study of the

shifting attitudes of the British towards courtesans and the nautch illustrates the importance of

constructions of gender, ethnicity, and caste to British empire-building in the eighteenth and
 4

nineteenth centuries. British representations of courtesans during this period reflect the changing

levels of perceived and actual British political power and social stability in the subcontinent. In

addition, these representations illustrate the shifts in British understandings of their own ideals,

norms, and values around gender, ethnicity, and class. Ratnabali Chatterjee demonstrates that

British colonization was a process of legitimizing their presence in India and was often “based

on theories built in England and worked out in the colonies.”3 Therefore, this thesis argues that

British constructions of nautch-girls were integrally linked to the validation and justification of

their empire and rule over India.

The British in the early eighteenth century were relatively accepting of courtesans and

nautch performances as they were regarded as significant cultural practices of the ruling Indian

elite. The British readily accepted, and participated in, these traditions because they possessed

minimal political, military, and territorial power in the subcontinent. Through adopting the

cultural practice of the nautch, the British validated, for themselves, their colonial presence in

India. By the late eighteenth century, nabobs, their lifestyle, and cultural integration or

Orientalization came under increasing pressure and disdain from metropolitan Britain, as the

British gained territory and political power in the region. In the early nineteenth century, nautch-

girls were increasingly constructed as negative aspects of a ‘backwards,’ exotic, and erotic

Indian culture. Courtesans were understood, and portrayed, as proof of the ‘dangerously exotic

Orient’ that threatened the power and stability of British colonial rule. This occurred

simultaneously with the British maintaining rule over a much larger territory as well as the rise

of liberal and Evangelical beliefs, which solidified British Victorian ideals and constructions of

gender, ethnicity, and class. Subsequently, elite metropolitan Britain increasingly conceived of

3Ratnabali Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” ANTYAJAA: Indian Journal of Women and
Social Change 1, no. 1 (2016): p. 66.
 5

courtesans in relation to nabobism and a dangerous exoticism that corrupted British men and

threatened the legitimacy of the East India Company’s rule.

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the British understood courtesans as

sex-workers. Under the British Crown, courtesans were increasingly represented as sex-workers

and the British were encouraged to not patronize nautch performances. In the nineteenth century

courtesans were subject to a loss of their cultural, political, and financial power due to the

combined decline in Indian elites’ power and patronage, as well as the comparative lack of

British patronage of nautches. Therefore, many courtesans had to depend on commercial sex-

work in order to survive, which corresponded to British representations of these women as

‘prostitutes.’ Simultaneously, the British government in India increasingly institutionalized sex-

work for the military through the Contagious Diseases Act and the subsequent proliferation of

lock hospitals, which were hospitals that female, Indian sex-workers were forced to stay in if

they were found to have a sexually transmitted disease. Furthermore, the mid-nineteenth century

represented sex-workers throughout Britain and the colonies as ‘fallen’ women who were in need

of elites to ‘save’ them. This narrative of the victimized woman was also applied to courtesans in

colonial India. The need to ‘save’ Indian women became another way to justify and validate

British colonial rule of the subcontinent during a period of change in the governance structure

and the fear of political instability after the Revolution of 1857. Thus, as Priyadarshini Vijaisri

expressed, the category of woman “is central to the ideology of power.”4 Therefore, this thesis

demonstrates how the shift in British representations of courtesans as criminals and victims was

integrally related to their perceived political power and stability within the subcontinent.

This research illustrates how the British constructions of courtesans were their production

of the Other. Therefore, courtesans were fundamentally linked to their construction and

4Priyadarshini Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi: Patterns of Sacred Prostitution in Colonial South India (New
Delhi: Kanishka Publishers, Distributors, 2004), p. 14.
 6

representation of the Self and British norms. Through the changing representations of nautch-

girls in relation to the perceived political stability of the British in the subcontinent, the

understanding and ideal of the British in the colony altered. This thesis demonstrates that these

representations informed and depended on each other. The British created and maintained these

constructions to represent themselves and work out their understanding of their role as colonial

rulers of India. The nabob, as a figure of rapacious consumption and Orientalization, relatedly

produced the construction of courtesans as alluring and sexually available. During the late

eighteenth century as the nabob was criticized for their Orientalized lifestyle, nautch-girls were

seen in an increasingly negative manner. In the early nineteenth century, the sahib and

memsahib, British men and women in India, were represented as the epitome of Britishness and

solidified hierarchies of ethnicity, class, and gender. Courtesans were represented as sexual

temptresses who threatened the stability of British colonial rule through miscegenation and

subsequent, so-called, ethnic degeneration per the pseudo-scientific racist beliefs of the Victorian

period. By the mid-nineteenth century, the British became increasingly powerful in the

subcontinent. Therefore, the British had a lessened need for courtesans to validate their political

authority through Indian cultural traditions. Consequently, courtesans were represented as sex-

workers, which fundamentally shifted their cultural power and role in Indian society. Courtesans

lost their cultural and political influence as the sahib and memsahib ideals grew in significance

and the British no longer required the social validation of their political authority that nautch-

girls provided. This thesis demonstrates that courtesans were understood as sexual beings

throughout the period under study. The sensuality of courtesans was represented in different

ways depending on the political stability of the British Empire, as well as British understandings

of themselves and their role in colonial India.

 7

This thesis does not examine representations of courtesans into the late nineteenth

century. The 1890s experienced a shift as British gender values were internalized by some

Western-educated, elite Indian men and culminated in the anti-nautch campaign that extended

into the early twentieth century and was linked to the nationalist movement. The anti-nautch

campaign was a significant aspect of Hindu conservative and nationalist ideology and illustrates

the importance of elite Indian men in the representation and control of Indian women’s bodies in

the late colonial period. The period explored in this work illustrates how British representations

of courtesans were explicitly related to their understanding of their own power and stability in

India, as well as the shifting constructions of gender, ethnicity, and class that produced and

justified the colonial project in India.

Intersectional feminist theories concerning gender, ethnicity, and class/caste, as well as

conceptualizations of scholarly Orientalism are the primary theoretical frameworks utilized

throughout this thesis. British representations of courtesans and their responses to nautch

performances are examined in order to illustrate the subsequent constructions of Indian women.

In addition, the broader shifts in British society during the late eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries are explored to demonstrate the impact these changes had on the British community

and colonial project in India. Travel narratives, letters, diaries, paintings, and newspaper articles

are employed as evidence that offers contemporary insights into the manner in which empire,

class, ethnicity, and gender were understood and conceptualized during this period. This thesis

briefly analyzes pre-colonial courtesans and their social, financial, cultural, and political agency

in order to create a more holistic understanding of these women and the changes they

experienced in the colonial period. These frameworks will enable a more nuanced understanding

of how gender constructions altered, and subsequently influenced, the production of empire in

colonial India.
 8

There is a relative academic silence concerning courtesans in the colonial period.

Therefore, this thesis uses scholarship from a variety of topics and theoretical frameworks,

including intersectional feminism, Orientalism, colonial sex-work, pre-colonial courtesans,

nabobs, sahibs, and the British Crown in order to produce a holistic understanding of courtesans.

The intersection of ethnicity, gender, and caste/class during the period of British imperialism in

India has received extensive attention by the academic community. Edward Said’s Orientalism is

formative for a wider discourse on scholarship surrounding British imperialism in India. Though

Said’s study mainly focuses on Western perceptions of the Middle East, many of these ideas can

be applied to British views on India during the nineteenth century. The development of the Other

in India through simplified stereotypes were of utmost importance in the construction and

maintenance of British superiority and imperial rule throughout the subcontinent. India was

constructed as the Other, through its exoticization and eroticization, in order to define the West.5

Constructing the Orient as weak, irrational, and feminized meant that the West was inherently

and implicitly represented and understood to be the opposite: strong, rational, and masculine.6

This demonstrates the gendered nature of East-West relations, as well as how the British utilized

gendered stereotypes in order to maintain their imperial power in India through emasculating

male Indian bodies. Said’s Orientalism has been seminal in shaping present-day scholarship,

specifically concerning the theory of post-colonialism, and influences subsequent literature in

relation to British imperialism throughout Asia.

The study of the creation and maintenance of colonial power and British superiority

through gender, ethnicity, and caste in India has evolved and lent itself to greater insights in how

these hierarchies developed and endured. Scholars such as Gayatri Spivak illustrate the

significance of studying subaltern identities in India to nuance historical narratives and

5 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), p. 1.

6 Ibid., p. 4.
 9

conceptualize the myriad and intersecting forces at work within the colonial matrix.7 The

scholarship surrounding Indian women during the colonial period tends to focus on high-caste

women and their experiences. This includes the British moral crusades against sati, the self-

immolation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre; polygamy; zenanas; purdah, or veiling;

female education, particularly literacy; and the production of the high-caste New Woman in the

late nineteenth century due to the nationalist movement and Western-educated elite Indian men.8

Nandita Prasad Sahai argues that recent scholarship often homogenizes the experiences of Indian

women and presents upper-caste women as the overall norm.9 The works cited above encourage

scholars to approach Indian women in a more intersectional manner in order to create more

nuanced understandings of their experiences under British colonialism.

Scholarship on courtesans throughout Asia is slowly increasing in the twenty-first

century. However, scholars often use the figure of the courtesan and their experiences to prove

other topics around the intersections of gender, ethnicity, caste/class, and colonialism. Veena

Talwar Oldenburg’s article “Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow,

India,” is a seminal work on Indian courtesans that has enhanced scholarly interest in the topic

by bringing the study of these women into academia that encouraged a nuanced understanding of

their lives.10 However, there remains only a few larger scholarly works on courtesans. Martha

Feldman and Bonnie Gordon produced their edited collection The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-

Cultural Perspectives, which examines the representations and various experiences of courtesans

7 See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in Selected Subaltern

Studies, ed. Guha, Ranajit, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 3-34.
8 Nandita Prasad Sahai, “The ‘Other’ Culture: Craft Societies and Widow Remarriage in Early Modern India,”

Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 2 (2007): p. 38.

9 Ibid.
10 See Veena Talwar Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow, India,” Feminist

Studies 16, no. 2 (1990): pp. 259-287 for an exploration of 1970s courtesans and the subsequent understandings of
colonial courtesans.
 10

in many different cultures, including India.11 Pran Nevile’s Nautch Girls of the Raj is a seminal

work in the field and establishes the general history of courtesans from their religious inception

to their demise in the mid-twentieth century.12 There are few monograph-length texts devoted

solely to Indian courtesans, and those that do exist are often broad in their temporal scope, as the

primary and secondary literature remains quite minimal on this topic.13 Furthermore, a

significant portion of the scholarship around courtesans often argues that the colonial period was

a time of degradation of courtesans from culturally and politically influential figures, to

performers, to commercial sex-workers.14 This thesis adds to extant scholarship through a more

temporally-specific analysis of courtesans in the colonial period. In addition, this thesis attempts

to go beyond the present ‘degradation’ narrative, while not diminishing its potential accuracy, in

order to demonstrate how courtesans were understood by colonial powers in relation to British

political and territorial power in the subcontinent. Therefore, this thesis illustrates that the

colonial period is not solely about the loss of courtesans’ social and political power, instead it

focuses on how that loss of power was represented and influenced by British colonizers and their

changing constructions of gender, ethnicity, and caste/class.

11 See Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon, eds. The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2006) for their extensive analysis on the cultural place of courtesans, as well as the social,
economic, and political requirements for a courtesan culture to develop.
12 See Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, for analysis of courtesans from asparas and devadasis to their

secularization as tawa’if to their experiences under British imperialism and their eventual legal demise in 1947.
13 See Awadh Kishore Prasad, Devadasi System in Ancient India: a study of temple dancing girls in South India

(Delhi: H. K. Publishers and Distributers, 1991); Kay Kirkpatrick Jordan From Sacred Servant to Profane
Prostitute: A History of the Changing Legal Status of the Devadasis in India, 1857-1947 (New Delhi: Manohar,
2003); Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj; and Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi: Patterns of Sacred Prostitution in
Colonial South India as examples of monographs focused on courtesans. Also, note the vast majority of these
monographs focus solely on the devadasi tradition in South India. In contrast, there are predominantly scholarly
articles on tawa’if in the north, with few monographs.
14 This is observable in the historical narratives produced by scholarly works such as Vijay Prakash Singh, “From

Tawaif to Nautch Girl: The Transition of the Lucknow Courtesan,” South Asian Review 35, no. 2 (2014): pp. 177-
194; Pamela Price, “Honor, Disgrace and the Formal Depoliticization of Women in South India: Changing
Structures of the State under British Colonial Rule,” Gender and History 6, no. 2 (1994): pp. 246-264; Chatterjee,
“Prostituted Women and the British Empire.”
 11

The primary sources used throughout this thesis are predominantly from a British

perspective. At times other European writings are also used in cases where they produced

significant or enduring commentary on courtesans, such as Abbé Jean-Antoine Dubois (1765-

1848).15 This work utilizes travel narratives, journals, diaries, and letters, as well as paintings,

prints, and other imagery produced mainly by the British who travelled, served, or lived in India.

In addition, some sources are used from those who had never been to India, in order to illustrate

the widespread social reach of the gender, ethnicity, and class representations of Indian women.

This also demonstrates the impact that the metropole had on colonial India and the British

population there, as well as the influence of India on British representations of their colonial rule

in the subcontinent.

Substantial silences exist in the sources used in this thesis. There is my personal lack of

Indian languages that limits the texts and perspectives that can be accessed in this research. In

addition, though courtesans were literate, there is a lack of sources from their own perspectives

and in their own voices, whether these sources did not survive or did not exist in the first place is

unknown. The majority of primary sources about courtesans do not possess the first-hand

experiences of these women. In the pre-colonial period, Indian men often wrote about courtesans

and in the colonial period it was predominantly British men and women who produced these

sources. Therefore, courtesans are constructed by others throughout their history in India,

limiting scholarly understanding about the women’s personal experiences from their own

perspective.16 Felicity A. Nussbaum demonstrates the scholarly difficulty of locating women’s

agency within male-dominated sources, particularly within the imperial domain, where colonized

15 See Abbé Jean-Antoine Dubois, Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India; and
their Institutions, Religious and Civil (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817). This text is one of
the more famous documents that examine the cultural, political, and religious role of devadasis in Southern India.
16 Doris M. Srinivasan, “Royalty’s Courtesans and God’s Mortal Wives: Keepers of Culture in Precolonial India,” in

The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 161.
 12

women “were scarcely visible” in the sources.17 Due to this silence, this thesis attempts to

nuance the understanding of courtesans by recognizing the lack of sources within the historical

narrative. In addition, this thesis explores the British perspective of courtesans as a social

construction, recognizing that it was produced within a framework that continuously silenced

these women.

The terms used throughout a scholarly work are important and inform the understanding

of many historical issues. Therefore, the choice of terms utilized throughout this thesis is

significant. Scholarship contends with many problematic terms that possess numerous

connotations and should be challenged in order to create more nuanced and respectful

understandings of a topic. This thesis utilizes the terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ in reference to various,

hegemonic, geographical understandings of the world. These terms are accompanied by

problematic, monolithic, connotations, such as the ‘West’ as fundamentally more ‘civilized’

while the ‘East’ is often represented as ‘decadent’ and ‘tyrannical.’ However, these terms tend to

be less problematic than previous understandings of these regions as the ‘Occident’ and the

‘Orient.’ Therefore, this thesis uses ‘West’ and ‘East,’ however, it recognizes the various issues

and hegemonic ideologies that exist around these words, as well as the nuanced and varied

experiences of the cultures and peoples in these places. In addition, the words used to denote the

region of study within this thesis are important to examine. Scholars such as Durba Ghosh

challenge the use of terms such as ‘Indian’ and ‘South Asian.’18 Ghosh argues against using

‘India’ and ‘Indian’ because this period pre-dates a nationalist consciousness and sense of

17 See Felicity A. Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English
Narratives (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 5 for an exploration on the silences within colonial
sources.
18 See Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2006), p. 34 for a more in-depth exploration of the meaning and connotations surrounding these
terms.
 13

India.19 In addition, Ghosh argues that ‘South Asian’ as a term to refer to the people and cultures

of the Indian subcontinent is a post-colonial concept that should not be retroactively imposed on

the region.20 Therefore, in reference to the various political issues surrounding these terms, this

thesis uses the terms ‘India’ and ‘Indian’ to refer to the peoples, cultures, and histories of the

Indian subcontinent as the British understood it in the colonial period, as that is the main

temporal focus of the work.

Furthermore, this thesis employs the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ to refer to the children

produced through Euro-Indian unions. During the colonial period, and in much of present-day

scholarship, the term ‘Eurasian’ denotes such children and ‘Anglo-Indian’ denotes the official

British community in India.21 The terminology has recently shifted to use ‘Anglo-Indian’ to

reference the children of European and Indian heritage.22 Therefore, this thesis utilizes the term

‘Anglo-Indian’ in this manner. Furthermore, the term ‘Oriental’ is placed with quotation marks

around it in order to interrogate the stereotypes and narratives that exist in the context of the

racist hierarchies of empire.23 In addition, the terms ‘sex-work’ and ‘sex-worker’ are employed

throughout this thesis to avoid and challenge the negative connotations surrounding the words

‘prostitute’ and ‘prostitution.’ ‘Prostitute’ and ‘prostitution’ may, at times, be employed to bring

awareness to the negative connotations that were imposed on courtesans in the colonial period,

however, they will appear in quotation marks in order to challenge these assumptions and

problematic representations of sex-work and sex-workers.

19 Gosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 34.

20 Ibid.
21 Lionel Caplan, “Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women: Gender Constructs and Contrasts in a Changing

Society,” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 4 (2000): p. 864, ftn. 1. A host of other, more problematic, terms were used
to refer to children of Euro-Indian unions during the colonial period, including ‘half-castes’ and ‘half-borns’ and
relates to their systematic oppression by both Europeans and Indians throughout this period.
22 Ibid.
23 Indrani Sen, Women and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India (1858-1900) (New Delhi:

Orient Longman, 2002), pp. xiv-xv.

 14

Lastly, there are numerous terms used to reference the women this thesis examines. In

pre-colonial India, these women were referred to by numerous names, including tawa’if, ganika,

devadasi, vesya, and randi, as well as many more. These terms were based on intersections of

region and caste, which denoted the various levels of cultural significance, roles, and agency

these women had in India.24 In order to create consistency within this thesis, the term ‘courtesan’

will be used to denote the various women who possessed social agency and engaged in some

form of culturally and religiously-influential performances and sex-work. Though the term

‘courtesan’ has some negative connotations of the erotic and exotic, this thesis works to

challenge these ideas and illustrate the cultural and political agency many of these women

possessed, particularly in pre-colonial India. Furthermore, when exploring pre-colonial female

performers, the term ‘courtesan’ will predominantly be used, unless in particular reference to a

certain type of courtesan where a specific term is employed. In addition, this thesis utilizes the

term ‘nautch-girl’ interchangeably with ‘courtesan’ when exploring the colonial period because

‘nautch’ and ‘nautch-girl’ were terms employed specifically by the British to denote Indian

courtesans and female performers. ‘Courtesan’ is used throughout the thesis in order to re-

establish the cultural and political importance of these women, while ‘nautch-girl’ is used to

illustrate the amalgamation of these various women and the overall ‘degradation’ of female

performers throughout the colonial period.

A significant aspect of this work is recognizing my own positionality in society. It is

important to acknowledge that as a white, middle-class, Western-educated woman, I possess a

certain set of experiences and privileges that impact the lens through which I understand and

study historical topics. Though this is influenced through the intersectional feminist framework

that I use in my approach to this thesis, it is important to recognize the limits my knowledge and

24 These terms are explored more extensively later in this thesis.

 15

experiences create in my study of British representations of India and Indian women in the

colonial period.25 In an effort to follow Linda Alcoff’s suggestion that scholars should attempt to

create “the conditions for dialogue and the practice of speaking with and to rather than speaking

for others,” this thesis tries to produce a conversation in which numerous voices are included and

the chance for continued dialogue exists, rather than the erasure of marginalized groups’

perspectives and experiences.26 Therefore, this thesis attempts to ‘speak to’ the representations of

courtesans in colonial India in the hopes of a broader discourse on the experiences and historical

narratives of those marginalized by the hierarchical systems both past and present.

This thesis chronologically traces the development of representations of courtesans in

India. The first chapter briefly examines the social organization and roles of courtesans in the

ancient and early modern periods of pre-colonial India. This chapter also explores the political,

cultural, and financial influence and agency courtesans possessed prior to the mid-eighteenth

century. The remaining chapters solely focus on the colonial period. The second chapter explores

British imperial culture in the eighteenth century and the Orientalized lifestyle of the nabob, as

well as British representations of nautch-girls as a form of political validation and an integral

aspect of their Orientalized lifestyle in the subcontinent. The third chapter examines the second

half of the eighteenth century and the social anxieties produced by the Orientalized lifestyle and

rule of the nabob in India. Subsequently, this chapter illustrates the changing British conceptions

of Indian courtesans and elite metropolitan policing of nabobism. The fourth chapter explores the

cultural shift from the nabob to the sahib as the ideal British ruler in India during the early

nineteenth century. In addition, this chapter examines the rise of the memsahib as a significant

25 See Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism,”
in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes
Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991): pp. 1-47 and Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful
Category of Historical Analysis,” in Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996): pp. 152-180 for their intersectional feminist theoretical framework that informs much of this thesis.
26 Linda Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Cultural Critique 20 (1991-1992): p. 23.
 16

figure in colonial discourse and representations of colonial authority in the subcontinent. This

chapter explores the various British representations of courtesans and nautch performances in

relation to the perceived threat cultural and sexual interactions posed to the imperial project. The

final chapter examines the criminalization and victimization of courtesans in the second half of

the nineteenth century under direct British rule of India. In conclusion, this thesis explores the

changing British representations of courtesans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the

correlating British understandings of their own political power and stability within the

subcontinent.
 17

Chapter 1
Courtesans in Pre-Colonial India

But for this girl, adorned with jewels, whom I once dearly loved, such dances are a daily
performance. She is only a dancing girl.27

The above quotation is from the second century CE text Shilappadikaram (the Ankle

Bracelet), by Prince Ilangô Adigal that follows his romance with a courtesan. It recognizes the

professional nature of pre-colonial Indian courtesans, as well as their skill and influence over

powerful men. Prior to the analysis of nautch girls in the colonial period, an exploration of

courtesans in pre-colonial India is required in order to obtain a more nuanced understanding of

British representations of dancing-girls. In addition, it is important to recognize the diversity of

Indian women’s experiences and gender relations, as many scholars create a homogenized view

of their lives which perpetuate stereotypes that are “both ahistorical and unhistorical.”28 This

chapter explores the historical context of courtesans, their long history throughout the

subcontinent, as well as their cultural significance and subsequent political power. In addition,

larger concepts of Indian women’s gender roles and expectations, agency, and the intersections

of gender with caste in pre-colonial India will be examined to enable a more holistic view of

courtesans and their position within society.

The scholarship surrounding pre-colonial Indian courtesans is relatively sparse,

particularly in comparison to academic work on high-caste Hindu women in the ancient and

early modern periods. According to Nandita Prasad Sahai, there is less academic study on how

gender relations were constructed among the lower-castes, where a significant amount of the

courtesans originated.29 The scholarship up to the 1980s on the pre-colonial courtesan continued

27 Prince Ilangô Adigal, Shilappadikaram, trans. Alain Daniélou (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967), p. 50.
28 Nandita Prasad Sahai, “The ‘Other’ Culture: Craft Societies and Widow Remarriage in Early Modern India,”
Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 2 (2007): p. 53.
29 Ibid., p. 36.
 18

the representation of their sexualized and less than respectable status in Indian society.30 This is

observable in Anant Sadashiv Altekar’s monograph The Position of Women in Hindu

Civilization: From Prehistoric Times to the Present Day that argues courtesans were “persons

who had sacrificed what was regarded as specially honorable in a woman.”31 Priyadarshini

Vijaisri argues the reason for this interpretation is that many studies on the pre-colonial courtesan

rely on and replicate ideas about caste dynamics in the colonial period that portrayed lower-caste

women as ‘prostitutes.’32

By contrast, more recent scholarship recognizes the sexual component of Indian

courtesans’ lives in the pre-colonial period, while refraining from passing moral judgement on

courtesans or portraying them as inherently immoral.33 Present-day academia contests the image

of courtesans created by previous generations of scholarship and attempts to nuance the

experiences of these women through subaltern and intersectional theoretical frameworks of

gender, ethnicity, and class/caste. For example, Vijaisri explores how religiously-sanctioned

sexuality enabled devadasis to exert political, cultural, and economic autonomy within ancient

and early modern Indian society, as well as the patriarchal structures that contained this agency.34

Scholars often lack historical sources from courtesans’ perspectives because the vast majority of

primary sources available to scholars are literary sources and traditional treatises on politics,

love, law, and arts, which were mainly written by men and often expressed theoretical ideals or

30 Priyadarshini Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi: Patterns of Sacred Prostitution in Colonial South India (New

Delhi: Kanishka Publishers, Distributors, 2004), p. 6.

31 Anant Sadashiv Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization: From Prehistoric Times to the Present

Day (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1959), p. 181. This monograph was originally published in 1938, however, it was
reprinted until 1983, illustrating the persistence of this representation of courtesans in the academic community.
32 See Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi, pp. 6-30 for an analysis of the problematic scholarship surrounding

courtesans and devadasis.

33 See Amrit Srinivasan, “Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance,” Economic and Political Weekly 20,

no. 44 (1985): pp. 1869-1876; and Lata Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins: The Courtesan and the
Nation’s Narrative,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 14, no. 1 (2007): pp. 93-116 as examples of scholars who
approach pre-colonial courtesans in this manner.
34 Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi, pp. 93-97.
 19

criteria for gender norms rather than the way these norms were expressed in society.35 Therefore,

it is difficult to produce an understanding of pre-colonial courtesans that recognizes their varied

roles and experiences, as well as their personal lives and views of their profession. This chapter

examines courtesans through literary sources, paintings, and contemporary scholarship to

produce a nuanced conceptualization of pre-colonial courtesans and more fully understand the

alterations that occurred to the representation of these women under British imperialism.

A Brief History of Pre-Colonial Courtesans: Devadasi and Tawa’if

Courtesans were a cultural phenomenon that was not limited solely to India. Evidence of

courtesans exists in numerous parts of the world including Ancient Greece, Edo Japan, and

Imperial China.36 Courtesans in ancient and early modern India shared aspects of lifestyle with

these cultures, although they also were unique expressions of Hindu and Muslim histories and

cultures. Courtesans were an integral part of Indian society since the third century BCE and

possessed a divine origin in Hindu culture.37 According to Pran Nevile, Lord Brahma created

asparas, female dancers, and the most accomplished aspara, Urvashi, imparted her dancing

knowledge to humans. The first to receive this knowledge were the temple dancers, devadasis, at

which point devotional dances became an essential part of temple service and were prevalent

throughout the subcontinent in the ancient period.38 Devadasis were dedicated at a young age,

typically around seven or eight, and were rigorously trained in dancing and singing. Upon

reaching puberty they went through a marriage ceremony to the deity, which solidified their

connection to the temple as well as their social position and role as a devadasi.39 Daughters were

35 Doris M. Srinivasan, “Royalty’s Courtesans and God’s Mortal Wives: Keepers of Culture in Precolonial India,” in
The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 164.
36 Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon, eds. The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2006), p. 3.

37 Srinivasan, “Royalty’s Courtesans and God’s Mortal Wives,” p. 162.
38 Pran Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj (New York: Penguin, 2009), p. 2.
39 See Srinivasan “Reform and Revival,” pp. 1869-1870. A devadasi was initiated as a young child by a priest of the

temple in a Pottukattu, tali-tying, ceremony. Upon reaching puberty, she went through a Sadanku ceremony, where
 20

often dedicated to the temples of the goddess Yellamma, although other popular goddesses to

dedicate daughters to included Dymavva, Maramma, Hulingamma, and Uchchangiamma.40

The advent of the Mughal Empire in North India in 1526 disintegrated the devadasi

system in the region. However, dance was an important cultural aspect for Muslim rulers and the

Mughals facilitated the amalgamation of Persian and Hindu dance forms, which produced

secularized courtesans, typically referred to as tawa’if, who were attached to their courts and

palaces.41 Tawa’if who were not patronized by the courts worked in kothas, or salons, which

catered to the nobility and were often run by an older, retired courtesan or chaudharayan.

Chaudharayans typically received approximately one third of their courtesans’ income in order

to maintain the kotha, pay servants, and train new dancing-girls, which enabled older courtesans

to maintain their financial independence and agency throughout their lives.42 Tawa’if practiced

their craft from around the age of five, and were trained rigorously by male teachers known as

ustads for approximately ten years.43 Therefore, tawa’if performed similar cultural functions as

the devadasi in southern India, without the religious overtones associated with temple service.

The Arthasastra, a significant treatise on Indian polity dating from around the first or

second century CE, encouraged the state to finance and invest in the training of courtesans as it

would directly profit from their success.44 In this way, though the temple support of the devadasi

system was absent, northern India continued to maintain the cultural significance of courtesans

and classical dance forms, albeit in a different and secular manner. Therefore, the Mughal

Empire became the patrons of the dancing-girls of the north and actively supported the training

wedding songs were sung as well as procreative and nuptial rites were performed by temple priests, essentially
marrying her to the temple.
40 Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi, p. 35.
41 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 3.
42 Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins,” p. 101.
43 Vijay Prakash Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl: The Transition of the Lucknow Courtesan,” South Asian

Review 35, no. 2 (2014): p. 179.

44 Srinivasan, “Royalty’s Courtesans and God’s Mortal Wives,” p. 162.
 21

and employment of courtesans. Emperors such as Akbar (r. 1556-1605), Jahangir (r. 1605-1627),

and Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658) heavily supported courtesans during the early modern period.45

This was observable through courtly images that depicted these emperors, including Akbar,

holding extensive performances in their courts (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1: Akbar’s court dancers performing at the celebrations of the birth of Salim from the Akbarnama, c. 1590.

The image from Akbar’s court also illustrates the prevalence of courtesans and their

performances at significant events and ceremonies, as the print depicts the celebration of the

birth of Akbar’s son, who later became the emperor Jahangir.

There were many terms used in pre-colonial India to describe courtesans. The main

differentiation was between devadasis, religious dancers attached to Hindu temples, and tawa’if,

secular performers who received patronage from the royal courts of the Mughal emperors. There

45 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 18.

 22

were numerous regional and caste-based sub-groupings within these two terms. This illustrates

the various experiences, cultural differences, and regional varieties of courtesanship that existed

in pre-colonial India. In addition, by the early modern period, the proliferation of terms to denote

courtesans demonstrates how the practice had developed into a highly specialized and

hierarchized system.46 Within the devadasi category, jogatis and basavis denoted temple dancers

who were influenced by region and social standing.47 Edgar Thurston listed seven types of

devadasis, including data, vikrita, bhritya, alankara, and hrita, who received different labels

depending on if they gave themselves to the temple as a gift, for their family’s prosperity, out of

devotion, or were presented to the temple by noblemen.48 In the north, the terms nati and

barangana denoted various levels of accomplished courtesans, whereas the word randi referred

to a “common prostitute” and was seen to occupy a separate sphere in relation to training, caste,

and subsequent clientele.49 In addition, a ganika was seen to be the highest level of a courtesan,

whereas vesya or rupajiva denoted a sex-worker who was socially ranked below a ganika. Low-

grade sex-workers were often termed pumscali and female slaves who were forced to provide

sexual services to men were known as dasi.50 Etymologically, these women were different from

each other and, therefore, most likely had various experiences and levels of agency within the

pre-colonial patriarchal systems. Priya Srinivasan argues that devadasis had a significantly

different history than the tawa’if.51 However, there remains a lack of scholarship on the topic

and, in many ways, these women experienced a similar fate during the colonial period, as the

46 Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi, p. 70.

47 Ibid., p. 100.
48 Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras: Government Press, 1909), p. 125.
49 Ratnabali Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” ANTYAJAA: Indian Journal of Women and

Social Change 1, no. 1 (2016): p. 70.

50 Srinivasan, “Royalty’s Courtesans and God’s Mortal Wives,” p. 162.
51 Priya Srinivasan, Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor (Baltimore: Temple University Press,

2012), p. 177 ftn 1.

 23

British amalgamated the vast personifications of this profession and produced a single,

monolithic image of courtesans as the nautch-girl.

The Social Organization, Political Power, and Cultural Significance of Courtesans

The stereotypical image of the courtesan as an immoral or sexually promiscuous woman

is inaccurate in relation to the female performers of pre-colonial India. According to Nevile, pre-

colonial India had more open and less restrictive ideas around sex and, therefore, the role of the

courtesan was recognized in society.52 Tawa’if were highly educated and culturally refined

women whose main purpose was to provide cultural entertainment through song, dance, and

intellectual conversation to aristocratic male patrons. Though courtesans could provide sexual

services to elite Indian men, this component of their profession was only a small part of the

cultural role they played.53 Occasionally, courtesans would sexually gratify a patron, if a

sufficient price were paid; however, many court dancers did not normally offer their sexual

services to upper-caste men.54 This demonstrates, that though these women were subject in many

ways to the male gaze and patriarchal power structures, they were often able to exercise sexual

agency and have control over their bodies within the confines of patriarchal systems. However,

courtesans were also constrained by patriarchies, for it was standard practice throughout India for

a courtesan’s training to be financially supported by a rich patron, who would typically become

her first sexual partner upon reaching puberty.55 Nevertheless, courtesans continued to exercise

agency within these patriarchal systems.

52 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, pp. 101-102.

53 Erica Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women: Sexual Relationships, Venereal
Disease and the Redefinition of Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century India.” The Indian Economic & Social
History Review 46, no. 1 (2009): p. 17.
54 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 178; Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 71.
55 Veena Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow, India,” Feminist Studies 16,

no. 2 (1990): p. 263.

 24

Courtesans were often quite wealthy, as they received money and land from patrons, and

devadasis were often given land endowments from their temples. Courtesans’ legal ability to

acquire and inherit property as well as pursue paid professions, unlike other women during this

period, enabled them to maintain financial independence. In addition, courtesans usually had

only a few sexual partners throughout their lives and any children with these men were solely

connected to the woman.56 The children of courtesans often inherited dance practices, economic

capital, and land from their mothers, as courtesans were the only women in India who were

legally entitled to own and inherit property.57 This caused many scholars to argue that courtesans

were the only group in India to have matrilineal kinship organization.58 Though not their own

caste, the role of courtesans and devadasis was often hereditary, as their female children

frequently entered the same profession. If courtesans lacked a daughter, they could adopt one

based on customary Hindu law.59 Furthermore, as the female members of courtesan communities

were the primary source of income, land, and political power, daughters were favoured over

sons, which was contrary to the vast majority of Indian society during the pre-colonial period.60

In addition, courtesans throughout India were able to exercise power through cultural

significance, courtly politics, and caste mobility. The most significant aspect of courtesans’

agency was their cultural significance, for this informed all other aspects of their social, political,

and economic power in the pre-colonial period. Courtesans were considered the keepers and

disseminators of high Hindu and Muslim culture due to their intellectual and artistic skill,

56 Srinivasan, Sweating Saris, p. 177 ftn 1.

57 Margaret Walker, “The ‘Nautch’ Reclaimed: Women’s Performance Practice in Nineteenth-Century North India,”
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (2014): p. 553.
58 Srinivasan, Sweating Saris, p. 177 ftn 1. However, see Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, “Female Agency and

Patrilineal Constraints: Situating Courtesans in Twentieth-Century India,” in The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross Cultural
Perspectives, ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 312-331.
Particularly p. 326 for a challenge to this widely held belief, as they argue that the “absence of patrilineality does not
equal matrilineality,” and illustrate how courtesans’ agency continued to be constrained in pre-colonial India by
patrilineal social organization and patriarchal institutions.
59 Srinivasan, “Reform and Revival,” p. 1872.
60 Ibid., p. 1869.
 25

particularly through their training in poetry and dance. The Kamasutra contains section VI,

which was devoted to courtesans, and argued that in order for a courtesan to be considered

accomplished, she had to be proficient in the sixty-four arts. These arts included singing,

dancing, playing musical instruments, drawing, writing, decorating, magic, carpentry, tailoring,

architecture, chemistry, minerology, rules of society, and how to pay respects and compliments

to others.61 The Kamasutra also illustrates the cultural importance of the courtesan, as it states

when fully accomplished in the above arts a courtesan “receives a seat of honour in an

assemblage of men. She is, moreover, always respected by the king, and praised by learned men,

and her favour being sought for by all, she becomes an object of universal regard.”62 This

demonstrates that courtesans held significant cultural status and influence in pre-colonial Indian

society. The rigorous education of courtesans in these arts meant that they were the only literate

women during the ancient and early modern periods in India, when it was considered improper

and unrespectable for high-caste women to be literate.63 Their extensive education also meant

that members of the Mughal nobility frequently sent their sons to kothas in order to learn

etiquette, the art of conversation, polite courtly manners, and appreciation of Urdu literature from

courtesans.64 In addition, courtesans, and particularly devadasis who were married to a deity,

were considered auspicious women because they were not married to mortal men and could,

therefore, never become widows. This bestowed enhanced cultural significance on courtesans, as

they became important aspects of wedding ceremonies, often tying the tali of the bride and

leading the wedding procession in order to confer their marital luck onto high-caste women who

61 Vatsyayana, The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: Translated from the Sanscrit in Seven Parts with Preface,
Introduction, and Concluding Remarks, trans. Richard Burton, Bhagavanlal Indrajit, and Shivaram Parashuram
Bhide (Benares: Printed for the Hindoo Kama Shastra Society, 1883), p. 25.
62 Ibid., p. 26.
63 Walker, “The ‘Nautch’ Reclaimed,” p. 553
64 Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins,” p. 100.
 26

could afford this service.65 Courtesans’ luck in marriage translated to a general auspiciousness,

which meant that their presence was often socially required at important ceremonies, such as

birthdays, festive occasions, puberty ceremonies, weddings, and processions.66

Due to their cultural significance, courtesans in pre-colonial India were able to exercise

agency through both political power and caste mobility. As noted above, many courtesans

originated in lower-castes. However, due to their close, and at times intimate, relationships with

nobility, princes, and emperors, courtesans were able to cross caste boundaries and experience

social treatment, positions, and privileges similar to high-caste women.67 Courtesans were also

able to freely interact with men and did not practice purdah, as many Indian women did during

this period.68 The cultural significance of courtesans was enhanced because, for members of the

nobility, maintaining a tawa’if or a devadasi as her main or sole patron was a symbol of social

prestige and privilege.69 Though political power was not open to all courtesans, many influenced

the politics of the period in both Hindu and Muslim courts through their cultural importance and

artistic developments of classical Hindu music and dance forms. In addition, a few courtesans

became the wives of important Mughal emperors, and were able to indirectly exercise political

power. For example, Jahandar Shah (r. 1712-1713) married a dancing-girl named Lal Kunwar

and Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad Shah (r. 1719-1748) married the courtesan Qudsia Begum (d.

1765), who were both able to exercise substantial political power through their marriages.70

Therefore, many courtesans were able to gain political influence and challenge delineations of

social structures due to their mobility within gender and caste-based social hierarchies. However,

65 Srinivasan, “Reform and Revival,” p. 1870.

66 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p.14.
67 Felman and Gordon, The Courtesan’s Arts, p. 6.
68 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 67; Pamela Price, “Honor, Disgrace and the Formal

Depoliticization of Women in South India: Changing Structures of the State under British Colonial Rule,” Gender
and History 6, no. 2 (1994): p. 248.
69 Srinivasan, “Reform and Revival,” p. 1869.
70 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 19.
 27

their marginal position within a largely patrilineal kinship system meant that they were often

denied full access to the highest strata of society. 71 Although this rule did have a few exceptions

in the figures of courtesans who married emperors, it was typically true for most dancing-girls.

In sum, courtesans were significant cultural figures in the pre-colonial period. Their

cultural, financial, sexual, political, and caste agency ensured that they were significant historical

players who heavily influenced Indian culture, particularly in their dissemination and

perpetuation of classical arts. However, though courtesans had a substantial amount of agency

and independence, they were still constrained by patriarchies that produced and maintained their

very position within pre-colonial society.72 Courtesans held a position within society in which

they maintained patriarchal institutions, however, they operated within these systems in ways

that resisted traditional gender norms and values. In this way courtesans were able to carve out a

space for themselves in which they had substantial amounts of agency within a system that

oppressed women. The following sections will examine how courtesans were influenced by the

advent of British imperialism in the subcontinent, and the changes in their representation in

relation to British conceptualizations of their political power in India.

71 Feldman and Gordon, The Courtesan’s Arts, p. 6.

72 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 190.
 28

Chapter 2
Courtesans, Nabobs, and British Power in Eighteenth-Century India

No entertainment can in India be complete without a nautch.73

Though written in 1838, the above quotation from the Hampshire Advertiser & Salisbury

Guardian illustrated the general view of the British in the eighteenth century in regard to nautch

performances. This chapter explores the importance of British nabobs and constructions of nabob

masculinity in the eighteenth century, as well as how nautch-girls and performances were

represented at the time. Though only a small number of men were able to achieve the opulent

lifestyle of the stereotypical nabob, this section will argue that they had a substantial influence on

British cultural understandings and representations of India, Indian women, and Britain itself.

This chapter examines the period of early British presence and cultural contact of the eighteenth

century in India, and the political and cultural landscape that shaped it. Nabobism was an

important feature of British society in India, and the shifts it went through during the eighteenth

century were mirrored in, and linked to, British understandings of Indian courtesans as nautch-

girls were a stereotypical part of the nabob experience. These representations of courtesans

perpetuated Orientalist understandings of the East, and India more specifically, as an exotic and

erotic Other through British constructions of gender, ethnicity, climate, and caste.

The term ‘nabob’ is an Anglicized transliteration of the word nawab, which meant

‘deputy,’ and was the title of aristocratic regional governors in the Mughal Empire, with

associated responsibilities.74 Nawabs were able to amass local power throughout the late

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the Mughal Empire gradually became more

decentralized. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the term ‘nabob’ underwent a

distinctive shift. In the first half of the century, nabob continued to be a transliteration of the

73Hampshire Advertiser & Salisbury Guardian, August 18, 1838, Issue 787.
74E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj c. 1800-1947 (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2001), p. 13.
 29

Indian title and solely referred to Indians with regional power. However, in the second half of the

eighteenth century, the term ‘nabob’ became associated with the British in India and acquired

different connotations.75 ‘Nabob’ began to be used during this period by domestic Britain to refer

to their fellow countrymen in the subcontinent and critique their lifestyles, political power, and

wealth.76 The growing pejorative nature of the term represents heightened levels of anxiety and

criticism of British intervention, trade, and governance in India. ‘Nabob’ particularly illustrated

domestic Britain’s fears of the increasing Orientalization of British subjects in India.

The historiography of nabobs illustrates significant shifts in the scholarship of British

imperialism from the twentieth to the early twenty-first centuries. The works of early twentieth-

century scholars, such as Percival Spear and Dennis Kincaid, are some of the first academic texts

on British nabobs in the 1700s. These scholars adhere to the beliefs of eighteenth-century critics

that viewed nabobs as opulent, fundamentally altered by their time in India, and willing to use

their new-found wealth to enter into and destabilize the political system of England.77 The

specific historical context must be considered in these works, as these scholars wrote on British

imperialism in the subcontinent prior to India’s independence in 1947. This context contoured

the ways in which these scholars analyze nabobs, and their concurrence with eighteenth-century

critics, to minimize the period of Company-led British imperialism and focus on the more duty-

centred periods of colonialism that ensued in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

under the British Crown.

In contrast, more recent scholarship on this topic has significantly altered discourses on

nabobs. Philip Lawson and Jim Phillips represent a shift in the scholarly narrative as they focus

75 Tillman W. Nechtman, Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), p. 11.
76 Ibid.
77 See Percival Spear, The Nabobs: A Study in the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth Century India (Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1932) and Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India, 1608-1937 (New York: Kinnikat
Press, 1938).
 30

on the broader societal atmosphere that produced animosity towards nabobs in the late eighteenth

century.78 Tillman W. Nechtman and E. M. Collingham also explore the wider social, political,

and economic factors that led to the characterization and stereotypical representation of nabobs

in the late eighteenth century.79 This scholarship allows for a more nuanced understanding of

nabobs and the impact they had on British society, as well as the influence that British society

had on them and the governing of India. Specifically, Nechtman examines the material culture

that was produced by nabobs returning to Britain, and how this fomented popular public hostility

towards nabobs as they were seen to be the harbingers of a more globalized and imperial sense of

Britishness, which was viewed as threatening traditional understandings of British identity in this

period.80 Collingham focuses on the body, and the appropriate codes of behaviour embedded into

them, of the nabob and the sahib81 to demonstrate the changing understanding of Britain’s goals

and duties within the Indian subcontinent.82 Previously, British scholarship understood Indian

history in an Orientalist manner that represented Islamic rulers of India, particularly the Mughal

Empire, as creating a period of decline and stagnation in Indian civilizations.83 In contrast, recent

78 See Philip Lawson and Jim Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti’: Perceptions of Nabobs in Mid-Eighteenth Century
Britain,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 16, no. 3 (1984): pp. 225-241, which offers an
in-depth analysis on the political atmosphere in England during the mid-eighteenth century, as well as the influence
of returned Anglo-Indians on the Parliament.
79 See Nechtman, Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Collingham, Imperial Bodies, for

their detailed works on the representation of nabobs.

80 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 16. Nechtman offers an influential analysis on the impact that the material culture of India,

which was brought to Britain through the nabobs, had on public perceptions of the East India Company and Britain’s
imperial project in India.
81 The term sahib, in recent scholarship and throughout this work, denotes the utilitarian and sober British official

that ruled India in the nineteenth century, one that did not become Orientalized but rather maintained British values,
norms, and lifestyles while in the subcontinent. See Collingham, Imperial Bodies, for an explicit examination of the
sahib.
82 See Collingham, Imperial Bodies, for an analysis of the British body in India during the nineteenth century, in

relation to both the nabob and the sahib, as well as the importance of the body as an historical source.
83 Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2006), p. 2. This understanding was often described as the British Orientalist triptych of
periodization for Indian history, which was popular during the colonial period and the early twentieth century. The
first stage of Indian history was seen as the ancient and great Hindu civilizations, often associated with purity and a
lack of corruption. The second was a period of despotism, corruption, stagnation, and decline due to the Islamic
rulers of the Mughal Empire. Lastly, the period of British rule with enlightened leadership and progress, as well as a
return to the glorious, ahistorical, ancient past. This triptych worked to justify British imperialism in the
subcontinent, as well as ideas of British superiority over India and Islamic Indian rulers.
 31

scholarship challenges the assumption of a stagnating Mughal Empire and instead argues that it

was the culmination of long-term transitions in trade, economics, culture, politics, and society

that enabled the British to gain the necessary resources to intervene and acquire territory in the

subcontinent.84 This scholarship works to demonstrate that criticism of British nabobs was a

reaction to the larger social fears and questions that metropolitan Britain was facing as an

increasingly imperial and world power over the course of the eighteenth century.

Political and Social Power in Eighteenth-Century Empire

British nabobs were produced within a specific socio-economic and political context in

British society in both the metropole and the colony. In the early eighteenth century, the Mughal

Empire was wealthy, powerful, and controlled a substantial population. The administration was

divided into regional areas of power through zamindars, local leaders; princely rulers; and

nawabs. As Mughal centralized power declined throughout the eighteenth century, these regional

leaders enhanced their local power and became increasingly autonomous.85 Though substantial

political changes occurred during this period, other aspects of Indian society, such as its culture,

arts, and economics, continued on similar trajectories in relation to larger global shifts. In

Britain, the East India Company was established in 1600 and given a monopoly on the South

Asian spice trade. Marshall argues that the British were militarily repulsed from gaining

substantial territory in India until the 1740s, which had a direct impact on the development of the

British nabob during the first half of the eighteenth century.86 By the mid-eighteenth century, the

Mughal Empire was too politically and militarily decentralized to produce a united front against

the British. Therefore, the British were increasingly able to utilize political situations and the

84 Ibid., p. 3.
85 P. J. Marshall, The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003), p. 4.
86 P. J. Marshall, “British Expansion in India in the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Revision,” History 60, no. 198

(1975): p. 30.
 32

decline of Mughal power to enhance their trading opportunities, commercial enterprises, and

territorial acquisitions through their intervention in Indian politics. For example, the instability of

the Mughal Empire meant that between 1707 and 1750 the East India Company was able to

negotiate directly with provincial leaders in Bengal, Awadh, Arcot, and Hyderabad.87 This

allowed the British to insinuate themselves as another political actor into the rapidly shifting

political climate of India. Shifting political power in the subcontinent influenced the British

imperial project and the ways in which they manifested their power, as well as their

representations of courtesans and the development of the British nabob.

There was also the widespread belief in Britain that the Mughal rulers of India in the

eighteenth century were violent, anarchic, and despotic, which was based on British Oriental

ideas concerning the Mughals as the reason Indian civilization had ‘stagnated.’88 This correlated

with British attitudes propagated throughout the Enlightenment and culminated in their stadial

theory of the world, which created a sense of European superiority and ordered different cultures

in the world into a hierarchy based on European standards and ideals.89 The perceived despotism

of the Mughal Empire and the belief in British superiority propelled British political and

economic interests in India, as well as justified their emerging colonial mentality. The replication

of Mughal or Orientalized lifestyles in the form of the nabob was seen as requisite to the

representations of power in India in the eighteenth century. At the same time, as the British

gained power in India, nabob lifestyle was not seen as contradictory to British goals in India of

more ‘enlightened’ rule.

In 1774, the Asiatic Society of Bengal was founded in Calcutta under the direction of

Warren Hastings (1732-1818), the first Governor-General of Bengal. The British Orientalist

87 Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2006), p. 5.
88 Marshall, The Eighteenth Century in Indian History, p. 21.
89 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 25.
 33

project, commissioned by Hastings, aimed to understand, document, and analyze Indian

civilization in the interest of both knowledge and rule. The works of leading British scholars and

Company civil servants such as William Jones (1746-1794), Charles Wilkins (1749-1836), H. T.

Colebrooke (1765-1837), and others opened the Western study and representation of India; and

is the basis of modern Indology. At the same time, in reality, British cultural perceptions

generalized the way Indian society operated.90 British understandings of India could not be

separated from British views and self-representations of Europe’s evolution away from, and

superior to, India and the East. Orientalist scholarship did not judge India on its own terms,

rather it used Enlightenment modes of knowledge and British views of the East that easily

converted to justify British superiority and colonial expansion.91 These Orientalist theories and

scholars were simultaneously fascinated by Indian culture and convinced of European

superiority. This mentality worked to justify the rising political power of the British in parts of

the subcontinent. In addition, this combination of scholarship and political power was influential

in developing the openness to, and interest in, high-caste Indian lifestyles that were integral to

the shaping of the eighteenth-century British nabob. Furthermore, the Orientalist project was also

undertaken with a purpose to better govern India. The ‘grant of the diwani’ by the Mughal

emperor Shah Alam II (1728-1806) in 1765 made the Company the government of Bengal; as

Mughal power recognized the new political reality. Therefore, Hastings’ initiation of the

Orientalist project was consistent with interests of rule.

The Nabob

The British nabob began to appear in India in close relation to colonial acquisitions in the

subcontinent. The majority of nabobs came from Britain’s middle-class, who gained significant

90 Metcalf and Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India, p. 59.

91 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 35.
 34

wealth in India, beyond what their means would have been in Britain.92 However, the stereotype

that every white man who entered India became wealthy beyond measure was untrue as only a

few British men were able to fully achieve a nabob lifestyle. This was because the majority of

British men in the subcontinent made little money as they were working-class soldiers and

traders, or they died due to the high mortality rates of tropical diseases that were common

amongst British persons in India.93 In many ways, stereotypical nabobs were few, far between

and, subsequently, quite famous, such as Warren Hastings, Robert Clive (1725-1774), and Sir

David Ochterlony (1758-1825). Their lifestyle in India was a distinct hybridization of Western

and Eastern modes of living. Thomas Medwin (1788-1869) described nabobs as “neither English

nor Indian, Christian nor Hindu,” due to their amalgamated lifestyles.94 This belief of a more

culturally fluid person in the body of the nabob is reflected in recent scholarship as well, as E. M.

Collingham also viewed the nabobs as being neither British nor Indian, but a combination of the

two cultures.95

Nabobs typically adopted aspects of Indian culture and traditions that they found

agreeable and legitimized their power within the subcontinent. Thomas Williamson (c. 1758-

1817) believed that the British “must coincide with the habits of the natives to a certain extent, if

we mean to retain health, or to acquire comfort.”96 Williamson illustrates the British tradition of

adopting, what they saw as, Indian customs that correlated with their Orientalist view of India

and modes of living and rulership. This included smoking the huqqa, wearing Indian-style

clothing, attending nautch performances, and keeping a zenana, which the British associated

92 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’ p. 231; P. J. Marshall, “British Society in India under the East

India Company,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (1997): p. 106.

93 Ibid., p. 226.
94 Thomas Medwin, The Angler of Wales: or, Days and Nights of a Sportsman (London: Richard Bentley, 1834), p.

5.
95 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 13.
96 Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum; or complete guide to gentlemen intended for the civil, military

or, naval service of the East India Company vol. II (London: Black, Parry, and Kingsbury, 1810), p. 2.
 35

with Indian lifestyles.97 The lifestyle of the nabob is observable in paintings such as one likely

depicting William Fullerton (Figure 2.1). The image shows Fullerton (d. 1805) seated on a rich

carpet, surrounded by his Indian servants, smoking a huqqa, with a box of betel nut by his side.

Figure 2.1: Possibly William Fullerton seated, surrounded by his Indian servants, smoking a huqqa, c. 1760-1764.

Though still wearing British clothing, this image of Fullerton illustrates the ability of British

officials to adopt, what they considered, an Indian lifestyle. The luxury-loving, decadent, and

distinctly Orientalized British man demonstrates a stereotypical representation of the British in

the subcontinent, as well as the ways in which India was seen to influence the lifestyles of

imperialists in the eighteenth century. The figure of Fullerton and other nabobs illustrates the

ways in which nabobs appropriated aspects of Indian culture to legitimize their political authority

97 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 36.

 36

in the areas of India under British control during this period. In addition, the nabob lifestyle was

a British stereotype of aspects of Indian lifestyle that the British facilitated and adopted as it

magnified the pleasures and freedoms of their place in India, which was not representative of the

realities of Indian lifestyles. The portrait of John Foote (1718-1768) depicts him in ‘Orientalized’

dress that was a combination of British views on Turkish and Mughal clothing, which would not

have been worn by Indian rulers (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2: Captain John Foote in ‘Oriental’ dress, 1761.

This image conveys Orientalist stereotypes around Indian clothing and rulership that the British

adopted based on their perceptions of Indian lifestyles. The portrait illustrated the stereotypical

nabob lifestyle of excess, pleasures, and freedoms in India, as well as the British fascination with

their erotic and exotic image of the East.

The lifestyle of the British nabob was represented as being luxurious. While seen as

opulent by much of metropolitan Britain, this lifestyle of nabobism was viewed by the East India

Company as coinciding with their Orientalist views on how to best rule in India. The British
 37

adopted cultural aspects of India that they believed would help legitimize their rule of the

subcontinent in the eyes of the Indian populace. Nabob lifestyles also correlated with the British

view of themselves in the eighteenth century as the new Indian nobility.98 Furthermore, the

assumption of numerous Indian cultural traditions, whether appropriately or properly adopted,

demonstrates the various ways in which the British showcased their authority in the

subcontinent. This was especially important for the British in the eighteenth century as their rule

over India was neither complete nor guaranteed during this period.99 The assumption of various

Indian cultural aspects and traditions such as clothing, huqqa smoking, and attending traditional

entertainments such as the nautch, were ways of demonstrating power and legitimate rule

through, what the British perceived to be, an Indian context. However, this context was heavily

influenced by British Orientalists’ understandings of India and its socio-cultural traditions,

clothing, history, and religions. In sum, the political and social context of limited military and

political authority in which the British found themselves during the majority of the eighteenth

century, required and enabled the development of the nabob.

Nabobs, Bibis, and Nautch-Girls

Nabobs were important figures of cultural contact, and their lifestyles and experiences

influenced the ways in which the British interacted with, and related to, Indians. The changing

perceptions of nabobs throughout the eighteenth century were closely interrelated to British

understandings of gender, Indian women, and nautch performances. Nabobs heavily influenced

the British perceptions of nautch-girls, and Indian women more broadly. The alterations in

British acceptance of nabobs was integrally related to changing British constructions of gender

and appropriate forms of femininity. This chapter explores the ways in which nabob masculinity

98 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 17.

99 Ibid., p. 8.
 38

and nabobs themselves interacted with Indian women, with a particular focus on nautch-girls and

the impacts this had on gender constructions in India and Britain.

Orientalist scholarship and travel narratives created an enduring understanding of the

East as the Other in the eighteenth century. In documenting and producing scholarship about the

East, the British, and the West more broadly, came to shape a representation of itself as the

‘civilized’ norm.100 One of the most significant themes the West constructed was that the East

was a place of lascivious sensuality.101 This was also understood in relation to constructions of

Indians’ ethnic and cultural Otherness as, according to Ann Stoler, “sexuality is the most salient

marker of Otherness and therefore figures in any racist ideology.”102 The sexual and ethnic

Othering of Indians gave the British “their greatest justification” for the colonization of the

subcontinent, as the superiority of imperialists and colonial rule was expressed in moralizing

language surrounding Indian customs, particularly those associated with women.103 Cultural

phenomena such as female child marriage and polygamy appeared to prove to the British that

Indians were ‘naturally’ more lascivious than themselves.104 Moreover, this was proven by the

emerging practice of pseudo-scientific climatic racism in the eighteenth century. For example,

John Millar (1735-1801) argued that,

In warm countries, the earth is often extremely fertile, and with little culture is capable of
producing whatever is necessary for subsistence…The inhabitants, therefore, of such
countries, while they enjoy a degree of affluence…are seldom disposed to any laborious
exertion, and thus, acquiring habits of indolence, become addicted to sensual pleasure.105

100 Rana Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of the Orient (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986), p. 10.
101 Ibid., p. 6. The other major theme Orientalist scholars produced about the East was India as a region
characterized by inherent violence and, therefore, incapable of self-governance. However, in respect to physical
limitations, this thesis will not explore the numerous applications of this construction in the imperial project.
102 Ann Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia,” in Feminism

and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996): p. 215, emphasis in original.
103 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 66.
104 Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class Under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics,

1793-1905 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980), p. 5.

105 John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks or, an Inquiry into the Circumstances which give rise to

influence and authority, in the different members of society (London: J. Murray, 1773), pp. 7-8, emphasis added.
 39

This illustrates that the British constructed the East as inherently more sensual than the West

through understandings of climate-based racism. Furthermore, Orientalist scholarship produced a

stereotypical and enduring image of Indian women as inherently promiscuous and hyper-sexual,

which in turn constructed British women as non-sexual, domestic, and maternal figures.106 Adam

Ferguson (1723-1816) contended that “the burning ardours, and the torturing jealousies of the

seraglio and the haram, which have reigned so long in Asia” were not present in Western Europe,

as “with an abatement of heat in the climate…it is changed into a spirit of gallantry.”107 These

constructions of the East as a place of heightened sexuality in comparison with Europe were used

by the British to justify colonial expansion in the subcontinent, as well as the sexual exploitation

of Indian women as mistresses, courtesans, and sex-workers. British constructions of Indian

women as inherently promiscuous and possessing “unlimited sensuality” justified to them this

exploitation as simply ‘natural’ and, therefore, not requiring validation.108 This demonstrates the

intersecting oppression of ethnicity and gender constructions that repressed Indian women within

the colonial matrix.

British society in India shaped the nabob stereotype and lifestyle in the eighteenth

century. At this time the British community in India was predominantly made up of young men,

as there were few children, women, or people over the age of fifty.109 The distinctive lack of

white, Protestant British women meant that many of these men and nabobs either married or

cohabitated with Indian women, known as the bibi, some of whom would then integrate British

men, both nabobs and soldiers, into their extended family.110 This led to the belief that British

men were incorporated into Indian society and created genuine bonds between themselves and

106 Felicity A. Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 3.
107 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (London: T. Cadell, 1793), p. 193.
108 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of the Orient, p. 51; Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 207.
109 Marshall, “British Society in India under the East India Company,” p. 90.
110 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 33.
 40

Indians, though these were unable to transcend ethnic boundaries, Ronald Hyam suggests that

these relationships created “a healthy” appreciation and affection across ethnic and cultural

divisions.111 However, this belief often led scholars to represent eighteenth-century colonial

India as a period of less cultural and ethnic prejudice that is heavily contested by other scholars.

Durba Ghosh argues inter-ethnic conjugal relationships were influenced by unequal and

intersecting power structures of class, ethnicity, and gender, which meant that these relationships

were more “uneven and contested” than represented by previous scholarship.112

Bibis were a significant aspect of nabob lifestyle in India during the eighteenth century.

The British often represented Indian women as inherently and excessively sexual, as well as

available for their sexual consumption.113 This was related to British fantasies around their

sexual liberty in India as well as Orientalist views of Indian women as erotic and exotic beings,

which was fully encapsulated in the bibi and British understandings of her sexual availability.

The British understood the bibi in a similar manner to other Orientalized aspects of Indian

lifestyle, such as the nautch or huqqa smoking, as aspects of Indian lifestyle that harmonized

with their view of themselves as rulers and fulfilled their fantasies of the East, which were

fundamentally tied to the production of the nabob lifestyle in the eighteenth century. In the

eighteenth century it was the socially acceptable norm for elite British men to keep Indian

mistresses.114 British men, though often disparaging of elite Indian men for having multiple

wives and zenanas, they themselves frequently had “kept several women in a harem-like

arrangement.”115 This demonstrates that the British adopted the nabob lifestyle in order to satisfy

111 Ronald Hyam, “Empire and Sexual Opportunity,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 14, no. 2

(1986): p. 396.
112 Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 38.
113 Nussbaum, Torrid Zones, p. 170.
114 Sumanta Banerjee, Under the Raj: Prostitution in Colonial Bengal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), p.

42.
115 Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 3.
 41

their own fantasies of the subcontinent, which were produced through Orientalist narratives and

stereotypes about India. The unfinished family portrait of William Palmer (1740-1816) illustrates

the sexual intimacy and cohabitation between British men and Indian women (Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3: Major William Palmer with his second wife, the Mughal princess Bibi Faiz Bakhsh, 1785.

This image illustrates the imperial culture and nabob lifestyle of the eighteenth century that

constructed an Orientalized view of Indian women as erotic and sexually available for British

men. Furthermore, it demonstrates that British men were able to have multiple wives in India,

which enabled them to take on aspects of Indian lifestyle that the British exaggerated and

Orientalized to support their fantasies about India. Though popular throughout the eighteenth

century, by the 1790s relationships between Indian women and British men would begin to cause

social anxiety around ideals of ethnic purity and the political stability of the imperial project.

The construction of Eastern women as inherently promiscuous and sensual was

predominantly created through British men’s interaction with bibis and courtesans, as these were

the main cohort of Indian women accessible to the British. Throughout the colonial period, the

British did not comprehend the various levels of courtesanship within Indian society. The

numerous social distinctions from the low-caste randi to the highly accomplished tawa’if and
 42

ganika were subsumed under the category of nautch-girls, or dancing-girls.116 The term ‘nautch’

was an Anglicized version of multiple Indian vernacular words for ‘dance,’ which all derived

from the Sanskrit root of nāc.117 Before the large-scale arrival of white British women, or

memsahibs, in the subcontinent, courtesans were the first Indian women to interact “on an erotic

plane” with British colonizers, and they formed an integral part of the cross-cultural social life of

British nabobs in India during the eighteenth century.118 Courtesan performances, nautches, were

a culturally prestigious style of entertainment in the subcontinent that were popular during

official interactions and social events between British colonial officials and wealthy Indians.

This was illustrated by Jemima Kindersley (1741-1809) who wrote, “when a black man has a

mind to compliment a European, he treats him to a notch.”119 Nautch performances became an

important place of cultural interaction between the British and Indians in the early colonial

period, constituting an arena of cultural interaction.

Many male British officials enjoyed nautches, as the British represented the

performances and performers as the epitome of Eastern decadence, luxury, and sexual excess.

Indian courtesans became fixed in British male fantasies and were seen as signifying Eastern

debauchery and institutionalized sensuality.120 An example of this is the painting of a dancing-

girl by British artist Tilly Kettle (1735-1786) (Figure 2.4). The painting depicts a nautch-girl

ornately dressed, with extensive jewellery, holding a huqqa.

116 Indrani Sen, Women and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India (1858-1900) (New Delhi:

Orient Longman, 2002), p. 45.

117 Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of the Devadasis of Puri (Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1985), p. 6. There is significant scholarly disparity surrounding the root of the word ‘nautch.’
Though all scholars agree that it is an Anglicized word, its root and derivative are debated. See Pran Nevile, The
Nautch Girls of the Raj (New York: Penguin, 2009), p. 23 which argues that ‘nautch’ is an Anglicized form of the
Urdu word ‘nach’ that was derived from the Sanskrit word ‘nritya’ which meant ‘dance.’ In essence, the origin of
the word is debated, however, it appears to derive from Sanskrit roots and denotes a dance or performance.
118 Sen, Women and Empire, p. 45.
119 Jemima Kindersley, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies

(London: J. Nourse, 1777), p. 230. In some early writings from European travelers, nautch was written as notch.
120 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” pp. 71-72.
 43

Figure 2.4: A Dancing-Girl with a Huqqa, 1772.

Portraits such as this were popular at the time and exhibited the decadence, wealth, and exotic

imagery that surrounded courtesans in the British perspective. According to Ghosh, Kettle’s

painting illustrated the unknown Indian woman as “one of several excesses of the orient.”121 This

image of the nautch and nautch-girls would be perpetuated by British narratives into the

nineteenth century and become symbolic of the region. Anne Elwood (1796-1873), during her

travels in India in the late 1820s, observed a nautch performance and described it as “so perfectly

new and so completely Oriental, that I was much delighted.”122 Elwood’s description of a nautch

121Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 65.

122Anne Katherine Elwood, Narrative of a Journey Overland from England, by the Continent of Europe, Egypt, and
the Red Sea, to India including a residence there, and voyage home, in the years 1825, 26, 27, 28 vol. II (London:
H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830), p. 81
 44

as “so completely Oriental” demonstrates how the British had come to represent this form of

cultural performance as the epitome of the exotic and erotic East.

In addition to being symbolic of the East, nautch performances also represented the

excessive and luxurious nabob lifestyle and the Orientalized Company servant. This is exhibited

in the painting of Sir David Ochterlony, the first British resident in Delhi, which depicts him in

Indian-style clothing, smoking a huqqa, and watching a nautch performance in his Delhi home

(Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5: Sir David Ochterlony in Indian dress, smoking a huqqa, and watching a nautch in his house in Delhi,
1820.

Figures such as Ochterlony illustrate the nabobism and Orientalized lifestyles of many early

colonial officials. Ochterlony, who lived a lavish nabob lifestyle in Delhi, often held nautch

parties for his European guests.123 Many rich British officials, as they increasingly emulated the

luxurious lifestyles of Indian elites, maintained their own troops of nautch-girls in order to

123 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 37.

 45

entertain their guests.124 The image of nabobs enjoying and experiencing nautches was integrally

related to Orientalist understandings of Indian women as being sexually available to conquering

and colonizing British forces. Subsequently, it was not unusual for a British nabob, who had his

own troop of nautch-girls, to select one as his sexual partner as a “temporary bibi on a salary.”125

This demonstrates that nautch-girls, and the constructions that surrounded them as sexualized

and racialized Others, played an important role in the representation of British nabobs in

eighteenth-century colonial India.

Furthermore, the British outlook on India and nautch-girls was influenced by

Enlightenment theories and the East India Company’s policy of non-interference in Indian

culture and religious traditions.126 The lack of traditional British entertainment, such as balls, in

India during the early colonial period, particularly before the nineteenth century, Company

officials eagerly took part in Indian forms of entertainment, including the nautch.127 The British

continued to patronize nautch performances, which caused many courtesans to move to British

settlements and stations. Nautch-girls were also employed by the British army as entertainment

for the soldiers.128 The British viewed Indian forms of entertainment, such as the nautch, in an

Orientalist manner, similar to their perceptions of Indian lifestyle. The excess of the British

nabob lifestyle was justified through Orientalist representations of India. Nautch performances

were also politically significant for British officials to attend, as they demonstrated both the

adoption of cultural aspects the British associated with Indian forms and symbols of political

authority, as well as their increasing power within the subcontinent as nautch-girls began to enter

124 Ibid., p. 27.

125 Ibid., p. 105.
126 Indrani Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings: Colonial Narratives on Indian Women (London: Orient Longman, 2008), p.

xiv.
127 Vijay Prakash Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl: The Transition of the Lucknow Courtesan,” South Asian

Review 35, no. 2 (2014): p. 181.

128 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 27.
 46

their social circles. By assuming an Orientalized, or nabob, lifestyle, the British believed they

were solidifying and validating their rulership. In addition, the British were most willing to adopt

Indian practices, such as the nautch, that harmonized with their idea of themselves as Indian

rulers.129 The British illustrated their growing political presence in the subcontinent through

attending elite Indians’ nautch performances and having their own for wealthy Indians or other

Company members. This was especially significant during the first half of the eighteenth

century, as the British had limited territorial acquisitions and military presence in India.

Subsequently, adopting cultural aspects of the region was necessary in order to gain political

power and economic trade agreements. Consequently, the British adopted nautch performances,

nautch-girls, and bibis as forms of status symbols in the eighteenth century. The British did not

solely assume an Orientalized lifestyle to legitimate their way of governing India. The nabob

lifestyle was also adopted by the British for their own pleasures and individual purposes of

fulfilling their fantasies around the wealth and luxury of the East and the sexual availability of

the bibi and nautch-girl. These British constructions of Indian women and Indian forms of

entertainment represented British Orientalist understandings of India and Indian lifestyles, which

they adopted for their own pleasure in relation to British fantasies of the East and to justify the

imperial project in the subcontinent.

The East India Company encouraged early colonial officials to adopt aspects of Indian

lifestyles and partake in sexual relationships with Eastern women. The British believed sex with

Indian women would help them acclimatize to the colonies and protect them from the illnesses

that, supposedly, accompanied male abstinence.130 In addition, this occurred simultaneously to

129Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 43.

130Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power,” p. 219, during the eighteenth century the scientific
understanding of sex was that men needed regular, although not excessive, sexual release or they would suffer
effeminacy, lethargy, and illness.
 47

the celebration of white, male heteronormative sexuality and sexual liberty in Britain.131 This

encouraged the sexual excesses of the British in India based on their Orientalist views of Indian

women as inherently sexual beings who were available for British sexual consumption. During

this period the British were aware that courtesans’ lives were associated with sex-work. This was

illustrated by the French Catholic missionary, Abbé Jean-Antoine Dubois, who observed

devadasis in South India and remarked “the dancing girls, who call themselves Deva-dasi,

servant or slaves of the gods; but they are known to the public by the coarser name of

strumpets.”132 Though courtesans engaged in a form of sex-work, it was one that involved

extensive cultural significance and intercourse was not the dominant feature of their profession.

For the British, the nautch and nautch-girls were the perfect combination of Indian culture,

‘Oriental’ allure, and sexual availability, therefore, nautches became a common and popular

form of entertainment for the British in the eighteenth century. The British predominantly

understood nautches as an entertainment style, for they did not fully conceptualize the cultural

significance and power that courtesans held in Indian society. The British took their own

understanding of sex-work, as being the profession of ‘fallen’ women from the lower classes, as

was the stereotype and dominant trend in Britain at the time, and ascribed this to nautch-girls.133

This negated the cultural significance and agency of many courtesans because they were not

viewed as obtaining political, financial or social influence in their own right as keepers and

dispensers of courtly culture. In contrast to their previous roles, the British understood courtesans

131 Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (London: Penguin, 2013), p.
343.
132 Abbé Jean-Antoine Dubois, Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India; and

their Institutions, Religious and Civil (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817), p. 401, emphasis
in original
133 Hyam, “Empire and Sexual Opportunity,” p. 372. Hyam’s theoretical work in this article is often disparaged by

other scholars, particularly feminists. See Mark T. Berger, “Imperialism and Sexual Exploitation: A Response to
Ronald Hyam’s ‘Empire and Sexual Opportunity’” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 17, no. 1
(1988): pp. 83-89 for one of the more famous responses to Hyam.
 48

as merely entertainers, performers, or sex-workers.134 Courtesans were culturally significant to

the British as symbols of British wealth and political authority in the subcontinent. Therefore,

though the British saw nautch-girls as ‘prostitutes’ and immoral, this imagery was of little

significance during the eighteenth century. The British were more focused on solidifying their

political position within India and attending or putting on nautch performances was an important

aspect of styling themselves as the next rulers of India. The British validated their political

authority by taking on the trappings of ‘Oriental excess’ and luxury through nautch

performances, as well as other aspects of nabob culture, due in large part to the Orientalist views

of India that were dominant at the time.

The representation of nabobs in the eighteenth century was integrally linked to the British

construction of nautch-girls. The British symbolized courtesans as the epitome of sexual

availability, ‘Oriental’ decadence, allure, and the exotic and erotic nature of India they

constructed through Orientalist scholarship and climatic racism. Therefore, the figure of the

nabob, as the Orientalized British man who partook in Indian forms of entertainment and culture,

melded well with this understanding of nautch-girls. These representations were produced

simultaneously and were dependent on each other. The courtesan could not be sexually available

and symbolize ‘Oriental’ decadence without the British nabob to consume them sexually and

experience their exotic entertainment and wealth. Therefore, British consumption of Indian

entertainment, women, and wealth was fundamental to their understanding of legitimizing their

colonial rule and representation as nabobs.

In conclusion, the political, economic, and social context of the eighteenth century was

seminal in shaping the development of the British nabob in India. The political decentralization

of the Mughal Empire, the rise of regional powers, and the increase in resources and military

134 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 179.

 49

power of the British enabled their territorial acquisition of India. These territorial acquisitions

were quite small until the 1740s, therefore, nabobs had to integrate more readily into Indian

society as they did not have the territorial, military, or political power to maintain or impose their

own lifestyle onto Indian society. This particular power situation directly influenced the

development of the British nabob during the eighteenth century. In addition, British beliefs of

Western superiority, Enlightenment ideals of order and classification, and Orientalist scholarship

concerning the stagnation of the Mughal Empire produced a perceived need for British colonial

rule in the subcontinent. Orientalist interest in Indian traditions, religions, and customs interacted

with the ability for some men to become incredibly wealthy in India, as well as the integration of

these men into Indian culture and families through their bibis, to create the nabob. Furthermore,

Orientalist conceptualizations of Eastern women as inherently promiscuous and, therefore,

sexually available for British consumption produced significant and enduring images of the East

as penetrable and open to colonization. British representations of courtesans played a significant

role in their adoption of Orientalized Indian cultural traditions and the validation of British

political power throughout the eighteenth century. Though politically important in the first half

of the eighteenth century, the British nabob, and their love of the nautch, did not disappear in the

latter portion of the century. Instead, as the political situation shifted, British nabobs came under

increasing pressure to maintain a solely and completely British mentality and lifestyle in India.

The nabob was an ideal British ruler of India for most of the eighteenth century. However, by the

mid-eighteenth century the governing tactics of the East India Company and the lavish lifestyles

of the nabobs began to face increasing criticism from metropolitan Britain.

 50

Chapter 3
The Shift away from the Nabob, c. 1757-1790

The Gentlemen who have returned from India in some Years past, have acquired such an
Independence from their wealth, and such Strength from their Numbers and Connection with
each other, that they were become exceedingly formidable, and might perhaps have overturned
the System of the House. This makes it absolutely necessary to SQUEESE them.135

The above quotation from the Public Advertiser newspaper illustrates the criticism

British nabobs underwent from elites in metropolitan Britain in the second half of the eighteenth

century. The British nabob was the dominant figure in the political landscape of colonial India

and continued to patronize nautch performances throughout this period. The late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries were a period of considerable change in British attitudes and

understandings about India, the nabob, and the courtesan. Concerns about the political power of

the East India Company and its influence on British domestic culture and values, alongside a

new morality at home, would affect the perception of the nabob and courtesan. This chapter

examines the historical situation of the late eighteenth century and the effects of the growing

power of the East India Company on British social outlooks and attitudes to India. It examines

the changing British perception of the nabob, the end of Orientalism as a lifestyle in India, and

the shifting perception and growing negative image of the courtesan that changing British social

attitudes engendered.

Governing India as a Trading Company: The East India Company and Changes in
Political and Territorial Power in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

The changing political power of the East India Company partially explains the changing

British views on the nabob. The Company’s power caused considerable anxiety in British

political and social circles due to fears of the potential corruption and ‘degeneration’ of British

social values. This anxiety was also apparent in changing perceptions of the nabob as British

135 Public Advertiser, May 26, 1773.

 51

domestic society came to define the nabob as representing Eastern effeminacy, luxury, and

corruption. Over the course of the second half of the eighteenth century, metropolitan Britain’s

criticism of nabobs led to changes in how the British constructed ideas of difference and

governance in India, as well as the eventual diminishment of anxieties concerning the power of

the nabob and the Company. These changes are explored through the growing fears of

decadence, the potential for political corruption, and changes to the governance structures and

goals of the East India Company.

There has been substantial scholarly debate surrounding this period of study. Percival

Spear argues that the eighteenth century was a period of intense social change, while the early

1800s was a period of continuity.136 More recent scholarship, including Bernard S. Cohn and P.

J. Marshall, challenges these beliefs and argues that the 1700s was a period of continuity, while

the early nineteenth century was a time of more drastic change.137 Though scholars such as Cohn

and Marshall argue that the eighteenth century was a period of continuity, this thesis will

demonstrate that it was also a time of change up to the early nineteenth century. Felicity A.

Nussbaum argues that the late eighteenth century was an interim period in which the British

shifted from their non-interventionist policy that dominated the first half of the century to

increasing political and social domination of India, which would become the standard practice of

the East India Company in the early nineteenth century.138 Though British nabobs continued to

dominate colonial India during the second half of the eighteenth century, this period significantly

136 Percival Spear, The Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth Century India (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1998), p. 23. This text was originally published in 1932.
137 See Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996),

and P. J. Marshall, The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Revolution or Evolution? (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003). These scholars are often associated with the Cambridge School of Thought on British imperialism in
India, which is often critiqued for being apologists of empire that removes the agency and blame for imperialism
from the British and places it more on Indians.
138 Felicity A. Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives

(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 15.

 52

altered modes of behaviour and understandings of Britishness, which became solidified in the

early nineteenth century.

The mid-eighteenth century was a period of British political and territorial expansion in

India. This was part of a larger shift in imperial attitudes and the type of empire produced during

the mid-eighteenth century. Nussbaum refers to this phenomenon as the move from the first type

of British Empire, to the second.139 The first British Empire was focused on its colonies in North

and Central America, which were based on imperial forms of mercantilism and slavery.140

Consequently, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the East India Company was

predominantly a sea-based empire and “was established solely with a view to trade,” according

to John Nicholls.141 In contrast, the second British Empire, which began to emerge in the latter

half of the eighteenth century, was based on the commercial exploitation of Asia and Africa.142

As Edmund Burke (1729-1797) noted on February 15, 1788, “the constitution of the Company

began in commerce and ended in Empire.”143 This illustrates the predominant popular view at the

time, that the British Empire in India and other colonies was altering rapidly. The elites of

domestic Britain observed this alteration with trepidation in relation to their political, economic,

and social stability and superiority in their new empire.

In addition, the second half of the eighteenth century was a period of questioning the

goals and purpose of the imperial project, which took place within the broader context of the

British Empire. The American Revolution forced Britain to question its empire and led to a

schism in political consensus and attitudes towards imperial expansion, particularly in relation to

139 Ibid., p. 16.

140 Ibid.
141 John Nicholls, Recollections and Reflections, Personal and Political, as connected with Public Affairs during the

Reign of George III (London: James Ridgway, 1820), p. 243.

142 Nussbaum, Torrid Zones, p. 15.
143 Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 6, India: The Launching of the Hastings

Impeachment, 1786-1788, ed. P.J. Marshall (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 283.
 53

the changing nature of empire from simply a trading company to more substantive political

control and colonization of India.144 In addition, this period experienced heightened moral

questioning of slavery and the slave trade in the Caribbean, which furthered the political and

social schism concerning imperial goals and governance structures in the empire.145 These moral

and territorial alterations in the first area of British imperialism fed extensive debate in the

metropole concerning the nature of British imperialism. Burke believed that the Company had

been inadequate rulers of India and that “were we to be driven out of India this day, nothing

would remain, to tell that it had been possessed, during the inglorious period of our dominion, by

any thing better than the ouran-outang or the tiger.”146 Subsequently, the alterations in the

structure and goals of the East India Company, as well as the territorial gains and increasing

political power in the subcontinent, exacerbated these domestic anxieties around the stability and

purpose of the imperial project in India.

The changing geographical and political power in India altered the state of the East India

Company’s role and influence in the subcontinent. The Company progressively encouraged

territorial acquisition and statecraft because trade was no longer its sole prerogative. There was

also a substantial increase in the population of British soldiers in India during this period, which

enabled this territorial conquest.147 Moreover, the Company had produced one of imperialism’s

greatest innovations: the sepoy army. The sepoy was an Indian mercenary soldier trained by the

Company to fight on its behalf. The sepoy would be the forerunner of the British Indian army.

Subsequently, the Company began to become more militarily and politically involved in India in

144 Philip Lawson and Jim Phillips, ‘“Our Execrable Banditti’”: Perceptions of Nabobs in Mid-Eighteenth Century

Britain,” Albion 16 (1984): p. 238.

145 Tillman W. Nechtman, Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2010), p. 29.

146 Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 5, India: Madras and Bengal 1774-1785, ed.

P.J. Marshall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 402.

147 Lionel Caplan, “Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women: Gender Constructs and Contrasts in a Changing

Society,” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 4 (2000): p. 170.

 54

order to protect and expand its existing territories and trading opportunities in relation to

competition in India, as well as with other European powers such as the Dutch, French, and

Portuguese.148 Between 1745 and 1756 the Company would go on to defeat its main European

rivals for dominance of India. In 1757 the British defeated the forces of the nawab of Bengal at

the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to secure its political control of Bengal, which marked the British

conquest of India. The victory led to more widespread military operations in eastern India and

culminated in the East India Company being granted the diwani, or sovereignty of Bengal by the

Mughals in 1765. Thereby the Company became more concerned with governance of its

territory, and the beneficial trading opportunities this entailed.149 This meant the Company began

to adopt more state-like institutions, including collecting taxes, acquiring a standing army, and

administering justice. Therefore, by the late eighteenth century, the East India Company had

raised its own Indian army, amassed a territorial empire, and gained land revenue and the ability

to administer justice from the grant of the diwani.

Nabob Nightmares: The Fear of the ‘Nabob’ in Parliament.

The power of the East India Company created considerable political and social anxieties

in the metropole around the role of Britain in India and the possibility of an extensive empire in

the subcontinent. The figure of the nabob became symbolic of the power and political corruption

of the East India Company. Metropolitan Britain saw rapid empire-building in India as becoming

swiftly out of control.150 Nicholls illustrates the anxieties produced by the changing role of the

East India Company for “this Empire has been acquired by a Company of Merchants; and they

retained the character of exclusive trader, after they had assumed that of sovereign…Sovereign

and trader, are characters incompatible.”151 Nicholls’ disdain of the East India Company’s

148 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 17.

149 Ibid., p. 8.
150 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’” p. 232.
151 Nicholls, Recollections and Reflections, pp. 249-250.
 55

governance demonstrates the wider fears of British society in relation to the political authority of

the Company in India. This illustrates the small and relatively slow changes that occurred during

this period in the Company’s empire, which led to more extensive changes in governance

structures in the next century.

These anxieties around the changing imperial system were worked out most succinctly on

the body and stereotype of the British nabob. During the eighteenth century, as the British

continued to consolidate their political and territorial power, the Orientalized nabob remained a

central figure in validating the British imperial presence in the subcontinent.152 However, the

nabob also came to represent the changing governance structure of the East India Company, and

symbolized the concerns of corruption and decadence of Britain from its Indian Empire.

Therefore, elite domestic Britain saw nabobs as threatening both as individuals and as

representative of the East India Company. Furthermore, as the British consolidated their

territorial and political power during the second half of the eighteenth century, the image of the

nabob became less helpful in validating political power, and instead was understood as

threatening the British position in India.

In addition to the territorial expansion during the mid-eighteenth century, which altered

the governance structure of the Company and enhanced its state-like institutions, the Company

was increasingly seen as mismanaging its governance of India. While individual British men,

often stereotyped as nabobs, continued to make their fortunes in India, the 1750s and 1760s were

a period of decline in the Company’s profits and an increase in its costs.153 The excesses of profit

and wealth made often by tribute, theft, and corruption alarmed domestic Britain and its

perception of the nabob and how the Company operated in India. This was exemplified by Burke

152 E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c. 1800-1947 (Cambridge: Polity Press,

2001), p. 7.
153 Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2006), p. 6.
 56

who stated that “the ruin of [India] has fallen into our hands’ and England has thought proper to

look on unconcerned.”154 Furthermore, after gaining direct political control of Bengal in 1757,

there was a famine from 1769 to 1770 that killed one fifth of the population of Bengal.155 This

exacerbated popular and parliamentary opinion that the Company was mismanaging its

governance of India, a sentiment that only increased in the subsequent decades. In the 1770s the

belief that nabobs were a corrupting influence on Britain and the Company was ruling India in a

despotic manner entered the public and popular imagination in full force.156 Therefore, domestic

Britain viewed the Company’s form of aggressive and militaristic trading and political strategy

as morally wrong and a threat to the stability of the imperial project.

British elites were concerned with what they saw as the increasingly despotic governing

style of the East India Company and its subsequent potential corruption of the metropole and its

constitution. Burke, and other members of Parliament were concerned that they were “not able to

contrive some method of governing India well, which will not of necessity become the means of

governing Great Britain ill.”157 This demonstrates domestic Britain’s concern that the Company’s

style of rule would influence the manner in which Britain itself was governed. Moreover, the

British viewed the changes in the Company as its officials becoming corrupted by India and

‘Indian’ governance styles of despotism and decadence.158 This belief became manifest through

Enlightenment ideals and beliefs of Western superiority, as well as climate-based racist views

produced through Orientalist scholarship that the warmth of India created luxury and opulence,

which subsequently produced a greedy and corrupt governance structure. Alexander Dow (1735-

1779) argued that “Nature herself seems to have denied liberty to the inhabitants of the torrid

154 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 5, p. 114.
155 Gosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 6.
156 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’” p. 234.
157 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 5, p. 383.
158 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 81.
 57

zone.”159 This was seen to be responsible for the, supposedly, despotic governance system of the

Mughal Empire. The governance system of the Company adopted and continued certain

attributes of the Mughal Empire, and did not dismantle, only took over, its political system.160

Domestic Britain believed this adoption of the ‘despotic’ Mughal political system caused

“violence, war, and desolation.”161 This caused the British to believe that the Company was

corrupted by Indian influences and, therefore, was governed despotically, without a sense of

responsibility for Indian inhabitants or the British constitution. The concerns of Parliament with

Company practices in India came to a head in 1772 with a parliamentary inquiry that turned into

the trial of Robert Clive, who was accused of criminal greed and personal corruption. Clive

survived the censure, but Company rule came under government supervision two years later with

the Government of India Act of 1774. The ‘nabob’ began to represent the possibility that Britain,

instead of improving India through returning its original and ancient laws and governance

structures, would itself be tainted by Eastern luxury and decadence. Therefore, the wealth and

excess embodied in the figure of the nabob was seen as threatening and importing Eastern

‘despotism’ to Britain, which was a particularly concerning possibility after the political turmoil

of the seventeenth century.162 The changing governance structures of the East India Company,

and its adoption of Indian aspects of governance produced social anxieties that were transformed

and embodied in the figure of the nabob during the mid-eighteenth century, and led to a social

backlash against the Orientalized British.

Nabob Nightmares II: The Fear of the Nabob in Society

159 Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan, from the Death of Akbar, to the Complete Settlement of the Empire
under Aurungzebe (London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1772), p. 5.
160 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 14.
161 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 5, p. 114.
162 Nechtman, Nabobs, pp. 91-92
 58

The actions of the individual nabob, furthermore, alarmed domestic Britain. Burke argued

that the East India Company was governed by “Young men (boys almost)…without society, and

without sympathy with the natives. They have no more social habits with the people, than if they

still resided in England; nor indeed any species of intercourse but that which is necessary to

making a sudden fortune.”163 This demonstrates the fears in Britain that the corrupt, decadent,

and oppressive methods of rule practiced by Company men in India could potentially corrupt

Britain and become the national order through the social influence of the nabob. Throughout the

mid-eighteenth century, nabobs came under increasing public scrutiny in Britain. This began

with British men who returned to England and spread to all perceived ‘nabobs’ in India, which

reflected the social anxieties around the East India Company’s governing strategies and political

power in the subcontinent.

One of the greatest fears metropolitan Britain had concerning nabobs was that they would

corrupt both the political and social world of England. Domestic Britain saw nabobs as having

been corrupted by India’s luxury and opulence, which was believed to produce greed and a lack

of morals. William Huggins, an indigo planter, demonstrates this fear of British corruption by

Indian lifestyles in that after:

A long residence in India, they are deeply imbued with its manners…in the notions of
[their] self-importance. Accustomed to a luxurious style of living, which equals that of
noblemen in England; to authority over a numerous population; to flattery and
submission from underlings, they often acquire a despotic habit of thinking and acting,
totally inconsistent with genuine freedom.164

The British feared that nabobs, influenced by the luxury of India, would bring this ‘Asiatic

despotism’ to Parliament and threaten both the constitution and the moral values of Britain.165

163 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 5, p. 402.
164 William Huggins, Sketches in India: Treating on Subjects Connected with the Government; Civil and Military
Establishments; Characters of the European, and Customs of the Native Inhabitants (London: John Letts, 1824), p.
61.
165 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’” p. 226.
 59

This was illustrated by Burke during his speech on the opening of the impeachment trial of

Warren Hastings on February 15, 1788 that “It is well known that great wealth has poured into

this country from India; and it is no derogation to us to suppose the possibility of being corrupted

by that by which great Empires have been corrupted.”166 The fear of political corruption was

most palpable during local elections, as it was believed that nabobs were forcing their way into

British politics through their extensive Indian fortunes. In a letter to Horace Mann in 1761, an

election year, Horace Walpole expressed his dismay that “West Indians, conquerors, nabobs, and

admirals attack every borough.”167 Walpole’s anxiety of nabobs in Parliament was also

expressed in numerous newspapers and created feelings of antagonism towards returned British

subjects. The Public Advertiser newspaper demonstrated these feelings in 1776 when it

aggressively stated that “these Gentlemen are Nabobs…Let us hunt a Nabob! There is no Sport

equal to the Hunting of a Nabob! With all my Heart, Gentlemen, hunt as many Nabobs as you

please.”168 This social antagonism reflects the rising anxieties of domestic Britain towards the

wealth and potential political corruption that was represented by the figure of the nabob.

Furthermore, the belief that nabobs were returning to Britain and infiltrating the

Parliament was so prevalent that it was a scholarly assumption about nabobs into the early

twentieth century. Spear argues that nabobs first began returning to Britain after the Battle of

Plassey in 1757, where they “entered Parliament in force at the election of 1768.”169 The

academic community has subsequently disproved the panicked belief that nabobs were

overrunning the House of Commons during the mid-eighteenth century. Philip Lawson and Jim

Phillips demonstrate that there was only a small number of British nabobs in Parliament during

166 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 6, p. 277.
167 Horace Walpole. The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford vol. 5 1760-1764 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1903), p. 29.
168 Public Advertiser, February 20, 1776.
169 Spear, The Nabobs, p. 32.
 60

this period. In 1761 there were twelve nabobs and by 1780 there was a slight increase to twenty-

seven members of Parliament who had been to India. However, these men did not represent a

coherent political force within the House of Commons.170 As previously examined, only a small

percentage of returned British men were nabobs, and this demonstrates that an even smaller

portion became involved in the political sphere in Britain. However, the widespread fear of

nabobs and the overall impact that they had on British society demonstrates that the nabob was

an influential social figure within eighteenth-century Britain. The animosity towards returning

nabobs also illustrates the anxieties of domestic Britain to the increasing influence of its Indian

Empire on its own society.

The British government attempted to police the nabob through political avenues.

Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, various Acts were passed in attempts to

curtail the overwhelming power of the East India Company in the subcontinent and place it

under Parliamentary control. The Regulating Act of 1773 attempted to reform the Company by

bringing their activities under Parliamentary supervision.171 In addition, the British government

and society targeted individual nabobs, such as Robert Clive and Warren Hastings in order to

maintain traditional British hierarchy and the imperial project in India.172 Hastings and Clive

were vilified in the British press and underwent criminal trials in relation to their personal

fortunes and supposed mismanagement of the East India Company and its Indian territories. The

political print by James Gillray (1757-1815) demonstrated the view of nabobs corrupted by

India’s wealth (Figure 3.1).

170 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’” p. 228.

171 Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 6.
172 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 107.
 61

Figure 3.1: The Bow to the Throne, alias the Begging Bowl, 1788.

This image depicts Hastings sitting on the throne of England handing bags of money to the

politicians Edward Thurlow (1731-1806) and William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) while King

George III (1738-1820) and Queen Charlotte (1744-1818) are on the ground amongst piles of

gold coins. Edmund Burke viewed nabobs, such as Hastings, as the epitome of the idea that

Britain was moving away from an empire of political liberalism to a more oppressive form of

global domination. This was illustrated during his speech on Charles James Fox’s (1749-1806)

India Bill on December 1, 1783, “that every means, effectual to preserve India from oppression,

is a guard to preserve the British constitution from its worst corruption.”173 Warren Hastings

became one of the most infamous nabobs due to his eight year impeachment trial that ended with

his acquittal in 1795.174 Throughout Hastings’ trial his main opponent, Burke, represented

Hastings as a true nabob, fully infected by the ‘Oriental vices’ of greed, luxury, and

despotism.175 Burke referred to Hastings as being “puffed up…with the insolence of Asia,” and

173 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 5, p. 383.
174 Ibid., p. 17; Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 118.
175 Gosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 7.
 62

that “Mr. Hastings comes before your Lordships not as a British Governor, answering to a

British Tribunal, but as a Soubahdar, as a Bashaw of three tails. He says: I had arbitrary power to

exercise; I exercised it.”176 This demonstrated the manner in which the British nabob was

associated with symbols and traditions of British views of the East and ‘Oriental’ despotism.

Though Hastings was acquitted, he and other infamous nabobs, came to symbolize the corrupted

nature of the East India Company. In addition, the India Act of 1784 increased the parliamentary

supervision over the Company and separated the military and civil administration of the

Company’s presidencies from commercial enterprises, which worked to decrease the tension

between the Company’s role as both a merchant and sovereign of India.177 These Parliamentary

alterations in the late eighteenth century worked to produce a negative public image of the nabob

that would quickly be replaced in the early nineteenth century by the British sahib. The sahib

was an ideal ruler that conformed to British understandings of themselves and maintained

ethnicity, gender, and class-based hierarchies in a more British manner than the body of the

Orientalized nabob had done throughout the eighteenth century.

In sum, nabobs were seen as a proverbial ‘boogey-man’ that would negatively impact

Britain in its social, political, and economic sectors through moral depravity, political corruption,

and luxurious lifestyles. Burke accurately described the social fear of nabobs during his same

speech on December 1, 1783, as “They marry into your families; they enter into your senate;

they ease your estates by loans; they raise their value by demand.”178 This demonstrates the

image of the nabob inspired fear in metropolitan Britain. Though the number of nabobs in

Britain, as well as in India, was in actuality quite small, the above demonstrates that they had a

176 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 6, p. 353, 346. The Bashaw is an anglicization of pasha
a Turkish title of honour and rank of three horse tails would be equivalent to a wazir of the Ottoman Empire,
illustrating Burke’s portrayal of Hastings as an example of how the British in India had been fully ‘corrupted’ by the
East.
177 Gosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 7.
178 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 5, p. 403.
 63

significant influence on metropolitan Britain’s cultural understandings of India and the social

anxieties that stemmed from the stereotypes of the subcontinent being a place of luxury,

opulence, and corruption - stereotypes that were seen to be negatively impacting the political and

moral underpinnings of Britain and understood through the body of the nabob. Furthermore, the

body of the nabob and the animosity towards them represented the prevalent fears that domestic

Britain had concerning the East India Company’s power and governance in the subcontinent.

These changes in the political and territorial situation within India during the second half of the

eighteenth century would alter conceptualizations of both nabobs and courtesans, as well as lead

to substantial social changes around constructions of gender, ethnicity, and class in the early

nineteenth century.

Policing and Punishing Nabobs Through Gender, Ethnicity, and Class Constructs

In relation to the fears of the British public, metropolitan society punished the nabob for

representing, what they viewed to be, the corrupting influence of the Indian subcontinent. This

occurred through mid-eighteenth century popular culture, including literature, plays, political

cartoons, and paintings, in which nabobs were stereotyped and represented as fat, vain, lazy,

cowardly, and foolish.179 They were also depicted as flamboyant and effeminate men who

willing incorporated Indian culture and attributes into their self-identity.180 Consequently, nabobs

quickly became one of the most notorious tropes in mid- and late eighteenth-century British

society.181 Over the course of the second half of the eighteenth century nabobs were increasingly

subject to societal pressures to revert back to appropriately British behaviour and reject Indian

influences. Social pressure took the form of mocking British nabobs as emasculated and

ethnically inferior British subjects, who attempted to better their social standing through wealth,

179 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 13.

180 Ibid., p. 3.
181 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 118.
 64

in order to maintain traditional understandings of Britishness and stabilize their superiority

within the subcontinent. This mainly demonstrated that Britain was anxious due to the blurring

of social barriers and conceptualizations of the Self and the Other through the body of the nabob,

which symbolized the fluidity of these cultural markers of difference.182 Therefore, elites in

metropolitan Britain were most anxious about this fluidity, which they saw as potentially

emasculating and ethnically ‘degenerating’ the metropole, as well as the newfound social

mobility of the East India Company servants who threatened the traditional social order of

Britain.

Fears of nabobs entering and influencing British politics were intrinsically related to the

larger historical context of the American Revolution, as well as the increasingly religious critique

of luxury and decadence in Britain during the mid-eighteenth century that was, in part, fueled by

returning nabobs.183 Luxury that derived from Britain’s imperial expansions was seen to be the

primary threat to the social and political stability of the country. These fears of societal

breakdown were expressed and publicly discussed most succinctly in the body of the nabob, with

its physical ‘corruption’ of British clothing, forms of entertainment, class, and morals. In

addition, the belief that India was an emasculated and ethnically degenerated region was

intrinsically linked to British and Enlightenment understandings of ethnic superiority and

climate. John Millar argued that “the difference of heat and cold, of moisture and dryness, or

other qualities of the climate, have a more immediate influence upon the character and conduct

of nations, by operating insensibly upon the human body, and by effecting correspondent

alterations in the temper.”184 During the eighteenth century, the British believed that the climate

of various regions had fundamental impacts on the ethnicity, ethnic degeneration, moral

182 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 118.

183 Ibid., p. 225.
184 John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks or, an Inquiry into the Circumstances which give rise to

influence and authority, in the different members of society (London: J. Murray, 1773), p. 8.
 65

character, and strength of the people who inhabited the area. The British believed in the

“Superiority which the harder sons of our Northern Climates have over the lazy Race of the

East.”185 Therefore, India was constructed as having a climate that produced subsistence with

little work on behalf of the inhabitants, which was seen to be the opposite of Britain. In turn, the

rich climate of India created indigenous inhabitants that were unaccustomed to hard work,

became lazy and corrupt, and were therefore ethnically inferior to the white, British

population.186 This climatic racism was prevalent during the eighteenth century in relation to

Enlightenment ideals and British understandings of their own superiority.

Nabobs, with their Orientalized dress and lifestyle, were understood to be ethnically

degenerated by the climate and subsequent culture of the subcontinent, to the point of practically

becoming Indian. It was strongly believed during the second half of the eighteenth century that

“Europeans…degenerate when transplanted to the East.”187 This climatically-produced ethnic

degeneration was also observable in popular culture through satirical political prints, such as the

one by James Gillray entitled ‘Count Rupee in Hyde park’ (Figure 3.2).

185 Public Advertiser, December 20, 1776.

186 Nechtman, Nabobs, pp. 51-55.
187 Public Advertiser, December 20, 1776.
 66

Figure 3.2: Count Roupee, supposed to be Paul Benfield of the East India Company, in Hyde Park, 1797.

The British nabob in the print represented the Company official Paul Benfield (1742-1810), who

was depicted as becoming so Orientalized and corrupted by India that his skin colour had

darkened. This directly linked India’s climate and inferior ethnic status to the body of the nabob.

In addition, this type of imagery illustrated domestic Britain’s view of India as a corrupting,

dangerous, and ethnically degenerating place that could negatively impact Britain. This imagery

socially punished nabobs by suggesting that they were ethnically degenerated and inferior to

British persons who had remained at home. In addition to punishing nabobs’ behaviour and

Orientalization, the ethnic degeneration of nabobs demonstrated Britain’s fear of the decline of

the entire population’s supposed ethnic superiority, due to their continued and increasing contact

with the East as their empire rapidly expanded in India during this period.188 The punishment of

nabobs through their representation as socially and ethnically inferior, further illustrated elite

188 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 34.

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metropolitan Britain’s fears of the corrupting power of the East, as well as the contemporary

management of the Indian Empire through the East India Company.

Furthermore, gender was utilized to police and punish the behaviour of nabobs, as well as

the broader East India Company, during the second half of the eighteenth century. Constructions

of gender were, similarly to ethnicity, intrinsically related to conceptualizations of the influence

of climate on people during this period. Temperate climates, such as Britain, were believed to

breed “strong independent types, full of manly vigour” whereas the hot and tropical climate of

India was seen to produce lazy and effeminate people.189 Some sectors of the public believed that

there was “a strong Proof that the Asiatic Effeminacy” could not corrupt or “oppose European

Fortitude.”190 However, there was a prevalent stereotype at the time that British men in India had

become effeminate in the mid-eighteenth century. Nabobs’ effeminacy was policed and mocked

by British society in order to re-establish British ideals of masculinity. The concept of British

men having numerous servants to do simple tasks for them was seen as the epitome of this

“effeminacy, or luxury,” that permeated the social life of British nabobs.191 While portraying

nabobs as effeminate worked to punish their Orientalized manners and lifestyles, this also

demonstrated the social anxieties that metropolitan Britain had concerning, what they saw, as the

emasculating nature of India. Furthermore, fears of the influence that India could have on

Britain, through the corruption of its political and moral underpinnings, was also expressed

through this effeminate view of India and nabobs.

Domestic Britain also policed nabobs through class, as it was concerned about the class

mobility created by the exorbitant wealth of returned nabobs. Much of metropolitan Britain

understood nabobs to be Orientalized and despotic, as illustrated by the London Chronicle

189 Ibid., p. 25.

190 Public Advertiser, August 30, 1781.
191 Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum; or complete guide to gentlemen intended for the civil, military

or, naval service of the East India Company Vol II (London: Black, Parry, and Kingsbury, 1810), p. 2.
 68

newspaper that described them as “Asiatic plunderers, who have accumulated their wealth by

fraud, plunder, and famine.”192 The British viewed nabobs as obtaining and maintaining a great

fortune in an aggressive and negative manner that was linked with the moral debasement and

corruption of nabobs. This was seen to be caused by their Orientalized lifestyles and experiences

in the subcontinent. Furthermore, the wealth of nabobs was seen to be beyond their appropriate

social status. The majority of nabobs were from the middle class, yet their time in India enabled

them to become wealthier than their status in Britain would have allowed. Therefore, nabobs

were seen as crossing class boundaries and gaining status and power through wealth, which led

to British society punishing them for their class mobility.

In addition, the nabobs’ wealth was criticized in relation to the Company’s

mismanagement of the Indian subcontinent, and the anxieties of potential corruption that it

fomented. Nabobs were caricatured in the public imagination as unscrupulous and having an

insatiable lust for wealth.193 They represented the corrupting influence of India and were seen as

a potential threat to British morals and political behaviour. This was demonstrated by a Company

army officer, Alexander Dow, who believed that the decline of Bengal began when it “fell under

the dominion of foreigners; who were more anxious to improve the present moment to their own

emolument, than, by providing against waste, to secure a permanent advantage to the British

nation.”194 Dow illustrated the prevalent negative view of nabobs as ruining India through

mismanagement in order to obtain and maintain their own personal fortunes. Furthermore, it was

widely believed that when nabobs returned to England their wealth overrode the economic

factors of supply and demand that maintained low prices, causing the prices for property and

provisions to increase drastically in the mid-eighteenth century.195 Walpole wrote that the actions

192 London Chronicle, April 15-18, 1775.

193 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’” p. 229.
194 Dow, The History of Hindostan, p. lxxvii.
195 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’” p. 234.
 69

of the East India Company nabobs “almost raised a famine at home by the luxury occasioned by

their opulence raising the prices of everything, till the poor could not purchase bread!”196 This

demonstrates the public anxiety and animosity directed at returning nabobs; they were seen as

possessing the negative attributes of political corruption and excessive wealth, which was

exhibited by their Orientalized clothing and behavioural attributes that were associated with the

subcontinent.

Additionally, British society punished nabobs and attempted to police their behaviour

through ideas of class. India was seen as inverting the social order, as lower levels of British

society could become significantly wealthy and style themselves upon return as more aristocratic

and elite than their position would have been had they remained in Britain.197 This was illustrated

by Burke who stated that “In India all the vices operate by which sudden fortune is acquired; in

England are often displayed, by the same persons, the virtues which dispense hereditary wealth.

Arrived in England, the destroyers of the nobility and gentry of a whole kingdom will find the

best company in this nation.”198 Domestic Britain was often concerned that returning nabobs

would obtain social mobility through their wealth and fundamentally alter the class system in

England. Therefore, these British nabobs were castigated for their humble origins and were

characterized as being “low born social climbers,” which held wide appeal to the British public

as a form of critique.199 Nabobs were frequently mocked in popular plays for being the sons of

carpenters, cheesemongers, and inn-keepers.200 Likewise, this social punishment and policing of

nabobs illustrates the anxiety that the British landed elite had concerning the rising wealth and

influence of East India Company servants and its governing of India.

196 Walpole. The Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. 8 1771-1774, p. 157.

197 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 21.
198 Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 5, p. 403.
199 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’” p. 230.
200 Ibid.
 70

In conclusion, the punishment and policing of nabobs’ behaviour and lifestyles took the

form of demonstrating their ethnic degeneration, effeminacy, and ill-begotten wealth. Moreover,

the manner by which nabobs were mocked by the British public illustrates their own social

anxieties concerning the emasculating and ethnically degenerating nature of the Indian climate

and luxury, as well as their fears of nabobs’ social mobility. These fears demonstrate that the

British were unsure of their new empire in India, and the manner in which they attempted to gain

and maintain ideals of Britishness in relation to the changing goals and management strategies of

the East India Company and the British Empire more generally. Though the British needed the

body of the nabob to validate their political power in India throughout the eighteenth century, the

British became increasingly concerned with the nabobs’ fluid cultural adoption and Orientalized

lifestyle. In addition, as the power of the British increased during this period the ideal of the

nabob was no longer needed in the empire and was subsequently policed and punished in order

to reassert new ideals of Britishness in the imperial project.

Fears of the Nabob and the Sensual Indian Woman

The changes in domestic Britain’s representation of nabobs were also seen in the

changing understandings and views of courtesans. Courtesans were increasingly portrayed as

negative and associated with sex-work. This began in the late 1700s and became more solidified

in the early 1800s. Though the British view of courtesans was mixed and rarely uniform, the

dominant narrative began to shift from courtesans as symbols of Indian cultural acceptance, in

order to validate British political power, to degraded, sensual women who threatened the

imperial project and corrupted British men through their sensuality. In addition, this section

explores how the social fears of the British nabob, and the underlying concerns around

effeminacy, ethnic miscegenation, and class mobility that led to their disparagement were also

represented through constructions of courtesans. The second half of the eighteenth century was a
 71

period of decline in the social, political, and financial status of courtesans, as well as an

increased prevalence in negative constructions of nautch-girls as sex-workers who threatened the

stability of the British Empire in India. This section demonstrates that the changing

representations of nabobs and nautch-girls were informed by the same social anxieties around a

changing political structure of the East India Company, as well as the fears around ethnicity and

class-based social mobility through personal and sexual interactions between British men and

Indian women.

Courtesans and nautch performances continued to be patronized by the British during the

second half of the eighteenth century. While the level of patronage and intimate relations with

nautch-girls did not significantly alter during this period, the imagery around courtesans was

beginning to degenerate. The increasingly negative British representations of nautch-girls

appeared in their travel narratives, journals, and letters. These documents, once published in the

metropole, perpetuated the Orientalist imagery of Indian women as inherently sensual and

morally lax. The change to more negative British representations of courtesans as sex-workers

rather than important cultural figures was rooted in the second half of the eighteenth century and

would become increasingly solidified and significant in the early nineteenth century. This

demonstrates the linked nature of the representations of courtesans and nabobs during this

period. While the nabob was criticized in metropolitan Britain, the representation of the

courtesan was also degenerated and constructed as a problem for the British in India. The British

became increasingly concerned with the behaviour of their countrymen in the subcontinent and

they required a group to blame for the Orientalized nabob. The courtesan, due to her ‘Oriental’

behaviour and overt sensuality, was a significant aspect of British social life in India and was

subsequently the primary figure constructed as corrupting British men. This illustrates that these
 72

representations were linked and experienced a similar period of cultural deglamorization and

deprecation throughout the second half of the eighteenth century.

The rising political and territorial power of the East India Company during the second

half of the eighteenth century impacted many sectors of Indian society. As the Company

conquered more land, it disturbed courtly centres of power that had supported courtesan culture

in the pre-colonial period.201 Indian rulers, including nawabs, zamindars, and princes,

subsequently lost political and financial power in these regions. This caused courtesans to lose

patronage and professional positions in courts across the subcontinent, which diminished the

cultural and financial power of courtesans.202 However, many of these women maintained some

social agency in colonial India because Indian elites and British officials continued to hold

nautch performances for each other in the second half of the eighteenth century.203 The British,

throughout this period, retained their enjoyment of nautch-girls and attendance at nautch

performances. However, during this period, courtesans became increasingly associated with sex-

work and were viewed by the British as simply performers, which exacerbated their loss of social

prestige and power. Though courtesans faced mounting losses of social influence, they survived

as a minimized, cultural entity in the second half of the eighteenth century, which demonstrated

their continued agency under British imperialism.

The second half of the eighteenth century experienced a slow, but distinctive and

building, alteration in the British views and understandings of nautch-girls. In the early 1700s the

British understood that courtesans were tied in some manner to forms of sex-work. However, this

was less problematic for the British in the eighteenth century as they believed it was beneficial to

201 Erica Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women: Sexual Relationships, Venereal
Disease and the Redefinition of Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century India,” The Indian Economic & Social History
Review 46, no. 1 (2009): p. 17.
202 Ibid.
203 Spear, The Nabobs, p. 35.
 73

attend nautch performances and patronize nautch-girls in order to validate their political power

and colonial presence within the subcontinent. British attendance of nautch performances related

to the general Orientalized British culture in India. The nabob lifestyle encouraged the adoption

of some Indian cultural traditions that the British believed harmonized with their view of

themselves as rulers of India and that fulfilled their personal erotic and exotic understanding of

the East.

However, the rising political and territorial strength of the British Empire in India meant

that the association of courtesans with sex-work was increasingly dominant in British narratives

concerning Indian forms of entertainment. Throughout the late eighteenth century there was a

popular association of dancing-girls, or courtesans, with “prostitution and licentiousness.”204

Jemima Kindersley was in India from 1765 to 1768 and was one of the first British woman to

write about a nautch.205 The majority of scholars utilize Kindersley’s writings to demonstrate

that the British of the mid-eighteenth century were fond of and socially relaxed about nautch-

girls.206 However, her writings demonstrate a clear and strong assumption that nautch-girls were

associated with sensuality. In describing a nautch, Kindersley wrote “it is their languishing

glances, wanton smiles, and attitudes not quite consistent with decency, which are so much

admired; and whoever excels most in these is the finest dancer.”207 This demonstrates that the

British viewed nautch-girls, and Indian women more generally, as being inherently sensual and

potentially immoral. This construction of courtesans as the ‘Oriental’ and sensual Other

continued from the early 1700s and the Orientalist scholarship produced throughout the century.

The British representation of nautch-girls as exotic and erotic Indian women was consistent

throughout the colonial period. However, courtesans’ sensuality was understood to be an

204 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 202.

205 Pran Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj (New York: Penguin, 2009), p. 30.
206 This sentiment is observable in Nevile’s The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 30 and Spear’s The Nabobs, p. 35.
207 Kindersley, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies, p. 231.
 74

increasingly problematic issue in the colony as the British enhanced their influence in the

subcontinent. While attending nautches was previously understood to be a way for the British to

validate their political power, these performances, the dancing-girls, and their sensuality were

slowly represented in a more negative manner and as a threat to colonial stability.

Throughout the colonial period, the British perceived courtesans as being the

personification of Eastern decadence and ‘Oriental’ sensuality. Vijay Prakash Singh argues this

representation was linked to the British often lacking the necessary language skills to fully

understand the surrounding music and songs of nautch performances. Hence, the British could

only rely on the visual aspects of the performance and the nautch was stripped of its linguistic

nuances and emotional significance.208 Singh argues that this reduced the courtesan to an object

intended for the British male gaze, particularly as the British were predominantly unaware and

unable to appreciate the cultural heritage and importance of the courtesan and her

performance.209 This lack of understanding enabled the further negative perceptions of

courtesans to foment and amplify. The misunderstanding about these women from the British

perspective was confirmed to each other through the writings of British officials and travellers.

British travel literature, an influential aspect of popular culture, played an important role in the

production of knowledge throughout the colonial period and provided the public with an

illustration, distorted by their own beliefs, of India as the Other.210 British travel literature was

demonstrative of European values rather than indicative of Indian society, and thereby produced

the Self through their construction of the Other as foreign and exotic.211 These narratives would

often explore nautch-girls and were fundamental in producing representations of them as the

208 Vijay Prakash Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl: The Transition of the Lucknow Courtesan,” South Asian
Review 35, no. 2 (2014): p. 182.
209 Ibid.
210 Janice Bailey-Goldschmidt and Martin Kalfatovic, “Sex, Lies, and European Hegemony: Travel Literature and

Ideology,” Journal of Popular Culture 26, no. 4 (1993): p. 141.

211 Ibid., p. 142.
 75

erotic Other. In addition, there was a formulaic nature of travel writing as a genre that

encouraged borrowing and created a “chain of errors,” which were expounded upon and

constructed the ‘truth’ that produced stereotypes about India and Indians.212 This was also the

case for Indian courtesans in their representation as being affiliated with sex-work and, therefore,

they were constructed as the apex of ‘Oriental’ sensuality.

Britain’s changing representations of the nautch-girls were explicitly linked to its social

anxieties around nabobs in the late eighteenth century. It was predominantly the level of cultural

assimilation, and subsequent loss of Britishness, in the 1700s that caused metropolitan Britain’s

fear of cultural and ethnic miscegenation.213 The prevalence of courtesans in British colonial

social life related to growing concerns that the proximity between the British and Indians had to

be regulated and diminished in order for the British to retain their political authority in the

subcontinent. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, few British women were in

empire, particularly India, due to the hardships of the seven month voyage around the tip of the

African continent that was believed to be too difficult and dangerous for women.214 The lack of

British women meant that the Company encouraged British men to maintain sexual relationships

with Indian women.215 However, by the late eighteenth century, British officials were

increasingly discouraged from keeping bibis, many of whom were courtesans, because of

pseudo-scientific fears of ethnic degeneration. Moreover, lower-class soldiers and Company

officials were allowed to turn to Indian sex-workers on a more short-term basis in order to

“satisfy their heterosexual impulses.”216 British attendance at nautch performances in the late

212 Ibid., p. 147.

213 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 34.
214 Caplan, “Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women,” p.865; Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. xiii
215 See Gosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, pp. 1-34 for an in-depth exploration of the various systems of

oppression that operated in sexual relationships between British men and Indian women, as well as the ambivalent
and contested manner in which these relationships altered over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
216 Ibid., p. 8.
 76

eighteenth century was increasingly seen as a sign of social and ethnic hybridity, which no

longer validated British political authority, but rather threatened the ethnic purity and stability of

the colonial power. Consequently, the social anxieties around proximity with Indian women was

related to maintaining a sense of Britishness in a foreign environment and validating British

political authority.217 Indian women, particularly the close social contact of British men with

courtesans, in the late eighteenth century were beginning to be understood as a threat to

Britishness because they disrupted the idealized understanding of the appropriate social and

cultural life of the colony.

Therefore, though courtesans were still represented and understood as being sexually

available to British men, they also demonstrated the building social anxieties of metropolitan

Britain in relation to social mixing, ethnic miscegenation, and the blurring of class structures

manifested in returned British nabobs. Subsequently, British society began to firmly believe in

this period that social distance between themselves and Indians was essential for maintaining

authority in the subcontinent.218 The British understood courtesans as the epitome and impetus

for this social mixing. Nautch-girls’ sensuality and sexual availability represented the possibility

of miscegenation, their continuous presence at British events illustrated the social mixing with

Indians present in the colony, and, lastly, the ability for both upper and middle-class British men

to access a nautch and nautch-girls was demonstrative of the blurring of class lines by nabobs in

the subcontinent. Consequently, courtesans were increasingly understood during this period as

potentially threatening figures to British stability in India, as well as encouraging or causing the

Orientalization of British nabobs.

217Ibid., p. 36.
218Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class Under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics,
1793–1905 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980), p. 164.
 77

In sum, the late 1700s was a period of distinct and building changes in the political and

social atmosphere of the British colony in India. However, it was also predominantly a period of

continuity from the cultural norms and morals of the first half of the century. British nabobs were

still significant in demonstrating cultural acceptance of Indian traditions, climate, and

entertainment. The attendance of the British at nautches given by Indian elites or British officials

was still a significant way in which to validate social and political authority. While these aspects

of the Orientalized British nabob remained important during the second half of the eighteenth

century, they were also increasingly criticized by elite metropolitan Britain because of the

anxieties they produced around class mobility and ethnic degeneration. The British nabob was

represented as an ethnically, culturally, and politically degenerated figure who threatened the

stability of the British imperial project in the subcontinent. The increasingly negative

constructions of nautch-girls as the impetus for the degradation of British men was linked to the

social anxieties around the nabob. This illustrates that as the Company gained political and

territorial power in India, along with the increasing population of soldiers in the region, it no

longer required the adoption of Indian traditions, clothing, and entertainment in order to justify

its presence in the region, or to rule in what the British believed to be an Indian manner.

Furthermore, the adoption of Indian traditions began to be seen as a dangerous threat to political

stability, as well as ethnic and social understandings of Britishness. Therefore, the figure of the

nabob came under attack during the second half of the eighteenth century and correlated with the

increasingly negative view of Indian courtesans. Though the nabob during this time was a more

problematic figure to the metropole, the constructions of courtesans would experience further

depoliticization and degradation later, once the nabob was no longer a threat to British political

stability in India. These representations informed each other, one did not create the other, they

occurred simultaneously as the British altered their understanding of their empire in India and
 78

produced new and different modes of legitimacy that became solidified during the early decades

of the subsequent century. Therefore, throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, the

character of the nabob began to disappear as the image of the ideal Company servant and ruler of

India and was eventually replaced by the figure of the sahib, which would lead to increasing

popular interest in courtesans as well as their representation as sex-workers by the British.

 79

Chapter 4
The Memsahib and the Courtesan, c. 1790-1857

The Nautch girls of Northern India…the equivocal character of whose evolutions has excited so
much horror in the mind of virtuous Europe.219

The London-based newspaper, The Morning Chronicle, demonstrated in this 1838 issue

that nautch-girls were seen as sexually tempting and, therefore, of dubious and threatening

character to Britain’s imperial project in the subcontinent. The early nineteenth century was a

period of distinct change as the British solidified both their political power, as well as their

cultural influence over colonial India. This chapter explores these changes as the figure of the

British nabob disappeared in the late eighteenth century and was replaced by the image of the

sahib as the ideal ruler of India. In addition, it examines the rising population of British women

in the subcontinent to illustrate the development of the idealized image of the British woman as

memsahib. This chapter demonstrates how constructions of courtesans and memsahibs were

mutually dependent on one another and informed the production of each other, as well as the

significance of courtesans to colonial discourse on proper modes of British rule. In the early

nineteenth century courtesans were more frequently represented as dangerous and sensual

women who corrupted British men and threatened the stability of the imperial project. The

British believed courtesans’ sensuality created the potential for miscegenation and subsequent

ethnic ‘degeneration’ that challenged the political stability of the British as they justified their

colonial rule based on the belief of their inherent ethnic superiority.

Furthermore, this chapter examines the cultural shifts in Britain and the British

community in India through the rise of Evangelical and liberal philosophies; Victorian ideals

around gender, ethnicity, and class; and the enhanced political power of the East India Company

through the idealized representations of the British sahib and memsahib. The sahib period of the

219 “Adelphi Theatre,” The Morning Chronicle, October 2, 1838, Issue 21492.
 80

early nineteenth century came to represent the rule of India in a more firmly British manner that

entailed more socially rigid hierarchies of gender, ethnicity, and class. The travel narratives of

British men and women are utilized throughout this section to illustrate the changing views of

nautch-girls throughout the early nineteenth century. Lastly, this section examines the various

representations of nautch-girls in this period and the impact these had on the diminishment of

courtesans’ cultural, financial, and political agency in Indian society.

There is scholarly debate over what period of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries

constitute the nabob or the sahib period. E. M. Collingham argues the nabob period dominated

the early nineteenth century, while the sahib period began after the Rebellion of 1857.220

However, this periodization is challenged by scholars such as Durba Ghosh, who instead argues

that the standard system of rule that represents the sahib period began to be unevenly

implemented in the late eighteenth century and was solidified by the mid-nineteenth century.221

This thesis uses the periodization outlined by Ghosh and argues that the sahib period occurred

from c. 1790 to 1857.

Evangelicalism, liberalism, and the Anglicized British Community in India

Over the course of the early nineteenth century, there was a cultural shift towards

Evangelical and liberal ideals in Britain, which were political and moral philosophies that

influenced the production of the figure of the sahib as the ideal British ruler of India. This shift

altered British justifications for empire in India and solidified ideas of difference and superiority,

which had been blurred with the advent of the nabob in the 1700s. In the eighteenth century the

British justified their imperial project in India through Orientalist scholarship. Scholars, such as

William Jones (1746-1794), produced understandings of India’s ancient Hindu civilizations. This

220 E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c. 1800-1947 (Cambridge: Polity Press,

2001), p. 13, 104.

221 Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2006), p. 10.

 81

enabled the British to validate their rule of the subcontinent by arguing that they were restoring

India to its once great past, and also represented European sympathies to Indian religious

traditions as well as interests in Indian languages and civilizations.222 However, the late

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries experienced a hardening of British opinion towards

Hinduism, particularly by committed Christians.223 In this period, it was “no longer

fashionable…to profess an interest in Persian poetry or Hindu metaphysics” as it had been

throughout the majority of the eighteenth century.224 This related to the shifting, separate, and

contradictory ways in which the British perceived India’s past. The first, which was more

popular during the eighteenth century, was produced by Orientalist scholars who reconstructed a

vision of India’s past and ancient civilizations as a golden age. In contrast, the rise in

Evangelicalism and liberalism focused on nineteenth century India, representing it as

‘backwards’ and in need of reform, which emphasized the low status of Indian women.225

Furthermore, Evangelical and liberal ideas informed and developed in relation to the rising

confidence of British rule in India, and the subsequent assumption that colonial rule brought

material and moral progress to India and Indians.226 The idea of restoring India to its ancient

‘golden age’ of civilization was pushed aside in the early nineteenth century and replaced with

more aggressive beliefs in the social, political, and moral benefits of contemporary British

civilization. Britain was conceived as a place of liberty, prudence, and productivity, while India

was represented in opposition as the despotic, luxurious, superstitious, and indolent Other.227

222 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 15.

223 P. J. Marshall, The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970), p. 41.
224 Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India, 1608-1937 (New York: Kinnikat Press, 1938), p. 118.
225 Uma Chakravarti, “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism and a Script for the Past,”

in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1990), p. 30.
226 Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class Under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics,

1793-1905 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980), p. 123.

227 Tillman W. Nechtman, Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2010), p. 59.

 82

This imagined image of India meant that it was constructed as a place that both could and should

be conquered by the British in order to justify their colonial presence by ‘modernizing’ Indians

and India.228 Subsequently, the British believed they should rule more in a British manner than

an Indian one, which in part led to the replacement of the nabob, as an Orientalized British ruler,

with the figure of the sahib, who conformed to British Evangelical, liberal, and Victorian ideals

of the British ruler of the subcontinent.

In the early 1800s, there was a distinct political and cultural shift towards Evangelical

Christianity and liberalism. These beliefs, combined with changes in ideals of morality and the

economic concept of free-trade, fundamentally altered the way in which the British perceived

and ruled India. Liberal and Evangelical ideas were prevalent in India at this time because there

was a shift in the type of British person who went to India. Increasingly, Evangelicals and

liberals went to India in the early nineteenth century. In Britain these individuals were often non-

conformists and the colonies were more open places for them and their beliefs. Hence,

liberalism, while in competition with Conservatism in Britain, had greater influence on the

cultural and political atmosphere of India and the British community there. Evangelicalism and

liberalism became increasingly popular and dominated the social and political culture of colonial

India from the 1830s to the 1850s.229 The ideology of liberalism centered on the perfectibility of

the human state and the belief that institutions fundamentally shaped human beings. Liberals

believed that if the institutions, predominantly those of education, morality, and religion, were

altered, people would subsequently change. These ideologies conceptualized India as being

decadent, ‘Oriental,’ and in need of social reform.230 Lord Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859), in his

speech ‘Minute on Indian Education,’ on February 2, 1835, believed in the “intrinsic superiority

228 Ibid.
229 Indrani Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings: Colonial Narratives on Indian Women (London: Orient Longman, 2008), p.
xv.
230 Ibid.
 83

of the Western literature,” and famously stated that he had never found someone “who could

deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of

India.”231 Evangelicals and liberals believed they could reform India through changing its

institutions. Therefore, they attempted to reform India and Indians through Westernized

education, with the particular goal of educating Indian women. John Bentley argued that,

the importance which the inhabitants of Europe attach to a sound and judicious education,
especially with regard to the female sex, is founded on the unerring deductions of reason
and experience. Without it, the whole frame of modern society, so superior to any thing
the world has previously witnessed, would quickly lose its dignity and refinement. What
idea are we to form, then, of the state of society in India, where the education of females
is invariably and systematically neglected.232

Bentley demonstrates the importance placed on educational reforms in India, specifically those

focused on Indian women. The British believed that their social and political institutions were

more civilized than Indian forms of education, morality, and religions and, therefore, attempted

to alter them to change Indian society.

In addition, the pressure for Westernized education systems in India was based on

policies that wished to undermine and break the bonds between Indians and their culture, while

simultaneously encouraging conversion to Christianity. Prior to the early nineteenth century, the

East India Company did not allow missionaries to enter India in relation to its policy of non-

interference concerning Indian religious beliefs and cultural customs. Missionary lobbying at the

time of the renewal of the East India Company charter proved victorious and in 1813 the

Company allowed missionaries to enter India.233 Evangelical reformers also turned their attention

towards a more ‘civilizing’ mission in India, as education was seen to be synonymous with ideas

231 Thomas Babington Macaulay, Speeches: by Lord Macaulay with his Minute on Indian Education (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 349.
232 John Bentley, Essays Relative to the Habits, Character, and Moral Improvement of the Hindoos (London:

Kingsbury, Parbury, & Allen, 1823), p. 164.

233 Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. xix.
 84

of Westernization.234 Emma Roberts (1794-1840) was quite adamant about the need for

education in order to ‘advance’ Indian society, particularly Indian women, as she believed that

“it is the women of India who are at this moment impeding the advancement of improvement;

they have hitherto been so ill-educated…that they have had nothing to amuse or interest them

excepting the ceremonies of their religion.”235 This demonstrates the prevalence and importance

placed on education as a means of ‘civilizing’ Indian people, especially women, and separating

them from their religious traditions. Furthermore, education was related to gendered ideas of

ethnic superiority and the maintenance of colonial power in India.

Evangelicalism was influential in the shift to rule India in a British context in order to

bestow the supposed benefits of British civilization and society onto India. The British conceived

themselves as morally superior to Indians. This belief was used to justify the British presence in

the subcontinent and enabled the British to critique, and attempt to change, Indian society in a

moral manner. Missionaries and liberals were stimulated by the rise of Evangelicalism during the

first half of the nineteenth century and encouraged subsequent social purity movements, which

attempted to alter aspects of Indian society that the British viewed as immoral, such as sati,

female infanticide, and child marriage, as well as encouraging the representation of courtesans as

sex-workers.236 These social purity movements were often supported by sectors of elite Indians

who increasingly stigmatized courtesans and were influential in their treatment and public

perception in the nineteenth century.237 Evangelicalism was a significant aspect of the early

nineteenth century imperial project as it influenced the ideal of the sahib, in that the British now

234 Deirdre David, Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995),

p. 18; Indira Ghose, Nineteenth-Century Travels, Explorations and Empires: Writings from the Era of Imperial
Consolidation, 1835-1910 (London: Pickering & Chatto Limited, 2003), p. xi.
235 Emma Roberts, Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay (London: Wm. H. Allen &

Co., 1841), p. 330.

236 Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj, p. 5.
237 Vijay Prakash Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl: The Transition of the Lucknow Courtesan,” South Asian

Review 35, no. 2 (2014): p. 182.

 85

encouraged social reforms of Indian society in order to echo Western markers of education,

civilization, and culture.

Evangelicalism was closely related to the rise of, and political shift towards, liberalism in

Britain and its subsequent influence on the imperial project. Similar to Evangelicalism,

liberalism and its advocates saw India as a luxurious and decadent place in need of social reform.

In addition, India and Indian culture were understood to be inherently inferior to the British.238

Indian governance systems were seen as stereotypically ‘Oriental’ and despotic, as well as the

root of Indian degradation. Liberals wished to reform India through changes in law and

administration in order for India to be more Western and British in its political make-up and

practice. James Mill (1773-1836) was a prominent liberal thinker and wrote The History of

British India, in which he argued that “the Hindu form of government, that despotism, in one of

its simplest and least artificial states, was established in Hindustan.”239 Mill believed this

despotism meant that “the Hindus, in mind and body, were the most enslaved portion of the

human race.”240 Therefore, liberals believed it to be imperative that the Company implement

legal and administrative reforms in India in order to change its institutions. These social reforms

were viewed as making India more similar to Britain and, therefore, more ‘civilized’ and

‘modern.’ Evangelical and liberal attitudes to British rule in India became popular and influential

by the 1820s and impacted aspects of the Company’s administration. William Bentinck (1774-

1839), who was Governor-General from 1828 to 1835, implemented many social reform policies

that were influenced by Evangelical and liberal thought. These included reforms of the judicial

system, education system, as well as instigating movements against sati and female

238 Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. xv.

239 James Mill, The History of British India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 236, originally
published in 1817.
240 Ibid., p. 237.
 86

infanticide.241 The early nineteenth century became a period of increasing social reform, which

correlated to the figure of the sahib becoming the ideal British colonial ruler in India, while the

nabob and Orientalized lifestyle became an obsolete symbol of British decadence and excess in

India.

These shifts created more permanent and assertive understandings of British superiority

and justified their imperial rule of India in a British idiom in order to benefit Indians. In the

colonial context, Britishness was conceptualized through a dialogue with difference. The

eighteenth century utilized culture as a marker of difference in relation to the perceived level of a

civilization through Enlightenment ideologies around stadial theory.242 Therefore, the marking of

Otherness was more diffuse in the eighteenth century and operated through difference in

manners, languages, politics, and religious practices.243 The nabob period blurred these

understandings of difference through British adoption of Indian lifestyles, clothing and

entertainments, which threatened the superiority on which the British based their justification for

colonial rule. Consequently, the use of culture as a marker of absolute difference was seen as

inadequate for constructing Otherness and fell out of use in the early nineteenth century.244 In

contrast, the nineteenth century utilized pseudo-scientific polygenesis, with new modes of

classification that had the necessary permanence of moral law, scientific knowledge, and sealed

bloodlines, as the basis for their understanding of ethnicity, which enabled the British to validate

241 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 52.

242 See Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 231 which explains stadial theory as an Enlightenment ideology that organized the
world into recognizable and hierarchized categories. These categories were utilized as an imperial tool that created a
socio-historical timeline of human progress and development, which essentially demonstrated through culture how
Britain had become developed while other regions had not. This theoretical framework was used throughout the
eighteenth century in order to validate Britain’s imperial project in the subcontinent. However, nabobs’ Orientalized
lifestyle illustrated the blurring of cultural difference that threatened the apparent superiority of the British and,
therefore, understandings of difference altered in the nineteenth century in order to maintain representations of the
Self and the Other, as well as continue to justify Britain’s empire in India.
243 Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 14. Ghosh argues this shift occurred unevenly in Britain and

India from 1760 to 1840.

244 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 235.
 87

their presence in India through the belief of their inherent superiority.245 By rigidifying

conceptualizations of British superiority and Indian inferiority, this cultural shift decreased the

social and political threats posed by the cultural openness and political corruption of nabobs in

the eighteenth century.

The End of the Nabob and the Rise of the British Sahib

In addition, the late 1700s and early 1800s experienced a decline in the social anxieties

concerning the East India Company and nabobs because the nature and composition of the

British Empire in India altered, which created a more stable understanding of Britishness in

colonial society and changed the approach taken by the British to colonialism in India.246 Such

changes lessened anxieties around the Orientalized body of the British nabob. The increase in the

British population in India, enhanced military, political, and territorial power; as well as the

decline in the communication distance between the two regions enabled a more Anglicized

identity to be imposed on colonial society. The rise of Evangelical and liberal ideals in Britain

and its colonies, as well as the increasing confidence in British rule in the subcontinent, illustrate

the declining fear of the nabob. The nabob mode of British imperialism focused on militarized

territorial acquisition, intercultural consumptions, and inter-ethnic exchange through British male

officials acquiring numerous Indian wives and concubines. This lifestyle was slowly replaced

with a more dutiful, trade-based East India Company servant that maintained bourgeois ideals of

efficiency, ethnic purity, morality, and liberalism.247 The British consolidated their power during

this period, which enhanced their ability to impose their own cultural values and ideals on the

subcontinent and subsequently diminished the social anxieties around the nabob.

245 Ibid., p. 237; Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 14.
246 Judith T. Kenny, “Climate, Race and Imperial Authority: The Symbolic Landscape of the British Hill Station in
India,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85, no. 4 (1995): p. 697.
247 Priya Shah, “‘Barbaric Pearl and Gold,’ Gendered Desires and Colonial Governance in Emma Roberts’ Scenes

and Characteristics of Hindostan.” Studies in Travel Writing 16, no. 1 (2012): p. 32.
 88

The attitudes and social anxieties towards nabobs explored in the previous chapter

worked to punish and police their behaviour and lifestyles, as well as the governing style of the

East India Company. These attitudes from the late 1750s into the 1770s, according to Philip

Lawson and Jim Phillips, laid the groundwork for critiques of the empire in India and contributed

to the ideals of imperial responsibility that became popular in the late eighteenth century.248 This

included the 1784 India Act, as well as the political and social reforms implemented by Charles

Cornwallis (1738-1805), who was Governor-General from 1786 to 1793, which developed more

systematic imperial ideologies of conquest and colonial rule.249 In addition, these reforms fought

against, what Cornwallis saw as, the immorality and corruption of the Hastings-era and the

prevalence of nabobism in India.250 These alterations in the governing structure and overall

power of the East India Company worked to diminish the fears of elite, metropolitan Britain in

relation to the social mobility of nabobs and the influence of the Company. This also decreased

the fear of nabobs having the wealth and power in India to return to Britain and corrupt its

political system.

Furthermore, nabobs began to be understood, in part due to their negative treatment in

British popular culture in previous decades, as people who were already corrupt, or more

susceptible to the corruption of a luxurious lifestyle, before they left Britain and went to India.

The British believed that if the ‘right’ type of people were sent into colonial India, they would

not be morally, ethnically, and politically corrupted.251 In 1781, the Public Advertiser implored

that “If our Officers in that Part of the World were to attend to their Duty as Men of real Virtue

our Settlements in that Part of the World would be established on the most solid Foundation, and

248 Lawson, Philip, and Jim Phillips, ‘“Our Execrable Banditti’”: Perceptions of Nabobs in Mid-Eighteenth Century
Britain.” Albion 16 (1984): p. 241.
249 Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 8.
250 Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2006), p. 66.

251 Lawson and Phillips, “‘Our Execrable Banditti,’” p. 107.
 89

Britain would reap the Advantages, without incurring the Imputation of Tyranny.”252 William

Huggins encouraged, in 1824, that the type of person who should be involved in the colonial

project was “a man educated in Britain, who has lived in Britain, who justly appreciates the value

of liberty, is requisite to restrain the despotic temper which prevails in India.”253 This British

construction of the ‘right’ type of person governing and administering colonial India diminished

the representations of India’s power and influence on British people, which decreased anxieties

surrounding the corrupting power of nabobs and India and worked to produce the figure of the

sahib as the ideal British ruler of the subcontinent. Therefore, the Orientalized nabob’s influence

on Britain was minimized as the British gained more power within the subcontinent and

encouraged an altered, and more Anglicized, behaviour that conformed to British ideals and

standards of Britishness.

In conjunction with the increased control of the British government over the East India

Company, the nature of the British community in the subcontinent was altered. The overall

population of the British was increasing in India.254 In addition, by the first few decades of the

nineteenth century, advancements in technology enabled faster communication between Britain

and India. The journey to the subcontinent also decreased from between five and eight months to

thirty-five or forty days due to the introduction of steamers by the 1830s.255 Furthermore,

territorial acquisitions had been consolidated and expanded upon, which meant the British were

more firmly entrenched in their political power in the subcontinent. Lord Richard Wellesley

(1760-1842) in 1798 increased military activity in India until, by 1818, Britain was the “master

252 Public Advertiser, August 30, 1781.

253 William Huggins, Sketches in India: Treating on Subjects Connected with the Government; Civil and Military
Establishments; Characters of the European, and Customs of the Native Inhabitants (London: John Letts, 1824), p.
62.
254 Percival Spear, The Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth Century India (Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1998), p. 26.

255 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 50.
 90

of India.”256 The change in communication time and the overall increase in population created a

British community in India that was more tightly integrated into British society and cultural

forms of Britishness. This enhanced the confidence of British imperialists in India and

consolidated ideals of Britishness in the community, which helped to decrease the fear of

Orientalization that was represented by the body of the nabob. These social, political,

demographic, and territorial factors diminished British fears of the Orientalized British and

replaced the nabob with the sahib as the ideal British ruler of India. The body of the sahib was

seen as the embodiment of ethnic superiority that worked to legitimize British rule in the

subcontinent because Indians were understood as naturally inferior and, therefore, open to

colonization.257 In addition, the construction of the sahib was intrinsically related to the

representation of both British and Indian women, particularly memsahibs and courtesans, as

explored later in this section.

The cultural, social, and political transition of the British imperial project in India during

the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries largely eradicated the public fear of nabobs in

Britain. By the 1820s, the anxieties around the cultural imports and political corruption of Britain

by nabobs had predominantly faded.258 The stereotypical nabob no longer had a social impact on

Britain as the East India Company had been placed under the more direct supervision of the

government, which made it appear as though the nabobs’ social mobility, political corruption,

and morally questionable methods of obtaining vast fortunes had been controlled by those who

had traditionally possessed elite positions in British society. Therefore, the image of the

effeminate, wealthy, corrupt, and Orientalized nabob was replaced in the early nineteenth

century with the sober, bureaucratic, and firmly British sahib as the ideal British imperialist in

256 Metcalf and Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India, p. 68.

257 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 8.
258 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 235.
 91

the subcontinent.259 Macaulay, in a speech delivered to the House of Commons on July 10, 1833,

exhibited the changing nature of British rule and the opposing figures of the nabob and the sahib.

Macaulay stated that he saw

a large body of civil and military functionaries resembling in nothing but capacity and
valour those adventurers who, seventy years ago, came hither, laden with wealth and
infamy, to parade before our fathers the plundered treasures of Bengal and Tanjore. I
reflect with pride that the doubtful splendour which surrounds the memory of Hastings
and of Clive, we can oppose the spotless glory of Elphinstone and Munro. I contemplate
with reverence and delight the honourable poverty which is the evidence of rectitude
firmly maintained amidst strong temptations.260

This statement demonstrates the disparagement of the nabob and the veneration of the sahib as

the ideal British ruler in India. The British metropole represented the sahib as being

characterized by, what they viewed as, British qualities of energy, integrity, and manliness.261

Significantly, the sahib was understood to embody the idea of the inherent superiority of the

British over India. Therefore, British men, and also women, were under pressure to preserve

British manners, values, and customs. This was in order to maintain the imperial project and

stability of the empire, as the British understood its rule in India in the early nineteenth century

as being based on British ideals of moral integrity. In sum, the sahib represented the

Anglicization of the nabob that was understood as more appropriate to the new, more

aggressively British, style of rule in India.

The Memsahib: Keeper of British Civilization

Colonial India experienced a substantial social shift in the early nineteenth century due to

the advent of British women in the subcontinent. This section explores the rise in the female

British population, as well as the impact it had on the culture of the colony, British men, and

259 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 3.

260 Macaulay, Speeches, p. 137. Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859) and Thomas Munroe (1761-1827) were the
Governors of Bombay and Madras, respectively, and were seen as the ideal version of a British ruler, or sahib, by
Macaulay.
261 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 53.
 92

representations of courtesans. There is scholarly debate on the role of British women in this

period. The standard historical narrative espoused throughout much of the twentieth century is

that the advent of British women in India created increasingly rigid understandings of ethnic

difference between colonizers and colonized peoples. On opposite ends of twentieth century

academia, scholars such as Percival Spear and Ronald Hyam argue that British women were to

blame for, what they saw as, the lessening of inter-ethnic respect between the British and Indians

that characterized the eighteenth century.262 The surge in the population of British women was

believed to end the ‘utopian’ period of ethnic equality and cultural sharing, and instituted the

rigid social structures in the early nineteenth century that “increased the widening racial gulf.”263

Therefore, it meant memsahibs were often represented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

as snobbish, prejudiced, and frivolous.264 In contrast, Indrani Sen argues the that memsahibs

were “merely echoing [their] own community’s ethnic prejudices and intolerance of other

cultures.”265 Ann Stoler corroborates this and argues that the presence of British women was

used to clarify ethnic lines and perceived ethnic threats to British prestige and stability within the

subcontinent.266 Sen demonstrates that the increasingly racist colonial policies of social and

sexual separation were not solely the prerogative of British women, but were more firmly based

on the changing social values of metropolitan Britain that were echoed by memsahibs in India.267

Furthermore, Durba Ghosh argues the mentality of ethnic superiority over Indians were in

formation from the middle of the eighteenth century and, therefore, were not solely based on the

262 Ronald Hyam, “Empire and Sexual Opportunity,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 14, no. 2
(1986): p. 383; Spear, The Nabobs, p. 140.
263 Spear, The Nabobs, p. 140.
264 Lionel Caplan, “Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women: Gender Constructs and Contrasts in a Changing

Society,” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 4 (2000): p.863.

265 Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. xix.
266 Ann Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia,” in Feminism

and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996): p. 228.
267 Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. xix.
 93

advent of increased numbers of British women in the subcontinent in the early 1800s.268 This

scholarship on British women in India allows for a more nuanced view of the memsahib as a

figure who both benefitted from colonialism because she was a member of the ruling ethnic

group, and was simultaneously oppressed due to patriarchal constructions of gender.

The rise of Victorianism took place in India, in relation to constructions of gender,

ethnicity, and class in Britain during the 1830s. The gender ideology of Victorian England

filtered into the colonial space and was imposed on both British and Indian women as the ideal

form of womanhood.269 Nautch-girls, as performers, were unsettling figures to the British, as

their mobility in the public sphere disrupted the foundational moral distinction between the

private and public spheres, which were so integral to Victorian gender ideals and norms.270 This

distinction of gender roles also meant that courtesans were understood to be outside of the

private versus public divide and were, therefore, constructed as dangerous women who

threatened Victorian ideals. In relation to the potent mixture of Evangelicalism, liberalism, and

Victorianism, courtesans were represented as a threat to the popular Victorian ideals of

domesticity. Subsequently, courtesans were represented as endangering the stability of the

British Empire in India through this challenge to social norms.

The early nineteenth century enhanced the eighteenth-century view of the climate that

attributed ethnic degeneration with tropical spaces, which was tied to polygenic theory that

assigned different ethnicities unique climatic locations and subsequent levels of civilization.271

Climatic theory supplemented British beliefs of their ethnic superiority as well as the threat of

268 Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, pp. 9-10.
269 Indrani Sen, Women and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India (1858-1900) (New Delhi:
Orient Longman, 2002), p. 190.
270 Lata Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins: The Courtesan and the Nation’s Narrative,” Indian Journal of

Gender Studies 14, no. 1 (2007): p. 95.

271 Nandini Bhattacharya, “Leisure, Economy and Colonial Urbanism: Darjeeling, 1835-1930,” Urban History 40,

no. 3 (2013): 442.

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‘degenerating’ in India. The prevalent colonial discourse was that the tropical regions of India

were hazardous to Europeans as a ‘race’ because it damaged their constitutions, which were seen

as fundamental to the maintenance of their whiteness and Britishness.272 The popular belief

amongst medical professionals and British elites in the first half of the nineteenth century was

that if Europeans remained in India for more than three generations they would lose their ethnic

identity and degenerate, therefore becoming an ‘inferior’ ethnicity, similar to Indians.273 A key

aspect of this idea of ethnic degeneration was the association of the tropics with laziness and the

diminishment of British vigour. Emily Eden (1797-1869), on her arrival in the Indian plains,

demonstrated this belief of indolence and degeneration through the climate when she stated that

she could “already feel what the languor is that this climate produces.”274 Eden demonstrates the

belief of climatic and, therefore, ethnic ‘degeneration’ in India that was a source of concern for

the East India Company.

Until the early nineteenth century, British men dominated the early colonial period in

India, which produced a male-centred and masculine social atmosphere that was essential to the

creation of the nabob.275 In the eighteenth century the East India Company discouraged British

women from entering colonial India because it was believed that women had weaker

constitutions and would consequently ‘degenerate’ faster in India’s climate. This understanding

continued to dominate medical discourses throughout the nineteenth century. The British

physician Edward John Tilt (1815-1893) believed that though “not aware that an attempt has

been made to estimate how long an average Anglo-Saxon constitution can stand India without

272 Julian C.T. Baker, “Darkness, Travel and Landscape: India by Fire and Starlight, c. 1820- c. 1860.” Environment

and Planning D: Society and Space 33, no. 4 (2015): p. 751.

273 Dan Keith Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1996), p. 32-33.

274 Emily Eden, “Up the Country” Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India (London: R.

Bentley, 1866), p. 377.

275 Pran Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj (New York: Penguin, 2009), p. 23.
 95

breaking down…I think it is rightly admitted that women break down sooner than men.”276 Tilt’s

opinion on British women’s health in India demonstrates the prevailing belief during the

nineteenth century that women were naturally weaker and more fragile than men, which made

them unfit to go to warmer climates in a colonial capacity. The presence of British women in

India increased colonial narratives and anxieties around ethnic degeneration as threatening to

Britain’s ethnic superiority and political stability because the strength of the imperial project was

understood to be integrally linked to the ethnic superiority of the British. Consequently, the

numbers of British women in India were limited by the East India Company until the 1830s.277 It

is estimated that fewer than two hundred British women were in Bengal throughout the

eighteenth century, as the Company actively discouraged British women from travelling and

living in India throughout the early colonial period. 278

In addition, representations of British women in empire were often quite contradictory.

Though British women were understood to be too weak to be in India, as well as enhancing the

degeneration of the British ‘race,’ due to their weaker constitutions, they were also increasingly

represented in the early nineteenth century as being required in the colony to protect the imperial

project and British ethnic purity. The necessity of memsahibs being in India was related to the

metropole’s increasing social censure of conjugal relationships between British men and Indian

women. Through the changing, more puritan, beliefs on morality in Britain, the British in India

had to lead more circumscribed and traditional sex lives to avoid censure by colonial authorities

276 Edward John Tilt, Health in India for British Women, and on the Prevention of Disease in Tropical Climates

(London: J. & A. Churchill, 1875), p. 34.

277 Erica Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women: Sexual Relationships, Venereal

Disease and the Redefinition of Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century India,” The Indian Economic & Social
History Review 46, no. 1 (2009): p. 8.
278 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 194. See Joan Mickelson-Gaughan, The ‘Incumberances’: British Women in India, 1615-

1856 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 3-4 for the example of William Keeling (1578-1620) who in
1615 attempted to smuggle his wife, Anne, aboard his ship headed for India, she was discovered by the East India
Company and sent back to England. This was the standard strategy of the Company in the early colonial period, and
this limited the population of British women in India until the changing policies of the early nineteenth century
increased their numbers.
 96

in the metropole.279 This mainly took the form of no longer cohabitating with Indian women and,

instead, marrying British women. British women were encouraged in the early nineteenth

century to enter the imperial project to protect British men from Indian women and the British

‘race’ from miscegenation. The increased presence of British women in the subcontinent was

seen as a way to minimize these relationships, as British men would then marry women from

Britain, experience the “calm delights of wedded life,” according to Emma Roberts, and no

longer be involved with Indian women.280 This enabled the population of British women to rise

in India over the course of the early nineteenth century. Nechtman argues “it would be

impossible to estimate the exact ratios [of British men to women] in the eighteenth century” and,

therefore, it is difficult to numerically track the increased population of British women in the

early nineteenth century.281 However, the proliferation of sources written by British women in

this period demonstrates an increase in their overall population in the subcontinent. In addition,

P. J. Marshall suggests the British male to female population ratio was around 100,000 to 35,000

by 1861.282 Therefore, though exact numbers are difficult to acquire, the population of British

women increased in the early nineteenth century, although the population of British men

continued to be higher throughout the colonial period.

Although British women were seen as a threat to imperial stability, they were

simultaneously believed to encourage British men to more rigorously adhere to European social

norms.283 This was particularly related to the increasingly influential Victorian norms of public

and private spheres, gender roles, concepts of ethnic purity, and social distance from Indians.

279 Sumanta Banerjee, Under the Raj: Prostitution in Colonial Bengal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), p.
42.
280 Emma Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society vol. 1 (London:

Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1835), p. 27.

281 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 194. In addition, the lack of census information on the British population in India during

this period was a limitation for this thesis.

282 P.J. Marshall, “British Society in India under the East India Company,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (1997):

p. 90.
283 Nechtman, Nabobs, p. 217.
 97

Furthermore, British women were represented as the keepers of British civilization in India and

“the bearers of a new redefined colonial morality” based on Evangelical, liberal, and Victorian

ideals.284 Their presence was seen as Anglicizing British men, who could be corrupted into

taking on more Orientalized lifestyles of the eighteenth-century nabob due to their relations with

Indian women, particularly courtesans and nautch-girls. The increase in British women in the

subcontinent was believed to bring British men more firmly within European gender, ethnicity,

and class norms, as well as proliferating Victorian ideals of domesticity.

Metropolitan elites increasingly viewed relationships between British men and Indian

women as problematic due to the fear of miscegenation and the subsequent threat it would have

on the stability of the imperial project. These beliefs coincided with the increased popularity of

Evangelical and racist philosophies at the time. Anglo-Indians, often the children of British men

and Indian women, were understood as a threat to the British in India because they confused

ethnic categories.285 They were a particularly potent threat because the British justified ruling

India in relation to a belief in their innate ethnic superiority, and the subsequent inferiority of

Indians. Anglo-Indians were dangerous to the imperial project because they had potential to

bridge the political and cultural gap between colonizer and colonized through demanding

political recognition or better treatment based on their ethnic heritage.286 Therefore, British

women in India were constructed as significant actors in enabling the maintenance of British

ethnic superiority by minimizing relations between British men and Indian women. This was

accomplished through British men marrying memsahibs and being brought more firmly into

British social norms and ideals of domesticity. Emma Roberts saw unions between British men

and women as “often the means of preventing extravagance, dissipation, and all their

284 Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power,” p. 227.

285 Caplan, “Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women,” p. 868.
286 Ibid.
 98

concomitant evils.”287 Thus, the presence of British women as wives in India was seen to

diminish the potentially rakish and immoral behaviour of British men that had dominated the

nabob period in the previous century.

While the Company discouraged inter-ethnic relationships, the opposite of the stance they

had taken in the preceding century, British men continued to have relationships with Indian

women throughout the 1800s, although the prevalence of these unions decreased throughout the

century, the children of these unions were seen as the most problematic aspect of this form of

union.288 These fears were allayed in part through changes in Company policies, for example the

reforms by Cornwallis in 1793, which barred Anglo-Indians from holding high positions within

the civil or military operations of the Company.289 The perception that the stability of the British

imperial project in India was threatened by inter-ethnic relationships was integrally related to

social anxieties concerning British men and women crossing ethnic, sexual, gender, and class

lines in India. This was due to the wealth of the subcontinent and the belief that India’s climate

degenerated the British constitution, while simultaneously enhancing the libidinousness that

could produce miscegenation. Therefore, the British conceived British women as being the

bastions of ethnic and sexual purity through Victorian and Evangelical gender and ethnicity-

based norms in an attempt to police and control the sexual and social behaviour of the British in

the subcontinent. Consequently, British women were often constructed as asexual, pure, and

chaste in opposition to the representation of Indian women as inherently sexual and immoral.

The conceptualization of British and Indian women in this manner constructed the Self and the

Other in an attempt to police the sexual behaviour of British men in the subcontinent.

287 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 32.

288 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 10. However, see Banerjee, Under
the Raj, p. 49 which argues that inter-ethnic relationships had essentially disappeared by the mid-nineteenth century
due to the increase of British women in the subcontinent.
289 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 10.
 99

The fear of miscegenation meant that the impetus was placed more firmly on British

women to ‘re-civilize’ British men and return them to relations with white women, which would

subsequently decrease social and sexual interactions with Indians. Emma Roberts demonstrated

the importance of British women’s presence in India, for when British women came together

“the gentlemen follow in their train, very few preferring the jovialities of their own exclusive

circle to the attractiveness of a feminine coterie. The fruits of domestication amid the ladies…are

of incalculable value.”290 Roberts illustrates the importance of British women in creating and

maintaining gender and ethnicity-based systems of colonial dominance in India. Furthermore,

these attitudes created more rigid social structures and barriers between colonizing and colonized

groups. The political threat of miscegenation, which enhanced the significance of British women

in maintaining the ethnic purity, and subsequent superiority, of the British in India. Therefore,

British women entered India and the imperial project in a period when the social foundation of

difference was shifting around ideas of ethnicity; Victorian gender roles; and the increasingly

rigid understandings class, religion, and civilization posited by liberal and Evangelical social

philosophies.

In conclusion, the rise of Evangelical thought in England transferred to India in changes

of governance style and a greater focus on societal reform through education. This occurred at

the same time as the rising prevalence and popularity of European theories on ethnic purity and

superiority, which permeated through the rest of the nineteenth century. These two ideologies

combined to create a highly gendered and racialized set of beliefs concerning India and Indians,

and effectively set up British women, or memsahibs, as the bastions of ethnic purity and

Victorian gender ideals of domesticity in India.291 This demonstrates the highly gendered and

290Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 260.

291Eugenia W. Herbert, Flora’s Empire: British Gardens in India (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2011), p. 35.
 100

ethnicity-based hierarchies that were created in colonial India in order to perpetuate British

dominance over the region. Ideas concerning gender and ethnicity were highly interrelated to

conceptualizations of the Orient and produced images and constructions of the Other in colonial

discourses. Oriental despotism, sensuality, and splendour were the major stereotypes and ideas

that the West maintained about the East in a manner that exhibited the greater strength and

rationality of the West.292 Subsequently, the production of an ethnic Other in colonial discourse

constructed colonized Indians as a population of degenerates on the basis of ethnic origin.293 This

construction of ethnic hierarchies worked to justify the conquest and colonization of India and

Indians, particularly as being in need of the British in order to ‘morally progress.’

Early Nineteenth-Century Nautch-Girls

The early nineteenth century shifted British perceptions of nautch-girls in relation to

constructions of memsahibs and sahibs. The constructions of courtesans and memsahibs were

produced in opposition to each other and were dependent on one another. The scholarship on

nautch-girls mainly focuses on the increased ‘degeneration’ of courtesans throughout the early

nineteenth century. Vijay Prakash Singh and Erica Wald conform to this dominant scholarly

narrative about courtesans during this period.294 There is a scholarly push for a reclamation of

nautch-girls from this narrative of ‘degeneration’ by examining courtesans in a manner that does

not solely focus on their relationship to sex-work. Margaret E. Walker explores courtesans

through their dance traditions in the nineteenth century in order to re-centre nautch-girls without

292 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), p. 4.

293 Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), p. 40.
294 See Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” pp.177-194 and Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned

Females and Idle Women,” pp. 5-25 who both explore the ‘degeneration’ of courtesans from their cultural, political,
and financial agency within pre-colonial Indian societies to their association with commercial sex-work in the
nineteenth century and the essential destruction of the courtesan tradition by the mid-twentieth century.
 101

solely concentrating on their relationship to the imperial project.295 This section predominantly

examines the ways in which representations of British memsahibs and Indian courtesans were

explicitly linked in colonial discourse on idealized notions of femininity, whiteness, and

sensuality for the maintenance of British political authority in India. Therefore, it utilizes recent

scholarly narratives that examine the ‘degradation’ of courtesans, as well as works that re-centre

courtesans as figures with individuality and agency in order to generate a nuanced understanding

of how British colonialism impacted the construction of courtesans in relation to British political

power in India.

Nautch-girls were symbolic of the East and were represented as sensuous and dangerous

temptresses in opposition to British women, who were understood as the embodiment of

Victorian domesticity and the bastions of ethnic purity. In this period, courtesans were

amalgamated from various caste, regional, and religious differences into a more simplistic

understanding of the nautch-girl, as well as the subsequent representation of these women as

commercial sex-workers. This illustrates the ‘degradation’ of courtesans from important cultural

figures to their amalgamation into a monolithic group, which negatively impacted their cultural,

political, and financial agency and power within colonial society.

Evangelical, liberal, and Victorian ideals influenced British persons’ enjoyment of the

nautch and appreciation of nautch-girls. Spear demonstrates that from the 1790s into the early

nineteenth century the British attitude towards the nautch had altered from “slightly guilty

appreciation or naïve enjoyment to frank incomprehension, boredom, and finally disgust.”296 The

alteration of the British ruling style in the subcontinent meant that forms of Indian entertainment,

such as the nautch, which were previously associated with symbols of rulership, were viewed

295 See Margaret, E. Walker, “The ‘Nautch’ Reclaimed: Women’s Performance Practice in Nineteenth-Century

North India,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (2014): pp. 551-567 for an analysis of the
choreography of nautch performances.
296 Spear, The Nabobs, p. 35.
 102

with repulsion and constructed as sensual and inappropriate performances.297 British travel

writers, particularly the memsahibs, produced narratives around the tediousness, wildness, and

wealth of nautch performances. Elizabeth Fenton (d.1875), upon deciding that the nautch-girl

she saw was “a mad woman,” whose performance contained “little to see that could please an

European eye,” returned home, “cured for ever of all curiosity respecting native

entertainments.”298 Furthermore, due to the rise in these political and cultural philosophies, as

well as the enhanced British territorial and political acquisitions in colonial India, the British

decreased their dependence on, and use of, Indian modes of political legitimacy in the early

nineteenth century. This particularly included attending nautch performances and patronizing

nautch-girls, although it also expanded to huqqa smoking and other forms of Indian

entertainment. The diminished political and cultural significance of courtesans and their dances

as symbols of authority and legitimacy encouraged the British in India to disparage these

performances. Subsequently, this would enhance the slow ‘degradation’ and amalgamation of the

courtesan into the category of a commercial sex-worker as the century progressed.

The lure of nautch-girls to British men decreased in the early nineteenth century as the

number of British women in India swelled, increasing marriages between British sahibs and

memsahibs.299 However, the social anxiety around nautch-girls, and the constructed perception

of their ‘Oriental’ sensuality, increased during this period. This related to the rise of Evangelical,

liberal, and Victorian popular culture and thought in the metropole and the subsequent

imposition of these gender, ethnicity, religion, and class-based values onto the British

community in colonial India and Indian society. These ideas and anxieties around Indian

297 Collingahm, Imperial Bodies, p. 54.

298 Elizabeth Fenton, A Narrative of her Life in India, the Isle of France and Tasmania during the years 1826-1830
(London: Edward Arnold, 1901), pp. 243-244.
299 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 182.
 103

courtesans were integrally linked to fears of miscegenation and the crossing of ethnicity and

class-based social boundaries that had abounded in the subcontinent during the previous century.

Memsahibs and courtesans were both significant figures in colonial discourse.

Enlightenment-based, polygenesis theory, and Victorian gender ideals worked concurrently to

develop understandings of the place and role of women within civilizations. Throughout the

colonial period, across the globe, women were understood to be a significant marker of

civilization that represented the level of “progress a culture and people had reached.”300 John

Bentley argued that “Of the superior advantages which have raised the nations of Christendom to

so high a pre-eminence above all others, there is none of greater prominence and greater

importance than the cultivation of the female mind, and the elevation of woman to her just rank

and dignity in society.”301 This demonstrates that the British understood the status of their

women as inherently linked to their level of ‘modernity’ and civilization. Bentley demonstrates

that the British represented European women as the most enlightened and educated women in the

world and, therefore, Britain as the apogee of world civilizations. Along with other concepts,

such as forms of government, religious beliefs, and types of education, the British understood

India’s place within their world order as being fundamentally linked to the status of women in

Indian society. While British women represented the superiority of European civilization to the

British, “among all other nations, whether Pagan or Mahometan, the female sex is held in a state

of degradation, and in no instance allowed to share in those privileges which the men reserve

exclusively for themselves.”302 Therefore, the British characterized India as being a less civilized

and a more ‘barbaric’ place than Britain due to the status of Indian women. This representation

was increasingly significant during the early nineteenth century, for it enabled the British to

300 Betty Joseph, Reading the East India Company, 1720-1840: Colonial Currencies of Gender (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 2.

301 Bentley, Essays Relative to the Habits, Character, and Moral Improvement of the Hindoos, p. 163.
302 Ibid.
 104

justify their domination of India as a benevolent act of educating and advancing the place of

women in Indian society.303 Specifically, this would take the form of social reforms based on

Evangelical and liberal philosophies. The British predominantly focused on the reform of the

cultural tradition of sati in the early nineteenth century. However, over the course of the period

this focus would shift to courtesans, although more tangible political action would not occur until

the second half of the nineteenth century, the narrative altered in this period and was the impetus

for later action.

In relation to Evangelical social reforms, British women wished to educate Indian

women, especially elite Indian women, in order to ‘advance’ them and Indian society. However,

courtesans were seen to impede the encouragement of female education in the subcontinent. The

British writer Mary Martha Sherwood (1775-1851), who was in India from 1805 to 1815,

expressed that courtesans’ “education consists in singing, dancing, and playing on a sort of guitar

or small harp. Some of the higher ranks of them are taught to read, on which account it is

considered disgraceful for respectable women in the East to learn.”304 This illustrates that

courtesans were represented as obstacles to British women’s ‘civilizing mission’ of Indian

society through the education of Indian women. Courtesans, due to their association with sex-

work, were seen as markers of civilization in a negative manner. Though courtesans were

educated, the British negated this aspect of their identity due to the ‘immorality’ of their sexual

lives, while the lack of literacy amongst elite Indian women was seen as illustrative of their

subjugation. Therefore, Indian women, as the marker of Indian civilization, were continuously

constructed during the nineteenth century as being fundamentally lower than British women and,

303 Felicity A. Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 11.
304 Mary Martha Sherwood, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood: (Chiefly Autobiographical) with extracts from Mr.

Sherwood’s journal during his imprisonment in France and residence in India (London: Darton and Co., 1854), p.
422.
 105

therefore, in need of Britain’s imperial project and colonial presence in order to ‘modernize’ the

subcontinent through the advancement of Indian women, which justified the British imperial

project.

The early nineteenth century experienced a hardening of social boundaries that worked to

widen the gap between colonizers and colonized peoples in the subcontinent. However, the East

India Company continued to encourage cross-cultural sharing during this period, albeit in a more

limited manner in order to diminish the perceived threats of nabobism and miscegenation.

Consequently, nautches formed an integral part of cross-cultural colonial social life and the

British continued to attend these performances throughout the period.305 This was demonstrated

through artwork such as the painting depicting Mahadaji Sindhai (1730-1794) entertaining

British officers with a nautch that was produced around 1815 to 1820, which illustrates the

continued presence of British officials at Indian forms of entertainment (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1: Mahadaji Sindhai entertaining a British naval officer and military officer with a nautch, c. 1815-1820.

305 Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj, p. 157; Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. xvii.
 106

Though the British were increasingly encouraged to avoid patronizing and attending nautch

performances from the 1830s onwards, the practice remained popular among many British elites

in India.306 This establishes that the imagery surrounding nautch-girls as symbols of ‘Oriental’

wealth, luxury, and sensuality persisted as a representation of Indian courtesans and India. The

opulence and exoticism of this imagery attracted the continued attendance of the British at these

performances. Elizabeth Fenton expressed the British fascination with nautches as “Like many

other Europeans I had a violent curiosity to see a Nautch. These native assemblies are much

frequented about Calcutta.”307 Her interest in attending a nautch performance, as well as

admitting that many Europeans continue to attend them in Calcutta, illustrates the persistent

allure and fascination with nautch-girls in the early nineteenth century. In addition, this

demonstrates the prevailing power that the imagery of ‘Oriental’ luxury and sensuality had over

the British understanding of Indian women.

Representations of Courtesans in British Writings

Nautches continued to be a common form of entertainment in the first few decades of the

nineteenth century. Invitations for nautch festivities were sent out in letters and cards, as well as

advertisements in local newspapers.308 These advertisements often appeared in newspapers such

as the Calcutta Gazette, which stated on October 20, 1814 that “Baboo Gopee Mohun Dab…to

contribute to the amusement of the public, has besides a selection of the most accomplished

nautch-girls.”309 This demonstrates that nautch performances continued to be popular forms of

entertainment in the early nineteenth century. Therefore, many British travellers, missionaries, as

well as civil and military officials in India described nautches in their travel narratives, letters,

306 Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj, p. 123.
307 Fenton, A Narrative of her Life in India, p. 241.
308 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 34.
309 Calcutta Gazette, Thursday, October 20th, 1814, vol. 62, no. 1598.
 107

diaries, and memoirs.310 While the British continued to patronize nautch performances, the

overall social atmosphere that was imported from the metropole increasingly discouraged British

attendance at these events. This was often attributed to the increased presence of British women

in the subcontinent and subsequently the rigid representation of the ideal memsahib, as well as

solidifying understandings of gender, ethnicity, and class-based social hierarchies. However, for

British women the nautch was one of the few sites of accessible gendered interaction they could

have with Indian women.311 Therefore, memsahibs’ descriptions of dancing-girls, their clothing,

jewellery, and performances became popular in the metropole during this period. These writings

often took the form of travel narratives, journals, and letters that were written originally as

private communication and were later published for popular consumption in Britain.312 In

addition, these narratives frequently influenced colonial policy and mentality, especially when

they served to support the power structures of the British imperial project.313 This was

particularly potent as memsahibs often wrote on the situation and status of Indian women while

focusing extensively on the need for the social reform of India in relation to Evangelical and

liberal beliefs. These attitudes, expressed through British women’s travel writings, altered and

hardened representations of courtesans from influential cultural figures, to performers in the

form of nautch-girls, to sex-workers, to maintain the stability of the imperial project in India.

The intersection of ethnicity and gender in India had influential consequences on the

ways in which British officials and memsahibs represented Indian women. British

conceptualizations of Indian women, their bodies and behaviour, were significant in colonial

310 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 27.

311 See Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, pp. xii-xiii. Another form of interaction with Indian women available to British
women was meeting high-caste women in the zenana. While completely closed to British men, British women were
able to intermingle with these women. However, the nautch remained a more accessible form of social interaction
between British and Indian women.
312 Ibid., p. xxv.
313 Ghose, Nineteenth-Century Travels, Explorations and Empires, p. x.
 108

discourses and influential in the negotiation and justification of the imperial project in the

subcontinent. Throughout the colonial period, the British represented nautch-girls as the epitome

of Eastern decadence, as well as a form of institutionalized sensuality. Nautch-girls and their

sensuality were specifically understood to occupy a space outside of the domestic sphere, which

threatened Victorian gender ideals of women’s proper roles and the subsequent social divide

between the public and private spheres.314 Moreover, in the early nineteenth century gender

norms and values became progressively rigid and sexual desires were more repressed in relation

to ideas of private and public spheres.315 This informed British understandings of courtesans and

their association with sex-workers and representations as temptresses, based on their own

cultural understandings of sensuality and domesticity.

The first half of the nineteenth century was a period of disquiet concerning inter-ethnic

relationships, specifically between white, British men and Indian women. Therefore, Indian

women were constructed as agents of ethnic degeneration for the British population and were

viewed as a threat to British dominance in the subcontinent.316 In contrast, British men saw

themselves as protecting Indian women and their sexual honour from, what they saw, as sexually

degenerative and oppressive Indian men.317 Gayatri Spivak succinctly describes this as “white

men saving brown women from brown men.”318 The ideas concerning Indian women’s sexuality,

and subsequently the threat they posed of ethnic degeneration, informed the travel narratives of

many memsahibs. Though white, British women were sexually subordinate in imperial society,

they were ethnically dominant in India and this privilege worked to influence the ways in which

314 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 182.

315 Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (London: Penguin, 2013), p.
359.
316 Shah, “‘Barbaric Pearl and Gold,’” p. 39.
317 Steven Patterson, The Cult of Imperial Honor in British India (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 57.
318 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by

Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), p. 297.
 109

they represented and understood Indian women.319 In many ways, memsahibs saw Indian women

as overly and overtly sexual, which implicitly demonstrated and idealized memsahibs’ own

sexual purity. In relation to the perceived sexual and ethnic degeneration of Indian women,

British women were constructed in contrast to these images as purveyors of ethnic and sexual

purity.

Memsahibs wrote extensively, and in great detail, on the nautch performances that they

witnessed in the early nineteenth century. The descriptions they wrote formed a rich and detailed,

though often prejudicial, record of courtesans’ performances in this period. Until the 1830s, the

British women who wrote on nautches attended these performances. However, by the 1850s,

memsahibs were not often present at these events due to the increasingly negative connotations

attached to the dances and the performers, as well as the social pressure from colonial society to

not attend them.320 This meant that the stereotypes around Indian women and nautch

performances were often repeated from earlier writers and, therefore, perpetuated beliefs about

courtesans. However, these narratives were not monolithic representations of nautch-girls and

their performances. British women, as individuals with various experiences and beliefs, did not

possess a uniform female gaze; rather, they had a plurality of opinions on the nautch and

courtesans.321 These viewpoints complicated the narrative and subsequent representations of

courtesans produced by British colonial society in the early nineteenth century. However, there

were patterns within these representations that often constructed some aspect of the nautch in a

manner that conformed to the various, and often conflicting, narratives of courtesans as symbols

of ‘Oriental’ sensuality and decadence, as victims, or as dangerous temptresses. Memsahibs often

focused on the clothing of nautch-girls, their dances, songs, and music, as well as the perceived

319 Patterson, The Cult of Imperial Honor in British India, p. 57.

320 Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. 1.
321 Ibid., p. xxvii.
 110

presence or absence of modesty in the women or their performances. British narratives on

nautch-girls also explored their apparent victimization as ‘fallen’ women, or sex-workers, and

their danger to British men through their ‘Oriental’ sensuality, sexual availability, and the

subsequent threat they posed to the imperial project through miscegenation.

British travel narratives, mainly written by memsahibs although British men also wrote

about nautches, described the performances in great detail. These descriptions frequently focused

on the courtesans’ movements, clothing, and jewellery, as well as the musical accompaniments.

These aspects of nautch-girls’ performances that the British explored illustrated their

constructions of ‘Oriental’ luxury, wealth, and sensuality, as well as the differences between

Indian and British society. Memsahibs appeared to be particularly interested in the clothing worn

by nautch-girls. Julia Charlotte Maitland (1808-1864), who was in India between 1836 and 1840,

positively described the dancing-girls she witnessed at a nautch as being “most graceful

creatures, walking, or rather sailing about, like queens, with long muslin robes from their throats

to their feet.”322 Emily Eden, who was in India between 1837 and 1840 with her brother, the

Governor-General George Eden the first Earl of Auckland (1784-1849), commented on the

richness of the nautch-girls’ clothing, as they were “dressed in gold brocades, some purple and

some red, with long floating scarfs of gold gauze.”323 Emma Roberts, who travelled in India from

1828 to 1832, gave a detailed description of the clothing worn by courtesans at a nautch. Roberts

viewed nautch-girls as presenting,

very picturesque figures, though somewhat encumbered by the voluminous folds of their
drapery. Their attire consists of a pair of gray-coloured silk trowsers, edged and
embroidered with silver, so long as only to afford occasional glimpses of the rich
anclets…Over the trowsers a petticoat of some rich stuff appears…having broad silver or
gold borders, finished with deep fringes of the same. The coortee, or vest, is of the usual
dimensions, but it is almost hidden by an immense veil, which crosses the bosom several
times.”324

322 Julia Maitland, Letters from Madras, during the years 1836-39, by a Lady (London: John Murray, 1846), p. 27
323 Eden, “Up the Country,” p. 40.
324 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 189.
 111

These descriptions demonstrate the interest with which British memsahibs approached courtesans

and nautch performances, particularly in relation to their clothing. The clothing of these women

was seen to represent the decadence of Indian women and the subcontinent more broadly, as well

as the stereotypical and different ways in which they dressed themselves in comparison to

Europeans. These descriptions of clothing created an understanding of courtesans and India as

being inherently different from Britain, in ways that represented the East as luxurious.

In addition to clothing, memsahibs often described the jewellery of nautch-girls as

representative of Eastern wealth and opulence. Nautch-girls, according to Maitland, wore a

significant amount of jewellery as “They were covered with gold and jewels, earrings, nose-

rings, bracelets, armlets, anklets, bands round their heads…and rings on all their fingers and all

their toes.”325 Roberts also depicted the plethora of jewellery displayed by nautch-girls during

their performances as “The hands, arms, and neck, are covered with jewels, sometimes of great

value, and the hair is braided with silver ribands…the diameter of the nose-ring is as large as that

of a crown-piece; it is of gold wire, and very thin; a pearl and two other precious gems are strung

upon it, dangling over the mouth.”326 This demonstrates that nautch-girls were bedecked in

extensive amounts of jewellery for their performances. In addition to the general splendour this

created, British women understood that courtesans could be individually quite wealthy. Roberts

wrote that “Many of the nautch girls are extremely rich, those most in esteem being very highly

paid for their performances,” some women even made “1,000 rupees (£ 100) nightly.”327

Courtesans were quite wealthy throughout the colonial period, even into the second half of the

nineteenth century when they were under increasing levels of social censure and were losing

employment and patronage. On the civil tax ledgers in Lucknow between 1858 and 1877,

325 Maitland, Letters from Madras, p. 27.

326 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, pp.189-190.
327 Ibid., p. 192.
 112

courtesans were in the highest tax bracket and had some of the largest individual incomes in the

city.328 The descriptions of jewellery and clothing alluded to the wealth of the nautch-girls. In

addition, these narratives constructed nautch-girls as symbols of ‘Oriental’ luxury and meant that

courtesans were represented as the epitome of Eastern stereotypes concerning India’s opulence

and wealth.329 Therefore, memsahibs’ representations of courtesans and their performances

perpetuated the construction of the East as the Other in relation to its decadence and wealth,

which was an image that was produced in the nabob period and persisted throughout the colonial

period.

British writers, upon experiencing a nautch, frequently gave detailed descriptions of the

performance; the dancing, singing, and accompanying music. Nautches were understood to be

different from British forms of entertainment at the time, particularly operas, theatre

performances, and balls. The British often described the movements of the courtesans as gliding,

not as dancing.330 Anne Elwood, while she was in Bombay from 1825 to 1828, described the

movements of the nautch-girls when, “At length they began, not to dance, but to move

gracefully, and slowly, throwing their arms about and waving their drapery, which they twisted

round them, or let fall in becoming folds, whilst the musicians behind them made a tremendous,

though not unharmonious noise with their vins.”331 Emma Roberts believed “the dancing is even

more strange, and less interesting than the music; the performers rarely raise their feet from the

ground, but shuffle, or to use a more poetical, though not so expressive a phrase, glide along the

floor, raising their arms, and veiling and unveiling as they advance or describe a circle.”332 While

328 Veena Talwar Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow, India,” Feminist

Studies 16, no. 2 (1990): p. 259.

329 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 66.
330 Walker, “The ‘Nautch’ Reclaimed,” p. 556.
331Anne Katherine Elwood, Narrative of a Journey Overland from England, by the Continent of Europe, Egypt, and

the Red Sea, to India including a residence there, and voyage home, in the years 1825, 26, 27, 28 vol. II (London:
H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830), p. 81.
332 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 190.
 113

the British saw the dancing as different from their own forms of movement, the singing and

musical accompaniment of the nautch were more often firmly ridiculed in their writings.

Maitland described the singing as “bawling like bad street-singers – a most fearful noise, and no

tune.”333 Roberts wrote that “the nautch girls of India are singers as well as dancers; they

commence the vocal part of the entertainment in a high shrill key, which they sustain as long as

they can; they have no idea whatsoever of modulating their voices.”334 In addition, Roberts

disparaged the music as “the instruments which form the accompaniment are little less

barbarous; these consist of two nondescript guitars, and a very small pair of kettle-

drums…making sad havoc with the original melodies.”335 Few memsahibs seemed to enjoy the

music or form of the nautch. Elizabeth Fenton, who was in India between 1826 and 1828,

described a performance by a nautch-girl as when “The musicians…commenced a native air,

merely a repetition of four notes; she advanced, retreated, swam round, the while making

frightful contortions with her arms and hands, head and eyes. This was her ‘Poetry in motion’; I

could not even laugh at it.”336 These descriptions worked to represent the fundamental difference

between Britain and India through their types of performance and entertainment tastes. In

addition, these descriptions placed greater value on British forms of entertainment than Indian

ones.

Though there were some exceptions, British memsahibs and sahibs typically found

nautch performances and Indian dancing to be boring, rather than exciting, forms of

entertainment.337 Maitland found the nautch particularly tedious as she defied “any one to have

watched this girl’s dull, unvarying dance long, without going to sleep.”338 Roberts echoed these

333 Maitland, Letters from Madras, p. 27.

334 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 190.
335 Ibid.
336 Fenton, A Narrative of her Life in India, p. 243.
337 Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj, p. 159.
338 Maitland, Letters from Madras, p. 28.
 114

sentiments concerning nautch parties, as she wrote that “to European spectators, the performance

soon grows exceedingly tiresome.”339 She argued it was the sameness of the dances and dancers

that contributed to the dullness of the performance as,

the same evolutions are repeated with the most unvarying monotony, and are continued
until the appearance of a new set of dancers gives a hint to the preceding party to
withdraw…A nautch given by a great person generally concludes with an exhibition of
fire-work, a spectacle in which native artists excel, and affords a very acceptable
gratification to eyes wearied with the dull sameness of the dancers.340

Maitland and Roberts’ descriptions demonstrate the view of many memsahibs as to the dullness

and unvarying nature of nautch performances. However, these views were often related to the

lack of knowledge that the British had of courtesans and their artistic traditions. The British,

largely due to their ignorance of Indian languages, did not understand the songs that

accompanied the courtesans’ dances, which meant that they were unable to appreciate the

context in which the performance was given.341 This limited the presentation to a simple routine

that the British perceived to be intended purely for entertainment, rather than to express a range

of emotions and a larger, more nuanced, story.342

Some memsahibs were able to recognize that a greater story was being told beyond

simply the movements of the dance; however, this did not necessarily encourage their enjoyment

or comprehension of the spectacle. Amelia Herber, who was in India in the early 1820s with her

husband Reverend Reginald Herber (1783-1826), described a nautch as,

the nâch, or dancing-girls, – if dancing that could be called which consisted in strained
movements of the arms, head, and body, the feet, though in perpetual slow motion,
seldom moving from the same spot. Some story was evidently intended to be told from
the expression of their countenances, but to me it was quite unintelligible.343

339 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 188.

340 Ibid., pp. 191-192.
341 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 182.
342 Ibid.
343 Rev. Reginald Herber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay,

1824-25 vol. I (London: J. Murray, 1861), p. 38.

 115

Amelia Herber recognized the potential of a broader context and story to the nautch; however,

this did not mitigate her general distaste for the performance, nor the tediousness with which she

felt it possessed as she found “the whole exhibition was fatiguing and stupid, nearly every charm

but that of novelty being wanting…I returned home between twelve and one much tired, and not

the least disposed to attend another nâch.”344 Herber, Maitland, and Roberts demonstrate the

conventional feeling of many early nineteenth-century colonizers in India who experienced

nautch performances and found them to be dull and tedious. The lack of understanding calcified

representations of the nautch as all the same and boring, which limited the ability of the British

to nuance their conceptualization of these performances and women. This was a significant

aspect of the amalgamation of courtesans because the British did not understand the differences

between these women and their performances, which meant that they were seen as being the

same as one another. The ‘sameness’ of the nautch contributed to the cultural amalgamation and

subsequent degeneration of courtesans and Indian entertainment styles in the nineteenth century.

However, there were some exceptions to the overall rule of memsahibs finding nautch

performances monotonous and tiring. Anne Elwood found nautch-girls and their routines to be

quite interesting and entertaining. Though “many persons complain of the sameness of a Nautch”

she found them to be so fascinating that it was “surprising that a regular set of Nautch girls has

never been imported for the English stage, for they would be far more interesting than the

Elephant of Siam, or the Siamese Youths, and the novelty and splendour of a Nautch would

recommend them for a season at least.”345 This interest with nautch-girls and their performances

was often related to ideas around ‘Oriental’ splendour and the nautch as symbolizing the epitome

of Eastern Otherness. Mary Martha Sherwood illustrated the ‘Oriental’ exoticism of the nautch

in that she “was astonished, fascinated, and carried, as described in fancy, to the golden halls of

344 Ibid.
345 Elwood, Narrative of a Journey Overland from England, vol. II, p. 82.
 116

ancient kings.”346 This demonstrates that the overall factor of appeal for the British concerning

the nautch was its relation to the stereotypes of wealth, luxury, and opulence that had been

integrally associated with the Indian subcontinent from previous centuries and perpetuated

through the Orientalist scholarship of the 1700s. Emily Eden also expressed this view when she

described the nautch as “the whole thing was like a dream, it was so curious and unnatural.”347 In

addition, memsahibs’ conceptualization of the nautch and nautch-girls as decadent was related to

the concept of their Otherness and difference, particularly their exoticism. Hence Eden’s focus

on courtesans’ ‘curious’ and ‘unnatural’ dance, music, and clothing. The British understood the

entirety of the performance as symbolizing the vast difference between themselves and Indian

culture, arts, and traditions, as well as the ways in which they represented India as naturally

exotic and erotic.

British men enjoyed the performances of nautch-girls, particularly in the eighteenth

century, although this continued into the early nineteenth century. Francis John Bellew (1799-

1868), in his quasi-fictional account of his service in the East India Company during the first few

decades of the nineteenth century, described a man, upon seeing a nautch as being “in raptures;

he considered nautches superior to all the operas in the universe, and thought he could hardly

have enough of them.”348 However, increasingly over the course of the first half of the nineteenth

century sahibs, especially missionaries, were increasingly negative about nautch performances

and courtesans. Reverend Herber experienced a different nautch compared to his wife, however,

he was of the same opinion in that their performance was “as dull and insipid to any European

taste as could well be conceived. In fact nobody in the room seemed to pay them any attention,

all being engaged in conversation, though in an under voice, and only with their near

346 Sherwood, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, p. 423.

347 Eden, “Up the Country,” p. 40.
348 Francis John Bellew, Memoirs of a Griffen: A Cadet’s First year in India (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1880),

pp. 371-372.
 117

neighbours.”349 The decrease in interest in nautch performances and nautch-girls was linked to

the rise of British women and British culture in the subcontinent. Pran Nevile argues this

occurred because more equal ratios of British men and women enabled British forms of

entertainment, such as balls, to ensue within the colony.350 However, in the early nineteenth

century, British and Indian forms of entertainment often occurred simultaneously, as

demonstrated by Roberts in that “deference to European taste has occasioned those [parties] at

Moorshedabad to be of mixed character; the nautch is frequently performing in one apartment

while quadrilles are going on in another.”351 This demonstrates the mixing of Indian and British

forms of entertainment during a period of cultural shifting as British ideals, art, and performance

were increasingly imposed on colonial India and replaced Indian forms of entertainment,

including the nautch. In sum, British women had many, varying, views of courtesans and the

nautch, however, their writings often adhered to British narratives ascribed to Indian women as

sensual symbols of ‘Oriental’ decadence.

The Courtesan as Temptress: The Threat of the Colonized Woman to the Imperial Project

The British understood the nautch and nautch-girls in a variety of ways, some

approached the nautch as a cultural tradition that they understood as representative of India and

the East.352 In these instances, British sahibs and memsahibs often focused on the dances and the

perceived modesty and beauty of the nautch-girls. Anne Elwood described the clothing of

nautch-girls as being the epitome of modesty as “the saree so completely covers the whole of the

person, and so effectually conceals the figure of the wearer, that it is likewise infinitely more

modest and delicate than our style of dress.”353 This demonstrates that some memsahibs saw

349 Herber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, pp. 102-103.
350 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 114.
351 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 92.
352 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 30.
353 Elwood, Narrative of a Journey Overland from England, vol. I, p. 375.
 118

nautch-girls’ clothing as being more modest than many European styles at the time. Courtesans

were often quite physically covered in clothing, with nothing but their face, hands, and feet being

exposed, which enhanced the imagery of their modesty by European standards.354 Amelia

Herber, the wife of a minister, believed the clothing of the nautch-girls “was modesty itself,

nothing but their faces, feet, and hands being exposed to view.”355 In addition, Elwood believed

the dance and pantomime sections were perfectly acceptable for polite and modest society as

“the most fastidious prude might have witnessed [them], without running the risk of any offence

to her modesty.”356 This view of courtesans’ modesty demonstrates the fascination and curiosity

with which many memsahibs examined nautch performances.357 However, Herber and Elwood

expressed the progressively less popular opinion on the modesty of Indian nautch-girls in the

early nineteenth century.

Throughout this period, the view of courtesans as modest was replaced because the

British increasingly represented courtesans as immodest, immoral, and overtly sexual women in

order to associate them with commercial sex-work and construct nautch-girls as endangering the

political and cultural authority of the British imperial project in the subcontinent. This alteration

in the representation of nautch-girls correlated with the rising strength of Victorian gender ideals

and pseudo-scientific racism that occurred by the 1830s. The image of the chaste and passive

British woman required the immodest and sexual Indian woman to create the dichotomy that

maintained British women’s sexual superiority over colonized women. The British increasingly

represented nautch-girls as embodying the inherent sensuality that they attributed to all Indian

women. This coincided with British climatic and Enlightenment-based understanding of India

and the ‘Orient’ as a place that was inherently lascivious, which connoted that Indian women

354 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 73.

355 Herber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, p. 38.
356 Elwood, Narrative of a Journey Overland from England, vol. II, p. 81.
357 Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. 1.
 119

were more sexual than their European counterparts and sexually available for British male

consumption. Subsequently, the British constructed nautch-girls as signifying Eastern decadence

and sensuality.358 Therefore, nautch-girls and their performances were constructed as erotic and

immodest in some British memsahibs’ travel narratives. Though Evangelical ideals did not fully

imbue into colonial society until the 1830s, Mary Martha Sherwood exhibited these values

earlier in the 1810s.359 Upon viewing a nautch Sherwood exclaimed, “For who can tell the utter

depravity of these unhappy women?”360 Pran Nevile argues it was the more puritan British

population, such as Sherwood, that represented the nautch as indecent and were disturbed by the

interest many of their countrymen displayed towards these performances.361 Emma Roberts

implied the sensual nature of nautch-girls was dependent on the audience, for “in the presence of

European ladies, the dancing of the nautch girls is dull and decorous: but when the audience is

exclusively masculine, it is said to assume a different character.”362 Captain Godfrey Charles

Mundy (1804-1860) validated Roberts’ assumption concerning nautch-girls as he wrote that

“European ladies not unfrequently attend these spectacles; and, when the dancers are warned

beforehand, they only witness a graceful and sufficiently stupid display.”363 However, he also

warned of nautch-girls that “if thrown off their guard by applause, there is some danger of their

carrying the suppleness of their body and limbs quite beyond the disgraceful and even bordering

on the disgusting.”364 The view expressed by Mundy, Roberts, and Sherwood demonstrates that

the British increasingly represented nautch-girls and their performances as inherently sexual and

358 Ibid.
359 Ibid., p. xv.
360 Sherwood, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, p. 423, emphasis added.
361 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 30.
362 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 192.
363 Godfrey Charles Mundy, Pen and Pencil Sketches, being the journal of a tour of India vol. I (London: John

Murray, 1833), p. 91.

364 Ibid.
 120

as symbolizing the sensuality of Indian women and the East in the first half of the nineteenth

century.

In addition, the British constructed the sensuality of Indian courtesans as a corrupting

influence and dangerous to the health of British men in the early nineteenth century. This was

specifically linked to representations of nautch-girls as sex-workers because courtesans did not

fit within the prevailing British models of sex and morality that developed in relation to the rise

of Evangelical, liberal, and Victorian gender ideals and moral philosophy.365 Elizabeth Fenton

was told of the sensuality of the nautch and that “the true Hindoostanee nautch, as it is exhibited

in the higher provinces, is such as no lady could witness.”366 In addition, the British had little to

compare in metropolitan society to courtesans’ roles and their political, cultural, and financial

significance in Indian society.367 Therefore, British writers, particularly memsahibs,

unhesitatingly associated the profession of the nautch-girl with sex-work.368 This meant that the

British increasingly placed courtesans under the misleading and inaccurate category of sex-

worker in the early 1800s.

The understanding of courtesans as sex-workers meant that the British often represented

them as sexual and immodest. Francis Buchanan (1762-1829), who was a doctor in India

between 1807 and 1814, believed that among courtesans’ “chastity…might be considered as

doubtful.”369 In addition, the kothas that were previously associated with artistic and creative

365 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 6.
366 Fenton, A Narrative of her Life in India, p. 241.
367 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 6.
368 Nandini Bhattacharya, Reading the Splendid Body: Gender and Consumerism in Eighteenth-Century British

Writing on India (London: Associated University Presses, 1998), p. 135.

369 Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras Through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, performed

under the orders of the most noble The Marquis Wellesley, Governor General of India, for the express purpose of
investigating the state of Agriculture, Arts, and Commerce; the Religion, Manners, and Customs; the History
Natural and Civil, and Antiquities, in the Dominions of the Rajah of Mysore, and the countries acquired by the
Honourable East India Company, in the late and former wars, from Tippoo Sultaun, vol. III (London: W. Bulmer
and Co., 1807), p. 66.
 121

culture in the pre-colonial period, were equated with brothels under the colonial government.370

Sherwood could hear the music from the kothas and,

often sat by the open window, and there night after night, I used to hear the songs of the
unhappy dancing-girls…and many were the sad reflections inspired by these long-
protracted songs. All these Englishmen who were beguiled by this sweet music had had
mothers at home, and some had mothers still, who, in the far distant land of their
children’s birth, still cared, and prayed, and wept for the once blooming boys who were
then slowly sacrificing themselves to drinking, smoking, want of rest, and the witcheries
of the unhappy daughters of heathens and infidels.371

Sherwood demonstrates the increasingly prevalent views in the early 1800s that nautch-girls

used their sensuality to corrupt British men. Nautch performances, nautch-girls, and kothas were

associated with this sexual behaviour, which enhanced social anxieties about this institution as

sexually threatening and culturally destabilizing.372

British women became progressively anxious in their writings around the sensuality

expressed by nautch-girls and their subsequent corrupting influence on British men.373 Sherwood

was particularly concerned about the corrupting nature of courtesans’ sensuality, for she wrote

that,

the influence of these Nautch girls over the other sex, even over men who have been bred
up in England, and who have known, admired, and respected their own countrywomen, is
not to be accounted for…This influence steals upon the senses of those who come within
its charmed circle not unlike that of an intoxicating drug, or that of what is written of the
wiles of the witchcraft, being the more dangerous to young Europeans because they
seldom fear it; for perhaps these very men who are so infatuated remember some lovely
face in their native land, and fancy they are wholly unapproachable by any attraction
which could be used by a tawny beauty.374

These narratives worked to represent nautch-girls as fundamentally sensual, tempting, and

corrupting of British men. This representation enabled the British to impose their gender norms

around modesty and chastity on Indian women. In addition, it constructed courtesans, and Indian

370 Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins,” p. 102.

371 Sherwood, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, pp. 423-424.
372 Sen, Women and Empire, p. 45.
373 Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. 2.
374 Sherwood, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, p. 422.
 122

women more generally, as the dangerous, sexual Other, which subsequently produced British

women as the safe, chaste, and pure Self. Therefore, the British used courtesans’ bodies as a foil

to positively define themselves and their role in the imperial project.375 These constructions were

created in opposition to each other while simultaneously being dependent on one another. The

representation of Indian women as inherently sensual and corrupting threatened the stability of

imperial project. However, British women were able to control courtesans’ ‘Oriental’ sensuality

by producing narratives about nautch-girls as degraded sex-workers.376 Therefore, the production

of this hegemonic narrative of modesty and sensuality enabled the British to control the

supposedly dangerous sexuality of Indian women.

The British maintained that ethnic degeneration and effeminacy, due to nautch-girls, had

already happened to the Portuguese when they traded in India. Reverend William Tennant (1758-

1813) argued that the Portuguese,

Chiefs, and principal officers, retained a multitude of those singing and dancing women,
with India abounds. Effeminacy introduced itself into their houses and armies. The
officers marched to meet the enemy in palanquins. That brilliant courage which had
subdued to many nations, existed no longer among them.377

Tennant demonstrates the perceived threat that ethnic ‘degeneration’ and effeminacy posed to

British understandings of their political stability and influence in India. The British believed that

miscegenation threatened middle-class morality and manliness, which endangered the basis on

which the British justified their colonial presence in India.378 Therefore, courtesans, as the

primary producers of ethnic mixing, were understood to threaten the underpinnings of the

imperial project.

375 Bhattacharya, Reading the Splendid Body, p. 135.

376 Ibid., p. 132.
377 Reverend William Tennant, Indian Recreations; Consisting Chiefly of Strictures on the Domestic and Rural

Economy of the Mahomedans and Hindoos, vol. I (London: Longham, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1804), p. 386.
378 Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power,” p. 234.
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Nautch-girls were a particularly potent symbol and threat of miscegenation, especially to

memsahibs, as they were understood as moving easily among men across ethnic and class lines

through nautch performances.379 Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller (1851-1900), an American missionary,

saw the mobility of courtesans as problematic to British ethnic ‘purity’ and the stability of the

imperial project because nautch-girls were

introduced into respectable circles in open day-light, and men freely associating with
them, while the ladies of the house were watching the scene from a distance as spectators
and not taking part in the social pleasures going on before them, in which the dancing-
girls were the only female participators. Could any thing more detrimental to the cause of
morality be conceived?380

Subsequently, memsahibs attempted to portray nautch-girls in a negative manner by associating

them with commercial sex-work, and the various and derogatory connotations that ‘prostitution’

had in a British context, in order to control Indian women’s sexuality and encourage British men

to solely maintain conjugal relationships with white, British women. British women became the

custodians of ethnic distinctions and the protectors of British men’s masculinity in relation to

metropolitan bourgeoise ideals of respectability and morality.381 Therefore, memsahibs’

protection of ethnic superiority was intertwined with the protection of British manhood and

national identity through colonial acquisitions and the preservation of the empire.382

Consequently, memsahibs were important figures in the maintenance of the imperial project

through hegemonic narratives around chastity.

British memsahibs were also anxious about the sensuality and perceived sexual

availability of courtesans in relation to domestic ideals. British women were understood in

379 Bhattacharya, Reading the Splendid Body, p. 142.

380 Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller, The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood (New York: Young People’s Missionary Movement,
1900), pp. 130-131.
381 Caplan, “Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women,” p. 864. In many ways, this meant that British women in India

became the site of metropolitan anxieties around their ethnic purity, morality, and sexual ‘safety’ from Indian men,
see Indrani Sen, Women and Empire, p. 9. Due to spatial limitations, this thesis does not examine these facets of
British women’s experience in India, but rather focuses on their idealized representation as sexually and ethnically
pure in contrast to Indian courtesans.
382 Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power,” p. 237.
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metropolitan society to be the staunch upholders of ethnic distinction in the subcontinent.383 The

Victorian domestic image of the wife as the keeper of the home, and in empire the protector of

civilization, was threatened by the existence of nautch-girls and their potential, and actual,

relationships with British men. Courtesans were understood as threatening this domestic bliss

and it “was of no rare occurrence; for it was said many an English wife lost her life from the

jealousy of native favourites.”384 Mary Martha Sherwood demonstrates the belief that courtesans

were both a physical threat to British women, as well as a social and political danger to them,

their roles, and the imperial project. This narrative perpetuated the British urge in the early

nineteenth century to control and create social distance between themselves and Indians. The

social distance was seen as necessary in order to maintain their political authority in the

subcontinent, as well as their own ethnic and sexual ‘purity.’385 Courtesans, who crossed gender,

ethnicity, and class-based boundaries through their profession, were seen as particularly

threatening to the imperial project.386 Therefore, memsahibs upheld hegemonic narratives

concerning the association of courtesans with sex-work in order to maintain the gender and

ethnicity-based hierarchies required to validate the British colonial presence in India.

British missionaries were particularly negative in their views of nautch-girls and their

danger to the imperial project. Missionary groups, as they became increasingly popular

throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, created reform movements that cast a stigma

upon nautch-girls.387 They often constructed nautch-girls as sex-workers and stigmatized them as

‘fallen’ women who threatened the imperial project. While the majority of the British in India

did not see courtesans as sex-workers, missionaries in the 1820s and 1830s encouraged the

383 Caplan, “Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women,” p. 863.

384 Sherwood, The Life of Mrs. Sherwood, p. 423.
385 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 43; Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India, p. 26.
386 Bhattacharya, Reading the Splendid Body, p. 143.
387 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 182.
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representation of nautch-girls as inherently sexual and immoral.388 Reginald Herber, who was the

Bishop of Calcutta from 1823 until his death in 1826, expressed this view when he saw some

women whom he believed, based on their “gaudy dress and forward manner seemed pretty

clearly to mark their profession as the nâch girls of the place.”389 This illustrated the Evangelical

belief at the time that associated courtesans with sex-work. The representation of nautch-girls as

sex-workers occurred because missionaries wished to enhance the imagery of India and

Hinduism as being ‘degraded’ and corrupting the character of Indians, which would increase the

monetary support of missions in the subcontinent from Britain.390 This representation became

increasingly prevalent and dominant in popular literature and imagery around courtesans as the

century progressed, which influenced the amalgamation of the various cultural levels of

courtesans into the singular entity of the commercial sex-worker. The association with sex-work

furthered the disempowerment of courtesans’ through the loss of their political, financial, and

cultural agency.

The Amalgamation of the Courtesan

The numerous variations of the courtesan were increasingly amalgamated into the single

image of the nautch-girl in the early nineteenth century and throughout the colonial period.

British representations of courtesans as singularly sex-workers or immoral entertainers

intensified this amalgamation. In the nineteenth century courtesans lost royal patronage as the

British took over more territory, which diminished their cultural and political power in India.

Courtesans also lost financial agency due to the lack of royal patronage, the vacuum this created,

and the colonizers’ inability to fill this void as they progressively avoided the nautch as a form of

388 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 19.
389 Herber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, p. 113.
390 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 19.
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entertainment.391 Subsequently, the overall cultural significance and agency of courtesans was

diminished as they became less important as symbols of political authority, which was integrally

related to the growing association of courtesans with sex-work.392 The association of courtesans

with sex-workers reduced the British attendance at nautches as more puritan and Victorian ideas

around appropriate forms of social and sexual intercourse developed during this period. This was

exhibited by the missionary Alphonse François Lacroix (1799-1859), who stated in a letter to the

London Missionary Society that “the disgraceful exhibition of prostitutes dancing before an idol,

which the wealthier natives adopted in order to attract European guests to the presence of the

images had suddenly disappeared. Nautches (dances) were exhibited the week before last, in

only two houses.”393 Lacroix illustrates how the representation of courtesans as sex-workers

worked to limit the levels of British attendance at nautch performances. In addition, under

colonial law the British understood all courtesans, from tawa’if to randi, to be simply

‘prostitutes.’394 Through the representation of courtesans as sex-workers, the British associated

nautch-girls with the negative connotations that they understood to be attached to the sex-

workers in their own society, especially as the British did not have a cultural equivalent of

courtesans in Britain.395 Therefore, the closest comparison they could make was with the

commercial sex-workers in their own society. This comparison reduced the cultural allure of

courtesans and subsequently limited their agency and influence in colonial society.

391 Doris M. Srinivasan, “Royalty’s Courtesans and God’s Mortal Wives: Keepers of Culture in Precolonial India,”
in The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 175.
392 Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins,” p. 101.
393 Council for World Missions Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Letter to Reverent Ellis

from Mr Lacroix, dated Calcutta, 20 Oct. 1837, CWM North India – Bengal, Incoming Correspondence, Box 5.
1837-1838, Folder 1, Jacket A, quoted in Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,”
pp. 19-20.
394 Srinivasan, “Royalty’s Courtesans and God’s Mortal Wives,” p. 176.
395 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 6.
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The representation of courtesans as being synonymous with sex-workers amalgamated

the various forms of courtesans, who had different levels of social mobility, financial power, and

political influence, into a singular group. This process was “painfully disempowering” for these

women and the cultural institution of nautch performances and courtesanship.396 The image of

the courtesan as a cultural artist was replaced by her representation as a ‘prostitute.’ The British

took the small sexual component of courtesans’ professional lives and, due in large part to the

rise of the social values espoused by Evangelicalism and Victorianism, constructed this as the

sole objective and role of courtesans in India. The representation of courtesans as ‘prostitutes’

was a significant factor in their amalgamation into a single entity over the course of the colonial

period. There had originally been a form of understanding among the British that there existed

numerous types of courtesans.397 The most obvious difference was understood between the

southern devadasis, who had been dedicated to Hindu temples, and the northern tawa’if who

were members of courts, part of kothas, or in troops employed by wealthy, elite Indians. This

acknowledgement diminished over the first few decades of the nineteenth century, until

courtesans were understood to be a single entity, which was predominantly related to their newly

defined status as ‘prostitutes.’398

Courtesans’ association with sex-work was an important factor in the amalgamation of

their cultural variety and their subsequent loss of political, financial, and social agency in the

early nineteenth century. However, this association worked concurrently with British

understandings of caste and Indian socio-economic organization in the amalgamation of

courtesans into nautch-girls. The British believed that courtesans formed their own caste and,

396 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 178.

397 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 19.
398 Ibid.
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therefore, their profession was purely hereditary.399 Thomas Williamson argued that Indian

society did not attach negative implications to courtesans because “the profession of a prostitute

is devoid of that stigma annexed to it in Europe…This is entirely owing to the profession being

hereditary, the same as other sects.”400 The British belief that courtesans were a single caste

worked to integrate these women into a singular entity in purpose, power, and roles. Previously,

in the pre-colonial period, courtesans came from various caste-backgrounds, and their social

mobility, due to their artistic achievements, was a significant aspect of their agency within Indian

society. While the social position of courtesans was hereditary in many ways, it was also firmly

based on skill and training, therefore, they were not technically their own caste, but rather more

similar to a guild.401 This social mobility continued into the colonial period, however, it

threatened British superiority in the subcontinent, as it enabled courtesans to cross both ethnicity

and class-based boundaries in the colonial period.402 Furthermore, in the nineteenth century, the

British were significant actors in encouraging and perpetuating the rigidification of Indian caste

ideas and distinctions.403 Whereas caste had been more fluid in pre-colonial Indian culture, the

rigidification of caste distinctions occurred in part due to Orientalist scholarship in the eighteenth

century, which focused on Brahmin forms of knowledge and law in their study of Indian law,

customs, and social organization.404 This enabled Brahmin notions of caste hierarchy and social

privilege to be imposed on Indian culture, which was far less Brahmin-dominated than the

British supposed.405 Therefore, the British helped to create a more inflexible and stratified caste

399 Jo-Ann Wallace, “Lotus Buds: Amy Wilson Carmichael and the Nautch-Girls of South India” Victorian Review
24, no. 2 (1998): p. 181.
400 Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum; or complete guide to gentlemen intended for the civil, military

or, naval service of the East India Company vol II. (London: Black, Parry, and Kingsbury, 1810), pp. 423-424.
401 Amrit Srinivasan, “Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance,” Economic and Political Weekly 20, no.

44 (1985): p. 1869.
402 Bhattacharya, Reading the Splendid Body, p. 143.
403 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 18.
404 Ibid.
405 Ibid., pp. 18-19.
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system. The rigidification of the caste system occurred simultaneously to the British

understanding of courtesans being members of a single caste, which worked to limit courtesans’

social mobility and furthered the diminishment of their power and agency within Indian society.

This marginalized courtesans and kept them within a lower social order, which decreased their

social mobility and the subsequent threat they posed to the political stability of the imperial

project in the subcontinent.

Another aspect of the amalgamation of courtesans into a single entity was their

representation in British travel narratives and, therefore, the social constructs of nautch-girls.

Courtesans were rarely understood or represented as individuals; rather, they were portrayed as

being so similar that they were indistinguishable. This was portrayed in memsahibs’ writings on

nautch performances in their commentary on the dances. British writers did not observe any

variation between the dances or the nautch-girls themselves. Julia Maitland believed that the

dance of nautch-girls “consisted of sailing about, waving their hands, turning slowly round and

round, and bending from side to side: there were neither steps nor figure, as far as I could make

out.”406 This demonstrates that while Maitland described her view of the dance, she also

exhibited her own lack of comprehension of the dance form as it was different from British

conceptualizations of dance. In addition, Maitland saw both Muslim and Hindu courtesans at a

nautch and simply described the change to a Hindu dancing-girl as “her dancing was very much

like that of the Mahometans, only a little more difficult.”407 Maitland was not the only British

memsahib who felt that nautch-girls were all too similar. Emma Roberts also found nautch

performances and nautch-girls to be indistinguishable from one another, she claimed that “the

only novelty presented by a fresh band of dancers is the colour of dress, or the value of the

406 Maitland, Letters from Madras, p. 27.

407 Maitland, Letters from Madras, p. 28.
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ornaments; the performances are precisely the same.”408 The British framed courtesans, and

Indian women in general, as “homogenized and monolithic collectives.”409 British men also felt

this way, which was demonstrated by Reginald Herber who saw another nautch later in his

travels, and described them as, “some dancing-girls came in, whose performance differed in no

respect from those whom I had seen at Bullumghur.”410 This suggests that the British had

difficulty in producing specific understandings of non-Western women. These representations of

the sameness of the nautch and the lack of individuality of nautch-girls worked to amalgamate

courtesans into one social entity and object. Courtesans acted simply as narrative tools in British

writings to demonstrate memsahibs’ purity and domesticity, which was used to illustrate Indian

women’s ‘degeneracy’ and, therefore, validate the British colonial project in the subcontinent.

The amalgamation of courtesans through their lack of individuality and as members of a single

caste in British representations were significant in their association with sex-work and their

disempowerment over the course of the early nineteenth century.

Though the British constructed courtesans as indistinguishable during the early

nineteenth century, which was fundamental to their integration into a singular entity associated

with sex-work, there was an exception to the general rule in this period. The nautch-girl, Nikki,

was a famous courtesan in early nineteenth-century colonial India and accrued enough cultural

significance as to appear in the writings of memsahibs. This included Emma Roberts who wrote

that “European eyes and ears being unable to distinguish any superiority in the quality of voice

or the grace of the movements. By the natives, however, different dancers are held in different

degrees of estimation; the celebrated Nickee, of Calcutta, has long held the rank of prima donna

of the East [sic].”411 This demonstrates a level of individuality attributed to a courtesan by a

408 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 191.

409 Bhattacharya, Reading the Splendid Body, p. 145.
410 Herber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, p. 36.
411 Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, p. 191.
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memsahib. However, Roberts herself does not view the difference between Nikki and other

nautch-girls; she instead references the estimations of “the natives” who recognized Nikki’s

greater skill and performance level. Therefore, though Nikki was famous enough to be

mentioned in the writings of Emma Roberts, the above passage demonstrates that she was an

exception that maintained the overall objectification of other nautch-girls during the first half of

the nineteenth century, as the British could not recognize the variation in the skill or

performances of different courtesans. This amalgamation of courtesans is also observable in the

use of the term ‘nautch-girl’ and the lack of British recognition as to the many different forms

and levels of courtesans and their associated terminology.412 This continued the amalgamation of

courtesans into the single entity of performers and sex-workers that limited their social agency

and cultural power within Indian and colonial society.

This chapter illustrates the changing and solidifying nature of colonial society in the late

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The figure of the nabob was replaced in this period

with the sahib as the idealized British man and ruler in the subcontinent. The changing

constructions of courtesans in this period demonstrated the political stability of the British in

India. The British no longer needed the Orientalized body of the nabob that was required as they

consolidated their power in the region. The body of the sahib, as the symbol of Britishness and

British values in India, legitimized their rule as the embodiment of ethnic superiority over

‘inferior’ Indians. Furthermore, the rise in Evangelical, liberal, and Victorian moral philosophies

and ideals worked to construct images and modes of behaviour for the sahib, memsahib, and

courtesans. The surge of British women in India, and as members of the imperial project,

illustrated the changing nature of empire and gender, ethnicity, and class norms in both Britain

and India. The rise of the memsahib and the sahib altered the representations of courtesans in the

412 Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj, p. 66.

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early nineteenth century. The travel narratives of British men and women demonstrates the

continued understanding of nautch-girls as the epitome of ‘Oriental’ decadence, wealth, luxury,

and sensuality. However, they also exhibit the increased British focus on the sensuality of

courtesans in relation to the threat they posed to the political stability of the imperial project,

which occurred through the danger of inter-ethnic relationships and miscegenation as the British

justified colonialism through the belief in their inherent ethnic superiority. British narratives in

this period attempted to control the threatening ‘Oriental’ sexuality of courtesans by associating

nautch-girls with sex-work in order to minimize their social power and their interactions with

British men. This worked to amalgamate the various positions of courtesans into the single

category of ‘prostitution,’ which was accomplished through associating dancing-girls with sex-

work. In addition, courtesans were represented as a single, hereditary caste that lacked

individuality, whose profession was sex-work. These British narratives around courtesans in the

first half of the nineteenth century worked to diminish the social power and allure that nautch-

girls held in the British imagination in order to control their ‘Oriental’ sensuality and protect the

strength of the imperial project in India.

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Chapter 5
Courtesans in Cantonments, c. 1857-1883

The dancing girls…their profession, indeed, requires of them to be open to the embraces of
persons of all casts; and, although originally they appear to have been intended for the
gratification of the Brahmans only, they are now obliged to extend their favours to all who solicit
them. Such are the loose females who are consecrated in a special manner to the worship of the
gods of India.413

Abbé Dubois, though writing earlier in the nineteenth century, illustrated the

representation of courtesans as sex-workers and the association of their behaviour with

immorality. The second half of the nineteenth century was a significant period in relation to the

representations of courtesans, their amalgamation, and ‘degradation’ into commercial sex-

workers. This chapter examines the relationship between sex-work and courtesanship in mid- to

late nineteenth-century India. British narratives around ‘prostitution’ are examined in relation to

their representation of Indian women as inherently sexual, and sexually available, beings.

Courtesans were simultaneously understood as threats, criminals, and victims during this period.

The association of courtesans with sex-work and the policing instituted of ‘prostitutes’ through

the Cantonment (1864) and Contagious Diseases (1868) Acts created the representation of

nautch-girls as degraded and dangerous criminals.

The second half of the nineteenth century underwent a sharpening of the British

representation of sex-workers as victims within Indian society. The victimization of courtesans

worked to validate Britain’s colonial presence in the subcontinent during the period of the British

Crown as emerging Hindu nationalist movements began to question British rule in the

subcontinent. The representation of courtesans as sex-workers and, therefore, victims enabled the

British to construct Indian society as fundamentally flawed and oppressive in order to justify

colonial rule, as well as construct the narrative of the British as chivalric ‘saviours’ of Indian

413Abbé Jean-Antoine Dubois, Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India; and
their Institutions, Religious and Civil (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817), p. 401.
 134

women. In this manner, courtesans continued to be the sexualized, oppressed Other, which

helped construct the British ‘Self’ and validated the imperial project in India.

Recent scholarship on courtesans during the second half of the nineteenth century departs

from scholarly work on nautch-girls in previous periods. Academia shifted to explore the

institutions, symbols, and narratives around sex-work instead of courtesanship. While scholars

often recognize that courtesans were a significant part of sex-work and representations of sex-

workers at this time, they are less central to the scholarly narrative. Phillipa Levine identified the

presence of courtesans working as sex-workers in military cantonments in the second half of the

nineteenth century.414 Scholars, such as Lata Singh and Jo-Ann Wallace, focus more extensively

on the laws and legal codes implemented to police sex-workers and instances of venereal disease

in the British military.415 The shift in scholarly concentration maintains the narrative of the

courtesans’ ‘degradation’ and the “gradual debasement of an esteemed cultural institution into

common prostitution” in the nineteenth century.416 The degradation narrative is present in much

of the scholarship surrounding this time period and topic of sex-work, particularly as academia

shifts from exploring the performances of nautch-girls to the “stripping it of its cultural function”

in the control of sex-work and the dehumanization of courtesans.417 This alteration in scholarship

illustrates the gradual disempowerment of courtesans in the second half of the nineteenth

century.

414 See Phillipa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New

York: Routledge, 2003) for an analysis of the medico-moral discourse surrounding gender, ethnicity, and disease in
the mid-nineteenth century.
415 See Lata Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins: The Courtesan and the Nation’s Narrative,” Indian

Journal of Gender Studies 14, no. 1 (2007): pp. 93-116 and Jo-Ann Wallace, “Lotus Buds: Amy Wilson Carmichael
and the Nautch-Girls of South India,” Victorian Review 24, no. 2 (1998): pp. 175-193, for their exploration of the
importance of the Contagious Diseases Act and the Cantonment Act as forms of sex-work regulation.
416 See Veena Talwar Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow, India,”

Feminist Studies 16, no. 2 (1990): p. 259 for an exploration of this scholarly narrative.
417 See Vijay Prakash Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl: The Transition of the Lucknow Courtesan,” South Asian

Review 35, no. 2 (2014): p. 183.

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A number of scholars examined throughout this section, including Indrani Sen, Frances

Mannsaker, and Elizabeth Collingham, argue that there was a definitive split in colonial policy

and attitude concerning Indian women after the Rebellion of 1857 and the subsequent seizure of

imperial power in the subcontinent by the British Crown.418 This was particularly related to

sexual relations between British men and Indian women. Mannsaker argues that “the post-

Mutiny mood…led to the belief that the Indian and English races had to remain separate where

the pre-Mutiny reforming zeal had led equally inescapably towards ethnic intermingling.”419

However, though inter-ethnic relationships continued, the early nineteenth century was a period

of increasing social censure and the gradual decline in the number and acceptance of conjugal

relationships between Indian women and British men.420 Therefore, this thesis argues that these

changes did not drastically shift after 1857; rather they happened slowly over the course of the

late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Representations of courtesans in the second half of the

nineteenth century built upon those in the early 1800s. The increasingly negative British attitude

towards nautch-girls and their performances was fundamentally linked to the gender, ethnicity,

and class ideals and hierarchies produced by Evangelicalism, liberalism, and Victorianism in the

first half of the nineteenth century.

Courtesans and the Rebellion of 1857

The Rebellion of 1857, or the “first struggle for independence,” was a significant political

turning point for the British in India.421 Upon the completion of the rebellion, the Mughal Empire

418 See E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c. 1800-1947 (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2001), p. 8; Frances M. Mannsaker, “East and West: Anglo-Indian Racial Attitudes as Reflected in Popular
Fiction, 1890-1914,” Victorian Studies 24, no. 1 (1980): p. 50; and Indrani Sen, “Devoted Wife/Sensuous Bibi:
Colonial Constructions of the Indian Woman, 1860-1900,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 8, no. 1 (2001): pp. 1-
22.
419 Mannsaker, “East and West,” p. 50.
420 Erica Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women: Sexual Relationships, Venereal

Disease and the Redefinition of Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century India,” The Indian Economic & Social
History Review 46, no. 1 (2009): p. 12.
421 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 183.
 136

officially ended and the British assumed direct control of the subcontinent. Thereafter, the

British Crown replaced the East India Company as the political power and governance system in

India and the empire was established in 1858, at which point the British were at the pinnacle of

their power and “imperial glory.”422 The British Crown would continue to rule over the

subcontinent until India’s independence in 1947. The political shift to direct rule altered the

military, as the British had to enhance their standing army in the subcontinent in order to protect

and maintain order in the colony. Changes to the political and military situation exacerbated

British concerns around Indian women’s sensuality and social status, which were expressed by

many memsahibs and missionaries, in the early 1800s.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, courtesans experienced an increasing decline

in their patronage and employment opportunities. Due to the Rebellion, Nawabi Wajid ‘Ali Shah

of Lucknow (1822-1887) was removed from power, which exacerbated the loss of aristocratic

patronage for the many courtesans in his court.423 Cultural and political attitudes towards

courtesans also appeared to change after the Rebellion of 1857. In Lucknow there was a

widespread belief that courtesans had played a significant role in financing and encouraging the

revolt.424 In addition, it was believed that some courtesans acted as spies against the British army

during the Rebellion.425 Though courtesans were not combatants in the Rebellion, the British still

punished them for their involvement in financing, what they saw as, ‘mutinous’ activities.

Courtesans were fined and their names appear on lists of property, including houses, orchards, as

well as manufacturing and retail places for food and luxury items that were confiscated by the

422 Ratnabali Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” ANTYAJAA: Indian Journal of Women and
Social Change 1, no. 1 (2016): p. 65.
423 Margaret, E. Walker, “The ‘Nautch’ Reclaimed: Women’s Performance Practice in Nineteenth- Century North

India,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (2014): p. 564.
424 Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins,” p. 97.
425 Singh, “From Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” p. 183.
 137

British in retaliation for their involvement in the events of 1857.426 The role of courtesans in the

Rebellion exacerbated the concern the British felt towards the power that Indian women’s

sensuality held over them, as well as the danger this sensuality posed to their political stability

within the subcontinent. The Rebellion also illustrated the financial and political power that

courtesans had in Indian society, which enhanced the British imposition of Victorian gender

norms onto India in an effort to police the behaviour and independence of these women. The

Rebellion intensified Evangelical and liberal narratives that social distance was a requisite for the

proper and successful rule of India and the stability of the imperial project, which the wealth and

influence of courtesans was perceived to threaten.427 Courtesans’ roles in the Rebellion enhanced

the representation that nautch-girls were engaged in criminal behaviour, which added to the

belief that dancing-girls’ sensuality and behaviour endangered the political stability of the British

imperial project in India. Therefore, in the period after the Rebellion of 1857, courtesan culture

was increasingly targeted by British official political and social policy. This heightened the

vulnerability of courtesans in Indian society and enhanced their degradation under British rule.

Sex-Work under the East India Company

In colonial India the institution of sex-workers, and the negative connotations

surrounding them, manifested more strongly under direct Crown rule.428 Pre-colonial India had a

more open and nuanced understanding of women and their sexual roles within society; therefore,

sex-work was not regarded as a criminal offence at the time.429 In contrast, metropolitan Britain

attached negative connotations to sex-work and saw sex-workers as ‘fallen’ women and “a

426 Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance,” pp. 259-260.

427 Indrani Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings: Colonial Narratives on Indian Women (London: Orient Longman, 2008), p.
xvii.
428 For the purposes of space, as well as the focus on Indian women in this thesis, the experiences of, and narratives

around, white, European sex-workers in colonial India will not be explored. Therefore, when referring to sex-
workers, this thesis specifically means female, Indian sex-workers.
429 Wald, “From Begums and Bibs to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 15.
 138

national disgrace,” due to the popular moral discourse around Victorian marriage and gender

ideals.430 Until approximately the 1830s, the East India Company’s prevailing, though unofficial,

policy was for British officials and soldiers to enter into conjugal relationships with Indian

women, many of whom were courtesans and subsequently the British associated them with sex-

work.431 The Company allowed these partnerships because conjugal relationships were

understood to be necessary in India to protect soldiers’ “at risk” heterosexuality and

masculinity.432 According to Stoler, sex-workers were seen at this time as a “necessary evil” to

minimize, what the British believed to be, the more dangerous sexual relationships between

male, British soldiers.433 Furthermore, there was a strong belief that men required regular sexual

release to maintain their masculinity, as well as their mental and physical health.434 This was

particularly important because the British regarded India as a degenerative place that negatively

impacted their health. Therefore, in order to maintain the physical health of their soldiers, the

British often enabled conjugal relationships between their men and Indian women.

In addition, the British believed that the practice of sex-work was a naturally occurring

phenomenon in tropical climates because they were associated with rampant and uncontrolled

sensuality. Adam Ferguson believed that the climate of India created “the melting desires, or the

fiery passions, which…take place between the sexes.”435 Furthermore, as mentioned previously,

the British understood Indian courtesans as a hereditary caste of sex-workers. Company officials

and military professionals rationalized that ‘prostitution’ was a hereditary, caste-based aspect of

430 Felicity A. Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 96, emphasis in original.
431 Wald, “From Begums and Bibs to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 8.
432 Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class Under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics,

1793–1905 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980), p. 162.

433 Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkely: University

of California Press, 2002), p. 2.

434 Linda Bryder, “Sex, Race, and Colonialism: An Historiographical Review,” The International History Review 20,

no. 4 (1998): p. 814.

435 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (London: T. Cadell, 1793), p. 192.
 139

Indian society and subsequently was not immoral by Indian standards to justify their

employment of sex-workers for the army.436 This belief continued into the second half of the

nineteenth century, as demonstrated by Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller who argued that “The nautch-girl

is a recognized caste” and that she “is born into her profession, and must follow it just as a

carpenter, goldsmith, or farmer is born into his caste and follows the trade of his father.”437 This

idea worked to solidify the belief that sex-work was an unchanging and static practice in the

subcontinent.438 The ahistorical agelessness of sex-work in India was specifically related to ideas

of religious ‘prostitution’ in the form of the devadasis. Stephen Meredyth Edwardes (1872-1927)

argued that “the system of religious prostitution is of great antiquity” and referred to devadasis

as “the caste of temple-women.”439 The British understood devadasis as sex-work under the

guise of religious devotion, which solidified for them that the practice and institution of sex-

work was ancient in India and produced a caste of sex-workers.440 In addition, British

conceptualizations of gender and ethnicity meant that the sexual availability of courtesans, due to

their profession, were compounded with the belief that colonized women were more sexually

available, willing, and conquerable than white women.441 Therefore, the British were able to

justify their patronage of ‘prostitutes’ and concubines in the colonial period. The construction of

sex-work as a hereditary, static, and ‘natural’ profession in India was necessary for the East India

436 Indrani Sen, Women and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India (1858-1900) (New Delhi:
Orient Longman, 2002), p. 46.
437 Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller, The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood (New York: Young People’s Missionary Movement,

1900), p. 145.
438 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 66.
439 Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Crime in India: A Brief Review of the more Important Offences included in the

Annual Criminal Returns with Chapters on Prostitution & Miscellaneous Matters (London: Oxford University
Press, 1924), p. 79.
440 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 5.
441 Indian women’s sexuality was often constructed in contradictory ways. The British understood Indian women as

sexually available and, therefore, conquerable. However, they also represented Indian women as having an
‘unbridled’ sexuality that made them unconquerable. Indian women were seen as inherently sexual in both
constructions, but their sensuality was both passive and conquerable as well as dangerous and unconquerable. These
contradictory representations illustrate the exotic and alluring aspect of India and Indian women, as well as the
British perception of India as a dangerous and corrupting place.
 140

Company to maintain their representation of sex-work as unproblematic and acceptable for

British soldiers to experience at the time.

Through the construction of Indian courtesans as members of a hereditary, ancient

profession of ‘prostitution,’ the British were able to maintain their masculinity, heterosexuality,

and ability to procure sexual release in a place where British women were rare. Moreover, this

enabled the British to control the sexuality of their soldiers as the Company was particularly

concerned about the working-class soldiers in their employ. The Company deemed the existence

and patronage of sex-workers a necessity because metropolitan beliefs around class were

integrated into their policies. British elites believed that working-class people, due to their socio-

economic standing and subsequent ‘inferiority,’ did not possess the intellectual and moral

resources for sexual restraint.442 This related to the narrative that British elites were superior and,

therefore, able to control their sexual passions.443 The British working-class population was

constructed similarly to people from tropical climates, as naturally licentious and unable to

control their sexual urges. In addition, the heat of tropical climates was believed to further reduce

the sexual restraint of British men; therefore, working-class soldiers were seen to be doubly

incapable of controlling their sexual passions in India.444 With the rise in puritan Victorian

gender ideals, social anxieties increased around ethnic miscegenation. However, these fears were

predominantly focused on elite British men in India. British officials in India and the metropole

were not concerned with ethnic mixing between lower classes of white men and Indian women

and continued to encourage soldiers to partake in conjugal relations with sex-workers.445 In

442 Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj, p. 2.

443 Sumanta Banerjee, Under the Raj: Prostitution in Colonial Bengal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), p.
57.
444 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 182.
445 Banerjee, Under the Raj, p. 57; Sen, Women and Empire, p. 46.
 141

addition, the Company, and later the British Crown, continued to arrange British soldiers’ access

to Indian sex-workers.446

The Crown, Cantonments, and the Contagious Diseases Act

Throughout the colonial period, especially after 1857 and the increased presence of

soldiers in the subcontinent, the dominant issue the British had with sex-work was the prevalence

and spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The frequent contact between sex-workers

and soldiers meant these diseases spread rapidly amongst both groups in military cantonments.

The number of sex-workers also increased in relation to the growing number of British troops

throughout the nineteenth century.447 British officials were aware of STDs in Britain since the

fifteenth century, and amongst military personnel in India since the mid-1700s.448 However, the

British became increasingly concerned as the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

experienced heightened rates of STDs among the British military. Therefore, in an attempt to

control the spread of these diseases, the system of lal bazaars and lock hospitals was proposed by

medical professionals and army officials.449 Lal bazaars were a section in military cantonments

that was dedicated to regimental and regulated ‘prostitution’ with Indian sex-workers. Lock

hospitals were hospitals dedicated to the ‘treatment’ of STDs, which forcefully detained Indian

women until they were ‘cured’ of their illness or infection. These institutions existed as of the

late 1790s, as noted by Thomas Williamson that,

with the view to prevent the encrease of a certain disorder, which proceeds with rapid
strides in that hot climate, it is customary to appoint a committee every month, at each
great station, for the inspection of such dulcineas [sex-workers] as may be resident within
the bounds of the cantonments: such as appear to be diseased are instantly confined to a
small hospital [sic].450

446 Sen, Woman and Empire, p. 46.

447 Radha Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in
India, 1800-1990 (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993), p. 34.
448 Banerjee, Under the Raj, p. 63.
449 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 13.
450 Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum; or complete guide to gentlemen intended for the civil, military

or, naval service of the East India Company Vol II (London: Black, Parry, and Kingsbury, 1810), p. 424.
 142

This demonstrates the beginning of lock hospitals and the stricter political and military

regulation of sex-work in India. The first four lock hospitals were established at Baharampur,

Kanpur, Danapur, and Fategarh in 1797.451 However, these early attempts at regulatory lock

hospitals failed to decrease cases of STDs amongst soldiers and cases continued to increase until

one in four British soldiers was infected by the mid-nineteenth century.452

Therefore, due to puritan moral discourses, the increase of STDs, and the failure of

regulatory measures in the early nineteenth century, the British felt the need to expand their

definition of ‘prostitute.’ This term began to include groups of women, mainly nautch-girls,

devadasis, and concubines, who had not been a part of previous British regulation attempts.

Courtesans had formerly been beyond the control of the British army; they were now frequently

constructed as spreaders of STDs, which placed them more firmly under British jurisdiction as

they simultaneously lost the patronage of elite Indians and their courts.453 Subsequently, the

British Crown implemented new laws in order to control Indian women’s bodies and sexual

relations. The first instance of legal change was the Indian Penal Code of 1860. The

implementation of this Code meant that Indian ‘prostitutes’ were assumed to be in a criminal

category and dedicating a girl under the age of eighteen to be a devadasi became a punishable

offence.454 This worked as an attempt to minimize the number of women who could become

devadasis and was one of the first instances of the British moving beyond their social

construction of courtesans as sex-workers and implementing legal documents that criminalized

this cultural institution and tradition. These legal changes worked to degrade nautch-girls and

451 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 13.
452 Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance,” p. 260; Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle
Women,” p. 14.
453 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 14.
454 Awadh Kishore Prasad, Devadasi System in Ancient India: a study of temple dancing girls in South India (Delhi:

H. K. Publishers and Distributers, 1991), p. 124; Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle
Women,” p. 22.
 143

portray them and their profession as criminal behaviour, an image that became increasingly

popular in British official understandings of courtesans.

In the mid-nineteenth century the British became more knowledgeable about the

importance of sanitation and hygiene. They altered water drainage, ventilation, and the

placement of military barracks in relation to these new understandings. In addition, British

officials discouraged soldiers from visiting Indian sex-workers in the lal bazaars.455 Two Acts

were passed that worked to further criminalize and control courtesans’ sexuality, employment

opportunities, and individual agency. The Cantonment Act of 1864 stated in Clause VII of

Section XVIII of the Rules and Regulations that the cantonment had to provide “For inspecting

and controlling houses of ill-fame and for preventing the spread of venereal disease.”456 In

addition, the Act stated in Section XXV that,

Whenever it shall appear necessary for the protection of the health of the Troops in any
Military Cantonment, it shall be lawful…to extend to any place outside the limits of such
Military Cantonment and in the vicinity of such Cantonment all or any of the Rules and
Regulations made for such Cantonment under Clause 7 of Section 18.457

This enabled the military to organize the sex trade within and around military cantonments,

which resulted in enhanced control of courtesans’ bodies and behaviour, as well as the

production of classes of sex-workers that were based on British understandings of class and

ethnicity-based superiority. The gora chakla were brothels that catered to British army officers;

the lal kurti chakla were for white infantry soldiers, who were from the working class; and the

kala chakla served only Indian soldiers, who were barred from entering the other chaklas or

employing the services of the women in those establishments.458

455 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 165.

456 Cantonment Act, 1864, 18 Vic, vii.
457 Cantonment Act, 1864, 25 Vic.
458 Banerjee, Under the Raj, p. 59.
 144

The Indian Contagious Diseases Act of 1868 was enacted for the supervision,

registration, and medical inspection of female Indian sex-workers in cantonments, cities, and

ports.459 In addition, it made the medical examination and registration of sex-workers

compulsory.460 However, only the sex-workers who came into contact with British soldiers had

to register with the cantonment and experience the highly invasive and compulsory, monthly

medical exams. Any sex-workers who were believed to have an infection or disease were

immediately confined within lock hospitals until they were ‘cured.’461 This was directly related

to the British attempts to regulate and decrease the levels of STDs in the military, as well as

maintain the ethnic ‘purity’ of the British in India. Furthermore, this Act broadened the definition

of ‘prostitution’ to include courtesans and concubines in order to control these groups of women

who the British constructed as sex-workers and were seen as spreaders of STDs.462 The

Contagious Diseases and Cantonment Acts solidified the general social understanding of the

British that courtesans were commercial sex-workers, which allowed them to disregard the

cultural traditions and political authority that courtesans had embodied in the pre-colonial and

early colonial periods. These Acts, by limiting the agency of courtesans, also decreased the

British utilizing their attendance at nautch performances as symbols of their political authority in

India.

The British produced the Cantonment and Contagious Diseases Acts based on ethnicity,

gender, and class hierarchies in order to maintain colonial and political power in the

subcontinent. Metropole and colonial officials knew that STDs physically degenerated the health

of the soldiers and were, therefore, a direct threat to the stability of their empire in India. These

459 Bryder, “Sex, Race, and Colonialism,” p. 817; Philippa Levine, “Venereal Disease, Prostitution, and the Politics
of Empire: The Case of British India,” Journal of Sexuality 4, no. 4 (1994): p. 581.
460 Kumar, The History of Doing, p. 35.
461 Bryder, “Sex, Race, and Colonialism,” p. 817.
462 Kumar, The History of Doing, p. 36; Singh, “Retrieving Voices from the Margins,” p. 102.
 145

fears were based on the assumption that a strong army was a necessary precondition for

maintaining their political stability and colonial dominance.463 The British army was at its largest

during the second half of the nineteenth century, as a large standing army was believed to be

necessary after the Rebellion of 1857 and the subsequent shift from the East India Company to

the direct rule of the British Crown. These views correlated with Victorian society’s focus on

hygiene and the need to keep soldiers healthy. Unhealthy soldiers, who were physically

degenerated from sexual encounters and drinking, were seen as threatening the stability of the

empire.464 As mentioned above, the British viewed miscegenation as another threat to the

stability of the empire and they subsequently encouraged British elites to avoid sexual

relationships with Indian women. However, this ethnicity-based anxiety interacted with the

belief that lower-class British soldiers were incapable of controlling their sexual urges, as well as

unable to afford their white wives’ presence in the subcontinent. The strict norms of sexual

behaviour that the Acts imposed on British soldiers and Indian sex-workers were reinforced by

Victorian concepts of gender domination in the metropole at the time. Male control over sexual

relations was codified in the second half of the nineteenth century by pseudo-scientific terms of

male superiority and female inferiority, which governed the treatment of sex-work in the

metropole.465 These ideas were exacerbated in the colonies as understandings of gender

hierarchies interacted with constructions of ethnicity, which maintained Indian women’s

inferiority based on both gender and ethnicity. In addition, the British representation of

courtesans as their own caste meant that they were constructed as lower-caste women. Lastly, the

British solely viewed Indian women as the spreaders and contractors of STDs and, consequently,

they saw Indian women as the problem, not their male soldiers. The Acts attempted to maintain

463 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 72.

464 Banerjee, Under the Raj, p. 68.
465 Ibid.
 146

the health of Indian sex-workers in order to secure the continued well-being of British soldiers

and enable their ‘natural’ need for regular sexual release.466 Therefore, nautch-girls experienced

intersecting levels of oppression through gender, ethnicity, class, and colonial domination.

Sex-Workers and Sexually Transmitted Diseases: The Policing of ‘Prostitution’

Though the British continued to write fictional novels and travel narratives about the

nautch, few memsahibs and sahibs attended these performances by the mid-nineteenth century.

The reduced British presence at nautch performances was predominantly due to the increased

British population in India, significant social censure of Indian forms of entertainment, and the

importation of a more Europeanized lifestyle in the colony.467 This alteration was demonstrated

by Mary Carpenter (1807-1877) who, between 1860 and 1876, was in India four different times.

Carpenter was invited when a “native gentleman gave a large party at his house, in honour of his

English friends,” while at this event, she experienced “some excellent native music,” however,

she “of course, withdrew at about eleven o’clock, before the nautch dancing commenced.”468

Carpenter demonstrates the shift in British society in India that increasingly associated the

nautch with negative connotations of ethnic corruption, miscegenation, and sex-work, and the

subsequent avoidance of these performances.

Though the British did not attend nautches with the same regularity as they had in the

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, nautch-girls and their performances persisted in

exercising “an erotic power” over the British imagination in India.469 Memsahibs’ travel

narratives continued to be intrigued by the clothing, jewellery, and dance forms of courtesans.

Anna Harriette Leonowens (1831-1915) described the clothing of the nautch-girls as,

466 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 76.

467 Ibid., p. 72.
468 Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1868), p. 39.
469 Sen, Women and Empire, p. 46. This can be seen in the plethora of British novels produced during the second

half of the nineteenth century that explores the ‘Oriental’ luxury and sensuality associated with nautch-girls.
 147

bright-colored silk vests and drawers that fitted tightly to the body and revealed a part of
the neck, arms, and legs…over this a saree of some gauze-like texture bound lightly over
the whole person, the whole so draped as to encircle the figure like a halo at every point,
and, finally, thrown over the head and drooping over the face in a most bewitching veil.
The hair was combed smoothly back and tied in a knot behind, while on the forehead,
ears, neck, arms, wrists, ankles, and toes were a profusion of dazzling ornaments.470

In addition to the interest in the clothing of nautch-girls, Leonowens also exhibited the continued

fascination memsahibs had for nautch performances. Leonowens described the splendour of the

nautch and the overall ‘Oriental’ nature of them, she described one such nautch as

A burst of wild Oriental melody flooded the pavilion, and all at once the Nautchnees
started to their feet. Poised on tiptoe, with arms raised aloft over their heads, they began
to whirl and float and glide about in a maze of rhythmic movement, fluttering and
quivering and waving before us like aspen-leaves moved by a strong breeze. It must have
cost them years of labour to have arrived at such ease and precision of movement. The
dance was a miracle of art, and all the more fascinating because of the rare beauty of the
performers.471

This exhibits the British captivation with the nautch as infused with ‘Oriental’ splendour and

foreignness. The British continued to lack a monolithic view of nautch-girls and their

performances. However, the narrative shifted over the course of the 1800s as the majority of

memsahibs viewed the nautch as overtly sexual and threatening to the stability of the imperial

project, which was originally espoused by missionaries and had grown popular since the early

1800s.472 However, some British memsahibs still attended nautch performances and found them

to be interesting and modest affairs. Elizabeth Cooper (1877-1945) was captivated by the nautch

and believed that “the dancing is extremely modest, as the dancer is fully clothed, and it is the

graceful, languorous poses of her slim body, the waving of her arms heavily laden with bracelets,

and the slow moving, gliding steps that keep time to the tinkle of the anklets, that charm her

470 Anna Harriette Leonowens. Life and Travel in India: Being Recollections of a Journey Before the Days of

Railroads (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884), p. 178.

471 Ibid.
472 Sen, Memsahibs’ Writings, p. 2.
 148

admirers.”473 Both Leonowens and Cooper demonstrated the continued British fascination with

the nautch and nautch-girls, as well as the unrelenting symbolization of courtesans as the

epitome of Oriental luxury, decadence, and sexuality.

The population of British women in India continued to grow over the second half of the

nineteenth century. This was due to the reduced journey time, the proliferation of matrimonial

opportunities with British men, and the increasingly popular view from the first half of the

century that British women were important in India for the continuation of the “imperial

identity” and maintenance of colonial rule.474 The demographic shift led to significant alterations

to relationships between British men and Indian women. Over the course of the nineteenth

century, especially by the 1850s onwards, there was a distinct decline in long-term, monogamous

relationships between Indian women and British men due to the increasing social censure of

inter-ethnic relationships.475 Subsequently, there was a corresponding increase in short-term

sexual transactions with sex-workers around military cantonments.476 This directly led to the rise

in the number of Indian sex-workers, as well as the legal and social policing of their bodies and

behaviour through British representations.

The British produced narratives that continued to represent nautch-girls as inherently

sexual beings and symbols of ‘Oriental’ decadence and sensuality. However, courtesans were

also increasingly constructed as either criminal ‘prostitutes’ or victims in British travel writings

in the second half of the nineteenth century.477 These new constructions of courtesans worked to

473 Elizabeth Cooper, The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women (New York: The Century Company,

1916), pp. 98-99.

474 Sen, Women and Empire, p.
475 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 5.
476 Ibid.
477 British women also wrote about a sense of adventure away from British and colonial society that often centered

around the nautch-girl. See Charn Jagpal, “‘Going Nautch Girl’ in the Fin de Siècle: The White Woman Burdened
by Colonial Domesticity,” English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 52, no. 3 (2009): pp. 252-272 for an analysis
of this body of literature and the allure of the financially and culturally independent nautch-girl in memsahibs’
literature. Travel narratives from this period often focused more on the victimization of courtesans as sex-workers
and not on their social and economic freedom outside of the domestic sphere.
 149

maintain and validate the political and colonial presence of the British in India. Courtesans were

represented as criminals due to their association with sex-work, military cantonments, and the

Contagious Diseases Act. However, this also produced the image of their victimhood and

degraded status in society that required intervention from British philanthropists and

missionaries. Though these representations did not fully reflect the actual and varied experiences

of courtesans during this time period, they were significant to British understandings of their

own power and stability within India. The British in India viewed courtesans as sex-workers,

however, the representations of sex-workers altered amongst the British population. British

official and military records, as well as some sahibs and memsahibs, portrayed courtesans as

criminals due to their association with sex-work and STDs. In contrast, missionary literature, and

memsahibs who espoused more Evangelical views, depicted these Indian ‘prostitutes’ as victims

in need of saving by the British.478 This demonstrates that these representations, though at times

contradictory, both worked to validate the imperial project in the subcontinent.

British civil and military officials, as well as some memsahibs, represented courtesans as

criminals and, therefore, threatening to the political stability of British colonial rule in India. This

was linked to the older construction of courtesans as symbolizing ‘Oriental’ luxury and sexual

availability, as well as corrupting British men through their sexuality and decadence.479

Evangelical and Victorian gender ideals became increasingly solidified in the mid-1800s, which

caused sexual intercourse outside of companionate marriage to be associated with corruption and

political instability.480 In addition, this intersected with concerns of ethnic miscegenation that

produced the image of courtesans as doubly corrupting, due to their association with sex-work

and their ‘inferior’ ethnic status in colonial discourse. The corruptive power of courtesans was

478 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 78.

479 Levine, “Venereal Disease, Prostitution, and the Politics of Empire,” p. 596.
480 Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, p. 193.
 150

demonstrated by Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller who argued that “many a family’s happiness has been

ruined, and estrangement made complete between husband and wife, by the husband coming

under the power and influence of the nautch-girl.”481 This demonstrates the opinion of many

memsahibs in this period, that courtesans were dangerous and corrupting figures who negatively

impacted the Victorian ideal of companionate marriage. Furthermore, this association worked

with new British views of hygiene and disease. Courtesans and sex-workers were believed to be

spreaders of STDs, while British soldiers were represented as the victims of these diseases and

not associated with their propagation in any manner.482 Though the British knew of the existence

of STDs amongst its military in India in the 1700s, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century

that they developed the narrative of Indian women as the origin and spreaders of these infections

and diseases. This exacerbated the official policy of blaming and punishing Indian women for

the proliferation of STDs.483 Hence, the Contagious Diseases and Cantonment Acts attempted to

regulate the spread of STDs through the controlling, inspecting, and containing of Indian

women’s bodies. These Acts, and the general social belief that sex-workers spread STDs, created

the construction of courtesans as diseased and dangerous women. Therefore, the image of the

sensual, beautiful, and beguiling ‘Oriental’ woman that was personified in the eighteenth-century

nautch-girl, had been replaced by the mid-1800s with the image of a diseased Indian woman

whose sensuality fundamentally threatened the political stability of the colonial project in the

subcontinent through disease, ethnic miscegenation, and threatening Victorian ideals of

companionate marriage.484

The policing of courtesans and sex-workers’ bodies was inherently related to

conceptualizations of ethnicity and class in relation to the stability and superiority of British rule

481 Fuller, The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood, p. 133.

482 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 6.
483 Banerjee, Under the Raj, p. 63.
484 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 75.
 151

in India. There was an inherent contradiction between how military authorities provided soldiers

with sexual relations with sex-workers and how colonial authorities attempted to discourage

conjugal relationships between elite British men and Indian women.485 This contradiction was

distinctly concerned with preserving the structure of colonial rule in India because “power

relationships show how sexual relations and the control of them helped to maintain the

empire.”486 Therefore, colonial power and the control of sexual relations were inherently linked

to one another, which meant that courtesans were integral to the production and preservation of

imperial power. The split between elite officials and soldiers was predominantly based on class,

which constructed lower-class men as unable to control their sexual urges. This contradiction

existed because of the supposed necessity of protecting heteronormative masculinity and strength

in the British army, which required male access to sexual release with colonized women. The

other was ethnicity-based ideas of superiority that became increasingly solidified after the direct

rule of India was assumed by the Crown. British elites were required to maintain both social and

ethnic distance from the colonized population in order to preserve the colonial discourse on

inherent ethnic superiority, which the British utilized to justify their political and cultural rule of

the subcontinent. This was due to the belief that ethnic ‘degeneracy’ through miscegenation was

linked to the political instability of imperial rule.487 Therefore, the criminalization and control of

courtesans as sex-workers was integral in the continuation of colonial power in India because

‘prostitution’ enabled the British to maintain their standing army’s virility, while simultaneously

protecting the ethnic ‘purity’ of the British elite through the increased presence of memsahibs

and subsequent minimization of inter-ethnic social and sexual relationships.

485 Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj, p. 164.
486 Bryder, “Sex, Race, and Colonialism,” p. 807.
487 Ann Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia,” in Feminism

and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 234.
 152

Courtesans continued to be important components in British representations of India and

Indians as less ‘civilized’ to justify their colonial presence in the subcontinent. British women

portrayed Indian women as unfree and subjugated in order to symbolize India as inherently

oppressive in its social norms and cultural traditions, which furthered the narrative of India

requiring British interventionist policies and colonization in order to ‘civilize’ the

subcontinent.488 Anna Harriette Leonowens, though fascinated with nautch-girls, also conformed

to the narrative of their victimization. She often portrayed courtesans as victims, such as the time

she saw a nautch-girl whose mouth had “an expression of dejection and sorrow lingering about

the corners which told better than words of weariness of the life to which she was doomed.”489

She continued to be impacted by this as “every now and then I found myself trying to picture her

strange life, wondering who she was and how her parents could ever have had the heart to doom

her to such a profession.”490 Leonowens perpetuated the representation of nautch-girls as victims

as she believed that the average life of a courtesan was difficult and they “generally died

young.”491 The belief of colonized women as victims was particularly vital in the construction of

courtesans in this period, as it portrayed Indian men as degenerated despots who oppressed their

countrywomen. In addition, this representation established British men and women as the

saviours of Indian women through the imposition of British gender ideals and norms, as well as

the protection of Indian women from their own culture.492

The Indian woman-as-victim narrative enabled British women, particularly proto-

feminists, to construct themselves as the saviours of Indian women in order to push through

488 Lionel Caplan, “Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women: Gender Constructs and Contrasts in a Changing

Society,” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 4 (2000): p. 864.

489 Leonowens, Life and Travel in India, p. 177.
490 Ibid.
491 Ibid., p. 190.
492 Mrinalini Sinha, “Gender in the Critiques of Colonialism and Nationalism: Locating the ‘Indian Woman,’” in

Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996): p. 480.
 153

social reforms that conformed to Victorian gender ideals. The ‘reclamation’ of sex-workers was

a major preoccupation of Evangelical reformers in England in the nineteenth century and was

imported to the subcontinent by the mid-1800s to ensure the ‘moral salvation’ of courtesans and

Indian women more generally.493 Therefore, courtesans were constructed as the Other through

ideas of their victimization, subjugation, and moral degeneracy. Consequently, memsahibs were

implicitly conceived as the Self in their sexual chastity and conforming to Victorian gender

norms, which illustrated the need for them in the colonial enterprise in order to import these

values to India and ‘civilize’ Indian women. Memsahibs were specifically focused on female

sex-workers at this time because they fulfilled both the image of the ‘fallen’ woman in need of

‘saving’ and the narrative of India being an oppressive and immoral place.494 These rescue

narratives and projects aimed to restore sex-workers to their “pre-fallen state of virtuous morality

and asexual purity” in relation to middle-class Victorian gender ideals for white women of

purity, chastity, and morality.495 The saviour narrative intersected with ideas of ethnic superiority

that made the social reform movement increasingly paternalistic, which meant British women

often constructed Indian women as children who were dependent on European women to teach

and ‘save’ them from their ‘backwards’ culture.496 The portrayal of Indian women as victims

created the image of British women as mothers, which infantilized Indian women and minimized

their political and cultural agency.

The dominant method that memsahibs used to ‘uplift’ and ‘civilize’ Indian women was

education. This built on the popular Evangelical notions that women were the markers of

493 Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp.

303, 308.
494 Uma Chakravarti, “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi? Orientalism, Nationalism and a Script for the Past,”

in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1990), p. 34.
495 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” p. 78.
496 Barbara Ramusack, “Cultural Missionaries, Maternal Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British Women Activists in

India, 1865-1945,” Women’s Studies International Forum 13, no. 4 (1990): p. 319.
 154

civilization, which became the prevalent belief of the mid-1800s.497 Mary Carpenter argued that

education was key to ‘uplift’ Indian women as “all acknowledge that the present condition of

woman, and her utter ignorance of everything that should exalt her nature, is the great barrier to

the elevation of the natives.”498 Memsahibs believed that the gradual reform of the ‘social evils’

of Indian society, such as sati, female infanticide, courtesanship, and child marriage, could be

accomplished through education.499 This form of education was predominantly focused on the

imposition of Victorian gender ideals and the model of companionate marriage onto Indian

society. These ideals imagined marriage as the only acceptable place for sexual intercourse, as

well as the image of the wife as the domestic angel of the house and an intelligent, yet

subordinate, companion for her husband.500 The memsahibs’ goal of encouraging Indian women

to conform to the ideals of the Victorian domestic angel was also internalized by many elite

Indian men by the late nineteenth century, which led to the rise of Hindu nationalist social

reform movements that focused on the education of elite Indian women. This was expressed in a

speech on August 1, 1870, by Keshub Chandra Sen (1838-1884), a Bengali social reformer, who

encouraged British women to go to India and teach Indian women, in order for them to receive

“an unsectarian, liberal, sound, useful education…an education calculated to make Indian

women good wives, mothers, sisters and daughters.”501 This demonstrates the British and elite

Indian perception of Western-education for Indian women that imposed Victorian gendered

ideals upon courtesans and other Indian women as a means to ‘civilize’ and ‘save’ them.

497 Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, p. 114.

498 Carpenter, Six Months in India, p. 76.
499 Sen, “Devoted Wife/Sensuous Bibi,” p. 15.
500 Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, p. 114; Priyadarshini Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi:

Patterns of Sacred Prostitution in Colonial South India (New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers, Distributors, 2004), p.
138.
501 Sophia Dobson Collet, ed., Keshub Chunder Sen’s English Visit (London: Strahan & Co., 1871), p. 474.
 155

Memsahibs constructed nautch-girls as threatening their attempts to ‘uplift’ Indian

women through education. Courtesans, as mentioned previously, were primarily the only literate

women in India during the pre-colonial and colonial periods. Therefore, the British believed that

many Indians connoted education, especially literacy, with courtesans. Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller

argued that “For centuries dancing-girls had the monopoly of all the education among women.

They were the only women that were taught to read and sing in public in the country; and hence

these two accomplishments were so associated with the nautch-girl as to be considered

disreputable for respectable women.”502 Furthermore, Fuller believed that “one of the stock

objections of the opposers” to female education “was: ‘It is not respectable for girls to be

educated’…you may still find an old person that clings to that feeling and associates learning in

his mind with the nautch-girl.”503 In addition, the British saw the practice of purdah among high-

caste women to be a major obstacle to their ‘civilizing’ mission in India. Conversely, nautch-

girls were present and visible in public society as they were able to, according to Elizabeth

Cooper, “come and go freely, mingling with both men and women. They are found at all feasts

and public ceremonies, and have a very definite and honourable place in Indian society.”504

Therefore, courtesans were seen as being more socially mobile and present in Indian society,

similarly to British women, which was what the British were attempting to accomplish for elite

Indian women. This was exhibited by Cooper who believed that nautch-girls had “the only real

freedom given to Indian women.”505 Memsahibs represented courtesans’ connection with sex-

work as threatening their education programs because the British believed that many elite Indian

men did not want their women to be associated with skills possessed by sex-workers.

502 Fuller, The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood, pp. 128-129.

503 Ibid., p. 129.
504 Cooper, The Harim and the Purdah, p. 98.
505 Ibid.
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Subsequently, courtesans threatened British women’s ‘civilizing’ mission, while simultaneously

being a target for the social reform of sex-workers in India.

The social reform of Indian women in the second half of the nineteenth century became a

strategic tool of colonial ideology. The ‘rescue’ of Indian women from oppressive social

practices perpetuated the myths of Victorian chivalry and the image of the British as saviours,

which helped to justify their continued colonial presence in the subcontinent.506 There was a

proliferation of elite Indian men who received Western education and internalized many British

values from middle-class Evangelicalism. This encouraged the social reform of Indian women

and society as well as, more problematically for the British, nationalist movements in India,

which threatened the colonial rule of the British in the subcontinent.507 Therefore, the British

utilized the image of the victimized Indian sex-worker and the uneducated elite woman to

demonstrate the ‘backwardness’ of Indian society. Indian women became a significant

component of the British narrative around their ‘civilizing’ mission in India and their rescue of

Indian women from, what the British saw as, the oppressive bonds of Indian culture.508

Subsequently, the British image of courtesans as victimized sex-workers solidified the political

stability of the imperial project by constructing the British as necessary for the ‘advancement’ of

Indian women and society.509 In sum, the images of courtesans as victims and as criminals

functioned simultaneously as constructions that justified Britain’s colonial presence in India in

the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Degradation of Courtesans

506 Sen, “Devoted Wife/Sensuous Bibi,” p. 13.

507 Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, p. 303.
508 Mary A. Procida, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in India, 1883-1947 (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 166.

509 Ibid.
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The ‘degradation’ of courtesans continued throughout the second half of the nineteenth

century. In the nabob period the British gained territorial and political power that subsequently

diminished the power of local Indian elites. Subsequently, many courtesans lost the patronage of

Indian courts and moved to British settlements in order to survive.510 This shift caused

courtesans to become increasingly dependent on British patronage; however, over the course of

the nineteenth century British Victorian and Evangelical influences decreased the social

popularity of nautch performances. Therefore, courtesans lost political and social power in

Indian society, which led to their destitution. The loss of patronage meant that there was an

exodus of courtesans from temples and courts to military cantonments as commercial sex-

workers to survive in the colonial period.511

Furthermore, British colonialism and a more capitalist-centered economy altered the

status of courtesans in Indian society as the British created sex-workers purely for sexual

purposes, which stripped courtesans’ of their cultural and artistic importance.512 Therefore, the

“only marketable component” of courtesans’ role in the late nineteenth century “was the sexual

one.”513 In addition, the British imposed their moral views of ‘prostitution’ on courtesans that

were supported by Victorian ethical norms and gender ideals. This continued the ‘degradation’ of

courtesans into sex-workers, as the British created the demand in relation to the health of their

soldiers and constructed them as problematic aspects of Indian culture, which criminalized and

alienated courtesans from the rest of society.514 Therefore, colonial practice and policy worked to

impoverish many courtesans and lower their social standing, economic power, and cultural

agency in the second half of the nineteenth century and left courtesans in a highly vulnerable

510 Pran Nevile, The Nautch Girls of the Raj (New York: Penguin, 2009), p. 21.
511 Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi, p. 135.
512 Banerjee, Under the Raj, p. 22.
513 Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” p. 17.
514 Banerjee, Under the Raj, pp. 22, 23.
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position under British rule.515 Furthermore, the criminalization and loss of patronage of

courtesans furthered their amalgamation into a single entity and identity as sex-workers because

the British did not differentiate between caste, region, or religious-based differences, which had

been significant variations in courtesanship during the pre-colonial period. In sum, the second

half of the nineteenth century solidified courtesans’ loss of patronage, which drastically reduced

their power and agency within Indian society and led to their further ‘degradation’ into

commercial sex-workers in order to survive in the colonial period. Though the British continued

to be fascinated by nautch performances in the late nineteenth century, these women were

increasingly marginalized in Indian culture due to British gender, class, and ethnicity-based

norms and values.

Repealing the Contagious Diseases Act and the Anti-Nautch Campaign

British proto-feminists vehemently opposed the Contagious Diseases Act and rallied

against its implementation in the metropole and the colonies in the 1870s.516 Josephine E. Butler

(1828-1906) was the most well-known advocate against this Act in the late nineteenth century

and she campaigned for its repeal in both England and India.517 Butler believed that the policing

produced by the Acts “could not be carried on without involving the certain degradation and

oppression of many innocent women.”518 Significantly, the construction of sex-workers as

victims permeated throughout British society in India and did not correspond with the

Contagious Diseases Act’s criminalization of courtesans and the image of the diseased ‘Oriental’

woman. In addition, reformers such as Butler were against the Contagious Diseases Act because

515 Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, p. 192; Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance,” p. 260.
516 Levine, “Venereal Disease, Prostitution, and the Politics of Empire,” p. 582. The scholarship predominantly
focuses on the ways in which British women resisted and organized around repealing the Contagious Diseases Act.
See Oldenburg “Lifestyle as Resistance” p. 261 for descriptions on the manner in which Indian courtesans actively
resisted the implementation of this Act such as bribing police and medical officials in order to avoid medical
examination.
517 Wallace, “Lotus Buds,” p. 180.
518 Josephine E. Butler, Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade (London: Horace Marshall & Son, 1896), p. 11.
 159

they believed it “virtually legalized prostitution.”519 British reformers believed that this

‘legalization’ of sex-work threatened Britain’s claim of moral superiority, and subsequent

political control, over India.520 The British had previously understood ‘prostitution’ to be a

hereditary caste and ancient profession in India. Therefore, reformers constructed the control of

sex-workers through the Contagious Diseases Act as the metropole allowing and encouraging

this practice, which was constructed as emblematic of India’s oppressive and ‘backwards’

society. This endangered the narrative of moral superiority the British used to justify their

colonial presence in the subcontinent. The risk to their moral superiority also threatened the

belief that the British colonized to help ‘civilize’ Indians, which was a necessary aspect of their

justification of the imperial project.521 The Contagious Diseases Act, therefore, was seen as

tarnishing the British image of themselves as the ‘white saviours’ of India. Due to the

overwhelming political organization against the Contagious Diseases Act, it was repealed in

1883.522

However, this did not stop British soldiers from patronizing lal bazaars, and the

‘prostitution’ of Indian women continued in the late nineteenth century in military cantonments,

as the army continued to provide sexual release for its soldiers. Nevertheless, the British became

less involved with the legal and social censure of courtesans in the 1890s. This was the period of

anti-nautch campaigns in which Indian men and women of upper castes actively worked against

the social production and attendance of nautch performances. The anti-nautch campaign was

linked to Hindu nationalist movements, reform movements, and Western-based middle-class

gender norms that had been internalized by elite Indians. This produced the idealized image of

the ‘New Woman’ in Indian society, who protected traditional Indian culture and yet maintained

519 Kumar, The History of Doing, p. 35.

520 Banerjee, Under the Raj, p. 177.
521 Ibid.
522 Chatterjee, “Prostituted Women and the British Empire,” pp. 77-79.
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more Victorian-style gender ideals.523 The anti-nautch campaign period was a significant aspect

of courtesans’ representations because elite Indian society increasingly internalized British

gender and class values in order to support the nationalist movement. A nautch-girl was believed

to have “Hell…in her eyes. In her breast is a vast ocean of poison. Round her comely waist dwell

the furies of hell. Her hands are brandishing unseen daggers ever ready to strike unwary or wilful

victims that fall in her way. Her blandishments are India’s ruin. Alas! her smile is India’s

death.”524 Indian elites understood nautch-girls as contradicting the values of the New Woman

and, therefore, posing a significant threat to the nationalist movement. The Punjab Purity

Association encouraged “all young men and old men, to all bachelors and married men and

widower, run away at once from this demon [nautch-girls] that is ever and anon vomiting hell-

fire.”525 In the late nineteenth century, elite Indian men encouraged British officials and Indians

to no longer attend nautch performances. Therefore, Indian nationalists and reformers idealized

the image of the New Woman and denigrated the courtesan as a way to combat British political

and economic dominance in India, similarly to how the British used nautch-girls to justify their

colonial presence earlier in the century. In both cases, courtesans were used as symbols to

validate gendered ideals and political power. This thesis does not examine the anti-nautch

campaign period in-depth because its primary focus is exploring British representations of

courtesans to investigate the connection between constructions of colonized women and British

understandings of their political stability and power in India.526

523 Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi, p. 137.

524 Punjab Purity Association, Opinions on the nautch question. Collected and published by the Punjab Purity
Association (Lahore: New Lyall Press, 1894), p. 3.
525 Ibid., p. 3.
526 See Pamela Price, “Honor, Disgrace and the Formal Depoliticization of Women in South India: Changing

Structures of the State under British Colonial Rule,” Gender and History 6, no. 2 (1994): pp. 246-264; Singh, “From
Tawaif to Nautch Girl,” pp, 177-194; Wald, “From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women,” pp.
5-25; Walker, “The ‘Nautch’ Reclaimed,” pp. 551-567 for explorations of the significance of the anti-nautch
campaign and the importance of elite Indians and nationalist sentiment to the policing of courtesans’ bodies and
behaviour in the late nineteenth century.
 161

Though under increasing social pressure to no longer patronize the nautch, the British

continued to attend these performances at public functions and private parties in the late

nineteenth century.527 This demonstrated the prevailing British fascination with nautch-girls and

Indian forms of entertainment. In addition, the continued presence of the nautch at official events

was a part of the British ruling style in the subcontinent, which based their claim to political

legitimacy on a belief of inherent superiority that took the form of lavish displays of power and

regalia.528 These were dependent on a melding of Indian and British understandings and

representations of political symbolism. Therefore, the nautch continued to be an important aspect

of validating British political authority in the subcontinent. The late 1880s and 1890s was a

period of significant anti-nautch feelings from both elite Indian social reformers and British

missionaries, proto-feminists, and temperance unions.529 However, British officials continued to

patronize nautch performances in an official capacity and maintained the East India Company-

inspired policy of non-interference in religious and cultural traditions. Therefore, colonial

authorities were cautious about supporting the anti-nautch campaign and continued to utilize

nautch performances as a means of political legitimization.530

In sum, the second half of the nineteenth century continued the ‘degradation’ of

courtesans into sex-workers. The Cantonment and Contagious Diseases Acts, as well as civil and

military officials, criminalized courtesans and created the image of nautch-girls as dangerous

‘prostitutes’ who were the origin and propagators of STDs. The construction of nautch-girls as

criminals allowed the British to police and contain Indian women’s sexuality, which was

understood to be a dangerous and corrupting force since the eighteenth century. In addition, this

also minimized the threat courtesans posed to the political stability of the imperial project. The

527 Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi, p. 135.

528 Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 128.
529 Vijaisri, Recasting the Devadasi, p. 147.
530 Ibid., p. 148.
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containment of sex-workers through these Acts ensured that elite British men were distanced

from them and, therefore, the danger of miscegenation was limited during a period in which

concepts of ethnic superiority were paramount to the justification of empire. In contrast, the

writings of memsahibs often represented courtesans as victims of an oppressive Indian culture.

This enabled British women to construct themselves as the ‘saviours’ of Indian women and the

providers of ‘civilization’ to the subcontinent. The British belief that they were ‘saving’ Indian

women and fostering Western ideals of ‘civilization’ and ‘modernity’ subsequently worked to

validate the imperial project in India. Furthermore, the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act

demonstrated the shift from legal control of sex-workers to their social censure by the Western-

educated elite conservatives and Hindu nationalist in the 1890s. Therefore, the various

constructions of courtesans in the second half of the nineteenth century policed their sensuality

and worked to justify the imperial project in a manner that supported the British notion that they

were ‘civilizing’ India and Indians by ‘saving’ Indian women.

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Conclusion

In sum, this thesis has explored the changing perceptions and representations of

courtesans, the East India Company, and the British imperial project in India during the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The construction of courtesans illustrates British

conceptualizations of, and responses to, their empire in India, as well as the ways in which they

justified their colonial presence in the region. Throughout this period, the British conceived

courtesans as the epitome of ‘Oriental’ luxury, wealth, and decadence. Courtesans were

understood to be inherently sensual and available for British men’s sexual consumption. This

image of the sexually available, erotic, and exotic courtesan correlated with the political rule and

figure of the British nabob. The nabobs of the eighteenth century illuminated the Orientalist

Indian lifestyles, cultural openness, and British fascination of India during the early imperial

period. Equally, the criticism of the nabob in Britain reflected in personal writings, images, and

newspapers demonstrated British fears and anxieties of early empire. The power of seemingly

unaccountable institutions such as the East India Company, and the infiltration of foreign values

on British political and social life were fears created in Britain by the figure of the nabob. The

use of gender, class, and ethnicity to punish nabobs also illustrates these anxieties and explores

the use of these categories as methods of punishing and policing the behaviour and lifestyles of

the British in the colonial sphere. Lastly, the decline of the nabob and the rise of the sahib

demonstrates the increasing power of the British government over the Company, as well as the

rise in Evangelical and liberal beliefs of British superiority and justification for empire. In

essence, the eighteenth century was a period in which the British justified their rule through

Orientalized images of India, which caused anxiety in the metropole. This was replaced with the

imperial rule of India in a more firmly British manner by the early nineteenth century. Though

the nabob was a small percentage of the British population, their influence throughout the
 164

eighteenth century was extensive and illustrates the changing understandings of empire in Britain

throughout this time period.

The early nineteenth century also shaped the image of the courtesan. Courtesans were

representative of the supposed sexual availability of Indian women and were the symbol of

‘Oriental’ sensuality, luxury, and wealth. The imagery of the courtesan altered due to the

propagation of Evangelical, liberal, and Victorian gender, ethnicity, and class norms and ideals.

In addition, this thesis expresses the importance of the increased population of British women in

India. Though memsahibs did not create racist divisions within the colony, they reflected

metropolitan views of ethnic superiority. Furthermore, the early nineteenth century was a period

of heightening social hierarchies around gender, class, and ethnicity that were imported into

colonial India due to the strengthened connection between metropolitan Britain and the

subcontinent, as well as the belief of inherent ethnic superiority as a justification for imperial

rule. During this period memsahibs became fascinated by nautch performances and described

them in great detail, with extensive focus on the clothing, jewellery, and dance forms of the

courtesans. Memsahibs including Elizabeth Fenton, Mary Martha Sherwood, and Emma Roberts

illustrated the increasingly popular representation of courtesans as dangerous temptresses.

Nautch-girls were constructed as corrupting influences on British men and as threats to the ethnic

‘purity’ of the British. This was seen as challenging the political stability of British rule in India

through miscegenation, which endangered British validation of the imperial project.

This thesis illustrates that the British representations of courtesans altered slowly over

time, while continuously maintaining the symbolism of nautch-girls as the epitome of ‘Oriental’

sensuality and sexual availability. The social anxieties around the courtesan as a corrupting

temptress were exacerbated in the second half of the nineteenth century. The British military

represented courtesans as sex-workers and, therefore, as corrupting criminals who propagated

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sexually transmitted diseases. The prevalence of STDs in British soldiers in India was blamed on

nautch-girls. Consequently, courtesans were seen as threatening the physical health of British

men and, therefore, their political legitimacy and rule of India. However, memsahibs and social

reformers such as Mary Carpenter and Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller portrayed sex-workers as victims

of, what they saw as, an oppressive Indian society. The victimization of courtesans enabled the

British to validate their colonial presence in the subcontinent through the narrative of ‘saving’

Indian women from their cultural traditions. Therefore, though courtesans threatened British

political legitimacy, they were also utilized to validate the imperial project in India and maintain

the stability of British colonial rule in the mid-nineteenth century.

In addition, this thesis demonstrates British representations of courtesans in relation to

their political power in the subcontinent. The British utilized nautch-girls as symbols of their

power in India and to validate their position as rulers of Indian society, although they were also

constructed as threating the political stability of the imperial project. This thesis examines the

gradual loss of social influence, political agency, and financial power that courtesans

experienced over the course of the colonial period due to the imposition of British gender,

ethnicity, and class ideals. The experiences of courtesans were not monolithic; however, the lack

of sources in their own voices creates difficulty in understanding their own perception and

experience of the colonial period. Courtesans possessed significant levels of social power and

agency within the subcontinent during the pre-colonial period, though this altered depending on

their variations in caste, religious beliefs, and region. Though courtesans continued to have

patronage throughout the colonial period, they also experienced a loss of cultural significance

that negatively impacted their financial, political, and cultural agency in Indian society. This

‘degeneration’ from courtesans, to nautch-girls, to sex-workers was intrinsically linked to British

representations of these women, as well as the imposition of British gender, ethnicity, and class
 166

ideals onto Indian society. Courtesans often deviated from these norms because they were

financially independent women involved in the public sphere, who rarely married, and had

significant caste-mobility. Therefore, they went against British ideas of Victorian companionate

marriage, class rigidity, and ethnic separation. Subsequently, the British attempted to police

courtesans’ bodies, sensuality, and behaviour in order to maintain their social norms and colonial

power in the subcontinent.

In conclusion, Indian women were predominantly portrayed in three different, and often

contrasting, ways in colonial discourse, which were worked out on the bodies of elite Indian

women and courtesans. The majority of scholarship has focused on these representations in

relation to elite women; however, this thesis examines the ways in which these constructions

were produced in relation to courtesans. In the eighteenth century, nautch-girls were represented

as the epitome of ‘Oriental’ sensuality. They symbolized the wealth, decadence, and luxury of

the East, particularly during a period of territorial acquisition and political ascendency for the

British. At this time, the British required Indian symbols of power in order to justify their

colonial presence in the subcontinent. Nautch-girls were significant and accessible Indian

symbols of political power, which the British adopted in order to illustrate their presence and

power in India. This imagery would continue to hold significance throughout the colonial period.

However, the representation of courtesans as symbols of ‘Oriental’ sensuality was challenged

and contained negative connotations in the nineteenth century. In the early nineteenth century

courtesans were constructed as temptresses whose ‘Oriental’ sensuality threatened the

masculinity and ethnic purity of British men in India and, therefore, the political stability of the

imperial project. This alteration occurred in relation to the growing political and territorial power

of the East India Company at the time. The British attempted to police the behaviour of both

courtesans and British men through the representation of nautch-girls as temptresses, as well as
 167

through the increased population of white, British women in the subcontinent. This was in an

effort to encourage British men’s adherence to metropolitan ideals around ethnicity, gender, and

class.

The period of the Contagious Diseases Act reinforced the threatening image of the

courtesan as temptress through representing courtesans as carriers of sexually transmitted

diseases. Therefore, courtesans became increasingly dangerous to British men and the larger

imperial project. In addition, the narrative of ‘saving’ Indian women altered this construction in

the second half of the nineteenth century. Elite Indian women were constructed as victims in

colonial discourse, through cultural traditions such as sati and child marriage, in the early

nineteenth century. However, by the second half of the 1800s, courtesans were also portrayed as

victims due to their association with sex-work and their representation as ‘fallen’ women. This

was related to the Contagious Diseases Act and the ahistorical British belief that courtesans had

been sex-workers for the entirety of Indian history. The construction of courtesans as victims

enabled the British to justify their continued colonial presence, in a period of growing nationalist

dissention, as ‘rescuing’ Indian women from Indian society and ‘saving’ courtesans from sex-

work. Therefore, the representation of courtesans as the epitome of ‘Oriental’ sensuality in the

eighteenth century continued throughout the nineteenth century, however, this narrative shifted

in relation to the political power of the British and their own alterations in gender, class, and

ethnicity-based social norms and hierarchies. This thesis demonstrates that the shift in British

representations of courtesans was distinctly related to their understanding of their political power

and stability in the subcontinent. The British constructed courtesans in different ways in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in order to justify their colonial presence and rule of India.
 168

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