Piaree’s Prayer: Glimpsing the Lives of Indian Dancing Women in Imperial Exhibitionary Spaces

Saturday, January 7, 2023: 2:10 PM
Congress Hall B (Loews Philadelphia Hotel)
Pratichi Priyambada, University of California, Irvine
In October 1895, Begum Jehan and Vajir Jehan, dancers based in Bombay, went on a tour to England on a six months contract. Few months in, Piaree Jehan, their grandmother and also a dancer herself, learnt about the death and disappearance of Begum Jehan and Vajir Jehan respectively. In 1896, Piaree filed a petition to the Bombay Police Commissioner, seeking justice.

Through a close reading of Piaree Jehan’s petition along with contemporary newspaper reports, this paper documents how Indian women dancers asserted their claims as professional artistes in the racialized and sexualized spaces of imperial exhibitions. In the second half of the nineteenth century, several groups of Indian women dancers started touring European and American venues for contractual performances, as pre-existing sources of patronage for the dancers declined owing to colonial legislations on prostitution and rising Anti-Nautch movement in India. However, amidst adverse weather, hostile audience and untrustworthy showmen, misfortunes, akin to the Jehan sisters, often befell them. This paper argues that, despite the adversities, dancers made spaces for self-expression as laboring performing artistes. By claiming unpaid wages, refusing sexual offers, writing petitions and forging female-centric kinship ties, dancers foregrounded their identity as professional performers—which was submerged under their overtly sexualized portrayal in British media and official discourses.

While existing discussions on the prevalence of Indian artists in imperial exhibitions have begun recently, particular attention towards Indian dancers remains inadequate, despite their rising popularity in the metropole by 1890s. This paper, hence, seeks to bring Indian women dancers at the forefront of the unfolding politics of imperial exhibitions through Piaree’s petition. Finally, by centering the experiences of Indian women dancers, this paper, also invites reflections on locating moments of negotiations of the marginalized within the logics of nineteenth-century imperial exhibitions as well as in the colonial archive.