Self Evident Presents: “Bharatanatyam: Project Caste” (by Shoes Off)

Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Spotify, Stitcher or TuneIn.

Self Evident is a Studiotobe production. Our show is made with support from PRX and the Google Podcasts Creator Program — and with the support of our listener community.

Transcript

CATHY: Hi, it’s Cathy! 

CATHY: This week, we’re sharing an episode from the show Shoes Off, a podcast about Asian Australian culture, hosted by Jay Ooi. The episode that we’re featuring is called “Bharatanatyam: Project Caste,” and it’s about how power and status, and in particular, caste, enable art forms to be co-opted. You may remember our previous episode, Pull up the Roots, where we shared Preeti and Srinidhi’s stories about the significance of their arangetrams. In that episode, they note that arangetrams are not just a connection to heritage and culture, but also a marker of class and privilege — something today’s episode takes a closer look at. We’re linking to Shoes Off’s website in the show notes, please check them out wherever you listen to podcasts! And learn more about the show at shoes off dot net. Ok, here’s “Bharatanatyam: Project Caste.”

Arj: Bharatanatyam has always been there since a very early time. What I can recall with some fondness is my mum's recollection of my experience of Bharatanatyam. When my cousin was performing her, arangetram in Melbourne. It was one of those early arangetrams that was with live music. The second arangetram in Melbourne to have had live music, and I was a two-year-old boy and my mother and father were very nervous about sitting in this grand hall with all the pomp and ceremony and trying to keep a young baby quiet. But apparently I sat on her lap like a doll and watched the whole thing and my mum always says that ever since that moment, I have always had this affinity for Bharatanatyam and Carnatic Music.

Thinesh: Bharatanatyam has become a touch point for many South Asian children looking to connect with their tradition and culture. 

Priyanka: And then here I was in a dance studio with all these unfamiliar sounds and smells and was told this is your culture.

Thinesh: But when this dance form is learned to connect with tradition and culture, whose tradition and culture is it? 

Arj: It feels like just a long-ingrained understanding of it being a 2000-year-old art form with this somewhat unbroken history that it had its development, that it was apparently revived in the early 20th century into the art form that we today know as Bharatanatyam. 

Thinesh: What is the history? 

Priyanka: I didn't think I did ever hear about the history of the art form.

Thinesh: Who holds the power in propagating Bharatanatyam? Why do they hold the power? And Who is being erased in the process? 

Nrithya: I believe that Project Bharatanatyam, or Project Reinvention of Bharatanatyam is actually Project Caste.

Thinesh: Hello and welcome to Shoes Off, stories about Asian Australian culture. I’m Jay Ooi. 

Jay: Nice try - That’s actually Thinesh Thillai - my best friend, my rock and inspiration, the reason I live - and I’m saying all this because you wrote this script, didn’t you? 

Thinesh: Look, it’s pretty great you have to admit.

Jay: It’s pretty great, and you’re taking the reins for the episode today.

Thinesh: How am I doing?

Jay: You are doing amazing. So, T, what are we talking about today?

Thinesh: Caste discrimination is one of those things that you can only understand if you have lived it. In this episode, we explore how power and status, and in particular, Caste, enables art forms from marginalised communities to be co-opted. And we see how Caste plays out in the diaspora through a style of dance called Bharatanatyam.

Nrithya: I believe that Project Bharatanatyam, or Project Reinvention of Bharatanatyam is actually Project Caste. 

Thinesh: This is Nrithya Pillai, a dancer from the Isai Vellalar community, the exact community that Bharatanatyam comes from. She’s an educator and activist who speaks about the history of Bharatnatyam.

Jay: What’s the deal with her referring to it as Project Baratanatyam?

Thinesh: Bharatanatyam in its current form didn’t just materialise out of nothing. There were particular political and social objectives involved to create the artform in its form today. Even the name Bharatanatyam was previously used interchangeably with Sadhir, amongst other terms. However, there was a deliberate decision in the 1930s to rebrand this artform as Bharatanatyam because of the word’s affinity to sanskrit and Brahminism. This fit into a larger narrative of a unified single ‘indian’ identity to facilitate seeking independence from the British. That’s why it’s a project - because it’s trying to achieve a very particular purpose.

Jay: So Project Bharatanatyam is all of these forces behind it and all of the objectives that come with its reinvention.

Nrithya: And why do I say that? Because in establishing this access to everybody else, the access to the hereditary community has been denied. We have actively erased the contributions of the hereditary community to create this new history for this art form, and create new careers for this art form. A new set of performers were encouraged to take part and provided access to this artform. 

Jay: So a lot of south asians I knew grew up learning Bharatanatyam. How did it get so popular?

Thinesh: So to fully understand its popularity, we need to do a bit of history. The version of Bharatanatyam that we know today used to be called Sadir, and it’s a bit different from the way we know it now. It was a sensual form of dance performed exclusively by some women from certain courtesan castes -  like the Isaivellalar women.

Jay: Who are these Isaivellalar women? 

Thinesh: This is a particular matrilineal caste from the Tamil Nadu/Thanjavur region in India. They had the practice of marking or selecting some women to live a life dedicated to the arts, with, shall we say, unconventional sexuality for the time. These women did not  need to submit to the patriarchal norms of marriage. Whilst this selection practice was in some ways oppressive and tied to a caste framework, these women did not need to submit to the patriarchal norms of marriage. Many of these women were respected as repositories of art and were women of high culture. They danced and sang in temples, courts, and public spaces. 

Jay: Right, so these Isaivellalar women were quite well respected, and had a form of dance that was their own, called Sadir which we now call Bharatanatyam. 

Thinesh: But once the British arrived in India, their social status started to change and their dance form wasn’t held in the same high regard. This was because once Victorian ideas of morality entered colonised India, it infiltrated the minds of the people living there. Isaivelllar women, their art and their unconventional sexuality came under severe scrutiny.

Jay: I was wondering when the British would arrive to make things worse. 

Thinesh: They always do. As a result of the British influence, powerful upper-caste Indians also started to change their views. There was a political campaign against the courtesan community’s supposed immorality. With all of this happening, their social status started to wane to the point that they were referred to as Devadasi. It originally meant servant to God but the term Devadasi was used to gloss over many communities from different caste locations,  and used to criminalise and stigmatise these communities -  when India’s- identity as a nation - was in question. The term Devadasi is a slur and it branded these women as ‘prostitutes’. 

Now, pretty much all women who did not behave the way the British thought they should behave, like the Isai Vellalar women, were looked down upon and stigmatised. 

Jay: So because of colonial British influence, the Isaivellalar community were painted and seen as immoral, and so they became stigmatised as Devadasi.

Thinesh: Yeah. This eventually led to legislation that meant they could no longer practice their art and perform it, which meant that they had no source of income. Because of this, many were forced into sex work as a way to make ends meet, which furthered this perception of Isai Vellalar women as immoral.

This is partly why Isai Vellalar is the preferred term now by many from the community, rather than, Devadasi. The term Isai Vellalar was a deliberate political move of self identification,  and, a rejection of the slur and stigma of the word, Devadasi. 

Jay: Right, so these women who danced Sadir went from being quite well respected to being ostracised in mainstream society and stripped of one of their sources of income, which was dancing Sadir.

Thinesh: Enter Rukmini Devi Arundale. In 1929, Rukmini, an upper-caste high status woman from India, travelled to Australia and met the great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. This sparked an interest in dance, and with a few ballet moves under her belt, Rukmini Devi returned to India where she became interested in this hereditary art form. She is often credited for the coinage of the term Bharatanatyam along with E Krishna Iyer and V Ragavan, all highly influential brahmin cultural nationalists, even though there is proof that the term Bharatanatyam was in usage in the courtesan communities much earlier. Subsequently Rukmini Devi, established the International Academy of the Arts, now known as the Kalakshetra, where students, namely from upper-caste, Hindu backgrounds, could come and learn various art forms, including Bharatanatyam.

Jay: Right, so Rukmini Devi and her peers discover Sadir, choose to call it Bharatanatyam and are then kind of seen as the founder of modern day Bharatanatyam. And this is the same Bharatanatyam that a lot of my South Asian friends practice right?

Thinesh: Most likely. And as a result, Rukmini Devi,  became one of the few faces of Bharatanatyam on the global stage. She became one of the most influential people who is credited for the ‘revival and resuscitation’ of Bharatanatyam and its present elite status.

Jay: So while isaivellalar women were being legally prevented from practicing Bharatanatyam, which originates in their community, a high status woman with better resources learns this artform, teaches it to others, and gets the shiny medal. And then my friends here in Sydney who then learn this style of dance essentially credit Rukmini Devi? This sounds like cultural appropriation. But with no white people involved? 

Thinesh: Yeah - so cultural appropriation occurs where members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture or people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group. This appropriation is all about power dynamics, but it doesn’t always come from a power dynamic relating to race or class or sexuality. It is also important to note that appropriation is not always a one time act. It’s not just a white washed history of dance, but also denying opportunities to hereditary dancers, belittling them for their skills not being ‘classical’ enough, dressing up as a devadasi to perform on stage, or playing a devadasi role without consultation or inclusion in the process. 

Nrithya: A new set of performers predominantly upper caste, upper-class women were encouraged to take part and provided access to this art form, with the help of the men from the hereditary communities who helped pass on the tradition of dance from the hereditary community to the women of the upper-caste.

Jay: So what makes someone upper caste - actually let’s take a step back - what exactly is Caste? 

Thinesh: Here is Mudit Vyas explaining what caste is. He’s a researcher at Monash University who focuses on the anti-caste movement. 

Mudit Vyas: So, let's assume that caste is a basis of discrimination like race, but it's not dependent on your skin color, it is instead dependent on what family you're born in, what name you're born with, what your ancestors' caste was. So yeah, it's basically accident of birth, and it assigns... In ancient times, it assigned you a certain occupation and you couldn't break those caste boundaries or occupation and there was certain stigma that came with being born in a certain caste.

Jay: So how are these castes divided?

Mudit Vyas: So, to begin with, there were four divisions, or the varnas. The people who were the oppressors at the top, which is my community, and that call themselves the Brahmins... are the priest class, are the priest caste.

Jay: So right up the top of the proverbial caste ladder, you have the Brahmins, and that’s the caste that Rukmini Devi, the reinventor of Bharatanatyam, was from. She was Brahmin.

Thinesh: Then there are the Kshatriyas, who are the warrior caste. Vaishyas, who were farmers, traders and merchants, and the Shudras, who were labourers which make up about 51% of the total population of India. 

Mudit Vyas: And anyone outside that hierarchy was basically untouchable. And untouchability was outlawed in the 20th century in India, but the stigma of caste remains, because caste wasn't outlawed.

Jay: So caste is this structure of predefined rankings that you’re born into. They’re not these discreet ideas that people are aware of but don’t talk about or name, caste is a very defined and labeled hierarchy with four main divisions, and these divisions help maintain this hierarchy, with anyone outside of it being so dirty that they’re untouchable.

Thinesh: It’s probably a good time to say that people who were formerly known as “untouchables” now self-identify, and are collectively referred to as Dalits, which means broken, but resilient. 

Mudit Vyas: And so within these divisions, each of these divisions, there are thousands of castes. And all of them are hierarchically arranged one on top of the other or one below the other, and everyone on top is oppressing everyone right below them.

Jay: So there’s a really structured and rigid hierarchy that is caste.

Thinesh: And it impacts every aspect of life.

Jay: Wow okay - so where does this hierarchy come from? 

Mudit Vyas: The caste system is sanctioned in the Hindu scriptures. The most... The oldest Hindu scriptures are rooted in the Vedas... They sanction the caste system. 

Thinesh: The Vedas are a body of Hindu texts originating in ancient india, and considered some of the oldest authorities on morality. 

Mudit: I mean, they sanction the varna system which is the divisions I talked about. The Brahmins on top and then the business class and the warrior class and the Shudras or the working class. That was identified and written down over 2000 years ago in Hindu scriptures and Hindus still abide by those scriptures.

Jay: What, so this concept of caste is over thousands of years old?

Thinesh: Yeah, this is why you need to do more South Asian episodes!

Jay: That’s why I have you, right?

Mudit Vyas: So it is probably the only religion in the world, as far as I can tell, that sanctions this kind of apartheid and it still is recognized as a religion within subcontinent and across the world. I mean, I still wonder why it hasn't been dismantled or at least reformed. So yeah, it finds legitimacy, the caste system finds it legitimacy in Hindu scriptures. And so anyone who says or calls themselves Hindu needs to understand that. That either they need to reform or they need to call out their own religion.

Jay: So caste is really rooted in Hindu scriptures.

Thinesh: Yeah, so when Rukmini Devi, a woman from an upper caste background, and other people in her milieu, learned the artform and started propagating it, guess what happened? 

Jay: I don’t know, what happened? 

Thinesh: They took things out they didn’t like, namely erotic and sensual elements, and added things they did like, like gods and deities from hindu mythology. 

Nrithya: I believe that when the reinvention happened, what happened was a bunch of people who were Brahmins decided to clean this art form, which included eroticism, which also included the bodies of women that it was on originally, which included my ancestors. So they decided to clean this art form, and they created something new. So this idea that the new Bharatanatyam was not for us, was not for the hereditary women, was established by this, and clearly has become exclusively Hindu-themed dance form. Something that is used as a propaganda. So this is why call Bharatanatyam as a caste-ridden art form. Today, the performing artists of this art form are predominantly upper caste. Predominantly Brahmins. It's completely run by the upper caste sections. And if there are non-Brahmins, they are also from the extremely privileged section of the non-Brahmin communities. Unless there is exorbitant wealth, one cannot perform this art form. 

Thinesh: So now Bharatanatyam is pretty much only performed by Brahmins or people with significant wealth.

Jay: And because Bharatanatyan was no longer a viable livelihood for Isaivellalar women, fewer and fewer of them can pursue it because they don’t have the same resources as the upper caste. 

Nrithya: So this is one way that the art has been restricted to the upper caste and the upper classes. This is an elitist performing art form that is kept within the fold of the upper caste, predominantly the Brahmins. And slowly and steadily, women from these communities were taken away from this art form. They were marginalized and were pushed away. At least by the 60s and 70s, we had nobody. You can actually see the clear decline in the number of Arangetrams that happened in the hereditary families, right from the 40s. 

Thinesh: So arangetrams are effectively like a graduation ceremony - but in recital form. It’s the culmination of everything you have learned in your Bharatanatyam training. . 

Nrithya: I come from this kind of omissions and erasures. So I'm the remnants of such erasure. And as somebody who comes from erasure, I also embody erasure.

Jay: So as the Isaivellalar women are pushed out of this art form, now it’s wealthy, upper caste people who have access to it.

Thinesh: And the amount of wealth you have is more often than not, based on your caste privilege, at least in the South Asian context. 

Jay: But your caste is completely arbitrary. It’s an accident of birth.

Thinesh: Based on an occupation your ancestor had eeeeons ago, that fell within a hierarchy set out in old hindu texts. 

Jay: So a lot of your life is already decided purely based on the caste you’re born into. That’s a lot to unpack. 

Thinesh: But we’ve only scratched the surface. 

Jay: But this is a podcast about the Asian Australian experience. 

Thinesh: South Asian Australian. 

Jay: South Asian Australian included for sure. How does class and caste play out in Australia?  

Thinesh: Unsurprisingly, how it plays out in Australia has a lot to do with how it plays out in India. Here is Mudit again. 

Mudit Vyas: 15% of the population is able to access private education, which is probably the only decent quality education in India right now. And is able to access jobs where, that English is a requirement, and those are going to be the people who are going to have global mobility. If you want to study abroad, if you want to work abroad, if you want to do a scale migration you need a certain level of English, you need a certain level of being able to talk, you need a certain level of savings, which is also grounded... The idea of savings in India is grounded in the idea of owning property. And property ownership's also defined by caste. Even if you're taking out a loan to study abroad, you need property to put as collateral.

Thinesh. As Mudit highlighted, it’s more likely that people with structural advantages and caste privileges have the opportunity to migrate from India or Sri Lanka to Australia more than others. My parents, for example, are Vellalars in Sri Lanka which is an upper caste community. THis meant that they had structural advantages that allowed them to migrate to Canada where I was grew up, at a time when others couldn’t.

Jay: So caste isn’t limited to South Asia, it kind of follows wherever south asian migrants go, since migration itself is more accessible by higher castes. And whilst caste and class overlap, they’re definitely not interchangeable.

Thinesh: Whilst Class and Caste overlap, they are not the same thing. You can be poor and have caste privilege. Conversely, it is possible for a Dalit to become wealthy but still be limited socially of their caste. A rich Dalit may still not be welcome to marry an upper-caste partner. They will be still be barred from becoming priests and will be treated poorly despite their ability to break class boundaries. 

Jay: Are Indian and Sri Lankan castes the same?

Thinesh: No they are not, however how caste aspirations play out in the diaspora are interrelated, and we’ll get to that a bit later. Its also important acknowledge that  there are many caste-oppressed migrant communities who have also migrated.  They have found they can’t escape the stigma of their caste, even in the diaspora. 

Arj: I'm a Carnatic vocalist. I'm also... I play the Mridangam. I think I'm now aware that caste plays a somewhat unconscious role in my life because I'm privileged. The fact that I live in Australia is probably because of my caste. The fact that my parents were able to move to Australia, following the riots in Sri Lanka is probably because of my caste. The fact that I enjoy certain educational privileges. Again, probably because of that caste. There are a number of other factors there, but certainly, when I look at, peoples who have been left behind in Sri Lanka that did not have the facility to migrate to Australia or people who are, have taken perilous journeys to come to this country for that better life. Not that all of them are from a caste that's different to mine, but from my understanding, many of them have come from those castes.

Jay: So how does caste and class intersect in the diaspora when it comes to Bharatanatyam?

Thinesh: Here’s Nrithya again. 

Nrithya: So when you have to get into the art of Bharatanatyam, this idea of Arangetram, and the money that is involved, it's a huge business. 

Jay: I’ve actually been to one! There were at least 3 costume changes and it was in like a theatre with tiered seating! It was big!

Thinesh: Was she a rich brown girl?

Jay: I mean, I’m pretty sure, yeah. She took a week off school beforehand just to get ready.

Thinesh: The crazy thing here is, I’ve been to a number of arangetrams too and they are elaborate and expensive ordeals. And my experience is not unique in this. Here’s Arj talking about one of his earliest memories in Melbourne. 

Arj: When my cousin was performing her arangetram in Melbourne. It was one of those early arangetrams that was with live music. The second arangetram in Melbourne to have had live music, and I was a two-year-old boy and my mother and father were very nervous about sitting in this grand hall with all the pomp and ceremony and trying to keep a young baby quiet.

Thinesh: Pomp and ceremony is an accurate way to phrase what it has become. 

Nrithya: And it is for the money, and there's need for many of the non-Brahmins who move out of India, is to properly establish a connection with their culture that they've long lost or they believe that they've lost. And Bharatanatyam is used as a tool to connect with their culture, but unfortunately this is also seeped in a lot of aspirational Brahminism, this idea of having an Arangetram having several costume changes in Arangetram. There's long display of money and these Brahminic traditions. We've gone to the extent of having certain... we have a Brahmin priests be part of Arangetram. We start having this aspirational behavior, and that's exactly how the caste hierarchy is meant to work, and why it is intact.

Jay: This sounds like, the extravagance in modern day gender reveal parties.

Thinesh: Absolutely. It’s unnecessary, OTT and apparently now quite dangerous.

Jay: Right, but it’s like, you feel like you have to put on this big show and it loses the essence of what it’s supposed to be about. 

Thinesh: Yeah, and the increasing extravagance of Arangetrams in India means that South Asians in Australia also aspire for those styles of arangetrams as a way of cultural connection. This is partly because it’s now considered a Brahminical artform, and so it’s kind of aspirational because it’s upper caste. 

Jay: Which then perpetuates caste dynamics in a direct but also indirect way. 

Nrithya: And we continue to do these kind of events. And it becomes as though unless you do an Arangetram like this, then you're not a dancer. It's the first step. But the point being that this could be something that can be done in a small scale. This can be in a temple. This can be in a small space. Unfortunately, class and caste play an important again in this, and you do tend to spend to show... you know the bigger the Arangetram, the bigger the dancer is supposed to be. That's the kind of image that is built on an Arangetram.

Jay: So why aren’t South Asian Australians engaging with the history of the artform?

Thinesh: Arj talks about this and why the real history of Bharatanatyam and the Isai Vellalar community may not be told or accurately represented.

Arj: The understandings of the art form are largely taken, in my view, taken from the time in which these practitioners were engaging with the art forms. So whether they were learning in the 1960s or seventies and have migrated to Australia and started to teach those art forms here, it's the values and the analysis of the art form at that time. That seems to be what's propagated here and has been.

Jay: Now, remember, having access to migration is already quite strongly tied to caste, so the narratives and histories that are told about Bharatanatyam in Australia are more likely those of upper caste people.

Arj: Now, these are practitioners that have done human service in creating vibrant and thriving art space for that art form. The discourse, however, has always been dominated by this idea of an unbroken tradition that dates back to the Nakha-Shastra and that the art form was, in some form of degradation, but that seems to be the dominant discourse. So that in 19, I think the twenties or thirties Rukmini Devi Arundale, together with others, such as E. Krishna Iyer and Mungara Yamini Krishnamurthy attached to this theosophist movement were instrumental in reviving the art form from that state of degradation. The idea that there's an element of redemption or saving of the art form, I think talking about the Australian perspective, that seems to be a common understanding, to what extent the Australian narrative engages critically in unpacking what that involved, I think is quite scant.

Jay: So Arj is saying Diasporic South Asians don’t usually have a great understanding of the history of Bharatanatyam. 

Thinesh: Yes, and more often than not credit it to Rukmini Devi and her peers. Diasporic practitioners rarely critique this sanitised history

Jay: Which I guess could be ignorance but that in itself is a privilege of being upper caste.

Thinesh: If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem. 

Arj: But I think that the mainstream narrative still exists. Part of that also is because the engagement with Bharatanatyam here, I think serves or has for a long time served a very different purpose, which is the engagement with cultural heritage in an otherwise so-called European land. If you focus on the Tamil Community, as an example, particularly if I was to talk from my personal perspective as a Sri Lankan Tamil, where the Tamil heritage was under attack and at the risk of, whether it's you want to refer to as genocide or some form of ostracization, the migrants that came to this country felt a strong need to cling to that sense of cultural heritage and whether it's Bharatanatyam or Carnatic music, teaching of Tamil culture on the Tamil language, the Tamil arts, all of these were considered to be instrumental in preserving or recreating that connectivity to cultural heritage here in Australia. And so where that has been given greater prominence, some of the other narratives involved in Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music have not been afforded the same level of importance because they played a secondary role.

Jay: Right, so when you’re in a country like Australia as a diasporic Indian or Sri Lankan, you may view Bharatanatyam more as a way to connect to your culture, but that often means the history isn’t the focus, whether it’s yours as a Sri Lankan Tamil or that of a hereditary dancer. 

Thinesh: What’s funny here is that when Arj talks about Sri Lankan Tamils who use Bharatanatyam as a way to connect to their traditions and culture, they are also forgetting the rich traditions that existed outside of India. Sri Lanka had its own hereditary dancers, Tamil speaking women who had migrated from India who were dancing in courts and temples. 

Arj: I think it's a disservice to members of the hereditary communities who have been displaced by the effects of the appropriation of the art forms. However, I think in the Australian context that still feels somewhat removed and therefore the damage feels distanced from the people who practice it here. I'm not suggesting that's in any way better or okay, or acceptable. But I think that probably is an important way of understanding the lack of connectivity to that damage. And therefore the fact that we don't engage with a sense of direct damage here, but what I often draw the parallel to is Australia's treatment of its first nations peoples, because here we are very privileged to sit on the land of indigenous peoples and we are enjoying the benefits of having appropriated that land from them well, or that certain peoples centuries ago appropriated the land from them and have created a new civilization. And we as migrants to this country are enjoying the benefits of that.

Jay: So in Australia as a settler colony, we’ve started a reconciliation process, even if we’re dragging our feet in it. But when it comes to Bharatanatyam’s history?

Thinesh: But for the most part, South Asians in the Diaspora haven’t even put their shoes yet. Their shoes are in fact off, but not for good reasons.

Jay: Did you say “Shoes Off?”

Thinesh: So how do we move forward? Here’s Mudit. 

Mudit Vyas: Yeah, so imagine you write a book where you say that I am supreme, I am going to decide how everyone else lives. This is a certain section of the population that nobody can even touch. They will be the ones who will be employed in disposing of the dead and cleaning shit. And they will be the untouchables. And my ancestors wrote this, and this is their caste privilege. That is what Brahmins have done. There is no merit in doing this, in writing this. And they also said, okay, half of the population is going to be working class for the rest of their lives, and their descendants will also be working class. They can't access education. If they access education, they have to be violently put down. And indigenous people are not supposed to live in this society. They are, quote unquote, 'savages'. Brahmins wrote all of this. And they practiced it, for thousands of years. That is equally violent to the Ku Klux Klan in the US. It's probably even worse, so to self identify as Brahmin is so problematic. So yeah, you are part of the problem if you're not actively speaking out against it. Because if you're not dismantling it, then you are benefiting from it.

Jay: There’s no way around it: the caste system is inherently inequitable. You can’t interpret your way out of it.

Thinesh: One of the things that Mudit recommends is reading B R Ambedkar’s The Annihilation of Caste. It’s a foundational text that was ahead of its time, so much so that it wasn’t even approved by people who were trying to dismantle caste structures at the time. However, now it has become a central text for the Dalit communities fighting for justice.

Jay: And understanding caste and its effects is definitely the first step in moving forward.

Thinesh: The funny thing is many South Asians are across Critical Race Theory but are strangely silent on caste. Seeing Bharatanatym in a music video - that’s cultural appropriation, but on the flip side, many are unaware of the fact that the artform itself has been appropriated and continues to disenfranchise the community it originates from. So we all need to become caste conscious and caste needs to become a part of our vocabulary when it comes to discussing discrimination. 

Jay: It’s that buzzword: Intersectionality!

Thinesh: Yes Jay. When it comes to Bharatanatyam, Nrithya says that the first step is to acknowledge the problem of caste, erasure and appropriation and stop propagating a false history. 

Nrithya: But it's taken five generations for somebody like me to come and speak about this. Isn’t it surprising that this was a community that once upon a time performed and hailed on to this rich tradition, and these were women who were repositories of this art form, but today we hardly have any women dancing from the community. And this couldn't have happened without political and social movements that... I mean, political and social aspects that have controlled women from being part of this system. All of these problematic notions need to be acknowledged, just like in many countries, indigenous are being acknowledged. Indigenous lands are being acknowledged. Public apologies are given. There have been truth and reconciliation movements. So these are things that are very important that need to be also thought about at least in terms of Bharatanatyam that is practiced today. It's important that artists strive to be vocal about issues, and also acknowledge that this is an appropriated art form. 

Thinesh: Nrithya says that some Isai Vellalar community members have started to dance again, but that they are not given the same level of respect and are still in the margins. And now, upper-caste women even want to dress up as “Devadasis”, in effect claiming the old and new variations of the art form leaving no space for her the people in her community. 

Jay: Okay, this is so much information to consume. 

Thinesh: So what have you learnt today?

Jay: This artform that we see a lot of South Asians performing in Australia has a more complex history and is inseparable from caste. When this artform was brought over to Australia, it was brought over with caste dynamics attached, which determines who performs it and how it’s performed.

Thinesh: So for example, how it was originally performed, it was quite fluid and flowy, and now the focus has shifted to sharp angles and clean lines.

Jay: And the originators of this artform are often forgotten behind the veil of connecting with one’s cultural roots.

Thinesh: Which, like, it isn’t a bad thing to connect with your cultural roots, but it’s important to know how this culture came to be and who has been erased in the process.

Jay: And not only does caste have a significant influence on who does what in India, but also a significant influence on who does what in Australia.

Thinesh: You can’t simply be an ally, you have to be anti-caste.

Jay: Like anti-racist, but for caste. 

Jay: And as there are thousands of castes, there are so many communities within South Asia, and the term South Asia has its uses as a contrast to white people, but like any overarching group term, it has its limits. It’s always going to exclude certain communities and cultures that aren’t the dominant ones.

Thinesh: So how can we practice Bharatantyam in Australia in a way that does recognise its roots?

Nrithya: So I would do pieces that talk about the history of this art form. Where does this art form come from? I like to do pieces from the temple traditions and court traditions. And I mention who it was composed by, who are these people? Who danced this piece? So there is humongous history in families like mine, and I wish to put forth that when I dance. And I also wish to talk about those women who are not talked about. So this kind of acknowledgement can be very important. I do notice that some of these dancers today, are reading out acknowledgements. They talk about how this was the art form from hereditary families, and how they socially and politically challenged at the end of the 18th century, and we're thankful to this community for having passed on this beautiful tradition to us.

Arj: So recently I did a performance where I wanted to express acknowledge at the outset, the traditional practitioners of the art forms that we today call Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music. That we pay our respects to those practitioners who have come from before from the members of the community and those who continue to exist today. I think that kind of acknowledgment avoids the sense of Eurasia, that many people who are from those communities. I think by paying that kind of respect, some may disregard that as being lip service, but it means that we are constantly and expressively acknowledging that contribution and that will help to change the perspectives of those who live in Australia as they constantly hear those words affirmed at the beginning of every performance of Bharatanatyam or Carnatic music.

Part of that will naturally spawn a greater awareness and interest in what this, Isai Vellalar community's contribution to the art form was. And that will hopefully garner, for example, more performance opportunities or speaking opportunities where instead of just drawing from one pool of artists that we may choose to present here in Australia, as visiting artists from India, then alongside them, we will also choose to engage with artists who come from that community proactively so that we can hear their narrative. The same way in which we would act as part of art strategy here in Australia, we actively choose to engage with first nations' artists so that we continue to recognize them, position them at the forefront of art practice here in Australia.

Nrithya: It's important that as individual artists, we all find our ways to come to terms with what's happened, everyone of us who dances it without acknowledgement of the problem is a problematic dancer. So to make it less problematic, it's important to engage in all of this, to engage in the history, to engage in the recurring problems of caste exclusion.

Thinesh: This episode was written and produced by me Thinesh Thillai.

Jay: With help from me Jay Ooi who also did the editing and mixing.

Thinesh: Special thanks to Priyanka, Arjunan Puveendran, Nrithya Pillai, Nithya Nagarajan, Mudit Vyas, Equality Labs and B. R. Ambedkar for the Annihilation of Caste.

Jay: And thanks to Arj and Nrithya for giving us some music to use as well as Avik Chari, and Alli Chang for the episode artwork. And special thanks to you Thinesh for putting this episode together.

Thinesh: We’d love to hear about your experience of caste in Australia, and how it impacts your practice of Baratanatyam. Leave a comment on Facebook or Instagram @shoesoffau.

Jay: And if you liked Shoes Off please subscribe we’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. Thinesh, where can people find you?

Thinesh: You can find me on Instagram @tamildaddy. Strange but political.

Jay: And if you know anyone who practices Baratanatyam, please share this episode with them.

Thinesh: Peace out!

Jay: Peace out!

Thinesh: There’s a couple reasons I wanted to do this episode, or this particular topic. One, I feel that the conversation around caste, specifically in Australia is quite limited, and people need to become much more aware of their caste privilege and what has allowed them to, for the most part, live a pretty privileged existence here. The other thing is that I see a lot of my peers in the South Asian community, and in particular the Tamil community, practice Bharatanatyam without really giving credit or acknowledging its complex history. And after see Nrithya’s work in trying to have that history acknowledged and the injustices that were a part of that process, I really wanted to communicate that story through caste.

Jay: Yeah, it’s an interesting dynamic because often as minorities we kinda feel like the oppressed, or, for example, say, your parents are not wealthy people, but they come from an upper caste sort of background, so I can understand why South Asians in the diaspora feel like they don’t need to engage in this.

Thinesh: Absolutely. And the thing is like, even for me, when it comes to acknowledging my caste, I actually didn’t know about it until a few years ago, and I think for most people who are from caste privileged backgrounds, they only become aware of caste and how it operates when it comes to dating and when they’re looking for partners or their families are setting them up to be married, that’s when caste conversations commence. And that’s because we only become aware of it at that point. People are caste oppressed have been experiencing this their entire lives, and I think it’s a huge disservice for us to continue operating with this immense privilege and not do anything to actively dismantle these oppressive structures.

Jay: I kinda like topics that flip the dynamic and make us examine our privilege and how we oppress others. 

Thinesh: That’s absolutely one of the main takeaways here because this is not the only example of this flipping of the wscript. I'm very very confident this is happening all throughout the diaspora in various Asian communities. This is just one particular example of it, and it’s quite fascinating to see a lot of people in the Bharatanatyam and upper caste communities play the “I’m being disadvantaged card” here in Australia, Canada and America but be blind to how they’re perpetuating really problematic dynamics and erasures back home by the art and things they’re practicing in the diaspora. How did you find this episode and discussion?

Jay: I found it… there were a lot of terms for me to get my head around it, but once I understood that, it became quite fascinating to see how, I guess, deeply rooted and still prevalent caste is in Asia as a monolith. 

Thinesh: What’s funny is the caste dialogue is now moving beyond India. The first thing I’d like to acknowledge is there are various caste frameworks all throughout Asia. In this episode we touch on how Sri Lanka also has a caste system different from the one in India. And Recently an author, Isabell Wilkerson, has written a book called caste that applies the Indian caste framework on American History, and she uses caste framework to assess that. It’s actually a very popular book at the moment. So I encourage anyone who’s interested to pick that book up.

Jay: Link in the show notes.