Of Music and the Maharaja

About the Speaker

Radha Kapuria trained as a historian at the University of Delhi before joining the Jawaharlal Nehru University for her MPhil degree. Her dissertation investigated the oldest classical music festival of north India- the Harballabh of Jalandhar, Punjab. She built on this ‘micro-history’ by researching a more macro-level social history of music in the region during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for her PhD at King’s College London, funded by the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission and the Institute for Historical Research, London. She has taught Ethnomusicology at King’s College London and History at the Indraprastha College for Women in Delhi. Beginning in October 2019, she will be the Smuts Research Fellow in South Asian Studies at Cambridge, where she will research the impact of Partition on the musical cultures of Punjab across the Indo-Pak border. She is currently preparing a book manuscript based on her PhD thesis, titled Music in Colonial Punjab: A Social History.

Abstract

This presentation focuses on performing artists at the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (r. 1801- 1839), the last fully sovereign ruler of the Punjab and leader of what is termed the Sikh Empire. Ranjit Singh’s kingdom has been studied for the remarkable authority it exercised over warring Sikh factions and for the strong challenge it posed to political rivals like the Marathas and the British.

While scholarly exploration of cultural efflorescence at the Lahore court has covered various aspects like painting, textiles, jewellery, etc., the place of performing artistes has been generally overlooked. This is surprising because they are conspicuous both in the Persian chronicles produced at the Lahore court itself and in accounts of the numerous European travellers who frequently visited it. I demonstrate how Ranjit Singh was partial to musicians and dancers as a class, even marrying two Muslim courtesans in the face of stiff Sikh orthodoxy. I then especially focus on Ranjit’s corps of Amazons—female dancers dressed as men, performing martial feats, the cynosure of all eyes, especially male European, and their significance in representing the martial glory of the Sikh state.

Finally, I evaluate the curious cultural misunderstandings that arise when English ‘dancing’ encounters Indian ‘nautching’, revealing how gender was the primary axis around which Indian and European male statesmen alike expressed their views and power. Ubiquitous in the daily routine of Ranjit and the lavish entertainments set up for visitors, musicians and female performers lay at the interstices of the Indo-European encounter, and Anglo-Sikh interactions in particular.

Report

In her seminar discussing her PhD thesis, Dr Radha Kapuria examined the role of music and gender in the court of the Sikh Empire under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The key locale with which Kapuria started her discussion was the Pul Kanjri—a historic bridge close to the Indo-Pakistani border that was reportedly constructed by the Maharaja at the behest of his beloved wife, Rani Moran. The Maharaja’s aberrant behaviour in the nature of his marriages was narrated: some of his favourite consorts were Muslim and were courtesans before their marriage to the Maharaja. This degree of favouritism was also narrated in the minting of special Moran Shahi coins as homage to his queen. These actions invited the anger of the Jathedar of the Akal Takht who ordered a punishment of 100 lashes to be administered to the Maharaja for breaking the rahet of the Sikh faith. While only 1 or 2 lashes were administered, the continued importance of the Sikh faith in Ranjit Singh’s empire was emphasised.

With the advent of the British, a few of the key tools used for diplomacy in the court of Lahore were dance and music. While European visitors did not understand the nuances of Hindustani classical music, dance was universally understood. Ranjit Singh’s unique ploy of assigning a military rank to his “Zenana Platoon” of dancers dressed as warriors was also a novel feature that greatly appealed to the British. Indeed, the Scottish traveller Sir Alexander Burnes vividly describes the “scores of Amazons” in his writing for the East India Company. The exact form of dance practised by the “Zenana Platoon” cannot be ascertained—it could be a form of the famous Keherwa performed in the Nawabi court of Awadh, or a form similar to the Nihang practise of gatka still seen to this day in North India.

By Akshaj Awasthi, Undergraduate Batch of 2021