The travelling tawa’if : histories of travel and performance in India from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century

Abstract Most literature on tawa’if s remains confined to specific princely states or cities in colonial India. Making ‘travel’ its central framework, this article tries to bring the movement and mobilities of tawa’if s into sharper focus. Engaging with the formidable research that has emerged since the publication of Veena Oldenburg’s essay on the Lucknow tawa’if s in 1990, I propose we approach their travels as itinerant subjects through a nuanced framework that distinguishes between the different types of journeys they undertake. Turning our focus on the trajectories and movements of tawa’if s, I shall argue, makes room for more embedded and rigorous histories of women performers in late colonial India. A conceptual attempt, this article explores the possibilities of locating performers as subjects within complex networks of travel and mobilities. This peripatetic aspect of tawa’if s’ lives will hence become visible as distinct types of mobilities—journeys of migration; travel in search of sustenance and patronage; types of displacement; exploitative circuits of exhibitions and displays; and in most cases, a crucial means of identity-making. In this article, tawa’if s’ travels will thus move between princely courts, towns, cities, and regions, and even across continents.