Here is a book that uses dance, very specifically the dance of the courtesan as presented by Hindi cinema to theorize and discuss a range of very important issues in contemporary India. It is an outstanding example of interdisciplinary scholarship. The book cuts across cinema studies, dance in Hindi films, Urdu and Hindi literature, gender and sexuality studies, politics, history and sociology to name just a few of the disciplinary locations that this book could easily occupy. Ruth Vanita employs the vantage of the courtesan in Hindi cinema to offer the reader a masterful account of the changing societal and political contexts of Hindi cinema, and the projection of the character of the courtesan in it. She demonstrates, very clearly, the shifting nature of gender and sexuality in India, by showing the reader the complex ways in which sexual pleasure and imagery has been used in Hindi cinema. Placing these within a larger political and historical context makes her analysis invaluable to scholars of gender studies, as much as to scholars of film studies.
Dancing With the Nation is a magisterial survey of modern India and its conflicting ideas of gender and sexuality. It analyses the conflict that is ever present between the ideas of a mythical ‘glorious past’ which contained within it a ready and easy acceptance of sexual pleasure in its infinite variety on the one hand, and on the other hand, the nationalist fervour of rebuilding a ‘correct and proper’ sexuality, based on colonial laws and Victorian morality. Many of the films that have the courtesan as one of the central characters seek to address this dilemma. The courtesan films, Ruth Vanita argues, gave an opportunity to Hindi filmmakers to delve deeply into the history of pleasure in the pre-colonial social context. In doing this, Hindi films demonstrated a rather nuanced understanding of sexuality, while of course celebrating heterosexual relations and marriage, and yet not erasing or condemning non-normative family and sexual relations. The primary lens that the author employs in this study is that of gender and sexuality, and not film studies, and yet this book would prove to be a valuable treasure-trove for cinema studies scholarship as well.
Based on a wide survey of Hindi films, Vanita makes a series of important arguments by looking at the depiction of the courtesan’s familial contexts as shown in Hindi films. She then moves on to take a look at the principles of Eros and how it is handled in such films. ‘Courtesans as Working Women’ is a theme that is addressed by her to discuss issues of women and work, and of women and property. The role of men, especially male friends and allies, in the lives of the courtesans is an interesting point of engagement in this book. The last two chapters, dealing with the categories of ‘Nation’ and ‘Religion’, should be a compulsory reading for those interested in contemporary Indian politics and society.