The inconvenient ‘public women’ of history

Our man was wrong, of course, for history has no shortage of European lords getting mixed up with the “wrong" sort of women. At the very moment he was writing, for example, the future William IV of Britain had spent nearly two decades with an Irish actress. No, the real problem was the discomfort of a certain type of man with the “whore"—or more precisely, women whose influence stemmed from unpoliced sexual access to other, more powerful males.

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While in this case an element of racism was in play, brown men also, to be clear, shared such feelings. Over a century later, it was Indians themselves, for instance, who branded an ageing Jaipur maharajah’s reign “randi ka raj" (“harlot’s rule") on account of the sway of a royal concubine.

In historical narratives, the “public woman" often seesaws between wicked designs and remorse for harbouring such designs. One 19th century story features the Arya Samaj founder, Dayananda Saraswati. Envious of this celibate’s growing reputation and anxious to destroy it, his rivals hire a woman to seduce him. But when the lady arrives, she sees a “mystic light" all around her target; instead of disrobing, she sheds “tears of penitence". Yet for every “reformed" vamp, there remained treacherous ones men were told to beware. Indeed, Dayananda’s own death is ascribed to poisoning by the Jodhpur maharajah’s mistress, who apparently feared she would be jettisoned by her patron under the guru’s advice.

None of this should surprise us. In a patriarchal world, from the male gaze the “right" kind of woman was either wife, mother or widow—and all of them submissive. The sexually unfettered “public woman" challenged this social ideal. Indeed, branding inconvenient women “sluts", even when married, was a standard instrument to cut them down to size.

In the early 19th century, for instance, there was an anti-British rebellion in Travancore. Aiding it was the rajah’s wife. When the revolt failed, the lady was cut off from her husband upon whom a pro-British group tried to foist a new wife. But what is telling is how she was discredited. Even as the rajah petitioned to be reunited with her, in colonial papers his spouse became a mere “favourite girl".

It was not just women seeking power who have confronted the charge of being harlots though. The writer Kavitha Rao in her book Lady Doctors (2021) tells how Kadambini Ganguly, among the earliest Indian women to qualify as a doctor, was slandered in the Bengali press as a “whore". She had struggled to obtain medical training, faced racism as well as sexism, balanced what she saw as her wifely duties with her career and yet ended up being attacked—because an educated, financially autonomous woman was a threat.

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Even a leader like B.G. Tilak, in his quarrels with Pandita Ramabai, a Christian convert and evangelist, could not help but suggest that she style herself reveranda—a play on “reverend" that also punned crudely in Marathi on randa or prostitute.

But what did women themselves make of the idea of the “slut"? Many, it must be said, deployed it to put down other women. In a Victorian-era succession dispute in Ramnad, thus, one lady sought to strengthen her claim by attacking a rival—born to a devadasi—as the daughter of a “notorious whore". The devadasi tradition itself was savaged by reformist women who equated Devadasis with sex workers. Devadasis resisted: “We are," one 1929 memorandum declares, women who “possess…all the privileges of the males in regard to property, special laws of inheritance", etc. “Noisy", self-righteous calls to disempower them into meek housewives would be “disastrous"—they stood to lose rather than gain.

While not all devadasis lived such confident lives and many did indeed face pressure to commit to a form of sex work, the memorandum was not terribly off the mark. Even in the north, there was a courtesan culture that could not be reduced to merely sexual elements. These were women who identified as artists and poets; indeed, they possessed vast resources, which is why during events such as the 1857 rebellion, many courtesans were able to aid the Indian fighters (and were punished for it by the British with the confiscation of their property). In an earlier period, a tawaif-turned-princess like Begum Samru led armies and won titles from the Mughal emperor, holding her own for decades as a single woman in a world of men.

This may be why we do find the odd glimpse in history of domesticated women who look upon the courtesan and devadasi with envy, romanticising the latter’s freedom from drudgery and wifely burdens.

As the poetry of the 14th century Maharashtrian Bhakti saint Janabai has it (in Vilas Sarang’s translation), “Cast off all shame, and sell yourself in the marketplace. Then alone can you hope to reach the lord." Janabai was a maid, trapped forever in the kitchen and in a life of service. Duty and respectability kept her there; in these verses she yearns to lose her shackles, pick up musical instruments and wander. Society will, she knows, call her a “slut" but at least, she seems to say, she will be free.

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Of course, the fact is that nobody in life is entirely free. But there are degrees of freedom, and some can assert their agency, while others must subdue it. The “whore"— a spectrum from the “public woman" to the married, educated female who refuses to conform—has greater agency in some respects. And it might appear in the smallest of ways. In 1902, for instance, the brother of the artist Ravi Varma complained about difficulties finding a model for a painting. They assumed local sex workers would skip along for a fee but were disappointed. “These prostitutes readily come if called for immoral purposes," the man complained, “but when required for posing they raise great objections."

That perhaps is exactly the point—the “whore" was a tag that came with a price. But all the same, in some respects she also had a strange, distinct form of choice.

Manu S. Pillai is a historian and author, most recently, of Gods, Guns and Missionaries.

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