First appeared in www.scroll.in on August 23, 2014. Many colonial writers equated hereditary women practitioners of Hindustani music with prostitutes and condemned them as a debauched lot.  Their contempt also extended to male musicians, who provided musical accompaniment to women performers and taught them.  This perspective influenced a section of the Western-educated Indians, who looked down upon the practice of music and dance.  Consequently, until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the study and performance of Hindustani music