Performing intimacy: slavery and the woman’s voice in eighteenth-century Marathi lavani

ABSTRACT

This article provides an optic for understanding the genre of the Marathi love lyric, lavani (lāvaṇī), and its emotionality. The genre reached its greatest popularity during the turn of the nineteenth century, receiving broad popular support as well as patronage from the Maratha State. Often contrasted with the povada (povāḍā), defined essentially as a heroic ballad that recounts the feats of larger than life historical persons, the two have been seen in tandem, paired for their characterization of masculine valour and feminine eros. Each genre, relying on the other to form a complete picture, providing the appropriate context in a dialogue of genres. Despite the contrast and obvious references to warfare in the povada, however, most scholars have not acknowledged the eros of lavani as a product of its historical circumstances. Instead, generations of scholars have often characterized lavani as immoral, about women who are ready to swindle heroic men out of their hard-earned riches – riches earned from plunder and warfare in the eighteenth century.

In this article, I steer away from moralizing discourses, and instead historicize the lavani’s aesthetics and emotionality within the contexts of warfare, displacement, and slavery – the material conditions under which lavani reached its apex. I consider the emotional language of the lavani as a desire for social intimacy, attachment, and protection, rather than an attempt at duplicity. The Maratha State frequently sold slaves for revenue generation, and often even granted slaves in lieu of payment; these activities disproportionately affected women. In reading the lavani genre, especially the woman’s voice, within its historical contexts, therefore, I argue for a materialist understanding of the lavani’s emotionality.

Keywords:

• slavery
• performance
• lyric poetry
• genre studies
• intimacy
• emotions
• Marathi

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Gokhale, Poona Urban History, 199. Gokhale, following some others whom I write about below refers to the lāvaṇī as the “lyric of love.” For a decent introduction to lavani practices today, see Shirish Shete, Dancing Maidens.

2. Sidhu, “Aryabhushan Theatre.” Tamasha is a form of folk theatre that often contains sequences of lāvaṇī. For references to the history of the Aryabhushan Theatre, see: Kulkarni, Marāṭhī Raṅgabhūmi, 17; Mujumdar, “Kirloskar Sangit Natyagruha,” 3–4; and Kulkarni, “Theatre of Maharashtra, 1843–1880,” 224 n.23.

3. The genre’s contents are certainly more expansive: the content has often been classified as poetry offering advice, poetry on a variety of random themes, love poetry based on stories from the purāṇa-s, and the kind of secular or worldly “love” poetry I write about here.

4. The Maratha state was led by the office of the prime minister, or Peshwa (peśvā), which had become hereditary following Balaji Viswanath (1713–1720). After his ministership, the Peshwa had become the de facto ruler of the Maratha confederacy. Much of the scholarship refers, therefore, to the Peshwai (peśvāī), or reign of the Peshwas.

5. An exception can be found in the work of Sharmila Rege, see: Rege, “Conceptualising Popular Culture,” 1038–47; and Rege, “Hegemonic Appropriation of Sexuality,” 23–38.

6. Chatterjee, “When ‘Sexuality’ Floated Free,” 945–962.

7. Below, I make distinctions between lavani and other performance traditions such as the devadasis of Tamil Nadu; or that of the tawaifs, courtesans who cultivated the arts; or the vocal masquerade of rekhti poetry, a genre of ghazal in which the speaking persona is feminine.

8. Scheer, “Are Emotions,” 193–220.

9. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection.

10. Srinivasan, “Reform and Revival,” 1869–76; Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance,” 259–87; Petievich, Men speak as women; and Soneji, Unfinished Gestures.

11. One important and notable exception is Rege, “Some Issues,” 132–54.

12. Rege, “Hegemonic Appropriation of Sexuality,” 27.

13. Gokhale, Poona Urban History, 26.

14. Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance,” 263.

15. Petievich, “Rekhti,” 77–78.

16. Petievich, Men speak as women.

17. Chatterjee, “When ‘Sexuality’ Floated Free,” 953.

18. Ibid., 950.

19. Chakravarti, “Reconceptualising Gender,” 165. On Chakravarti’s use of “Peshwa” and “Peshwai,” see n. 4.

20. Gordon, The Marathas, 154–73.

21. See the first chapter of Uma Chakravarti, Rewriting History, 1–42.

22. Gordon, The Marathas, 165.

23. Prachi Deshpande, “Caste as Maratha,” 12–13.

24. Chakravarti, Rewriting History, 4.

25. This topic, of the brahminisation of moral discourse with relation to performance traditions in Maharashtra, has been covered especially well in Naregal, “Performance, Caste, Aesthetics,” 79–101.

26. Keḷakara, Andhārātīla lāvaṇỵā.

27. Gokhale, Poona Urban History, 200.

28. Ibid., 201. Other shahirs include Parashuram (often written Parasharam; 1754–1844), Ram Joshi (1758/62-1812/13), Prabhakar (1769–1843), Anant Phandi (1774–1819), and Saganbhau (1778–1840).

29. Honājībāḷā, Honājī Bāḷākrta Lāvaṇyā, 7.

30. Keḷakara, Tantakavi tathā śāhīra, 42–43.

31. Ibid., 39–42 contains a geneaology of Honaji.

32. Ibid., 43–44.

33. Rege, “Hegemonic Appropriation of Sexuality,” 25–26; and Rege, “Some Issues,” 135–36.

34. Keḷakara, Tantakavi tathā śāhīra, 48.

35. Keḷakara, Andhārātīla lāvaṇỵā, 23–24.

36. “amṛtaphaḷa toḍāve” is an idiomatic expression. Amṛta is commonly the elixir of immortality, phaḷa the fruit of amṛta. With the verb toḍaṇeṃ, “to break” it can commonly mean to break off and take, as in “toḍuna gheṇeṃ,” which may be rendered as “partake” or “share.”

37. Rajamani, Pernau, and Schofield, Monsoon Feelings.

38. Rege, “Hegemonic Appropriation of Sexuality,” 27.

39. See note 16 above.

40. Gavaḷī, Society and Social Disabilities, 153.

41. Shirgaonkar, Peśavyāñce vilāsī jīvana, 30–45; 71–104.

42. Oldenburg, “Lifestyle as Resistance”; and Soneji, Unfinished Gestures.

43. See, for example, Morcom, Illicit Worlds and Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality.

44. Scheer, “Are Emotions.”

45. Ibid., 209–17.

46. Guha, “Slavery, Society,” 164–68.

47. Rege, “Conceptualising Popular Culture,” 1041. For some sale prices see Gokhale, Poona Urban History, 166–67.

48. Honājībāḷā, Honājī Bāḷākrta Lāvaṇyā, 9–14.

49. Ibid., 12–14.

50. Ibid., 9.

51. Ibid., 12.

52. Eaton, “Introduction,” 1–16.

53. Chatterjee, “Renewed and Connected Histories,” 19.

54. Guha, “Slavery, Society,” 177–78.

55. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 20.

56. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Hartman herself doesn’t refer to Smith, but the parallels are clear.

57. See note 55 above.

58. Ibid., 20.

59. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions, 177–78. Neither Mani nor Hartman refer to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments for their understanding of psychological substitution.

60. Guha, “Slavery, Society,” 164.

61. Bhāve, Mahārāshṭra-sārasvata, 710–11.

62. See Keḷakara, Andhārātīla lāvaṇỵā.

63. Dhond, Marāṭhī lāvaṇī, 40.

64. Ibid., 40.

65. Jambhekar, Memoirs and Writings, 28–29.

66. Rege, “Hegemonic Appropriation of Sexuality”; Rege, “Some Issues”; and Naregal, “Performance, Caste, Aesthetics.”

67. Rege, “Some Issues,” 142–44.