‘Purity of the Classical Forms’:Sexuality, Gender, and Bharata Natyam in Texts from South India

Here is the first paragraph in lieu of an abstract: This paper examines representations of the south Indian classical dance form, Bharata Natyam, in texts by R.K. Narayan and Mahesh Dattani. Previously known as sadir or dasi attam, Bharata Natyam is a heterogeneous dance form which has many different regional variations. Broadly, however, the term refers to the classical dance from the southernmost states of India which conforms to the Natya Shastra, said to have been written by the sage Bharata. Bharata Natyam is most commonly associated with the devadasis, female dancers who performed the dance in temples as part of a range of devotional duties. While Western visitors to India from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries regarded the dancers as exotic prostitutes, Hindu society at this time accorded importance and auspiciousness to the devadasi’s role. However, the British increasingly equated the supposedly licentious activities of the devadasis with a raft of other, mostly Hindu, practices in relation to women that needed reform, such as sati, child marriage, and the prohibition against widow remarriage. The Raj’s views were adopted by many members of the Indian middle and upper classes, and in 1892 a Madras reform group started the Anti-Nautch campaign against Bharata Natyam, portraying it as indecent and exploitative to women. In doing so, the group drew on other currents within middle-class Indian society that sought to suppress lower-class women’s traditional art forms or refine their ‘meretricious’ practices.