The Rebellion of 1857 dealt a body blow to the entire culture of North India, including the institution of thekotha. Not only were their clients ruined but tawaifs were penalised for their assistance to the rebels. Additionally, as India came under direct British rule, Victorian notions of morality gained ascendance. The British, who had actively patronised the kotha before 1857, now derided it as a decadent oriental institution. In 1875, a tawaif entertained the Prince of Wales to a dance recital during his visit to India. In just 15 years, however, the growing “anti-nautch” movement ensured that when, in 1890, Prince Albert Victor partook of similar entertainment there were indignant protests against the poor man for this “immoral” act. The post-1857 Indian petit bourgeois class, influenced by English education, had also imbibed these Victorian ideas of morality, leaving the tawaif in rather dire straits.

While modern notions of ethics ruined the tawaif, modern technology came to her rescue. At a time when the institution of the kotha was on its last legs, the recording/radio industry and, then a few decades down the line, the film industry acted to absorb tawaifs. The first singers to be recorded in India were tawaifs (who had now started calling themselves ganewalis or singers), the pioneer there being Gauhar Jan of Calcutta. Later on, it is said, inspired by her, a certain tawaif, Akhtaribai Faizabadi also took to recording her songs under the screen name, Begum Akhtar. Large numbers also made it to the new film industry, the best example being one of Gauhar Jan’s students, Jaddan Bai, who, remarkably, was a music composer, singer, actress as well as a director. She is today, though, better known as the mother of Nargis, and via her grandson, Sanjay Dutt, ensured that the tawaif “blood line” continued in Bollywood till 2013, cut short only by the Arms Act.

This influx of tawaifs as well as the preponderance of people from the heartland in the film industry meant that Bollywood naturally took the ethos of the kotha system, the Madonna-Whore complex, the purity of thezenana, the debased “masculinity” of the nautch girl and included them in its films, using, of course, the device of the item song.

The phrase “item song” might be of recent origin (from local Bombay slang, “item”, meaning an “attractive woman”) but the phenomenon is as old as the talkies themselves. India’s first item girl was a half-German, half-Indian lady, Anna Marie Gueizelor, better known by her somewhat inexplicable screen name, Azurie. Making her debut in 1934, Azurie was the dancing star of the time, acting in over 50 films, right up to Bahanain 1960. Her only starring role, though, was in the movie Maya (1936), where she plays a spoilt, rich socialite who pursues the hero. The hero, wisely, avoids this sort of forward woman and falls in love with the pure Maya, instead, much to the chagrin of Azurie who uses every trick in the book to get them to break-up, unsuccessfully of course.

As can be seen from Maya, the tropes of the bold tawaif and the demure zenana woman, were born fully-formed in Hindi Cinema. Dishonour and being sexually provocative, goodness and being reserved, it’s all there and the newly formed film industry, catering to the tastes of its audience, faithfully reproduces them.

The conventions set by Azurie—the nautch girl cum vamp—would be carried on by Cuckoo Moray. Making her debut in 1944, Cuckoo was really the first superstar item girl of B-town. With Shamshad Begum as her playback voice (to be mirrored by the Helen-Asha pair in some time) Cuckoo’s lithe frame was ubiquitous throughout the 40s and early 50s. In most movies, her role was limited to that of the item song, suitably sexualised, as in Awara (1951) where she sings “ek do teen, aaja mausam hai rangeen” in a bar, paying special attention to a sullen Raj Kapoor, who after a while, tired of this nonsense, literally pushes her to the ground. The paying public, though, were far more receptive to her charms and, consequently, distributers made sure that movies at the time did carry Cuckoo’s item song, an anecdote to be remembered the next time someone drones on about how the Sheilas and the Munnis have “trashed” Bollywood nowadays.

Cuckoo also popularised Cabaret in films, a form of risqué entertainment popular in the more elite hotels and restaurants of the time, the acts being performed by European troupes. Interestingly, the fact that Indians vamp-ised the exotic Western Cabaret dancer bears interesting parallels to the treatment of the tawaifs by the British. In both cases, a strong display of sexuality by the Other Woman was given a moral colour. The anti-nautch movement held up the tawaif as symbol of Eastern decadence compared to the upright British woman and 50 years later, Cabaret dancers, symbols of Western licentiousness, were contrasted with pavitra Indian girls, the suitable wife, with whom the hero would live happily ever after.

Cabaret hit its peak, as is well known, under Helen. Of Anglo-Burmese descent, Helen was initiated into Bollywood as a backup dancer by Cuckoo herself. In 1958, Helen and Cuckoo starred together in what is possibly Bollywood’s greatest mujra number, “Hum Tumhare Hain“, as part of the “super-hit” Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi. This song was when, if you’ll allow me to be a bit filmi, pupil became master. Dancing alongside Cuckoo, Helen outshone her guru and with the success of “Mera naam chin chin choo” (Howrah Bridge), later in the same year, Bollywood had a new dancing queen.

“Hum Tumhare Hain” also tells us that Bollywood, at the time, saw the mujra as unmitigated evil. To use Jerry Pinto’s phrase, the kotha (as well as the nightclub) provided the filmmaker with “instant debauchery”. “Hum Tumhare Hain” is a dance performed for the villain of Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, played deliciously by KN Singh. Shots of Singh reclining on a settee, a thin lecherous smile across his face, are interspersed during the song, firmly reminding the viewer that this is a place of sin and depravity. This Victorian demonisation of the mujrawould continue for a few more years till the ’70s, after which Bollywood yoked the tawaif to the stock character of the “hooker with a heart of gold” with movies such as Ek Nazar, Muqqaddar ka Sikandar, Pakeezah, Umrao Jan and Tawaif. This, of course, did not mean that Bollywood had erased the anti-nautch movement. Those Victorian values still remained but were now more patronising than directly hostile. For example, the character of Umrao Jan in the movie is significantly different from the novel. The original Umrao was fairly cavalier about romance, famously declaring, “I have never really been in love with anyone, nor anyone with me”. Decades of accumulated guilt about the kotha probably made this frankness disconcerting for the filmmakers, who changed the character to make her fall in love with one of her patrons and pine for him faithfully till the very end, like a “good” woman should.

The 70s saw another significant trend and one that continues till today: the fading out of stock item girls, like Helen and lesser performers such as Bindu, Aruna Irani and Padma Khanna. Breaking many taboos, mainstream heroines took their place, dancing and, to use that utilitarian Bollywood term, “exposing” in order to provide the titillation that the audience demanded. That said, this was hardly a jettisoning of the Madonna-Whore complex, more a reworking of it. Mostly, the heroine could perform erotically only for the hero, a good example being Sridevi’s wet sari act in Mr India. Allowances were also made when singing or dancing was a result of some pressing compulsion, such as Madhuri singing “Choli ke Peeche Kya Hai?” to trap the film’s villain. The “Madonna” could become the “whore”, temporarily, but only if the circumstances absolutely demanded it; never willingly.

For all that progress, therefore, the spirit of the Madonna-Whore complex was still maintained. Recently, in both Fevicol se and Beedi Jalayile, mainstream actors Kareena Kapoor and Bipasha Basu perform in item songs, not as the female lead but playing dancing girls only for the duration of the song. On the other hand, Aishwarya and Kareena sing Crazy Kiya Re and Chhamak Chhalo as lead characters, but only in the presence of their heroes.

And another change seen in the past decade or so is that the mujra has been stripped of its moral baggage. Songs like “Kajra Re” and “Jhalla Wallah” (Ishaqzade) have tawaif performances which are neither markers of evil nor drowned in pity. Of course, this change is largely superficial because modern audiences, cut off by a century from anything resembling a real kotha, have no cultural resonance with the tawaif any longer. Thekotha’s deeper, more enduring contribution to Bollywood—the restrictions on the sexuality of the pure Madonna-like heroine and the propping up of a bold, independent “whore” as a counter—remains alive and kicking and so does its principle vehicle: the item song.