Music in Colonial Punjab (Courtesans,Bards,and Connoisseurs, 1800-1947)

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This book offers the first social history of music in undivided Punjab (1800-1947), beginning at the Lahore court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and concluding at the Patiala royal darbar. It unearths new evidence for the centrality of female performers and classical music in a region primarily viewed as a folk music centre, featuring a range of musicians and dancers-from mirásis (bards) and kaldwants (elite musicians), to kanjris (subaltern female performers) and tawd'if (courtesans). A central theme is the rise of new musical publics shaped by the Anglicised Punjabi middle classes, and British colonialists' response to Punjab's performing communities. The book reveals a diverse connoisseurship for music with insights from history, ethnomusicology, and geography on an activity that still unites a region now divided between India and Pakistan.

If you stand on the bank of Hansli canal. located in Indian Punjab, you will see an expanse of green fields all around. Reaching over the canal is a rustic simply built iron bridge and if you listen carefully, you might hear the soft sound of anklet-clad footsteps on marble and the gentlest of singing voices.

Built in the seventeenth century as the shah nehr or royal canal by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, this canal was meant to channel the waters of the river Ravi, from Madhopur in Pathankot to the Shalamar Gardens in Lahore. In the nineteenth century, the canal was repaired and extended by the Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who constructed a small iron bridge over the canal for, and on the insistence of, his first Muslim wife. 'Moran Sarkar, the famous courtesan of Amritsar. The very journey of the canal waters mirrors the life of these two extraordinary lovers: Moran, who ended her days in Pathankot, the origin point for the Hansli canal, and Ranjit Singh, who died at his kingdom's headquarters in Lahore, the ultimate destination for the Hansli's waters.'

The origins of this simple iron bridge or the pul over the Hansli canal lie in a charming lovers quarrel between Moran and Ranjit. Once, Moran was on her way on horseback to the edge of her natal village Dhanoa Kalan to perform before Ranjit, who had halted there before going to the Golden Temple. While crossing the gushing waters, Moran's silver sandal suddenly slipped into the Hansli canal and was swept away. Heartbroken at the loss of her treasured shoe, a dismayed Moran refused to dance for Ranjit again; threatening never to speak to him unless he built a bridge at the very spot she had lost her beloved slipper. The Maharaja, smitten by Moran, and afraid to lose her affections, complied willingly. He immedi ately issued orders for a bridge to be built over the Hansli waters, a bridge became famous as Pul Moran, Pul Kanjri, Tawaifpul, or the Bridg of the Dancing Girl.

In time, Pul Moran or Pul Kanjri emerged a as a truly remarkable site that included, apart from the original bridge, a well, a pond or sarovar, garden, a resting house for travellers, a mosque, a Sikh gurudwara, and a Hindu temple, apart from the airy pavilions of the Bärähi Dari Pul Kanjri is today located less than 3 kilometres away from the Indo-Pak border at Wagah between Amritsar and Lahore. It was briefly conquered in skirmishes by both nations: Pakistan in 1965, and then 'reclaimed by India in 1971. A grandiose war memorial, symbol of a seemingly peren- nial yet only 75-year-old divide, currently stands at the site of a bridge that was originally built to connect two lovers, a memorial to love!

Today, Pul Kanjri is one of Amritsar's lesser-known historical land. marks The relative obscurity of this once-famous structure is a product of the historical shifts in social attitudes towards musicians, especially fe male performers, in Punjab. A symbol of the wealth of the patronage and power enjoyed by courtesans during Ranjit Singh's reign, Pul Kanjri is also an emblem of the 'shared space' of religious cosmopolitanism fos- tered by the Lahore court. The short-lived reign of Ranjit Singh's succes sors was followed by British annexation in 1849. Consequent upon the decline of Lahore as a courtly centre, this public structure gradually fell into decrepitude. The powerful wave of socio-religious reform led by the Anglicized middle classes that began in late nineteenth-century Punjab was marked by a hardening of anti-courtesan beliefs. Consequently, this nineteenth-century monument underwent restoration only in the twenty-first, as late as 2010.

**Contents and Sample Pages**