Jan 11, 1999

As the much maligned tradition finally faces extinction, two modern dancers make valiant attempts to redeem their art if not their place in society.

By S Kalidas

Sashimoni, the 82-year-old mahari, is bent and arthritic. But when she opens her mouth to sing a love song to her eternal husband Lord Jagannath in her cracked voice, her eyes light up and her limbs take on a life of their own. The effect on the audience is electric and they sit up in their seats to applaud this odd vestige from a long bygone era. For the first time in her life this mahari -- the local name for a devadasi of the Puri Jagannath temple -- has left her dingy room near the temple to grace the stage in Delhi, and she is not impressed. "What is all this song and dance about?" she asks the battery of television and print reporters who crowd her after the highly moving Odissi dance-drama, Sampoorna, which is based on her art and life. "All my life I have served my Lord and what do I get in return? A measly Rs 300 as pension and not a word of appreciation from either the Government or the dancers and dance teachers who live off our art," she says, clutching at her thin Sambhalpuri odhni (shawl) that was part of her trousseau when she was married off -- aged barely seven -- to the idol.

Indeed, what is all this song and dance about? All song and dance in our tradition -- or a very large chunk of it, anyway -- have come to us from the likes of Sashimoni and other devadasis who, over centuries, have been exploited by society in the name of religion and then neglected to the point of being outcasts in the name of modern enlightenment and feminist concerns. A few of them like (the late) Balasaraswati and M.S. Subbulakshmi did achieve national fame and international stardom but the bulk suffered ignominy and immense hardships. Today when there are but a handful left, just two in Puri and a few scattered over the remote villages of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, at least two urban dancers -- Swapnasundari and Sharmila Biswas -- have gone back in time and space to search them out, learn their art and try to revive it in the modern context. Coincidentally both of them presented the fruits of their labours in the form of dance dramas to an amazed metropolitan audience in Delhi last week.

"When our so-called classical dances like Bharatanatyam were being revived around the 1930s only the court traditions were retained," informs Swapnasundari, adding, "The temple dances and rituals which comprised the main repertoire of the devadasis were ignored because they wanted to separate the dancers from the temples and our society was not ready to accept them at that time. There was also a fear of the erotic that ensured its denial. So to call Bharatanatyam or Odissi 'temple dances' was a misnomer because we rejected the temple dancer and her art." Similarly Biswas adds, "If Odissi is taken to mean the classical dance tradition of Orissa then it cannot be limited to just one strand of dancing practised in the Puri area." The Odissi to which we have been exposed so far has come mainly from the Gotipua tradition to which most gurus including its doyen, Kelucharan Mahapatra, belonged. Besides, as Swapnasundari puts it, "The devadasi was the only woman with a public face and presence in traditional Indian society. She was educated, talented and self-dependent. She may have taken men for her physical or emotional needs but did so on her own terms and did not submerge her social identity in his. And this was probably what made her enigmatic on the one hand and an object of suspicion on the other."

But decades after its forced demise, is it possible to revive an archaic practice -- one which married off young girls to temple idols before they attained puberty and forced a life of social disrepute upon them -- for the sake of keeping their art alive? "The banning of the devadasi system has not done away with prostitution in this country nor has it stopped poor parents from selling their girl child to procurers. We have only deprived them of the opportunity to practice highly sophisticated arts which afforded them the choice of choosing and rejecting partners," says Rajagopala Rao, a retired college lecturer, whose ancestral home near Vijayawada regularly patronised devadasis on all religious and social occasions. Sashimoni mahari is confused, "My life has been an unceasing parikkha (trial) but the Lord tells me that it is also my deliverance. I was worried as to who will perform the daily sevas (the dance rituals performed for the idol each day from waking up the Lord at dawn and putting him to bed at night) when no devadasi exists? I went to an orphanage to adopt a child whom I would have brought up and trained to serve the Lord but both the government and the social workers shooed me away!"

Some critics have called this belated focus on the devadasi's art retrograde and revisionist. But as you watch a Sashimoni mahari or a Maddula Lakshminarayana (who has been teaching Swapnasundari, Vilasini Natyam, the art of Andhra Pradesh devadasis) you realise there is a depth of commitment in their art that makes modern Odissi and Bharatanatyam as found in Delhi, Calcutta or Mumbai seem shallow and mechanical. No wonder that the late Sanjukta Panigrahi too wanted to dedicate her self to the Puri temple. But it raised such a storm from social activists that her wish could never be put to practice.

Swapnasundari, on the other hand, has been able to do just that. Every year -- for the past three years -- she has been performing all the devadasi rituals and dances at the annual Brahmotsavam (fair) at the small village temple of Rangbaag near Hyderabad without announcing it to the national press. She will still not talk about it except to say, "It was initially difficult to convince the temple authorities and the district administration of my seriousness and sincerity but that having been taken care of, I have faced no problems. In fact the small sleepy temple has started attracting many more devotees during the nine days of the utsavam (festival) when I perform all the sevas." Perhaps with such efforts there is hope that the art of the devadasi might survive her demise after all.

© Living Media India Ltd