HEC Recognized. Oldenburg tries to establish that the courtesan culture of India, in the specific context of Lucknow, is a kind of alternative lifestyle that offers resistance to the oppressive patriarchal regime in the state. Charting the effect of colonial annexation of Awadh on the cultural legacy of the city of Lucknow, the essayist lays out two landmark moments in history that can be said to have turned the social status of the courtesan by a hundred and eighty degrees.
The first event that led to mistrust of the courtesan community among the British minds was their support of rebels in the Mutiny of , leading to policy crackdown on these kothas and increase in taxes on these women. The second was the passage of the British Contagious Diseases Act in , acting like finality in the reversal of the image of the courtesan, linking her inherently to venereal disease and unmindful sexual licentiousness.
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A tradition that once maintained cultural privilege was irrevocably thence linked to mere prostitution. Much in the line of other colonial thought, this decadence in Mughal culture allowed them to justify their annexation of and rule in Awadh. Whatever happened to Mughal culture on the whole, the tawaif was stamped with disrespectability.
The fabric with which patriarchal values cover women has been proven to be insufficient and hypocritical, by laying bare the actual tragedy behind individual stories from the women who chose or not to enter this profession.
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Oldenburg interviews these women and quotes their well-translated answers in the essay not only to make it authentic but also to evince the strong voice these women have, unlike many others who go on suffering their domestic lives at the hands of mostly affine relations. Conditions like extreme penury and unemployment in the family combine along with rigid traditional dogmas to denigrate women on the whole. What is ironic is that patriarchy successfully builds the rhetoric of morality, in order to suppress women belonging to any of the categories created by patriarchy in the first place.
