From kothas to the kinetoscope: How Bengal’s courtesans helped build modern entertainment

Imagine a woman floating down the Ganga in a budgerow, singing and dancing as rose petals are showered upon her. This was not a scene from a vintage film, but a real performance by a tawaif in Banaras during Janmashtami -- a spectacle so mesmerising that it entered local legend.

Such private majlis and lavish rangmahals were not unique to Banaras; they once lit up the narrow lanes of North Kolkata and the historic quarters of Dhaka, where the baijis and tawaifs of Bengal reigned as guardians of high culture, classical music, and refined etiquette. Their mastery of dhrupad and thumri set the tone for an entire era of aristocratic life.

Yet, as the nineteenth century drew to a close, political upheaval and aggressive moral policing dismantled these traditional spaces.

Forced out of their salons, these artists navigated a seismic transition onto the theatrical stage, into recording studios, and before the cameras of the silver screen.

In doing so, they played an important role in shaping the foundations of modern South Asian entertainment -- often at considerable personal cost.

The fall of the salons

The decline of traditional baiji culture was not simply the result of changing public tastes. It unfolded amid overlapping political, economic and social pressures.

Historically, the baijis -- successors to the Mughal-era court dancers introduced to Dhaka by Subahdar Islam Khan -- flourished under the lucrative patronage of nawabs, wealthy zamindars, and colonial elites.

But Victorian ideas of morality under British colonial rule gradually altered public attitudes towards the kothas and the women who performed there.

British officials faced severe reprimands for frequenting kothas, which colonial authorities increasingly branded as dens of "fallen women."

Such attitudes eventually influenced sections of "Bengali bhadralok" society, in which association with kothas came to carry greater social stigma.

Over time, highly trained performers were conflated with sex workers, which further erased important distinctions between different communities of women associated with these spaces.

The upheavals of the mid-twentieth century dealt further blows. The Second World War, the Partition of 1947 and the abolition of the zamindari system disordered the patronage networks on which many performers depended.

Deprived of their financial lifelines and facing intense social disdain, the baijis had to adapt to survive, setting the stage for their entry into commercial recording, theatre, and cinema.

Pioneering the stage, studio, and screen

As traditional venues closed, the early entertainment industry faced a talent vacuum. Because "respectable" women were forbidden by patriarchal social codes from performing in public, it was the women of the red-light districts and kothas who laid the foundations of modern Bengali entertainment.

In 1873, women were permitted to perform on the Kolkata theater stage for the first time. The pioneers of this new era, including Binodini, Tinkari, Tarasundari, Angurbala, and Indubala, were highly skilled vocalists and dancers who brought their rigorous classical training to the stage.

In 1902, Fred Gaisberg of Gramophone and Typewriter Limited (GTL) arrived in Kolkata to expand the recording business. He was mesmerised by the legendary Gauhar Jan, who became the first Indian voice ever recorded for commercial purposes.

Gauhar Jan's technical mastery and sharp business sense allowed her recorded music to reach far-off corners of the subcontinent. Bengal's own baijis, such as Indubala and Angurbala, followed in her footsteps, bridging the gap between classical kothas and public living rooms.

The dawn of silent cinema

When Dhaka produced its first full-length silent film, "The Last Kiss" (1931), the production relied entirely on the courtesans of East Bengal.

The teenage heroine, Lalita (whose real name was Buri), was brought to the set from Badamtoli at the tender age of fourteen. Her co-actresses, Charubala and Devbala, were recruited directly from the brothels of Kumartuli and the quarters of Zindabahar Lane.

These women did not merely participate; they shaped the aesthetic of the silver screen. Having spent years mastering classical music forms (like khayal, thumri, and ghazal) and the intricate, subtle facial and hand gestures (abhinaya) required to express deep emotions, they brought an unparalleled level of artistic polish to early performing arts.

The ordeal of transition

Transitioning to the studio and screen presented formidable technological and social hurdles for these master artists, who were forced to compress hours-long, intricate ragas into rigid three-minute gramophone discs while battling widespread superstitions that "singing into the horn" would physically steal their voices.

Beyond technical barriers, they confronted deep artistic prejudice from classical purists. Ustad Wazir Khan went so far as to make Ustad Allauddin Khan swear under oath never to teach courtesans.

The public harboured an equally hypocritical double standard. While audiences bought vinyl records and photos of stars like Gauhar Jan by the thousands, families routinely broke off marriage negotiations over any maternal link to a tawaif.

Even national icons like Noorjahan Begum faced crude disrespect from elite patrons who treated master vocalists like common tavern entertainers.

The perished and the forgotten

While a prominent few successfully reinvented themselves as recording artists and movie stars, countless others could not survive the rapid collapse of their world.

Those who lacked the youth, technological adaptability, or luck to transition to the stage were forced into low-tier prostitution just to survive. Deprived of the classical arts, they fell to the lowest social strata.

The historical record of their end is deeply tragic. In his memoir Dhaka Puran, Mizanur Rahman recalls the heartbreaking scene of a deceased courtesan being carried to an unclaimed crematorium.

Because the local pimps feared losing personal honour if they carried her, her fellow courtesans carried the bier on their own shoulders. Those without money for cremation had only one final resting place -- "the bosom of Mother Buriganga."

Today, the physical monuments of this era are vanishing. Gangajali, the famous baiji house in Dhaka's Patuatuly, is entirely gone. In Kolkata, Salim Manzil (the former home of Gauhar Jan) and 8 Indian Mirror Street (the home of Malka Jan Agrewali) stand in a deplorable state.

The current residents of these buildings have no inkling of the artistic giants who once lived there; their brilliant legacies survive only in dusty municipal files, rare photographs, and the crackle of vintage vinyl.

Modern South Asian cinema and music stand firmly on the shoulders of these pioneering women.

Yet, every time a modern listener leans into the timeless plea of Begum Akhtar's "Hamri atariya pe ao sawariya," they are reaching across time, holding a mirror to the forgotten women who built the modern sound and screen of South Asia.