As a historian, there are moments when I wish something in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramadi was actually true. The mesmerising mahal the courtesans live in is larger than the King’s Chambers in the adjoining fort, the Urdu diction puts the scions of Lucknow and Allahabad to shame, and the plethora of Muslim nawabs in Lahore makes one want to go out and find them. And yet, except for the title, which is after an actual locality in Lahore, everything else is pure fiction.
Heeramandi, or Hira Mandi, as one quick Google search will show, has nothing to do with diamonds, or the beauty of the women once found there, but is named after the son of a courtier of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Hira Singh Dogra, in fact, became very powerful and practically ruled the Punjab as minister during the minority of Maharaja Dalip Singh between 1843-44. At that time, it seems that the area was set up majorly as a grain market, with little sign of either courtesans or sex workers, the two interlinked professions it later became famous for.
As is often the case with areas which have more stories about them than recorded facts, the history of Hira Mandi has mostly been less fact and more fiction. Those who envision the past as a seamless narrative of peace, harmony and love, posit that the Hira Mandi was a place of high culture, art, poetry and classical dancing since Mughal times, and that the flawless storyline was only disturbed by the evil British, who made the area into a brothel, demeaning its high cultural value.
But if only wishes were so easily true! While the area no doubt housed some high-class courtesans who had access to the royals during the Mughal heyday, the place was always inhabited by a mix of people including courtiers and other nobles. But the Mughal court moved out of Lahore and Emperor Aurangzeb, a follower of strict Hanafi Islam, eschewed any dance, music or even elements of poetry. Lahore’s decline during Aurangzeb’s rule, coupled by it being on the route of invasions during the 18th century by Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah meant that for over 150 years, there were no rich, let alone royal, patrons for these high-class courtesans. Hence, these inhabitants moved out of Lahore — in fact, Lahore got rapidly depopulated, and other centres of art and culture emerged, such as Patiala in eastern Punjab and Rampur further east. No wonder, then, there are no late Mughal or early Sikh reminiscences of Hira Mandi.
By the time the British annexed the Punjab in March 1849, Hira Mandi was already being cast as a centre of sex work in Lahore — the mentions of culture and art had become a distant memory. An early account of Lahore by Maulvi Noor Mohammad Chishti, written in 1858, simply notes Hira Mandi as the final epicentre of fornication — “prostitution”, in other words. Thus, during the Sikh era, the original ‘House of Fornication’ was in the area of the Landa Bazaar of Lahore, from where it moved to Dhobi mandi, then Chakla Chowk (literally Brothel Square), Chowk Surjan Singh in Moti Bazaar, and was finally stationed at Shahi Mohalla, that is, Hira Mandi.
Another history of Lahore from 1882 by Kanhaiya Lal gives further details: It notes that the city had a large number of “tawaifs” (courtesans), more than “any other city”. Lal does not mention the high culture and art of the area, but narrates that it was full of beautiful abducted women from Kashmir and other mountainous regions and that after being groomed and trained in song and dance, they were sold off to rich patrons. Thus, while we wish to remember Hira Mandi as part of the 19th century high culture of Delhi and Oudh where Umrao Jaan and Pakeezah could be found, the reality during the Sikh and later, the British era was much starker, and much more reflective of the ground reality.
Bhansali’s drama resonates with a lot of us since we do not want to accept that the past could be anything but glamorous. After all, wasn’t everything great till the British came? We see the past through our own blinkers and miss its powerful reality, which was a lot more dynamic — and truer than our own imagination of it.
Consider the strange freedom movement narrative in the Bhansali reincarnation. Presumably, he wanted to show that the courtesans had agency and were working for change in the country. But what would have been the harm if it had depicted that the courtesans of this area won the right of marriage in the 1850s and went off in the thousands with their lovers — a fact attested to by both Chishti and Lal. Could there be a more potent success story for love?
Similarly, it could have been easily highlighted that starting from the 1930s, the best singers from this area began to get national fame, and that shortly afterwards, the studios of Lahore and Bombay began to be led by beautiful women of the Mandi. The likes of Malika Pukhraj, Naseem Begum, Tassawar Khanum, and Suraiya Khanum hailed from this area, and made their mark in pre- and post-Partition South Asia. As they became more famous and amassed wealth, they moved up and out, to more spacious and luxurious surroundings. Thus, rather than simply seen as a “loss” for Hira Mandi, their move should be seen as a testament of their talent, hard work and entrepreneurial spirit.
Bhansali would have us believe that the world of courtesans was enchanting in pre-Partition Lahore, with glamourous palaces, rooms full of the most expensive jewellery, and days spent composing and reciting poetry. While this certainly was the reality for a select few at some point in time, the reality for most inhabitants of Hira Mandi in the lead-up to Independence was darker. While we enjoy the great cinematography of Bhansali, let us not confuse it with the lived reality. At least, with this prompt, try to read the real history of our region which is fast being distorted.
The writer is a historian based in Lahore
