From 'Sati Savitri' to Seductress

In the Indian subcontinent the issue of women representation has been a conflicted one. While Indian ancient temples, sculpture art and tapestry are known globally for their accentuated depiction and the celebration of feminine figures, yet purdaah traditions in varied forms also highlight the nervousness associated with sight of the woman's body within the Indian perspective.

The perspective which was celebrative of woman body in Indian art-forms like painting and sculpture, feels the tension that epitomizes purdaah customs when it is about performative art-forms like theatre.

As a result, in the past many centuries, Indian performative art-forms were dominated by male performers. Many times male performers were also doing the female roles.

Women performances were largely restricted to the religious ceremonies. Tawaif women performers, who were carrying the lineage of the court dances, were largely seen as a social aberration as their claim of being artists wasn't obvious for many.

But particularly with cinema, the medium being a photographic scanning of actuality and everything on screen appearing like the actual object, it was felt necessary that women characters are also played by women, instead of having male actors disguising as female characters.

Thus Indians films have constantly made an attempt to validate the necessity of incorporation of the actual woman body onto the screen.

At the end of the day, the female body remains at the center of contest between a celebrated, divine form of fertility, prosperity, erogeneity, chastity etc and a corrupting, deviating, distracting form of temptation.

Film-makers in India have constantly negotiated with the prevalent moral fabric in its time, while dealing to represent women on screen.