Author Archives: Dr Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan

Postcolonial and Subaltern Rethinking of Critical Religion

17 Saturday Sep 2016

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The early 20th century formulations of Indian identity involved using the constructions of specific understandings of religion, and gender. Critical Religion (CR) has provided a crucial methodology to understand the workings of these ideological operators in identity formation within such colonial contexts. In this line, CR has rightly shown that constructions of religion/secular, sacred/profane dichotomies enabled the legitimisation of hegemonic colonial discourses. It is crucial for us to look at the question of ‘how’ these appropriations were carried out by the colonised.

Historical archives show conflicting and complex narratives on the indigenous understandings and usage of religion both as an ideological category and as a term. For instance, the archives show that South Indian nationalists often used the terms religion, sacred, secular, science, and profane in their discourses on Hindu/Indian identity. Much as these terms were appropriated, they were not necessarily used as the colonial narratives intended. Thus, whilst secular was criticised as modern, modern here meant materialistic — that is pertaining to materiality such as corporeality (sex), objects (wealth), etc., and therefore, profane). Science was often seen as a ‘Western value’ that potentially contributed to materiality when it was not thoroughly grounded in spirituality as Hindu philosophy was. Sometimes, science was cast aside as ‘not Indian’ . This understanding shifted when science was used to define Hinduism as superior to Western society. Science when grounded in Hindu philosophy was understood as a body of knowledge. Other times nationalists quoted medical knowledge from the ancient texts (for example, Ayurveda and the Vedas) to show that science was embedded in Hindu philosophy.

Thus, Indian nationalistic discourses used the language (terms and categories) of the colonisers to beat them at their own game, as it were. For CR, semantics are important for our understandings of these discourses, but nationalists’ mere use of these terms should not be seen as their adoption of a colonial, Christian understanding of these categories. The nationalists indeed used these terms religion, secular, science, and materialism in some instances that pointed to a colonial understanding of these categories. However, there were other complex ways in which these terms were used. As we can see from the examples give above, these terms had multiple meanings depending on the contexts within which they were used. These also transformed depending on who the discourses were aimed at, whether the colonisers or the subaltern groups. For instance, the regional linguistic nationalism that was a subaltern counter-movement to the hegemonic Indian nationalist movements in South India often advocated the importance of rejection of religion, and embracing science as the objective method of understanding human nature. Strongly grounded in Enlightenment values, these movements, whilst rejecting ‘Hinduism’ as a brahmanical religion, did not reject other faiths because their primarily objective was to hoist a counter-argument to what they saw as brahmanical hegemony. Arguably, the agenda of these movements swayed the way these ideological terms and categories were used.

This emphasizes the fact that we cannot assume that appropriation of the colonial categories were homogenous. We must delve deeper into these movements to provide a contextualized understanding of identity formations. Deconstructing ideological categories and to do away with them might clear the discourses of modernity clouding our understandings of historical, colonial developments. But it does not fully provide a postcolonial subaltern understanding of historical indigenous discourses. To put it simply, the question should not only be whether the term religion was used, and where they learned the term, it is to also ask how the term was used. To not take that into account is to make the mistake of succumbing to the orientalist discourse of a pre-Christian indigenous era when religion and secular were one and the same, and a Christian/colonial indigenous era where these distinctions were introduced, which the nationalists appropriated. This, then, would be a good example of Aditya Nigam argues as a postcoloniality that is an echo of modernity. If we look at the regional anti-colonial discourses, it is obvious that the indigenous nationalists had more agency than that. Subaltern Studies stands as a testimony to it. Perhaps, I should make a point very clear: I am not suggesting that we should abandon Critical Religion (and given the space this blog post is published in, that would be rather ironic!). But, if we are to provide a historical postcolonial subaltern understanding of religion, then we must move beyond (as in, add to) the scope of Critical Religion to listen when the said subaltern speaks. We now have two issues at hand: a) how do we understand the heterogeneity of anti-colonial, and nationalistic discourses; b) how do we listen when the subaltern engages with these heterogenous anti-colonial, and nationalist discourses?

In an article soon to be published by Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory, I have attempted to answer the first question using Dipesh Chakrabarty’s now famous theorisation of histories. Chakrabarty theorises History 1 as the ‘universal history of capital’ that abstracts labor as a function that is removed from its contexts, and Histor(ies) 2(s) as ‘numerous other tendencies . . . intimately intertwined with History 1 . . . to arrest the thrust of capital’s universal history and help it find a local ground’. At the outset, History 1 and Histor(ies) 2(s) can be seen as polar opposites that History 1 is the secular capital and Histor(ies) 2(s) are the indigenous traditions, i.e., religion. However, as Chakrabarty has shown, Histor(ies) 2(s) are present in History 1 in order for the capital to function; rituals invoking the divine, such as worshipping tools for weaving, etc. Thus, within these indigenous contexts, religion/secular categories, with the emergence of capitalism, does not function dichotomously. Rather the ‘religious’ is embedded in the secular to prevent a total takeover of the secular. However, this theorisation provides tools to understand only certain nationalistic discourses. For example, it points to the phenomenological aspects of orthopraxy. There are such multitude of hegemonic nationalistic discourses that need to be acknowledged to understand how colonial categories were appropriated. Moreover, we must also look at how subaltern groups engaged with these hegemonic discourses – both of the nationalists and the colonisers. After all, it is rather evident that the methodological tools used to understand the hegemonic nationalist discourses cannot be used to understand the engagement between the hegemonic and subaltern groups.

Michael Marten’s theorising of ‘religious alterity’ helps us to provide a better understanding of these discourses.* Discussing the missionary narratives in the Middle East in the early 20th century, Marten argues that the Protestant missionaries’ understood the native practices and faiths as an Otherness, an ‘alterity’, that was somehow ‘religious’ in a way. In other words, Protestant missionaries encountered practices and faiths that they saw as definitely ‘religious’, but understood them as an alterity, by Othering these native practices. Christian missionaries in the colonies were by no means postcolonial or subaltern. Nor were their understandings of indigenous faiths and beliefs. But as Marten argues, it is important to understand moments of Othering ‘whilst . . . hearing and respecting the language used by the individuals being discussed’. How does this work pertaining to the discourses of South Indian nationalists, and the subaltern groups? In using the colonial categories, South Indian nationalists were involved in two forms of Othering – a) towards the colonisers through consistent differentiation between their ‘superior Hinduism’, and the colonial ‘Western values’; b) towards the subaltern groups that challenged their hegemony — here the distinction was drawn between their version of Hinduism and that of the ‘degenerative’ versions of the Others. Within these forms of alterity, the nationalists used ‘religious’ in multitudinous ways some of which have been describe above. I acknowledge the risk of arguing that the nationalist discourses involved Othering the colonisers. At a fundamental level, this would be akin to making a case for ‘occidentalism’. That is certainly not what I am trying to do here. Rather, I am pointing to the indigenous nationalistic discourses that used similar, if not the same, language of alterity used by the colonisers (and the missionaries) to assert their position and agency in the domain of colonial politics. In doing so, they certainly indulged in ‘religious alterity’ with the subaltern groups. Acknowledging this would enable us listen to the language of the nationalists, and accept that they had more agency than what we admitted that they did. Acknowledging this would also provide us with a new methodology to listen to the ways in which subaltern groups responded to such alterity.

* Marten, Michael. “Missionary Interaction as Implicit Religion”. Presented at Implicit Religion conference, Salisbury, 2016. The author kindly shared this with me; I understand it is being prepared for publication.

Mystification and A Critical Reading of Mythologies

23 Monday Feb 2015

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It is not uncommon in public discourse to refer to mythologies as pertaining to the divine and the ‘supernatural’, and hence categorise them within the problematically constructed ‘religious’ sphere. Within the public sphere and academia in the West in general, these questions are dealt with as a certain kind of mystification. Such mystification takes two different courses: a) it is used as a talking point for the ‘secularists’ and ‘atheists’ to argue against the ‘evils of religion’ by seeing the supposed lack of rationality in these mythologies; b) it is used as a justification by many faith-based conservative groups to argue for an unquestioning mystified construction of understanding of various faiths. In fact, Richard King has, rather eloquently, argued that the latter has led to the construction of the ‘mystic East’ by Orientalists.

Whilst these two courses of narratives can possibly be seen as polar opposites, as many have argued on this website, the ideology that underpins these is the same: the reification of ‘religion’ and ‘secular’ binaries. What is needed, then, is a more nuanced understanding of mythologies that does not fall into either trap, for which we need more than just a deconstruction of the ‘religion’ and ‘secular’ categories, but rather a ‘middle ground’ to negotiate two primary issues pertaining to mythologies: a) that they are often a part of oral traditions as a result of which embellishment of the stories is common, thereby questioning the meaning of what is ‘original’; b) how can they be presented and understood in the current milieu of ever increasing importance to empirical evidence and quantification.

I recently acquired a copy of Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata by Devdutt Pattanaik (Penguin India, 2011), which is a relevant example here. To interpret or retell Mahabharata, a collection of many stories that forms a central narrative and one of the two major Sanskrit epic poems (the other being Ramayana) is not new. In addition to regional interpretations of these epics within India, there are varied retelling available from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. In addition, whilst these epics are generally seen as ‘Hindu’ epics, different interpretations are available within Jainism. Many of these retellings have adhered to the original story of the Bharatha Dynasty. There are slight variations to the stories but the core is retained. For instance, whilst according to the Indian telling of a character, Karna, as being born to Kunti and Surya (the Sun-God), Indonesian telling retains this narrative whilst adding that Karna was born out of Kunti’s ear and hence the name (Karna: lit. ear in Sanskrit) (p. 70).

What is interesting about Pattanaik’s retelling is how he points to alternative understandings of particular details of the stories to emphasise the crucial aspect: that these are ‘re-tellings’ of stories passed on through centuries. For instance, pertaining to the role of women in these contexts, using specific stories, Pattanaik points to the ‘gradual deterioration in the status of women in Vedic [sic] society’ (p. 38). He approaches the characters as embodied beings thereby not glossing over the questions of eroticism, sexuality, etc. He also points to an important historical development surrounding constructions and understandings of ‘Hinduism’ as a modern category: stories in Mahabharata referred more commonly to the Vedic deities of elements of nature – water, earth, air, fire and space. That Vedic rituals focussed entirely on the divine representation of these elements is well highlighted in this book, whilst the modern focus on deities such as Shiva or Vishnu were later developments during the first two decades of the first millennium, which saw a rise in Vedanta philosophy. Both Nicholas Dirks and Richard King have made similar arguments in their respective texts. Pattanaik also astutely observes that whilst all the stories within Mahabharata surround rituals (within the context of war between different groups and communities), they also point to a time when ‘State’ and ‘Religion’ were not separate (p 89). Of course, there are problems in Pattanaik’s retelling too: some of the categories he uses, for instance moral/immoral, masculinity/femininity, are not deconstructed or problematised.

However, this is a refreshingly new interpretation of the epic poem and points to the need for critical study of mythologies behind Mahabharata and Ramayana, which are so easily mystified and categorised as ‘religious’ texts. By critical study I do not mean the ‘de-mystification’ of these stories. The question here is not whether or not these mythologies ‘really took place’ or whether we can prove that Karna was really born out of Kunti’s ear. Equally, the alternative is also not to leave them untouched because of their constructed ‘sacrality’. Instead what we need are more texts like Pattanaik’s that deal with mythologies for what they are: stories embellished through centuries that point to the complexity of the contexts within which they were and are being told or re-told.

Mythologies thus must be understood not as accurate accounts of history or ‘objective’ retelling of past events, but as contextualised understandings of our pasts. Works that point to alternative re-tellings of mythologies must not be stifled, an issue that has risen often in India with the Hindutva groups as the main actors—Wendy Doniger’s work being a good example. In doing so, we might be able to subvert the dominant narratives of ‘rationalists’/‘secularists’ and groups such as the Hindutva and establish a more nuanced understandings.

Myths and Superpowers: “Metaphysical” Superheroes?

10 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Critical Religion, University of Stirling

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This blog post is primarily about the language surrounding “mythology” “myths” and along the lines of the thinking behind the Critical Religion Association, “religion”. I look at these terms as tools for categorization using stories of superheroes.

In 80s and 90s India, most available comics available were stories taken from “Hindu mythology” such as Ramayana and Mahabharata or stories based on these works in books such as Amar Chitra Katha. Also popular were the Jataka Tales, a collection of Buddhist moral stories. On the television front, we had two state-run television channels and programs on South Indian channels were dubbed versions of Hindi programs produced mostly in Delhi, the capital city of India. Dramatized adaptations of Ramayana (produced by Ramanand Sagar) and Mahabharata (produced by B. R. Chopra) were televised during these two decades. The personification of Hindu deities and demons, the grandeur of the production and film-sets, and the visualization of these stories (that until then were only narrated orally) in these shows was awe-inspiring. As is common for “mythology”, several different television and film adaptations of both Ramayana and Mahabharata have followed since; however, the early versions set the standard for how subsequent adaptations would be made. What has prompted me to write about superheroes and their superpowers is primarily the language that we use to describe on the one hand, “Hindu mythological” stories and on the other, stories of caped-crusaders produced primarily in the West. What I want to explore here is how the language of “mythology”, “myths”, and “miracles” puts the stories of Rama and Krishna in a different league from that of, say, Batman, Superman, etc. Superheroes in these contexts are defined or understood as someone with ‘higher mode of being’ transcending the mundane human lives; indeed as Indologist Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty puts it, ‘an enlightened sage’ who transcends the ‘world in which reality is defined by normal, social, conventional human existence’ (1980: 97).

The television shows Ramayana and Mahabharata portray central stories surrounding the lives of the Hindu deities Rama and Krishna, respectively. These stories include some of their heroics that establish their identities as deities amongst humans and thus, set them apart. For example, in an article that discusses the “myth” and “reality” of such stories, O’Flaherty gives an example of a story about Krishna: when Krishna, as a toddler, was caught eating mud by his mother, she asked him to open his mouth. He did, to reveal the entire universe, signifying that he was the embodiment of everything in this universe. Or the story where Krishna protects his devotee Draupathi by providing her with clothing when the cousins of her husbands attempt to humiliate her by disrobing her, as this video shows.

There are numerous such stories in Ramayana and Mahabharata (and other similar works classified as “Hindu mythology”). O’Flaherty, her problematic language aside, makes an important argument, that “mythology” made into a field of study has forced stories such as the above to fit within the framework of “myths” that need to have a function on a practical level because they concern deities (1980: 93) and are classified as “religious myths”. In doing so, these myths must then prove ‘whether or not there really is anything “out there,” and, if so, what it is’ (1980: 93). This, I contend, is primarily because, as flagged above, the language that is used to describe the stories of these deities, i.e., “myths” and “mythology”; that is, “myths” that need to within the framework of human rationality.

O’Flaherty argues that a definition of both “myth” and “reality” cannot be pinned down, but these terms are used as such: while “myth” refers to those experiences that are seen as metaphysical, “reality” is seen as pertaining to the physical world where “natural sciences” dominate (1980: 94). It is this construction and resulting understanding that problematizes how we understand stories surrounding the deities. By classifying what is perceived as metaphysical as “myth” or as the opposite of the physical world or natural sciences, stories of the deities are automatically classified as “religious” and supernatural. What then happens is a “mystification” of these stories as if they belong to a realm that is beyond human cognition or imagination. Richard King, whilst tracing the origins of the term “mysticism” as a Western construct, argues that “mysticism” is seen as pertaining to perceptions of God or deities, that is then seen as ‘antithetical to rationality’ (1999: 25). Using the term “miracles” because deities are involved makes these stories a mystified, otherworldly phenomenon: not in the sense of fiction, but as something that is supernatural. The mystification that derives from seeing these characters as “religious” pushes them towards a “religious-secular/scientific” dichotomy, in which attempts to “prove truth” automatically falter due to the false categorization. This is, of course, not to say that audiences believe that the superheroes in the DC Comics and Marvel Comics universes really exist or that the superpowers of these heroes are “rational”. There is a general level of acceptance and understanding that these characters are fictional; therefore, they enjoy a certain amount of legitimacy as fictions.

Of course, both “mythologies” and superhero comics to a large extent suspend reality or what we perceive as reality. As O’Flaherty argues, the purpose of these “mythologies” is for the superhero to reveal the tribulations in mundane human existence, and ways to resolve them (1980: 97). There are thus similarities between deities in the “mythologies” and the superheroes of the comics’ universes. In my view, Rama, Krishna, and other Hindu deities can be seen as superheroes, and to distinguish these stories from other superhero comics is problematic. The distinction is based on, as I have shown above, the distinction we make between “mythologies”, which as soon as deities are involved, is classed as “religious” or “spiritual mythology”. To categorize “mythology” as such then prompts us, with our problematic understanding of the category “religion”, to question whether these stories are “true”. We then ask “did it really happen?” The idea then is that if we cannot prove that it really happened, it is untrue and therefore, a “myth”.

Thus what I am pointing to is the binary categorization that results from pseudo-empirical tests of proof; whatever is seen as “religious” must be empirically provable as science (supposedly) is; if it is not, it is “mythology” – and therefore, superficial. Instead, we must see these stories as something beyond empiricism and/or otherworldly mystification, recognizing the role that miscategorization plays in our interpretations.

The ‘Secularity’ of Neoliberalism in India

20 Monday Jan 2014

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The on-going campaigns for the upcoming 2014 Parliamentary elections in India have put Mr Narendra Modi as the National Democratic Alliance candidate (NDA) headed by the right-wing political party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The coalition currently in power, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) headed by the Indian National Congress party, has been mired in various corruption scandals, a reason for increasing favorability for the NDA. But Mr Modi has been a very controversial politician. As a four-term (and current) Chief Minister of the north-western state of Gujarat, Mr Modi has been accused of expressing discriminatory opinions against minorities, specifically, Muslims. He is a member of the right wing Hindutva group, Rashtriya Swayam Sevak. In fact, a year into his first term as the Chief Minister in 2002, Gujarat saw a period of horrific communal violence that began when Muslim groups were accused of burning a train coach in Godhra that killed Hindu activists, which spiraled into violence against Muslim communities. Mr Modi has long been dogged by allegations that he refused to prevent the post-Godhra retribution committed against the Muslim communities after the train-burning incident.

Despite such a controversial history, Mr Modi’s polls numbers are indicating an increase in popularity and favorability as the next Prime Minister of India. As Desai has argued in this article, there is an issue of middle-class voters not opposing (at least openly) the Hindutva ideology of Mr Modi and the BJP. Importantly, Mr Modi’s campaign rhetoric has touted the neoliberal economic policies that he adopted in his home state of Gujarat that has seen significant growth of its economy. He has presented this as a divide between caste and religion on the one hand and development on the other; and he is presenting himself as a candidate pro-development. Thus, neoliberalism is used to show the seeming ‘secularity’ credentials of Mr Modi. He has repeatedly argued that his ideology of ‘inclusivity’ has been central to Gujarat’s trade policies, thereby ‘leveling the playing field’ for all and transcending differences in caste and religious identities. In fact, such a notion was put forward by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, a popular Indian-American proponent of neoliberalism, who has argued that Gujarat’s (and in fact, India’s) economic growth has transcended political, caste and religious differences. To an electorate experiencing a series of corruption scandals under the UPA government and stagnant economic growth, one can see why this rhetoric seems appealing.

However, this raises a question whether neoliberalism can be seen as a ‘secular’ ideology that transcends those identity markers in India that are often associated with ‘religion’ such as the caste system. The question of understanding economics as ‘secular’ science has been dealt with on many occasions in this Critical Religion blog. My focus here is to reflect on what understanding of neoliberalism pertaining to India one should consider. On the ‘new India’ that Zakaria sees as emerging, he wrote:

Starting in the early 1990s, New Delhi has been overturning the license-permit-quota raj and opening up the economy. The result is an India that is quite different from the one its founders might have imagined—a motley collection of communities, languages, and ethnicities living together in an open political and economic space.

This kind of narrative furthers the idea that Friedman argued in his now famous text, The World is Flat, that somehow, ‘secular’ economics would triumph and transcend the underdevelopment that exists on the ground because of ‘religion’, specifically caste and closely associated with that, class. Critiques of Mr Modi have pointed out how uneven the development brought in by neoliberalism in Gujarat has been. For instance, Desai argues that despite Mr Modi’s claims, his economic policies have benefitted the already existing middle-class Hindu communities whilst poverty and malnourishment has affected minority communities, especially the Muslim communities. Similarly, an article in First Post has argued that the Dalits continue to experience discrimination in society.

Workings of neoliberal policies are embedded in the social context. To look at these economic policies as the ‘secular’ solution towards development is problematic. Both Mr Modi and Mr Zakaria are disembedding the capitalistic benefits of these policies for their own ends. Within the context of India, neoliberal policies do not transcend caste or class identities but are shaped by them and politicians who have the power to administer and shape these policies. This is not to mean that the UPA government, as a ‘secular’ alliance, would have made these policies work better for minority communities. The ‘season of corruption scandals’ certainly did not leave the electorate reassured. But looking at neoliberalism as something that is removed from its social contexts, as Zakaria does in his essay, only lets campaigns such as Modi’s reframe the narrative to conceal the reality on the ground, that neither these policies nor Modi’s approach ensure ‘inclusivity.’ Zakaria himself says “Economic growth has created one more common element in the country—an urban middle class whose interests transcend region, caste, and religion,” which begs us to question, what about those communities that are being left behind? What is even more problematic with the Modi campaign and the BJP is that in addition to ‘lower’ class and caste communities being left behind, the BJP’s Hindutva connection reframes neoliberal development into a development of Hindu communities by a) emphasizing the superiority of the ‘Hindu’ identity; b) deliberately leaving other minority communities behind.

Hence, it is important to scrutinize (as some news outlets, such as the ones I have referenced above, have been doing) the rhetoric of the Modi campaign to ensure that development is not presented as an abstract concept that would render certain communities voiceless.

Performing Gender and Sexuality in Early 20th Century India

25 Monday Feb 2013

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Contemporary understandings of Karnatic Music and Bharatnatyam (also known as Indian classical music and dance, respectively) as ‘religious’ arts that represent Hinduism and Indian culture originated within a very specific historical context: the Indian nationalist movement in the 1920s colonial city of Madras; Partha Chatterjee, discussing a similar movement in Bengal, describes this as ‘Classicization’ (Nation and Its Fragments, 1997, p73). The nationalist movement in Madras was a ‘culture-defining’ project in which music and dance were carefully re-constructed by pruning specific practices and traditions to represent the ‘pure’ inner sphere of spirituality that would displace the outer sphere of colonial politics. Such re-defining of performance arts mystified music and dance performances as ‘religious’ (read: Hindu) experiences and gendered the performances by defining femininity within the politics of nationalism. According to this emerging nationalistic patriarchy, whilst the outer/’material’ world belonged to men, the inner/’spiritual’ world ‘assigned’ to women had to be protected and nurtured. The nationalist politics created a new hyper-feminine middle-class woman defined by monogamous conjugal relationships as the Hindu way of life. This woman was defined by her sexual propriety who, through her spirituality, had to maintain the cohesion of family life whilst the man succumbed to the pressures of the material world.

Discourses on women’s sexual propriety as a pivotal point of re-defining performance arts specifically targeted communities traditionally performing music and dance, the devadāsis. Devadāsi (literally: ‘Servant of God’) referred to diverse categories of women (and occasionally men) who learned and performed dance and music within diverse settings such as temples or royal courts, festivals and private ceremonies for their patrons. They lived in a matrilineal set-up within a patriarchal society in which they had the right to education and property and enjoyed a high societal status as nityasumangali (eternally auspicious). However, in the early 20th century discourses on ‘purifying’ performance arts focused on two aspects of their tradition: a) they were not bound by monogamous conjugal arrangements; these courtesans went through dedication rituals after which they entered concubinage of the king or became mistresses of their patrons; b) traditionally they performed (among others) compositions that were erotic poems portraying explicit sexual acts (usually between the hero and heroine of the poem/story). A focus on the devadāsi community, which had a historically significant presence in South India, as a symbol of immorality emerged due to a set of historical developments beginning in the mid-19th century. As court patronages diminished devadāsis moved to Madras and set up salon performances for the newly urbanized audiences, both native and European. The mid-19th century saw transformations in colonial representations of devadāsis from performers of arts (from a tradition outside of monogamous conjugal relationships) to ‘prostitutes’ who could perform dance and music. This description, ‘prostitutes’, was affirmed by a series of Anglo-Indian laws passed during the late 19th century modeled after Britain’s Contagious Diseases Act that targeted ‘prostitutes’ catering to British soldiers, and brought devadāsis under the laws. Judicial definitions, coupled with the influence of the Purity Campaign in 1880s Britain, triggered a politics of morality that resulted in a ‘devadāsi-reform’ movement, which saw devadāsis as moral deviants from whom sacred music and dance had to be rescued.

The early 20th century focus on nationalism and Hinduism, in addition to transforming perceptions of devadāsis, resulted in the movement that defined female sexuality in the public sphere by drawing distinctions between the divine and the erotic. Thus, not only was the divine redefined to indicate a nostalgic pure religious and Hindu past, but the erotic was also redefined as sexual impropriety. Reformers petitioned the government to abolish the devadāsi tradition; the movement was spearheaded by Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy, who was born into a devadāsi family but rejected the tradition. Her movement received support from (among others) the theosophist Annie Besant and Gandhi, who argued that music and dance were sacred but had been despoiled by devadāsis who had to be rehabilitated to become respectable middle-class women bound and defined by their monogamous conjugal relationships. Despite opposition from the devadāsi community, the Devadāsi Abolition Act was passed in 1947. Devadāsis were thus banned from performing dance and music within a salon set-up.

Whilst the vacuum in the performance space left by devadāsis was being filled by middle-class Brahmin women encouraged by nationalists and organizations such as the Madras Music Academy, these spaces were also being deified. Specifically, Rukmini Devi Arundale, a prominent theosophist and protégé of Anne Besant, employed stagecraft that reified Bharatnatyam as ‘religious dance’ by conducting a series of performances where she incorporated chants of Sanskrit verses and displayed an icon of Natarāja, an incarnation of the god Shiva in his form as a cosmic dancer, thereby representing the cosmic connection between art and the divine. She introduced sets of compositions in her performances that extolled Natarāja. While the devadāsi repertoire was removed from temple settings, Arundale adopted temple settings to her performance stage through portable temple background sets, thereby deifying the performance space. In contemporary Bharatnatyam performances, the presence of Natarāja idols and temple-setting backgrounds are ubiquitous.


(In this video, The image in the background is of Shiva, of whom Natarāja is an incarnation. The song is about Natarāja.)

The history of Karnatic Music and Bharatnatyam posits a focus on (among other issues) questions of embodiment and the female body. That the female body is impure had been established in the case of devadāsis within the politics of nationalism: music and dance representing the divine, their ‘sacred’ (read: ‘Hindu’) past therefore had to remain ‘pure’. The dimension of embodiment of music and dance permitted by patriarchy represents a dichotomy between the soul and the body in which the soul is the pure inner sphere that connects the performer to the divine, whilst the body represents the material outer sphere that needs to be removed from the context. Women as custodians of this inner spiritual sphere were to learn and perform these arts, thus embodying them, but had to remove the erotic from their performances, which were seen as belonging to the sacred inner space. This solidified the understanding that ‘true religion’ was sacred and must be distinguished from the non-sacred.