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Abstract
This paper examines issues of embodied performativity and transmission of dance practices amongst Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus in the suburbs of London, focusing on how the experience of migration has shaped the making of cultural and ethnic identities. Using data gathered from recent ethnographic work in British Tamil temples and in the Tamil community, it addresses the complex discourse between the religious and political sense of selfhood articulated in these Sri Lankan Tamil groups, particularly in relation to dance and ritual performance, and seeks to answer questions regarding the place of dance and movement in defining such identity. In addition, I note the expansion in transmission and performance of the classical dance form of Bharatanatyam in British temple locations and the presence of trance dancing at Hindu festivals, and question how investigating migration as embodied practice might lead to greater understanding of such highly politicised contexts.
Notes
1. Detailed ethnographic research work has been carried out by the author since 1999 in several London boroughs that support large Tamil communities such as the London Borough of Newham (east London), the London Borough of Brent (north-west London) and the London Borough of Merton (south London). Research work has taken place at certain Tamil temples (all Saivite) including the London Sri Murugan Temple, East Ham, the Shree Ghanapathy Temple, Wimbledon, the Highgatehill Murugan Temple, Highgate, and the Shri Kanagathurkkai Amman Temple in Ealing and one or two others. Methods used involved participant observation, film, audio recording, interviews and questionnaires. The early part of the research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, and the more recent research by the Ford Foundation, USA.
2. See http://www.ssrc.org/programs/religious-lives-of-migrant-minorities/ and http://www.surrey.ac.uk/cronem/projects/past/the_religious_lives_of_ethnic_and_immigrant_minorities_a_transnational_perspective.htm [both accessed 20 July 2011].
3. Despite the problematic and contested nature of the term ‘community’, I am using it to indicate the symbolic construct, as Anthony Cohen has called it (Citation1985), created by the perception of boundaries by the members of a group, in this case, Tamils originating from Sri Lanka. The actual notion of community often sustains a fluid and pragmatic meaning to individuals, revealing it to be a multi-layered, multi-valent notion that does not signify adherence or membership to one, closely defined group. Each member may be a member of various, loosely defined and changing communities, as Gerd Baumann's work has revealed (Citation1996).
4. One of the discriminating measures put in place was a restriction on university admissions for Tamils. The Sinhalese government introduced the ‘university admissions policy’ that standardised marks, effectively placing “the Tamil students at a disadvantage in that they had to obtain a higher aggregate of marks to enter the universities – in the medical, science and engineering faculties – than the Sinhalese” (Silva Citation1996: 22). Up to then the Tamils were in dominant positions in the science-based faculties of the then University of Ceylon.
5. The right to reside in the UK was restricted by the 1971 Immigration Act. From 1971, ‘right of abode’ was limited to those with a prior link to the UK, such as a parent or grandparent who was born here, which had the effect of virtually ending ‘primary’ immigration. The British Nationality Act of 1981 abolished the 1948 definition of British citizenship and replaced it with three categories: British citizenship, citizenship of British dependent territories and British overseas citizenship. Of these, only British citizenship provided the right to live in the UK.
6. The London Borough of Brent (north-west London) is home to the largest number of Sri Lankan Tamils, calculated to be in the region of 12,000. Brent is one of London's most culturally diverse boroughs where the non-white ethnic groups in the borough now form the majority of the population at 57 per cent; of this total, there is a Hindu population of 17 per cent (see Brent Council's website: http://www.brent.gov.uk [accessed 2 May 2011] for further information). Tamils began to settle in the borough of Brent in Willesden, Harlesden and Neasden in the 1970s, as many were students at Willesden College, and then began to move out to the areas of Kingsbury, Queensbury and Wembley. As the community grew more established, Brent became an attractive place for many more refugees, and now houses a vibrant Tamil community.
7. The Tamil population in Newham is predominately Sri Lankan, although Singapore Tamils were the first to come to the area (personal communication with Newham councillor, Paul Sathianesan).
8. See the Refugee Council's press release of 18 September 2003, published on their website: http://www.refugeecouncil.org/news/archive/press/2003/september/20030918refug [accessed 8 March 2006].
9. Martin Baumann (Citation2001) writes that three-quarters of the Hindu population in Germany are Sri Lankan Tamils (numbering around 60,000), the majority having arrived since the 1980s, although some were settled in the 1970s. He notes that there has been a consolidation and stabilisation of the Tamil presence in Germany as temples are built and new sacred spaces are established.
10. Problematic for several reasons – firstly, with reference to tensions between the more settled Tamil groups and the recent migrants (see details in David Citation2007b, Brun and Van Hear Citation2011) and secondly, with regard to governmental changes in migrancy laws across Europe and in particular, the UK.
11. It is important in this discussion to note the debate regarding the restructured and renamed modern form of Bharatanatyam that we see today, that relates to its two key historical revivalists – Rukmini Devi and Balasaraswati. O'Shea writes of how their two perspectives appear to form “sets of binary oppositions. Devi privileged a Sanskrit tradition, Balasaraswati a Tamil one. Thus, Devi identified bharata natyam as a national form; for Balasaraswati, its roots were regional” (Citation2006: 136). See also Avanthi Meduri's work on this subject (2004).
12. See David Citation2008 for further discussion of issues of Bharatanatyam dance related to politics, nationalism and war in Sri Lanka and in the Tamil diaspora.
13. I have been informed of dance classes taking place at the London Sivan Kovil Temple in Lewisham, south-east London. This Tamil temple has an adjoining community hall with a stage where weddings, arangetrams and performances can take place.
14. Mudralaya dance school is run by two well-known professional Indian dancers, Pushkala Gopal (Bharatanatyam) and Unnikrishnan (Bharatanatyam and Kathakali). They have about 125 students enrolled in their lessons, including several male students (summer 2004). Both dancers also taught at the Tooting Muthumari Amman Temple, London, for several years.
15. Mahasivaratri (Siva's night; also called simply Sivaratri and Sivaratri-vrata) falls on the fourteenth night of the dark half of every lunar month. His great (maha) night is in the lunar month of Magha (January/February) and is celebrated by all castes with elaborate rituals and offerings to linga (shape of the male organ) images. “The most auspicious religious observance among the devotees of Siva – and one which marks the high point of the Saiva religious year is Sivaratri … In its simplest form this observance consists of keeping a vigil (iagara) throughout the night and performing continuous worship of Siva during the day …” (Long Citation1982: 189). Music and dance often feature in the celebrations.
16. Some parents of the girls interviewed are professionals – doctors, accountants, teachers – others own their own businesses, such as retail outlets, and some of their parents are employed in shops or garages.
17. The Academy of Fine Arts examination system, developed in 1990 in India and Sri Lanka, is used extensively by the Tamil community in the UK and in New Zealand, Denmark and Norway. It incorporates Grades 1–7 in both dance and music and the children take one grade each year in April, and is taught and examined in Tamil. The director of the Academy is Dr Niththyananthan, also the director of the London Tamil Centre, and headmaster of Wembley Tamil School. Pathmini Gunaseelan is the Dance Director and examiner for the dance exams, and Saraswathy Pakiarajah is the Musical Director. Tamil students living in Europe at present come to the UK to take their exams.
18. These hand gestures are as follows: alapadma – open hand with fingers separated and stretched out, showing a lotus flower; suci – first finger points whilst others are held in fist; mukula – hand forms bud of flower with all fingers together touching thumb; pataka – the flag hand, which is held with all fingers straight and together; chatura – hand is bent at right angle with fingers together and little finger extended; chandrakala – thumb and first finger make shape of crescent moon whilst other fingers are bent into palm; anjali – both hands in prayer position.
19. Aspects of this research material were presented at the CORD (Congress for Research on Dance) annual conference in New York in 2007, and have been reproduced in their conference proceedings for that year. These original ideas have been further developed for this paper.
20. The kavadi dance is also performed by the men devotees at the London Sri Murugan Temple in East Ham at their annual Tai Pusam festival in January/February. Two of the men participating when I visited in February 2004 had their tongues and cheeks pierced; only one performed a rather wild dance, as if possessed. The other men carried the kavadi whilst walking in a slow, single-file processional line several times around the inside of the temple (author's field notes, 4 February 2004).
21. These instruments were “traditionally the hereditary specializations of the Isai Vellala [music landlords], a politically powerful community of Tamil Nadu” (Srinivasan Citation1998: 3). They play as an accompaniment to the deities, at times of ritual worship in the temple and at festival times, to initiate processions and as a prelude to the deities’ arrival on the streets during processions. As their sound is so powerful, they are considered to be outdoor instruments.
22. Flood states: “The scale or purity and pollution is an organizing principle and constraint which controls the regulation of bodies in social space in Hinduism” (2002: 220). The concept of purity (not to be confused with Western notion of hygiene) is essential to the Hindu worldview of humans and their hierarchical position within that perspective.
23. I was told by one of the temple organisers that they had decided not to have body piercing during this festival as the children found it too upsetting (personal communication, August 2002). There were in fact men and boys dancing with the kavadi on their shoulders, but without any piercing.
24. The Tamil word often used in these circumstances is avecam, meaning to be mounted or possessed by the deity.
25. It is important to acknowledge here that possession in both historical and current Hindu practice does not comprise one single, simple category, but rather is a phenomenon that manifests through a complexity of embodied states, emotions, linguistic expressions and geographical locations.
26. Schubel writes about Shi'a Mulims at the Ja'ffari Islamic Center in Thornhill, Ontario (1996).
27. Interview with Chief Inspector Derrick Griffiths, Newham, London, 19 March 2007.
28. This again reveals that Sri Lankan political circumstances are never separate from religious or cultural affairs. O'Shea writes of a Tamil Sri Lankan dancer, choreographer and teacher, based in Toronto, who teaches Bharatanatyam there “under the auspices of the Tamil Eelam Society, a Toronto-based organisation which exists primarily to provide social services for Tamil refugees, but that also, as its name implies, embraces a ‘counter-state nationalist’ … view of the Sri Lankan political situation” (2007: 100).
29. This is confirmed in the Human Rights Watch report at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/03/14/funding-final-war-2 [accessed 22 August 2011], and unpublished current research presented by Cathrine Brun and Nick Van Hear at the workshop, “Research on Tamils in the UK”, held in January 2006 at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society in Oxford (COMPAS), UK.