Talk:Tawaif

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"A tawaif is a woman of grace. She dances like a dream and, unlike a sex worker, is skilled." Who says sex workers aren't skilled? Maybe I just don't like the sentence structure... 131.107.0.112 (talk) 18:53, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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South Asia does not exist in the source, hence I am replacing it with what the source says (India). South Asia is a new term pushed by Pakistanis and western "multiculturalism" appeasers, this term did not exist at the time of Taiwaif during mughal era or British Raj. Don't try to rewrite history with conjectures, synthesis and cooking up new terms. Only use the terms apt for that era. Pakistan and South Asia did not exist when taiwaif were mainstream. 202.156.182.84 (talk) 05:48, 16 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

'A tawaif was a highly successful courtesan singer‚ dancer‚ and poet who catered to the nobility of the Indian subcontinent, particularly during the Mughal era. Many tawaifs (nautch girls to the British) were forced to go into prostitution due to a lack of opportunities by the time of the British Raj.'

Excuse me, but 'courtesan' already means prostitute'; defining tawaifs as prostitutes and then claiming that tawaifs only became prostitutes due to lack of opportunities during the British period is logically nonsensical. Besides, the claim that only the evil British made them prostitutes seems like nationalist revisionism. This kind of combination is known from many civilisations, starting from Greek hetaeras; we are apparently supposed to believe that it originally didn't exist anywhere else in the world until evil conquerors came along, because some 'patriots' want to purge their history of all aspects that embarrass them by differing from perfectly Victorian puritan attitudes. Attitudes that were, ironically, imposed on their cultures by those very conquerors. 62.73.69.121 (talk) 23:38, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]