Retrieving Voices from the Margins

Abstract

This article examines how contemporary feminist theatre ‘disrupts’ and ‘disturbs’ the nationalist project's hegemonic claim to respectability by reclaiming the voices of ‘loose’ women. It examines in particular a play, San Sattavan ka Qissa: Azizun Nisa, by Tripurari Sharma, to show how the foregrounding of the courtesan in the public-political space creates uneasy tensions in the way in which social, political and national life is organised by emerging middle-class nationalists. Moreover, by unravelling the various aspects of Azizun Nisa's publicness—as a courtesan and as a participant in the revolt of 1857—the play shows the distinctive ways in which resistance to norms is fashioned by Azizun Nisa in each case. By exploring the ways in which Azizun Nisa claims political subjectivity, the article engages with the issues that continue to animate the women's movement today. Citizenship for women, then, the article argues, traverses precarious grounds between exclusion and inclusion on terms of conformity.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Banerjee, Sumanta . 1989. ‘Marginalization of Women's Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Bengal’, in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds.), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, pp. 127–79. New Delhi: Kali for Women .

Bhadra, Gautam . 1988. ‘Four Rebels of Eighteen-Fifty-Seven’, in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies, pp. 129–75. New York: Oxford University Press .

Borthwick, Meredith . 1984. The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1905. Princeton: Princeton University Press .

Chatterjee, Partha . 1989. ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question’, in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (ed.), Recasting Women, Essays in Colonial History, pp. 233–53. New Delhi: Kali for Women .

Chenoy, Anuradha . 2002. Militarism and Women in South Asia. New Delhi: Kali for Women .

Jones, Kenneth W. 1976. Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in Nineteenth Century Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press .

Manuel, Peter . 1983. ‘Thumri in Historical and Stylistic Perspective’. Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles .

Oldenburg, Veena Talwar . 1984. The Making of Colonial Lucknow 1856–1877. Princeton: Princeton University Press .

Oldenburg, Veena Talwar . 1991. ‘Lifestyles as Resistance: The case of the Courtesans of Lucknow’, in Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash (eds.), Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, pp. 23–61. Berkeley: University of California Press .

10.

Sangari, Kumkum and Sudesh Vaid (eds.). 1989. Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History. New Delhi: Kali for Women .

11.

Seagull Theatre Quarterly.1998–99. ‘ Playwright, Director, Activist: An Interview with Tripurari Sharma ’, 20/20: 99–132 .

12.

Sharar, Abdul Halim . 1975. Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, edited and translated by E.S. Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain Elek . London: Paul Elek .

13.

Sharma, Tripurari . 2005. ‘A Tale from the Year 1857: Azizun Nisa—San Sattavan Ka Qissa: Azizun Nisa’, in Tuntun Mukherjee (ed.), Staging Resistance: Plays by Women in Translation, pp. 120–81. New Delhi: Oxford University Press .

14.

Srinivasan, Amrit . 1985. ‘ Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance ’, Economic and Political Weekly, 20(44): 1869–76 .

15.

Stokes, Eric . 1986. Peasants Armed: Indian Revolt of 1857. New Delhi: Oxford University Press .

16.

Subramanyam, Lakshmi . 2002. ‘In Their Own Voice: In Conversation with Anuradha Kapur, Geetanjali Shree and Vidya Rao’, in Lakshmi Subramanyam (ed.), Muffled Voices, pp. 231–45. Delhi: Har-Anand Publishers .