The Fragrance and the Fist

Tawaif, Urdu Poetry, and the Subversive Spaces of the Ghazal

Abstract

Tawaif, who were all women, were major contributors to poetry, dance, and music in India. However, tawaif today are primarily recognized as a group of women involved in prostitution and sex work, and their contributions to poetry and performance have been largely forgotten. This reductionist view has obscured their vital contributions to the cultural and literary life of South Asia. This article, therefore, revisits the history of the tawaif in pre-colonial and colonial contexts and deconstructs the poetry of Mah Laqa Chanda (d. 1824), a tawaif and a poet, to address the erasure of women’s oral and written voices in Urdu literary traditions. The article employs Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory of sign to understand the interpretation of “tawaif” as both a word and an identity over time. Furthermore, it applies Jacques Derrida’s method of deconstruction to critically analyze Chanda's poetry, arguing that tawaif literature offers a powerful model for understanding how women appropriated dominant cultural forms to subvert patriarchal structures.