ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Folding the Tent: Kerala Circus Academy NISHA P R Vol. 49, Issue No. 2, 11 Jan, 2014 Nisha P R ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate at Department of History, University of Delhi. Merely three years after it came into being, the Kerala Circus Academy, the first circus academy in the country set up by the government of Kerala, is on the verge of closure due to lack of vision. If the government is serious about reviving this dying entertainment form, then a more concerted effort will have to be made. Anyone familiar with the history of Indian circus should find it quite appropriate that the first state owned circus academy in the country was established in Thalassery, North Kerala. Most of the acrobats, trainers and entrepreneurs in Indian circus over the past century have hailed from this part of the world. The Kerala Circus Academy was inaugurated on 2 August 2010 and started functioning in a rented building at Chirakkuni. The glaring irony lies in the fact that this building was a former cinema theatre; cinema, an art form often blamed for the impending “death” of Indian circus industry. Hardly three years into operation, this circus academy is now heading towards a closure; a closure for good.[1] History of Circus in India Circus training centres, known as circus kalaris, came into existence in North Malabar in the late nineteenth century. The legendary circus guru, Keeleri Kunhikannan Teacher, considered as one of the forefathers of Indian circus, and his illustrious disciples, Mannan Teacher and M K Raman, established circus kalaris where they trained men, women and children. Circus acrobatics in India is a blend of various physical cultures — the western with indigeneous martial art forms such as kalaripayatt and kusti, as formulated by these kalaris. These centres provided trained acrobats to circus companies around the world.[2] In the latter half of the twentieth century some prominent circus entrepreneurs, such as Damodaran of Kamala Three Ring Circus and K Gopalan of Rayman circus, tried to establish circus training schools in various parts of the country. In the early 1950s, K Gopalan established a physical training centre for circus acrobatics in Nagpur. It included a circus training centre and a zoo.[3] Damodaran, who was the owner of Asia’s biggest circus company had kept aside acres of land in Kathirur, Thalassery for his dream ‒ a circus college with a students’ hostel.[4] In an article published in the Mathrubhumi Illustrated ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Weekly in 1957, Damodaran spoke at length about the need for a circus university in Kerala. He visualised the university giving both academic and acrobatic education to circus people, so that they could perform better than the European circus artistes: “As the student advances in her academic education to get a university degree, she should also be advancing in her training practices till she attains a means of livelihood by being proficient in at least one of the acrobatic items”.[5] Unfortunately neither of these projects could be realised. In 1957, Kandambulli Balan, author of the famous book Circus, also wrote about the need for a circus college putting forward a significant suggestion to include kalaripayatt and circus in the curriculum of Kerala Kalamandalam, which was in its formative stages.[6] Establishment of Kerala Circus Academy In 1992, for the first time the government initiated a project under the Sports Authority of India’s (SAI) Thalassery centre to train children of people belonging to the circus community in sports and gymnastics. But the authorities stopped admitting these children from 2000 onwards.[7] While the SAI authorities claimed that in the later years they stopped getting applications from the children of circus people, the circus community alleged that the seats meant for their children were handed out to “well-offs” by the officials.[8] So the decision of the Kerala government to establish a circus academy in Thalassery was seen as a constructive move by many who had spent their prime time in rings and tents. But as pointed out earlier, the academy is on the verge of closing. The Express report cited above states that “no student from the state has shown interest in joining the institution”. Established under the ministry of sports, the principal objective of the academy was to provide training in circus acrobatics to children below fourteen.[9] The chief executive officer (CEO) of the academy, M P Velayudhan, a retired deputy collector, says: “The aim was to select ten children from various circus companies and another ten from this locality. Applications for admission were called for in major Malayalam dailies. We received eleven applications and six people appeared for interview in May 2011. But none of them joined. Applications were called for twice again with almost no response”.[10] Velayudhan paraphrases the damning judgment of the former minister of sports: “Circus does not figure in any school syllabi. Nobody looks upon circus as a job. There seems to be no possibility for circus to go on as such.”[11] Eventually the ten seats earmarked for pupils from the circus companies were duly filled, and the children have stayed on. There are six girls and four boys from different parts of India and Nepal in the academy ‒ four from Tamil Nadu, four from Assam and Bengal and one each from Bihar and Nepal. Interestingly all these children are from Jumbo, Gemini and Great Royal circuses ‒ controlled by the same promoters. In fact the present circus academy has been established by recasting a private endeavour which had been set up by this management sometime back for training children. Ajay Shankar, one of the owners of the Gemini group says: “I’d begun a training set up for children sometime back in 2008. We had ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 about twenty five children as students. The expenditure became unmanageable, so I approached the then Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, with Achuthanandan as the Chief Minister, for help. Thus the government academy came into being”. He added that his company is bearing thirty percent of the expenses of the children (for dress, travel and sports), while the government is spending the rest, mostly on administration, though there is no formal contract regarding this expense sharing arrangement. Hence, the Sports Minister M Vijayakumar categorically states that the Academy is completely a government- owned institution, and that there is no contract with any circus company.[12] A two page quasi-official note in Malayalam titled “Circus Academy, Thalassery” states that the Academy was inaugurated on 2 August 2010 by the government, and ten kids were admitted with the help of Gemini/Jumbo circus. The three instructors at the academy were also from Gemini/Jumbo Circus. The note further stated that “according to the managing committee’s decision, children’s expenditure for food, uniform cloth and auto-rickshaw fare from hostel to school are borne by Gemini/Jumbo management from 02-08-10. This expenditure is reimbursed as per their claims.” Raghavan, one of the trainers said, “After turning fourteen these children would go back to Gemini circus”.[13] Syllabi and Running of the Academy That a successful Academy has not evolved from this arrangement, and that the other circus companies around the country and circus labour unions have not been encouraged to collaborate with it, brings forth questions regarding the manner in which the institution is being run. The managing committee of the Academy is another glaring example of certain exclusions at work. An all-India trade union for circus workers called Indian Circus Employees’ Union, affiliated to the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), has been functioning in Thalassery for more than three decades. The Circus Labour Union, registered in 1998, has also been functioning in the town. While not a single representative of any of these unions or circus workers’ community figures in the management committee, organisations such as the Circus Fans’ Association that exist only in paper have been included.[14] Another important and interesting aspect regarding the establishment of the Kerala Circus Academy is that it came into being just seven months prior to the ban imposed by Supreme Court on 18 April 2011 on the employment of children under fourteen in a circus. The petitioner, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), had argued that the children in circuses were subjected to exploitation, sexual abuse, bondage and servitude and proposed to notify circus as a “hazardous industry”. In an interview in 2013, the CEO of the Kerala Circus Academy said that he was unaware of the Supreme Court ban, and the representative of Bachpan Bachao Andolan said that he did not know that such an Academy had come into being while the litigation was in progress.[15] The curriculum committee which prepared the syllabus should have been constituted of ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 experts, including circus artistes, academicians and activists. Unfortunately it is almost a replica of the managing committee. The syllabus stipulates the training time for children between “6 am to 8 am” in the morning and “4.30 pm to 7 pm” in the evening. Training is given in floor exercises (boys and girls), vaulting table (boys and girls), beam (girls), parallel bars (boys), uneven bars (girls), high bars (boys), rings (boys) and pommel horse. Under the section “Jobs and Entertainment”, it lists “clowning (make up), jokes and entertainment”. The syllabus also caters to training in “tent preparation, different types of circus events, dress making, music, food preparation, jobs and entertainment (jokers), light and sound, animal circus, etc”.[16] Since no instruments and equipment were provided, the three trainers are instructing them in these floor exercises.