Abused by her husband, she opened cinema’s doors to women — yet history forgot Durgabai Kamat

The woman who opened the door

Around this time, a travelling theatre company, Chittakarshak Natak Company, arrived in Nashik. The company, owned by Raghunathrao Gokhale, had something that Phalke desperately needed: female performers. Among them were Durgabai Kamat and her daughter, Kamlabai Gokhale.

According to Kamlabai’s recollection in filmmaker Reena Mohan’s documentary Kamlabai (1992), Dadasaheb Phalke was a regular theatre-goer and music lover. Their company was about to shut down temporarily when he approached Raghunathrao and made a request: would he allow Durgabai and Kamlabai to act in his film while the theatre company remained closed? Raghunathrao agreed. Durgabai was cast as Parvati, while Kamlabai played Mohini in Mohini Bhasmasur.

With that decision, Durgabai Kamat became widely recognised as India’s first female film actor. It sounds like a footnote today. It wasn’t.

When acting was considered disreputable

India in the early 20th century was a very different place. Women working outside the home was itself frowned upon in many communities, while acting was considered particularly disreputable. The social stigma surrounding women in theatre and cinema was considerable. Female characters were therefore frequently played by men.

Even Dadasaheb Phalke’s efforts to find actors for Raja Harishchandra demonstrate how primitive the industry’s talent pool was.

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According to an advertisement reproduced by Siasat, Phalke’s casting notice read: “Wanted actors, carpenters, washermen, barbers, and painters. People who are drunkards, loafers, or ugly in appearance should not bother to apply for actors. It would do if those who are handsome are dumb.”

It may sound amusing today, but behind the eccentric advertisement was a serious problem: there simply weren’t enough people willing to enter this new profession. For women, the barriers were even higher. Durgabai Kamat didn’t merely accept a role in a film. She entered a profession that her society had not yet accepted for women. And she paid a price for it.

‘My father wasn’t a good man’

Much of what we know about Durgabai Kamat’s personal life comes not from records written during her lifetime, but from the woman who knew her best — her daughter. Kamlabai Gokhale spoke about her mother at length in an interview filmed by Reena Mohan for her documentary Kamlabai (1992), a film that drew on Mohan’s research into early Indian cinema.

In the interview, Kamlabai remembered Durgabai as a gifted artiste. “My mother was a gifted artiste. She had learnt Kathak and also played the veena, sitar and tabla. All this was because of her father. He was a learned and renowned musician. She inherited his talent and I, hers.”

When asked what had inspired her mother to become an actress, Kamlabai’s answer was strikingly simple. “Destiny”, she said. She then explained that her mother believed that, rather than becoming a prostitute, it was better to remain connected to culture and art.

Kamlabai Gokhale’s recollection of her childhood was even more painful. Speaking about her father, she said bluntly: “My father wasn’t a good man. He used to beat my mother half to death.”

According to Kamlabai, Durgabai Kamat eventually reached a point where she could no longer tolerate the violence. She remembered Durgabai’s mother-in-law telling her: “Durga, I am giving you my jewels and a house.”

Durgabai and her daughter subsequently left and went to live in Bombay, at Prarthana Samaj. There, the mother and daughter had to build a life of their own. And Durgabai chose theatre.

“How else could we have survived?”, Kamlabai asked.

The decision brought criticism and social ostracisation. But Kamlabai’s response to those who judged them was remarkably matter-of-fact. When asked about the criticism her mother faced, she said: “There is no cure for talk. How else could we have survived?”

Then came the question that perhaps captures Durgabai’s predicament better than any historical account: “My mother and I, alone. Who would have looked after us?”

Kamlabai Gokhale’s recollections offer an unusually intimate glimpse into the circumstances that preceded Durgabai Kamat’s entry into professional theatre and, eventually, cinema. It is easy, more than a century later, to romanticise Durgabai’s decision as the beginning of a glamorous career. For her, it appears to have been something much more fundamental. It was survival. And survival eventually became a profession.

Before cinema, there was theatre

Durgabai Kamat wasn’t simply someone who happened to be recruited into Dadasaheb Phalke’s film. She was already an accomplished performer.

In the same interview, Kamlabai Gokhale recalled her mother’s work on stage, saying Durgabai performed in prose plays and took on roles in translations and adaptations of Shakespeare, including King Lear and Macbeth. She played Othello’s wife and the nurse in Romeo and Juliet. She also portrayed Sudeshna, the wife of King Virata, in Keechak Vadh.

Kamlabai remembered her mother as a remarkably beautiful woman. But beauty wasn’t what made her a pioneer. It was her willingness to work when women weren’t supposed to.

Men threatened to quit

Durgabai Kamat’s arrival in theatre wasn’t universally welcomed. Kamlabai Gokhale recalled that when women joined the company, some male artistes threatened to quit. She specifically remembered actor Vinayakrao Kanetkar as one of those who strongly opposed the move. There was, however, one person who refused to back down: the owner of the drama company, Raghunathrao Gokhale. He stood by the women. And in a remarkable twist, Raghunathrao would eventually become Kamlabai’s future brother-in-law.

The theatre world had given Durgabai a profession. It was now about to lead her into cinema.

The meeting with Dadasaheb Phalke

Kamlabai Gokhale’s recollection of meeting Dadasaheb Phalke is perhaps the most charming part of the story. In her interview with Reena Mohan, she recalled that their company was in Nashik in 1912-13 and that Phalke frequently attended their plays. When he heard that the company was shutting down temporarily, he went to their house the next day to confirm the news. Kamlabai recalled Phalke asking whether the closure would last four or five months. When he was told it would, he made his proposal.

“In that case, I have a request. While your company remains closed, would you let this girl and her mother act in my film?”

Raghunathrao agreed. Durgabai and Kamlabai left almost immediately and began rehearsing for Mohini Bhasmasur. Kamlabai remembered the principal cast: she was Mohini, her mother was Parvati, Dattopant Sathe played Shankar and Vishnupant Sane played Bhasmasur.

According to Kamlabai, they completed the film in approximately six months. And in doing so, mother and daughter changed Indian cinema forever. Durgabai didn’t just enter cinema. She created a lineage. The significance of Durgabai’s decision becomes even clearer when we look at what happened afterwards. Her daughter Kamlabai went on to have a career spanning more than six decades, working across theatre and cinema. The family legacy continued through Kamlabai’s grandson, actor Chandrakant Gokhale. And then came the next generation: actors Vikram Gokhale and Mohan Gokhale.

What began with a woman who simply needed to find a way to survive eventually became a multigenerational acting legacy.

The woman history almost forgot

And yet, for someone who helped open the door to Indian cinema for women, remarkably little is known about Durgabai Kamat herself. There are conflicting accounts about her birth, marriage and later years. Some reports suggest that she was born in 1879 and died in 1997, but these dates are difficult to independently establish.

However, according to Kamlabai Gokhale’s recollections, Durgabai Kamat was a woman who endured violence. A woman who was judged for working. A woman who was told, directly and indirectly, what respectable women were supposed to be. And a woman who decided that she would work anyway. Durgabai lived during a period when India was fighting British rule. But while a nation was demanding freedom from colonial power, she was fighting a quieter battle of her own. The freedom to work. The freedom to earn. The freedom to raise her daughter. The freedom to choose art over the narrow choices society had prescribed for her.

More than a century later, the questions have changed, but the struggle isn’t entirely unfamiliar. Women in cinema continue to fight for equal pay, equal opportunities, creative freedom and the right to exist in the industry on their own terms.

Durgabai Kamat’s battle began long before those conversations had names. She didn’t have an established film industry to welcome her. She didn’t have female stars who had gone before her. She didn’t have an agent, a casting director or a publicist. She had a daughter, a talent, a theatre company and a decision to make. She chose to step in front of the camera. And every Indian actress who followed her walked through a door that Durgabai Kamat had helped open.