Binodini Dasi: Courtesan Who Defied Caste Barriers In 19th-Century Theatre

"I am neither a scholar nor a great writer. I only want to share the story of my life." — Binodini Dasi in Amar Katha.

The colonial theatre of 19th-century Bengal was not just a space of entertainment but also a crucible of socio-cultural transformation. Amid this evolving landscape emerged Binodini Dasi, a young girl from a marginalised background who would become a formidable figure on the Bengali stage. More than an actress, Binodini became a symbol of contested identities, performer and writer, muse and marginal, deviant and dignified.

Her autobiography Amar Katha (published in 1912) remains one of the earliest autobiographical texts by an Indian woman and is central to feminist discourse on performance, memory, and female voice in South Asian literature. What makes Binodini unforgettable is not only her brilliance on stage, it's the audacity with which she turned to writing. In a time when women like her weren't even allowed to read freely, she wrote herself. 

To Be Born a Courtesan's Daughter 

Binodini Dasi was born in 1863 in Calcutta to a courtesan mother. Her social position was fixed before she could speak. She belonged to the red-light district. In her memoir Amar Katha (My Story), she writes with sharp clarity about being treated as untouchable by the bhadralok (upper caste-class men) even as they consumed the labour, art, and beauty of women like her."I have no kith or kin, no society, no friend, no one in this world to whom I may call my own. For I am a social outcast, a despised sinner."

Binodini was not merely excluded from respectability; she was actively used by it. Men came to her performances, praised her spiritual portrayals of Sita or Draupadi, and then turned away in disgust. The public woman was to be celebrated on stage and erased off it.

Childhood of Hunger, Stigma, and Survival 

Her early life offers a quiet but brutal commentary on the class and caste violence that operated under the shadow of colonial modernity. She recounts how her mother once asked a wealthy family for leftover sandesh (sweets) from a funeral:

"They were already ten or fifteen days old. If one were to have them today, certainly we would have to cover our noses for the smell."

The bhadralok could give, but only with the reminder that the poor should be grateful for their own dehumanisation. Binodini's memoir recalls child marriage, economic pressure, and how her brother was sold into marriage at the age of two. Her entry into theatre was not a decision made in pursuit of passion. It was hunger, need, and the absence of any other choice.

Subject-Position and the Right to Say 'I'

In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak argues that subaltern women have historically been denied the ability to speak for themselves. Their narratives are either erased or rewritten by others, be it patriarchy, colonialism, or nationalism. Binodini challenges this. She doesn't ask to be purified. She doesn't perform respectability. She writes from where she is, fully aware of the ways her voice will be received. And in doing so, she asserts her subject-position in a society that has only ever seen her as an object. Through her writing, she exposes the structure, the system, the silence.

"There is nothing in this world for me but everlasting despair and the fears of a heart filled with sorrow. And yet there is not a soul who will listen even to this."

She bears witness not only to her own exploitation but to that of an entire class of women, actresses, prostitutes, and performers who carried the cultural richness of Bengal while being denied dignity.

Performance as Empowerment and Entrapment

While the stage provided Binodini visibility and a semblance of independence, it was not devoid of exploitation. Her roles often reflected an idealised femininity scripted by male playwrights and directors, situating her within performative boundaries shaped by patriarchy. Nevertheless, Binodini's mastery of her craft and her ability to evoke emotional complexity in characters such as Draupadi, Sita, and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu challenged gendered assumptions of passivity and subservience.

Yet, empowerment was double-edged. Binodini was denied ownership in the theatre she helped build, and she eventually retired from the stage at the age of twenty-three, disillusioned by betrayal from male patrons. Her exit underlines the precarity of women's labour and their disposability within cultural institutions.

She referred to herself as barangona (fallen woman), not to internalise shame, but to unmask the language of oppression. By using the term thrown at her, she stripped it of its power.

"A prostitute's life is certainly tainted and despicable, but where does the pollution come from? Surely they were not despicable from the time that they were in the mother's womb?" This questions the very moral foundations of society. 

Autobiography as Resistance

In Amar Katha, Binodini breaks the silence imposed on women of her class and profession. The text, while fragmented and non-linear, becomes a space of reclamation. She not only documents her roles and performances but also interrogates the hypocrisies of upper-caste men who consumed her talent but refused her legitimacy.

Her writing exposes the moral contradictions of a society that demanded ideal womanhood onstage but denied dignity to the women enacting it. She writes with both vulnerability and assertion, confronting betrayal, reflecting on her mother's sacrifices, and questioning the divine injustice of her social condition. Thus, her memoir functions as both testimony and counter-narrative.

Locating Binodini in Contemporary Discourse

Today, Binodini's life is being revisited through plays, films, and academic scholarship. She is no longer just a theatrical footnote but a feminist precursor, her story resonating with contemporary questions about female agency, labour, and representation in public spaces. Her voice, once dismissed as marginal, demands recognition not just as performance, but as history.

Binodini Dasi's life compels us to confront the archive's biases, to acknowledge the spectral presence of women whose stories remain entangled in the margins of cultural memory. In revisiting her, we do not merely honour a historical figure; we challenge the structures that continue to shape whose stories get told, and whose are silenced.

Opinions expressed by the author are their own.