In 1938, Sarola Kasar, a village on the western peninsula of what is today known as India, arranged its annual fair in honour of Nirgunshah Auliya, a fakir, an ascetic, venerated by local Muslims. A British survey of the village says the band of musicians and tamashas (theatre troupes) hired for the event commenced only after 10 PM. Despite the fact that tamashas in the region had for long been a vibrant and spontaneous art form which embodied the spirit of social change and still do, the British officers included them in the list of apparent problems plaguing the village. This was part of the colonial ethos that developed in the 19th century, which deepened after a subcontinental rebellion in 1857. Colonial law proscribed what they viewed as native, vulgar, and unproductive and criminalized those engaged in such practices. The consequent Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 marked several castes for whom music and dance was a hereditary necessity as indulging in criminal activities.