Birth Of Sharafat

Violette Graff's Lucknow is the story of the transformation of rustic Laxmanpur into glorious Lucknow in the space of just 130 years: 1722-1857. It's a journey into the minds, manners and morals of Shia 'nawabs' as Saadat Khan and successors styled themselves, who fought for power even as they looked for poetry in their lives. It's the story of how these cultured rulers from Nishapur in Persia (birthplace of Omar Khayyam) nurtured a renaissance of arts in their city. Lucknow became legend, the term 'lak-hnavi' passed into Indian lexicon.

Graff goes beyond cliches to the very core of Lucknow. No touristy recounting of the city's "inimitable culture, cuisine, couture and courtesans" here. Abdul Halim Sharar did a good job of that at the turn of the century. Graff's work is more searching, scholarly. Through a remarkable collection of essays she manages to establish how a cosmopolitan city became a communal one. She examines an oft overlooked paradox: how Lucknow's commoners were spared the 1947 communal carnage even as its elite worked towards the emergence of Pakistan.

Graff's socio-political account of national, communal and caste politics as it was played out in Lucknow over the last 14 years: the journey from Baradari to Babri, as it were, makes for a fascinating read. As does contributor Jacques Pouchepadass' perceptive analysis of the Victorian mind on India as gleaned through feminine records of the 1857 Lucknow siege. To the Victorian ladies Indians are "untrustworthy", the "Mahratta, a notedly treacherous race". Native "cowardice" is an adage fervently subscribed to, native childishness yet another. Indians are mentioned not only with contempt but with astonishing insensitivity. "The enemy soon retreated," writes one Victorian army wife of an attack she witnessed, "having done no greater harm than cutting up about 20 grass cutters". For someone so callously nonchalant about humans she exhibits touching concern for her pet dog left "miserable and pining" for her!

Perhaps the most interesting essay is Veena Oldenberg's Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of Courtesans of Lucknow. Courtesans to Oldenberg are sexually liberated, feisty survivors rather than passive victims of the patriarchal system and colonialism. Lucknow's courtesans, like their ancient Greek counterparts, were women of refinement, preservers and performers of the high culture of the court. Association with them earned societal praise rather than censure. Colonial masters decrying the decadence of the nawabs sought to discredit courtesans as common prostitutes. They'd also stumbled upon the embarrassing truth that the larger number of British casualties in 1857 were due to venereal disease rather than combat. Hurriedly courtesans were rounded up, issued prostitute licences, relocated to cantonments for soldiers' "convenience", mandatorily examined for infections. How these women intensified their struggle against an intrusive civic and colonial authority that taxed their incomes and inspected their bodies, how they subverted and bribed their way through the system, refused to pay taxes, spiritedly defended themselves against both men and "masters" forms the substance of Oldenberg's essay. Her subjects talk of how they "change their qismat", how they play "the game of love that makes men come back again and again sometimes until they are financially ruined". It's a journey into a seldom seen inner world, a rare glimpse of a sorority that's strong, cohesive, mutually supportive. Result: new perspective on a way of life, a worldview a courtesan offers by way of explaining how her lifestyle is superior to that of "respectable married women": "It is we who are brought up to live in sharafat (genteel respectability) with control over our own bodies and our money and they who suffer the degradation reserved for lowly neech women"!

Graff's Lucknow offers much more: Gail Minnault's essay on how Urdu flourished in Lucknow, Juan R.I. Cole's essay on how Shiite noblewomen used religion as instruments of power, Mushirul Hasan's piece Traditional Rites and Contested Meanings on sectarian strife in the city, Lafont's knowledge nugget essay on the French and the fortunes they amassed in 18th century Lucknow.... Sociologists, political scientists, armchair aficionados: all would find something of abiding interest in this book. One of the finest in recent years on a city that in its magnificence once rivalled the Florence of the Medicis, the Athens of the Greeks.