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Abstract
Nationalism is a problematic concept since it includes and excludes certain groups on different grounds as it suits the State. India excludes marginalized indigenous, Adivasi tribal population and many in the neglected Northeastern region of the sub-continent from the privileges of citizenship. I discuss such exclusions via performances in the genre of Contemporary Indian dance, by providing a brief overview of this style, its origins, techniques and idioms. A pioneering dancer-choreographer of Contemporary Indian Dance, Astad Deboo’s solo, group and collaborative work spanning 50 years, is note-worthy for his choreography with marginalized Manipuri drum-dancers and martial artists in Rhythm Divine I, and Rhythm Divine II: The River Runs Deep. Deboo’s signature style – abstract, meditative and infused uniquely with emotion” is imbibed by the Manipuri dancers. This essay also explores violence perpetrated by the Indian State against poor, tribal Indians as performed in Contemporary Indian Dance by diaspora-based Aparna Sindhoor/Anil Natyaveda’s Navarasa Dance Theater Company in works such as River Rites, showcasing struggles for water rights; A Story and a Song concerned with environmentalism using Indian and Native American folk tales. In Sindhoor’s words, Navarasa’s choreography delves into social justice issues? such as violence against women, environmental degradation, [and] human rights?
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This law amends the Citizenship Act of 1955. As Harsh Mander, an Indian human rights activist remarked, “it is, without exaggeration, probably the most dangerous piece of legislation that we’ve had because it amounts to truly destroying the very character of the Indian state and the constitution.” Religious affiliation, under India’s secular Constitution, was supposed to be irrelevant to belonging as citizens and this Law defies that. Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human rights Watch stated that “The bill uses the language of refuge and sanctuary, but discriminates on religious ground in violation of International law.” https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/11/asia/india-citizenship-amendment-bill-intl-hnk/index.html.
2 See Mallika Sarabhai’s TED talk, “Dance to Change the World” at: https://www.ted.com/talks/mallika_sarabhai_dance_to_change_the_world?language=en Sarabhai’s website, “Say Enough to All that is Wrong” is at: http://www.mallikasarabhai.com. I have discussed Sarabhai’s works in my book (2011, 100–105).
3 As a junior at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, I was motivated in 1971 to accompany a group of students to Calcutta to help with East Pakistani refugees coming in trains across the border into India. I recall checking train compartments for anyone left behind, and working with volunteers, distributing food and much desired cooking oil (also used by people for their hair) sometimes for nearly 20 hours each day. I am so grateful that my socially conscious parents allowed me to have this incredible experience of seeing ordinary people suffering at close quarters.
4 This kind of internal enemy is comparable to the US contending with domestic terrorism, home-grown rather than from “others/outsiders.”
5 See also, Ahmad (Citation2004). See also, Including the Excluded in South Asia, editors Madhusree Sekher, Radu Carciumaru (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2019).
6 See also, Lowe (Citation2015). For Native American genocide see: https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states
7 In India as in African nations, projects of large dams have had a record of being white elephants. Rather than enhancing “development” as they promise, they benefit the already well-off in these societies. In the case of the Narmada Dam in the Indian state of Gujarat, the dam’s water would benefit the wealthy farmers in the region while rendering the poorest tribals homeless and without livelihood that depends on the land. Roy’s decision to join hands with the oppressed in this struggle against the Indian state that collaborated with the World Bank on this project brought much attention to their plight. The documentary film documents Roy marching with the tribal people and with the other major feminist activist, Medha Patkar, in street protests demanding a stop to the submersion of tens of thousands of tribal homes, and asking for state accountability against the brutal treatment of these downtrodden “citizens” of India. The Supreme Court was involved in the final decision-making that did not go in favor of the tribals. Roy also writes about the plight of these displaced people forced into crowded cities, and without skills; they become part of the urban poor, forced to live in slums.
8 In August 2019, India’s Hindu nationalist party in power, the Bharatiya Janata Dal (BJP) revoked Article 370 of the Indian constitution that gave Jammu and Kashmir “special status” in protecting it from citizens across India purchasing land in that Muslim-dominated region. This was criticized as favoring the majority Hindu population of India who could now buy land and get other privileges in Kashmir. This is a highly contested region between India and Pakistan; Roy’s novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness strongly indicts the Indian military’s violence and power over ordinary people.
9 Beyond Tradition, film by Rajesh S. Jala. Produced by Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, 2009.
10 http://www.ctdps.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/467/CONFLUENCES%2010%20200505.pdf
11 Chandralekha (Citation1998). Chandralekha’s essay was first presented in Bombay at the East-West Encounter Conference in 1984.
12 Deboo’s work with the deaf began by chance in Calcutta during the 1980s with a theater group called Action Players that worked with deaf actors. Deboo did a workshop with them. “It was a challenge as to how I would communicate with them, how would I would motivate them to dance,” he noted in an interview (Wire, March 2017). He used counting as a method along with counting rhythmically. Even though they cannot hear, Deboo needs music “to create a work, to inject emotion into it, the rhythm into it” to create “one whole.” In Calcutta, the deaf were actors and not dancers, so Deboo used facial expressions. With another group, Chennai’s Clarke School for the Deaf, the deaf dancers were trained in Bharatanatyam. “So, they had the rhythm of movement. [Hence] I created a 60-minute show that dealt with the rasas with music that was specially composed for it (it was presented at the 20th Annual Deaf Olympics in Melbourne). I was working closely with the music composers too in that show, because each rasa has a different mood.” Deboo has also conducted workshops with deaf dancers in Hong Kong, in Mexico, and at Gallaudet University in Washington DC, the largest in the world for the deaf.
13 Deboo’s work with street children, “investing time to train them in order to bring them to a certain level of performance . . . then, once I close the show, some of them remain in the performing world, but they are more into puppetry, then some are also doing Bollywood (dance) in say, Kingdom of Dreams (Gurgaon). I am glad that they are able to make a living out of the craft they learnt (from me) and they continue to learn from others with whom they are working now. That’s my legacy – train them and say, now fly. That way, they can also evolve” (Wire, March 2017). Since Deboo cannot offer them regular work, they have to take on different dance opportunities. However, Deboo notes that “with the drummers of Manipur, it is different. Pung cholam is also a ritual. When they are not working with me, they are also being invited to various homes, for births, deaths, marriages or for a performance” (Wire, March 2017).
14 I am most grateful to Astad Deboo for his time over a phone interview for this essay, as well as materials that he shared via several emails.
18 https://www.rediff.com/news/special/astad-deboo-and-the-dance-of-rebellion-in-manipur/20150113.htm
19 Times News Network, “Breaking the Mould.”
20 I am very grateful for a very useful and enlightening phone conversation (April 2020) with Dr. Aparna Sindhoor about several of these works.
21 Medha Patkar has dedicated her life in her activist involvement with the struggle of opposing the dam on the Narmada river that would displace hundreds of thousands of tribal people’s homes. See: https://www.outlookindia.com/photos/topic/narmada-bachao-andolan-nba/102357
26 I witnessed two powerful and memorable performances of Encounter – one at the 2010 Asian American Theatre Festival in Los Angeles, and the other one in 2012 at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles. I was asked by Tim Dang, the Artistic director of the theater to conduct a post-show discussion when audience members made connections between India’s tribal population and indigenous peoples in others parts of the world. My published essay, Dang Citation2014, includes a discussion of Encounter (along with Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Ruined).
27 Devi received the 1997 Magsaysay Award for “Journalism, Literature and the Creative Communication Arts,” as well as the 2006 Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award from the Government of India. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Introduction and Afterword in Devi (Citation1995).
28 Spivak, Imaginary Maps, xxvi.
29 This and subsequent Devi quotations are from “The Author in Conversation” in Spivak, Imaginary Maps, ix–xxii.
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Notes on contributors
Ketu H. Katrak
Ketu H. Katrak is Professor in the Drama Department at the University of California, Irvine. Author of Jay Pather, Performance and Spatial Politics in South Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021); Contemporary Indian Dance: New Creative Choreography in India and the Diaspora (Palgrave 2011, 2014); Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers (Rutgers UP 2006); among other publications in African and Postcolonial Theory, Women Writers, and Indian Dance.