Dancing through Caste: Temples as site and context for Bharatanatyam

Bharatantyam, as an artform, has had a long and complicated history, with lineages of appropriation, cultural, and epistemic violence, as well as erasure, inherent in its form, aesthetic, as well as the material relations that surround the artform. However, this is not the image of the dance form that most like me, especially those coming from savarna positionalities, grow up with. The Bharatanatyam we know, and are introduced to, is a carefully curated image of “purity”, “culture”, and “Indian-ness”, that we inherit, as “heritage”. This version of the artform then seeps into our day-to-day lives, as an “extracurricular” activity, that adds on into our “skillset”. Learning a “classical” dance style, therefore, inadvertently becomes a marker of being “cultured”, and therefore, becoming more “Indian”.

Another layer to these dynamics, is that most scholarship and knowledge-production, within and about Bharatnatyam comes from writers of upper-caste and South Indian origins, either residing within the country, or forming part of the diaspora. This creates an almost homogenous culture industry, where a standardised paradigm of the form becomes evident, and is disseminated through varied infrastructures, such as educational institutions, media productions, and even live performances. This paradigm is then also picked up by other “non-South-Indian”, upper-caste, aspiring dancers, who seek to break into this tight-knit South Indian circle of power. Thus, the cycle of appropriation, erasure, and violence, continues, morphing itself into contextual forms of caste-based exclusion, where local traditions of dance and music are replaced with a standardised form of Bharatanatyam, with no space for the expression of local identities, narratives, or histories.

Temples, for the longest time, have played a significant role in this image-making project of the dance form. Before contextualising the history of the artform further, it is necessary to draw nuance about the term “devadasi”, as an overarching term for hereditary dancers from different local histories in South India. This is a Sanskrit translation of the term ‘tevaratiyal’ which means ‘servant of god’, and it came to be used in around the 1920s, when the socio-legal movement to police the dancing body in public gained more power. Thus, through the manufacturing of this identity of the devadasi as occupying the space between a temple dancer and a courtesan, the legal movement was able to disseminate its discourse, leading to its culmination in the The Tamil Nadu Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act, 1947. Today, this is a term that is loaded with the trauma of caste-erasure, and therefore, as directed by various anti-caste dance scholars, I use the term ‘hereditary dancers’ henceforth.

In the period of the Chola dynasty, women in South India were able to gain positions of power and respect, by making donations and obtaining the right to offer services to the temple. Thus, the women who served in the temple were revered for their honourable positions, and therefore acquired the right to own land, and have economic power. For women from lower castes, and socially isolated women like widows, therefore, becoming a hereditary dancer became a way to gain social mobility. They were thus able to grace ritualistic ceremonies, participate in royal festivities, and enjoyed an overall higher position in the social order. Dance was a fundamental part of the role of these women, as they performed narratives from the daily lives of the people, in the temple premises. The temple, thus became a site, where relations of caste within the artform became evident, by simultaneously segregating the “dancing” woman from the “homely” brahmin woman, while also allowing space, for the hereditary dancers, to negotiate their power and agency. Thus, it is essential to question the universalising way in which temple dedication has been spoken of, within brahminical revivalist movements of the artform.

This revivalist tradition was mainly led by brahminical figures, one of the key ones being Rukmini Devi Arundale. She founded the Kalakshetra in 1936, and modelled its syllabus according to British text-based learning, which also included Sanskrit aesthetic theory like the Abhinaya Darpana, which is a book written by Nadikeshwara, describing varied kinds of expression patterns. The founding of this institute was a turning point, since it fundamentally altered the artistic form along with the artist demographic of Bharatanatyam, by institutionalising and formalising the brahminised and sanskritised form of movement and expression through the body.

At Kalakshetra, male members of the hereditary dancing communities (like the Isai Vellalar) were employed to teach brahmin women, the artform of Bharatanatyam in its “purified” version. These male members, who had previously controlled access to the repertoire, and who monitored the continuity of the art, were found to be “troublesome” (Coorlawala, 2004, p.54) by Arundale, and therefore in order to establish self-sufficiency, she encouraged her students to learn the art of coordinating and conducting performances through the use of the ‘nattuvangam’ (coming from the word ‘nattuvanar’ meaning, a male member of the hereditary community - a word which has now been appropriated to mean, anyone who plays the nattuvangam, and controls the performance).

Thus, as brahminical female dancers mastered theory, music, and the conduction of performances, the right and authority to validate and legitimise transformations in the dance form shifted from the inheritors of the art, to those who had textual knowledge, and authority. Upper-caste and upper-class women were therefore, able to challenge the right of the male nattuvanars to dictate dance repertoires, and were therefore, able to establish cultural and epistemic hegemony on the dissemination of the “purified” form of art (Gaston, 1991).

This also marked the shift from traditional, patronage based models of access, to global, intellectual property related methods of access distribution. This democratisation of the sanskritised artform, through the sanskritised body, therefore, allowed for practitioners from non-hereditary communities to access this artform. However, since Kalakshetra was an inherently brahminical space, gatekept through cultural and economic access points, the dance form was entirely taken away from the hereditary communities, where it came from (McGann, 2019; Pillai, 2002). Women in these communities were not allowed to learn these artforms, due to the reputation that the hereditary communities had earned post the ban. The control and power over the dance form therefore, shifted entirely to upper-caste and upper-class practitioners.

Additionally, along with the artistic form of Bharatanatyam, the content of the artform was also altered, and sanitised. Arundale believed that the artform of Bharatanatyam, in order to be made “pure”, had to be purged of all references to sexuality, or sensuality. Thus, the use of “sringara” (expressions of sexuality) was refurbished as Bhakti, where the deity became the figure towards which sringara was directed. Thus, today, the temple, and therefore, the brahmanical version of “bhakti” has become the lens through which the supposed “purity” of the dance as well as the dancer is established. The temple also becomes an ideological site, where compositions revolving around worship, and praising the deity, are routinely taught in regular Bharatanatyam courses. Furthermore, opportunities for performing Bharatanatyam are also controlled by temples, within the South Indian context. Within non-South-Indian contexts, there is an added layer of ideological “purity” that Bharatanatyam’s association with temples brings about. Especially in contexts of metropolitan cities, where caste becomes more insidious, and morphs into euphemised notions of “culture”, “classical” dance becomes a segregating mechanism between “public culture” and “high culture”. The need for rigorous training in classical dance forms, thus acquires a realm of moral value load, where practising the artform is compared to “sadhana” or worship, and the effort taken to learn other artforms, or the labour inherent within folk forms of dance and music, are at times, invisibilised.

Additionally, for most students from savarna backgrounds, a critical understanding of the artform and the questioning of its caste-based relations, only comes about, through either academic exposure, or through the labour of oppressed caste dancers and activists on social media. Additionally, the hegemonic dissemination of the artform takes place in such a way, that these brahminical patterns of being, become deeply affective, and emotionally loaded; leading to a sense of nostalgia, whereby the performance of this version of the artform, creates relationships of love and safety, within circles insidiously impacted by brahmanical patriarchy. Additionally, since religion itself becomes an avenue of comfort, for many, and dance is seen as an extension of that religious practice, it becomes a fraught space, whereby personal beliefs, affective suffering along with structural privilege, comfort-seeking in religious practices, and the inherent violence that some of them create; all intersect to create the lived realities of Bharatanatyam performance.

In such contexts, I have often wondered – how can one bring this intellectual understanding of caste-violence inherent in the dance form, into praxis? How can one, while holding space for the varied kinds of meaning that the current versions of religion and dance bring about, also create space for the questioning of the inherent violence within these practices? Perhaps there are no perfect responses, when it comes to allyship, and dismantling the systems of power that have been ongoing, historically. But maybe, it begins with listening, and educating oneself. It involves sharing resources that have been gatekept earlier, and by populating the artform with performers from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, it also means questioning our own notions of “purity” and “aesthetics”, and making active efforts to include narratives beyond the brahmanical repertoire. The “temple”, in this context continues to remain a loaded site and context, and questioning its histories, might be the first step towards establishing a meaningful, contextual pattern of engagement, with the meanings it allows space to hold.

Dancing through Caste: Temples as site and context for Bharatanatyam

Ishika Khollam

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