What, in your understanding, are four significant ways in which theatre and music complicate the question of

gender difference during the late 19th and early 20th century in India?

Our society is pretty conservative and full of superstitious traditional values, they
avoid and disregard anything or anyone that is different and term it as "abnormal".
So they would probably relate a cross dresser to a Homosexual or a Transgender.

Kathryn Hansens article regarding the 19th and 20th century Indian theatre explains
how cross-dressing and female impersonation shaped different forms of discomfort
towards the desire which was evoked between the male spectator in the audience
for the desire of rational amusement and the male actors who wanted to be
female impersonators desired in their own right, as men who embodied the
feminine.
Expressions of queer sexuality had much older histories than colonialism but due
to social and cultural obligations it was never put forward and Colonialism in a
way, introduced Homophobia in the country which was somehow internalized
entirely by India where cross sex friendship too was seen as a marker of western
influence. This internalization also allowed homo-erotically inclined individuals to
develop various kinds of relationships and closeness with others. The anti-sex
views and concern over non-normative sexualities espoused through colonial
Puritanism had a critical role in the enlargement of the Indian National Identity. As
Hansen states, Theatrical transvestism not only enabled actors to transform their
own gender identities but also sustained and eventually reworked viewing practices
predicated on interest in transgender identification and the homoerotic gaze and
further ramifications of theatrical cross dressing for the constitution of gendered
subjectivities, posed questions about homo erotic pleasure and homosexual culture
that maybe extended to a wider range of spaces and times. An important note to be
insisted here is that modernity in India has not always been explicitly liberating.
Modernity had erased spaces and produced new subjectivities. Earlier forms of
sexuality and identities were reconstituted to fit the new norms of the colonial
establishment and then in turn became a part of the modernizing nationalist
rhetoric.
In Jayshankar Sundaris autobiography he states how femininity penetrated deep
into his being. He was so immersed in his female impersonation that women
learnt how to move, to perform, to show off and to flirt through him (on stage). It
can be understood evidently when Sundari states how They would talk with their
friends and try, usually unsuccessfully, to imitate the gestures of Sundari. Not
only his characteristics but they also followed his fashion sense, they started
dressing just like he did on stage, making him an influential figure who formed
their identity as the type of clothing an individual wears is completely dependent
on the individual as the fashion in which the individual follows a particular
Fashion acts as a personal identity for the individual. Here, Sundari served as a
fashion icon for all the women as the way women dressed during that time were
heavily influenced by the fashion statement Sundari made through his acting and
persona on stage. Textile industries used to print lyrics of the songs played during
the performance on their sarees. Despite being of the opposite sex, Jayshankar
Sundari could somehow connect with the femininity of women through the
characters in the books which he has read and through all the women he has come
across in life and through these he could transform himself into the artistic form
that expresses the feminine sensibility.
Women and Music: The Case of North India:
Early Accounts

Again, no distinction seems to be evident between singers and dancers in the case of women. Many of
the great women singers of the past were skilled dancers, and the traditional skills of the tawayef
included dancing as one of its essential elements. In fact, one of the evident differences between female
and male artists is that the musical profession is itself differently designated: whereas in the case of men
it consists of skill in singing various classes of songs and playing instruments, in the case of women there
is the additional elements of dancing, the arts of courtesy and sexual gratification. Termed variously
bais, baijis and tawayefs, one often finds them uneasily situated at the fringes of the musical world. If
the advent of the so-called respectable women into the world of music led to this stereotype being
questioned, even this change, as many performing artists today will testify to, has not been a smooth
one.

As we will see, the line between the high classical forms, if one may use such a term, and forms with
local, seasonal or ethnic associations is continually blurred in speaking about women artists. Whereas
mens virtuosity in vocal music is measured in respect principally of the dhrupad and the khayal (and
allied forms, for instance, the sadra and the tarana), the repertoire of women artists, while it certainly
includes the khayal , and in a few instances the dhrupad, is mainly thought to consist of the thumri and
forms like dadra, kajri, chaiti and so on. The notion of a distinct domain of the classical is itself new, and
the problem of using it is reflected in the use of terms such as semi- or light- classical to describe
many of the forms that women artist were thought to specialize in.

Anecdotes of women performers are comparatively poorly recorded. As till about the second decade of
the 20th century women artists did not figure in the histories of the gharanas, or principal styles and
schools of music, the reconstruction of gharana histories have little information about women
performers. What we do know is often in the context of their dealings with male artists, and in them
women tend to come out as inferior. We have little authenticated information about the lives of women
performers, their practices of training and performance, their performance practices and so on. There
seems to be little doubt that the social organization of women musicians till fairly recently (i.e., mid 20 th
century) was essentially distinct from that of male artists.

Reba Muhurys account entitled Thumri o Baiji contains valuable information about the daily lives of
women artists. In fact, as contrasted to the patriarchal structure of the male singing tradition, the
organization of the community of women artists was essentially matrilineal or gynocratic: male children
for instance were not desired, and female offspring were highly prized. Male members of the community
would usually serve subsidiary roles like servants or attendants: if they were lucky and received some
training in music they could at best hope to be accompanists.. Muhury points that in spite of the image
of a luxurious lifestyle and conspicuous consumption associated with the life of the tawayef, such
fortune was reserved for a very few, and that also for short periods. In fact the average bai or tawayef
lived a life of extreme simplicity, even plainness. Muhury notes that they were mostly held in contempt
and distrust by respectable householders.

The life-stories of Janaki Bai (known as Chappanchhuri as her face was defaced by knife cuts at
the behest of a wealthy patron) and Badi Moti Bai, whom Muhury found in a state of utter
penury, living next to a cowshed, supports Muhurys assertion about the tenuous status of the
women performer and her subjection to the whims of her patrons.
Muhury recounts the sad history of Bai Durgeshnandini, reduced by a personal tragedy to near-
destitution and mental illness. Many women singers apparently turned to religion at the end of
their singing careers, but here too the reception was by no means unequivocal. A particular
religious institution in Maharashtra accepted no less than 22 singers but only on the condition
intolerable as it may seem that they gave up singing altogether.

Mohammad Jan speaks of the decay of this community of singers in the 1950s. Munirbai of
Kucknow, herself a reputed dancer and student of the kathak dancer Shambhu Maharaj,
attributed the final breakup of the tawayef community to three principal causes: Gandhiji,
independence and the Arya Samaj!

The Arya Samajis were always against us. They said we were a corrupting influence and
deserved no place in civilized society. In fact it was largely the Arya Samaj campaign that
was responsible for the concerted police drive against the kothewalis of Lucknow in
December 1958. (Bor: 109; Nagar: )

Vidya Rao points out that the tawayef does not exist any more, and the notion of one has been
identified with the prostitute. This identification has been strengthened by the popular cinema, as also
by the fact that the few tawayefs who still practice their art are forced to live in the red-light districts in
cities because of social pressures

A way of approaching the changes in the status of women singers is through the gramophone industry,
active in India from around the beginning of the 20 th century

Thus splits along gender lines are visible in the lists, with the musical forms ideologized as being `higher'
falling in the male domain and being contained within the inherently patriarchal construction of the idea
of gharana; the so-called sub-classical forms being the field of professional woman artists, referred to as
bais or baijis. The authorizing locus of knowledge is the male gharanedar ustad ideally working under
conditions of courtly or aristocratic patronage, from whom other male students learn through a kind of
economy of gift, in which the returns for the gift of knowledge are conceptualised in terms of service and
fidelity. That in practice this was not always how things worked, and that competing systems for the
dissemination of musical knowledge is something that could be studied through the examples of women
artists. Early lists of recordings show unusually large numbers of women artists entering into the field.
Forms of music practised by women are therefore recorded in large number. From a total statistical
analysis it would appear that the number of recordings in the early lists is inversely proportional to its
place in the imaginary hierarchy of musical forms. Thus there are the fewest dhrupads and the greatest
numbers of geets, ghazals, dadras and kajris, with khayals and thumris lying somewhere in between. But
the opportunity afforded by the neutral space of recording is used by singers to create images of the self
which run counter to the general run of musical practices. Let me introduce this point with a glance at
the lists.

What distinguishes Oomda Jan's efforts is that she appears to have recorded songs of many different
types: 3 dhrupads, 3 khayals, a sargam-geet, a tappa, in addition to horis, thumris and a gazal. Given that
at this time social distinctions reinforce formal distinctions in the musical world, this freedom to
negotiate genres appears to be of significance. Recorded repertoires often run counter to the content of
performances or even the status of musical knowledge. Women singers, we know, often began concerts
with a short khayal composition or two; or if they were also skilled in dancing, as Gauhar Jan reputedly
was, they rendered a tarana while dancing. All these were designed to evoke admiration for virtuosity;
but there was no doubting that the main content of their concerts in most cases was a range of sub-
classical forms. In Oomda Jan's case - and in many others too - the space afforded by recording becomes
a way of recasting musical identities. On the other hand, the popularity of light classical forms as items of
recorded music, prompt male ustads to strive for competence in these as well; many of the male singers
in the early lists record them side by side other kinds.

The relatively easy presence of women as concert, radio and gramophone artists since the 1950s,
conceals thus a long and troubled history of erasure and marginalization in the one hand, and co-option
and adjustment on the other. It would be easy to see the period, we have surveyed, from the middle of
the 19th to the middle of the 20th centuries, as one which sees a gradual and steady decline in the
profession of the woman singer as a result of alterations in the system of patronage, social hostility, the
development of nationalist cultural policies and so on: and it would certainly be right to emphasize these
factors. What needs to be added is that like other practitioners of music in this time, women singers too,
show considerable skill and dexterity in adapting to new conditions. If at every stage there is loss and
forgetting, it seems to be a part of the way in which North Indian classical music has adapted to new
conditions of being. At the same time, it has continued to value, and rely on, its internal systems of
memory and retrieval: the anecdote, the bandish, the sound recording, the singing voice. At some future
time perhaps it will be possible to write not only an aesthetics, but also a history, of sound as the
repository of musical values.
Theatrical transvestism not only enabled actors to transform their own gender identities but also
sustained and eventually reworked viewing practices predicated on interest in transgender
identification and the homoerotic gaze. [163]
The present essay addresses this phenomenon as the historical resurgence of a long standing
practice in the context of late colonial cultural formations. It explores the ramifications of
theatrical cross-dressing for the continuation of gendered subjectivities, posing questions about
homoerotic pleasure and homosexual culture that may be extrapolated to a wider range of space
and times. [163-64]
The analysis presented here challenges the time-honored but fundamentally homophobic premise
that female impersonators were mere surrogates for missing women. Although women in the
nineteenth century were disinfrahised both as social actors and as theatrical performers, my
argument is that female impersonaters were desired in their own right, as men who embodied the
feminine. Contrary to popular notions, they often coexisted with stage actresses and were chosen
by their fans in preference to them. [164]
Moreover, these cross-dressed actors, with their huge followings, were vital agents in the
redesigning of gender relations and roles. They set new standards for feminine conduct and
fashion, transforming the visual construct of womanhood into an image of bourgeois
respectability. Simultaneously, female impersonators crafted a new sense of the interior person.
They formulated attitudes of modesty and vulnerabily that became the hallmark of the new
feminity, paving the way for the emergence of the dutiful, demure bharatiya nari (Indian
woman) of the nationalist era. [164]

The practice of holding a nautch was adopted by the British in the early nineteenth century both
for private enjoyment and to honor a guest. Missionary-led aversion to the nautch took root in
midcentury and prompted Indian and British elites to look for alternative entertainments.
urban theater was often proposed as a respectable substitute. Nonetheless, the taint associated
with the female performer on account of her presumed sexualtity and low social origins carried
over into attitudes towards actresses in the urban theatre. The stigma accompanying the presence
of actresses, who were viewed as prostitutes, was often cited as the rationale for the policy of
certain theatrical companies to hire only men to play female roles. Yet fondness among
spectators for erotic genres of song and dance such as thumri and ghazal dictated that these items
be retained within the performative strcutre of the urban drama. In consequence, female
impersonators took on the double burden of enacting noble womanly characters even as they
inherited the arts of courtesans. [167]
By the eighteenth century, the gendered segregation of public and private spheres forced the
seclusion of women in the households of socially prominent families. Singing, dancing, and
other performance arts were relegated to stigmatized classes of women.
theatrical representation of womens roles or parts by mens bodies was crucial to the visual
construction of the feminine in this period. In that analysis, the effects of theatrical transvestism
are understood to reach beyond the reification of existing boundaries, or the transgression of
those boundaries for the purpose of generating laughter. In the South Asian context, where
women of status had long been secluded within private domestic spaces, masquerades of gender
were productive of new ways of imagining and viewing the female form. Through the
transvestite performer, the external look of the women was regulated by minute attention to the
details of fashion and feminine accoutrements. This reworking of the surface was conjoined to a
new focus on the interiority of character. [169]
My emphasis here will be on how the operations of female impersonation within the reforming,
educative program of the late-nineteenth-century Parsi theatre also complicated the viewing of
the male body and the construction of masculine subjectivity. For men as well as women, cross-
dressing opened up an arena in which gender could be articulated in complicated ways. I propose
that transgender massqurades, in addition to renewing a preexisting culture of homosociability in
the context of a reconstituted urban public, introduced new possibilities for homoerotic pleasure
and expression. As in the construction of heteronormative roles, these possibilities were
predicated on exchanging devalued traditional ways of encoding gender difference, or more
accurately gender ambiguity, for esteemed, updated, [169-70] modern ones. These urban
theaters moved away from a burlesque, transgressive mode of female embodiment, often
associated with folk practice, to a high mimetic style emphasizing naturalism. The display of
overt sexuality was replaced by an elaborate code modesty, propriety, and respectability that
identified the new woman in heteronormative terms. But equally they positioned the
homoerotic gaze toward a refined, transgendered performer who aroused a different kind of
desire.
Jayashankar Sundari and BalGandharva excelled in the embodiment of feminie sensibility and
decorum, creating prototypes for the ideal Indian women.
Moral purity and its counterpart, forbearance in distress, were invoked by impersonators like
Sundari in scenes of pathos and tragedy. The historic power of these actors and their capacity
to transform themselves into vulnerable, unfortunate female served to expand the emotional field
of the male viwer/subject. A desire to explore and experience the interior realms associated with
feminie feeling, thereby expanding ones humanity through the test of suffering, seems to have
been a large part of the fascinatin with transgender roles at this time. Sundari as female
impersonator crafted a self that found deep sources of satisfaction in its entry into feminie
subjectivity. [173]
The pleasure of homoerotic spectatorship and transgender performance were linkd in the uran
theater with the satisfactions of social and economic privilege. Both became national icons.
The position of audiences within the burgeoining consumber economy introduced opportunities
for the commodification of their images. [175]