Performing for the gods? Dance and embodied ritual in British Hindu temples

Abstract

Recent ethnographic work in Tamil Hindu temples in London has revealed a new display of performed religious expression that ranges from the bodily movements of the priests during ritual to trance dance and classical Bharatanatyam dance performance. This article examines the performativity of such events, looking at their manifestations through the lens of both anthropological theory and that of performance studies. It considers how such embodied practices are ‘performances of faith’, and how this is manifest through the concepts of rasa and darshan, as found in Hindu ritual. The production and confirmation of a specific British Tamil Hindu identity through such performativity is discussed.

Acknowledgements

The author should like to thank those who commented on an earlier draft of this article presented at the British Asian Theatre conference at Exeter University in April 2008, and the editors of the current volume for their comments on the final paper. Research was supported by the AHRC and by the Ford Foundation, USA, through the SSRC, New York.

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 (northwest London), and the London Borough of Merton (south London). Research work has taken place at certain Saivite Tamil temples including the London Sri Murugan Temple, the Shree Ghanapathy Temple, the Highgatehill Murugan Temple and the Sri Kanagathurkkai Amman Temple. Methods used include participant observation, film and audio-recording, interviews and questionnaires. The early part of the research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK (AHRC) and the more recent work by the Ford Foundation, USA.

^2. Saivism or Saivite worship connotes the worship of the deity Siva or members of Siva's ‘family’ and is thought to be the oldest tradition of Hindu worship.

^3. Despite the problematic and contested nature of ‘community’, I am using it to indicate the symbolic construct, as Anthony Cohen (The Symbolic Construction) has called it, 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 person may be a member of various, loosely-defined and changing communities, as Gerd Baumann's work has revealed.

^4. Bharatanatyam, originally known as sadir or dasi-attam is an Indian classical dance style from southern India which developed in the Hindu temples. It has a fractured history, being outlawed from the temples in 1947, a legal decision strongly influenced by British social reformers concerned over alleged prostitution of the dancers. It was reformed, re-named and some would say appropriated, by middle-class, educated Brahmins such as E. Krishna Iyer and Rukmini Devi in the 1930s and is now a global dance form, flourishing in diasporic Hindu communities all over the world as well as in dance programmes catering for students of all nationalities.

^5. Tai Pusam is a Tamil Hindu festival dedicated to Murugan, Lord Siva's son, celebrated each year for one day during January/February. Terotsava is also an annual event, where the deities are brought out from the temple and carried around the local streets in a decorated wooden chariot, called a ter. This is usually preceded by a two weeks of religious festivities in the temple, and is often thought of as a spiritually cleansing process.

^6. Archanas – personal prayers of devotees to the deity facilitated by the priests. A small payment of £1 or £2 is made and the priest recites the particular name, the family names and their horoscope signs together with prayers in Sanskrit in front of the deity and usually in the presence of other devotees.

^7. The British Tamil community includes not only Tamils from Sri Lanka, but also from India, South Africa, Mauritius, Singapore, Trinidad and Malaysia. No accurate numbers are available, but it is said to total around 150,000–200,000 people. Some London Tamil temples are predominantly Sri Lankan where national identity remains strong.

^8. Temple president. Personal interview. 6 Nov. 2004.

^9. Body piercing is part of many Tamils' devotional ritual to the deity amongst both men and women, but is primarily undertaken by male devotees. At the London Sri Murugan Temple in East Ham and other London Tamil Temples, ritual piercing takes place at the annual Chariot festivals and at Tai Pusam. Through their cheeks and through the tongue devotees have a small metal spear, a vel, symbolizing the spear that Lord Murugan carries, and that represents his shakti power. Placed through the top skin on their upper arms are long, thin needles and in their backs, hooks that are attached to ropes and held by another man who guides the dancer from behind, carefully pulling and lifting the ropes as he moves. Others might have small hooks over their chest and back, on which small limes are hung. Body piercing of this type is called by the Tamils, ‘wearing alaku’.

^10. See David (‘Performing Faith’; ‘Religious Dogma’); Geaves Saivism; and Taylor ‘The Symbolic Construction’ for studies on the UK Tamil community. There is some research published on Tamils in Europe – see Baumann and Salentin (297–323); Jacobsen (134–48); and McDowell A Tamil Asylum, for example.

^11. Temple official, Shree Ghanapathy Temple. Personal interview. 25 Oct. 2006.

^12. For further details of Tamil migration patterns, see David (5–24).

^13. Navratri is a pan-Indian annual religious festival, celebrated for nine days in the autumn. The dates of these festivals are calculated according to the Hindu lunar calendar with Navratri occurring each year in September or October of the western Gregorian calendar. The nine nights of Navratri follow the new moon in the month of Asvin (September/October), and are followed by a tenth night of celebration called Dashera (tenth). It is a time of honouring the female power of the divine, the devi or shakti power which is considered to be a positive force for good that can triumph over evil.

^14. Mudralaya dance school is run by two well-known professional Indian dancers, Pushkala Gopal (who teaches Bharatanatyam, Vocal and Veena), and Unnikrishnan (who teaches 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. See also Austin's concept of performativity.

^16. Much has been written on the subject of the devadasis by scholars from India, USA and the UK – see Kersenboom Nityasumangali; Marglin 212–36; Meduri ‘Nation’; O'Shea At Home; Soneji 30–49; and ‘The Hindu’; ‘Reform’ for example. It is important to note that devadasi practice varied from region to region and according to which religious tradition they belonged (Gorringe 11). In this regard, Davesh Soneji critiques the use of the term devadasi as an umbrella term to connote all temple dancing women from all parts of India, glossing over all distinction of origin and vernacular differences (32). Avanthi Meduri comments that there is no equivalent English term for the name devadasi as their sexual freedom and artistic prowess ‘had its roots in a culturally accepted polygamy alien to modern western culture’ (11).

^17. This is a dedicatory bow in which the dancer asks the deity for blessings on her performance and for the earth or stage on which she is about to dance.

^18. Senior Hindu Saivite Priest, London Shri Murugan Temple. Personal interview. 13 Feb. 2003.

^19. Shakti is divine energy or power, often considered to be feminine.

^20. There are at least 108 mudra (hand gestures) used in temple ritual; many of these gestures correspond to the dance gestures.

^21. The term rasa is part of a complex system of Indian aesthetics. It denotes the highest aspect of emotional experience in an artistic form (drama, dance, poetry, song), and can be translated in many ways, such as the essence, flavour or inner taste of an experience. It can carry a religious understanding, as dancer Ram Gopal explains, the ‘emotional fusion of the artist and the audience is comparable with Brahmananda, or oneness with Brahma the Supreme’ (24). See also Schwartz Rasa – Performing, and the work of Zarrilli (‘Where the Hand’ 205–214; When the Body).

^22. The Natyashastra is a codified Sanskrit treatise dealing with dance, drama, music, poetics and aesthetics and thought to have been composed in the first centuries AD by Bharata. One chapter explains in detail the concept of rasa, followed by another describing how the rasa emotion is conveyed (bhava).

^23. See also Austin's concept of performativity.

^24. Sometimes translated as the long or great night of Siva, Mahasivaratri is an annual religious festival worshipping Siva, and goes on all through the night. This great (maha) night is in the Hindu 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 189). It is also called Sivaratri and Sivaratri-vrata, and music and dance often feature in the celebrations.

^25. Karnatic music is the name of the classical system of music originating in the south of India, distinct from the northern or Hindustani style. Bhajans are religious songs sung by groups of devotees.

^26. These were the dancer's words on that occasion: ‘This was the first time I had danced in a temple on Sivaratri. At the temple, I felt particularly privileged as they had never allowed dance there before. And to be asked to dance by the shrine was also very significant…. The dance was for Siva; it is Siva. I did not treat it as a performance at all. It was not a performance for an audience. It is very special for me to dance on Sivaratri’. Personal interview, 28 March 2002.

^27. See David ‘Beyond the Silver Screen’ for a discussion of the scopophilic gaze in Bollywood song and dance film performances.

^28. Tai Pusam is an annual Tamil Hindu festival dedicated to Murugan, Lord Siva's son and is celebrated in January. Trance dance, possession and body piercing are practices often associated with this ritual festival.