Retrieving Voices from the Margins

This article examines how contemporary feminist theatre ‘disrupts’ and ‘disturbs’ the nationalist project's hegemonic claim to respectability by reclaiming the voices of ‘loose’ women. It examines in particular a play, San Sattavan ka Qissa: Azizun Nisa, by Tripurari Sharma, to show how the foregrounding of the courtesan in the public-political space creates uneasy tensions in the way in which social, political and national life is organised by emerging middle-class nationalists. Moreover, by unravelling the various aspects of Azizun Nisa's publicness—as a courtesan and as a participant in the revolt of 1857—the play shows the distinctive ways in which resistance to norms is fashioned by Azizun Nisa in each case. By exploring the ways in which Azizun Nisa claims political subjectivity, the article engages with the issues that continue to animate the women's movement today. Citizenship for women, then, the article argues, traverses precarious grounds between exclusion and inclusion on terms of conformity.