NIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE
utiyattam: Intangible Heritage and Transnationalism
A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Critical Dance Studies
by
Elizabeth Mani Kurien
August 2013
Dissertation Committee: Dr. Marta E. Savigliano, Chairperson Dr. Priya Srinivasan Dr. Anthea Kraut Copyright by Elizabeth Mani Kurien 2013 The Dissertation of Elizabeth Mani Kurien is approved:
Committee Chairperson
niversity of California, Riverside Acknowledgements
This dissertation would not have been feasible without the help of countless people and several resources to aid research work. I thank the University of California,
Riverside for the Chancellor’s Award and teaching assistantships that contributed significantly toward my study. I also thank the University for granting me leave to allow time for recovery from a medical condition accompanying the birth of my son, Ezra. I faced this medical situation right after fieldwork was completed, and time for recovery was required to regain strength to begin writing again. I would like to thank my mentors who have been a great source of encouragement throughout my dissertation process. I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Dr. Marta Savigliano for her consistent and strong guidance. Thanks also for her ardent attention to detail and consistent engagement with my work. Her willingness to grant me freedom to experiment with my writing entailed tremendous work, in terms of helping me figure out ways of presenting materials consistent with dissertation formats. She has helped make the challenges of writing a dissertation, a pleasurable one. I thank Dr. Anthea Kraut for her incisive comments and insights on unconventional issues on Intellectual Property Rights, helping make my work more widely pertinent in this area. Thank you to Dr. Priya Srinivasan for sharing her thoughts on how ethnographic work always changes the “subject” and the ethnographer in the encounter. She also pushed me to think hard about danced cultural labor and its difficult imbrications within global capital. I thank Dr. Toby Miller for helping me think about utiyattam in relation to the socialist and Marxist political contexts of Kerala. I thank Dr. Susan Rose for her invaluable insights on the dancing body’s ability to craft
v “realities” in performance. I thank my teachers who I had a chance to work with at UC,
Riverside, especially, Dr. Linda Tomko, Dr. Jaqueline Shea Murphy, Dr. Anna Scott, Dr.
Sally Ann Ness, and Dr. John Kim. Their classes have been a deep learning experience and their knowledge and expertise, invigorating. Special thanks to Dr. Karen Torjesen,
Claremont Graduate University and Dr. Deepak Shimkhada, Claremont McKenna
College, who sparked within me the desire to write about dance. Many of my colleagues at the Dance Department at UC, Riverside, have helped me along my path. I thank my dear colleague-friend, Adanna Jones, for her support, love, and encouragement--all shared with a great sense of humor. A special thanks to Hannah Schwadron, for her brilliant feedback and comments on parts of my draft. I also thank Gabriela Mendoza-
Garcia, Melissa Templeton, and Tania Hammidi for their help and support during my
PhD project.
I thank my dance guru in Bharatanatyam and Mohiniyattam, Mrs. Shyamala
Surendran, Kerala, India, for her exemplary guidance imparted with a fun-loving spirit throughout my life. Whenever I speak with her, I am reminded of how I came to love dance so passionately. I also thank the numerous artists and scholars in Kerala, India, whose contributions during fieldwork, have made this dissertation possible. I thank Dr.
K.G.Paulose for long hours of conversations and insightful information. I thank master practitioners Margi Sathi, Margi Madhu, Usha Nangiar, and Kapila Venu, all of whom have taken time out of their busy performance schedules to share their points of view which have become a central part of my thesis. A special thanks to Dr. P.Venugopalan and G. Venu for sharing perspectives from an activist/scholar point of view. I thank
v Nangiarkoothu practitioner, Kalamandalam Sangeetha, who has been a darling friend and invaluable guide through much of my fieldworks. She assisted me in understanding the detailed gestural usage in utiyattam, via demonstrations. She also introduced me to master artists of utiyattam, thus helping make my entry into the “field”, a smoother process. I thank Kalamandalam Sindhu for her help and critical comments regarding my research questions during fieldwork. I thank her especially for mailing me valuable books on utiyattam that were not easily available. Many loved ones helped me facilitate my travels and stay for fieldwork in Kerala. My mother and daughter accompanied me to several performances of utiyattam that lasted through the night. I thank them for their generous spirits and desire to support my work. In order to view the twelve day
Nangiarkoothu festival at Ambalapuzha, I had to find a safe place to stay. I thank Kavitha
Suresh for her kindness in arranging my stay at her lodge, for offering me delicious home-made meals at her home, and for treating me as a member of her family during my stay at Ambalapuzha.
I also wish to thank the numerous friends, family, acquaintances and even strangers (yes, that’s right!) without whose support, I would not have made it this far, let alone be able to write this dissertation. As mentioned in the beginning, soon after field work was completed in December 2011, I experienced a serious risk to my life, associated with a caesarean section procedure during my delivery. The courage, teamwork, and expertise of several medical doctors and nurses, who have worked tirelessly to restore my life, deserve special mention. I especially thank Dr.
Ramachandran N. Menon (GI surgeon, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi), Dr.
v Vijayalakshmi Pillai, (Gynecologist, Vijayalakshmi Hospital, Ernakulam), Dr.
Sreedeviamma, (Pambatheeram Ayurveda Hospital, Chengannur), and Dr.
Radhakrishnan Nair, (Kochi). Several people--dear friends and people whom I have never known--responded quickly to urgent text message chains, requesting blood. I thank the seven high school students of Toc-H Public School, Ernakulam, who voluntarily and anonymously donated blood during this emergency situation. I remain eternally thankful for their generosity and courage. I thank each of the nurses who stood by me, day and night, for ten long days at the critical care unit in Amrita Hospital. I have never witnessed such intense labor and care toward the service of other people’s lives. After I was shifted from the hospital to my parents’ home, I continued to need intense care for three months to help with basic needs. I thank my three home nurses, each of whom stayed by me an entire month—Mariamma Chedathi, Annamma Chedathi, and Roselina
Chedathi. They bathed me, comforted me during moments of extreme pain, encouraged me, and cared for me. I thank my family who had to bear the brunt of this medical trauma. I thank my father, Soman Mani. His patience, undying love, courage, and strength are unparalleled gifts, my children and I have experienced. I thank my mother,
Laila Mani, for giving me life once again, by nurturing me back to health, while having to attend to the needs of my new born son and my older daughter. In spite of advancing age, my parents were able to provide exemplary care with fierce courage, and extreme gentleness. I thank my daughter, Tara Kurien, who not only had to endure the distress of not being sure whether her mother would “make it”, but also having to witness my hard recovery process. Her life during these months was left bereft of my active presence in
v her life, yet her consistent and quiet assurances remain unforgettable. During this time she was registered in an online-school to continue her second grade studies, and she showed remarkable responsibility in doing her work, without anyone’s promptings. My daughter has taught me so much about what matters in life. I thank my children, Tara
Kurien and Ezra Kurien, for the infinite moments of laughter, love, and inspiration that they continue to provide. I thank my husband, Anup Kurien, for helping with the care of our children. I thank my dearest friend, Archana Ramachandran, who made time, in spite of her family commitments, to play with my daughter and offer her comfort. I thank my family friend, Suneeth Varma, for taking charge of working through logistical issues concerning treatment plans when things were too chaotic at the hospital. I thank my dear cousin Mariam Isaac for the much needed emotional support and strength she offered my family during this time. I thank my dear cousin, Gibi Ann Kurian, for taking time off from her family to spend a month with my family and me to offer support. I have too many people who have helped me regain my health and well-being. Their kindness and labor can never be measured, only experienced and acknowledged. I hope I can return a fraction of the kindness and favor to somebody, someday. After six months, once I was strong enough to endure long hours of flying time, I returned back to my alter-home in
America. My daughter had to begin school for the new academic year and I had to begin my dissertation writing process. My mind and body, I realized had to be re-trained to write, to be able to have stamina to put down thoughts on paper and computer. Often times, I had to type while standing, as sitting down for more than a few minutes was still painful. While transcribing interviews, I had to re-visit these interviews multiple times to
v make sure the distractions of constant movement, had not interfered with the transcription process. In a way this dissertation has been an integral part of my healing, my struggles and my triumphs during this period in my life. I never thought I would be able to begin writing again, and more so, finish this dissertation. So, if anyone is out there struggling with their dissertation, I just want to say it is doable.
Back in the United States, friends took the place of family and many of them have helped much beyond the call of duty. I thank my baby’s sitter, Sarita Lakkakula, who has not only provided wonderful care for my son Ezra Kurien, but also gifted deliciously cooked dishes. I also express my deep appreciation to Cindy and Barry Katz, instructors, of TM (Transcendental Meditation). TM is a simple and effective process that allows the mind to gain deep rest, thus helping to regain physical and mental stamina quickly and effortlessly. I thank my friends, Raj and Susan Abraham for their unfailing love and support, and Naomi and Raj Abraham for opening their home to us, and offering to watch my children on numerous occasions. I thank Shubha Koneru and Sindhura Prabhu for the many moments of laughter, strength and courage they have provided. I also wish to thank
Drs. Sunil and Susan Thomas, who have read through parts of my thesis and offered invaluable comments and encouraged me all the way to finish line.
x Dedication
To my loving parents, Soman Mani and Laila Mani, and to my precious Tayu.
! "! ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
utiyattam: Intangible Heritage and Transnationalism
by
Elizabeth Mani Kurien Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Critical Dance Studies University of California, Riverside, August 2013 Dr. Marta E. Savigliano, Chairperson
utiyattam, practiced in Kerala, India, is the only living Sanskrit dance-theater tradition today. In 2001, UNESCO declared the art form as “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible
Heritage of Humanity.” This dissertation examines the impact of utiyattam’s universalization as “intangible heritage” on the localized artistic practice. Drawing from dance studies and media studies literature to analyze interviews with utiyattam practitioners as well as utiyattam’s performances during field work in Kerala, this study presents utiyattam as an arena of multi-sided contestations. Intellectual Property Rights operate within a racialized system of “universalization” where, in addition, gendered and casticized privileges are negotiated. utiyattam practitioners currently live these entanglements that affect their citizenship status within the Indian nation-state. Fieldwork at various locations in Kerala, including Irinjalakkuda, Chathakkudam, Moozhikkulam,
Tripunithura, and Ambalapuzha, have enabled me to highlight local practitioners’ and scholars’ viewpoints regarding utiyattam’s history and historiography. Observing live
x performances, both on stage and during practice sessions, I focus on corporeal renderings of different formats of utiyattam, including Nangiarkoothu (solo female theater),
Cakyarkoothu (male solo verbal performances), and utiyattam (combined danced-acting of multiple performers). Via fieldwork and interviews, I found that universalization of this local practice differentially narrows, rather than broadens access to archived materials of utiyattam. In fact, international clients and caste-specific performers are favored, while limiting the local non-caste performers’ access to utiyattam sources. I then examine how the media intervene in specific ways to shape the modern and
“traditional” Indian ideal citizen via the female performer of utiyattam, affecting the value of women’s cultural labor and their culturally specific performing rights through paradoxical intertwines of caste and gender. Finally, I examine how the (visual)
“difference” of the material dancing body of utiyattam negotiates and is subjectified in the racialization process as utiyattam circulates globally as “universal” heritage.
Ultimately, this dissertation shows how transnationalism intervenes in disarticulating
utiyattam’s cultural symbolism from its cultural danced labor, a process in which the nation- state plays a conciliatory role, allowing to gloss over the bodies that labor for
utiyattam’s upkeep, thus revealing processes of state-fundamentalism and neo- orientalism.
x Table of Contents
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………...iv
Abstract of the Dissertation…………………………………………………………….xi
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1
My Encounter with utiyattam………………………………………………...... 9
Chapter 1: Female Authorial Rights and the Intangible Heritage of utiyattam…..30
Sponsorship of utiyattam, Access to Documented Materials, and Ownership of Practice…………………………………………………………………………………...46 Individual Artistic works and “Unproblematic” Authorial rights………………………..66
Access to Ancient Manuscripts and the Expansion of Female Characters in
utiyattam………………………………………………………………………………………....75
Chapter 2: utiyattam and the Postnationalist modern Indian Citizen……………..89 Labor Rights of the Caste-based Performer and the “Un-marking” of Caste…………..109
Media Interventions in the Specatucularization of utiyattam……………………...... 111
Saraswathy Nangiar and the Performance of “Modern” India…………………………115
Vasu Cakyar’s Wife, “Saudamini” and the Portryal of “Traditional India……………. 120
“Jessica” the Foreign Woman and the Portrayal of the Western “Other……………….121
Mediatized Lives versus Real Lives…………………………………………………....123
utiyattam and its Uneasy links to Fundamentalist Tendencies in Kerala……………..124
Chapter 3: Why the Vidhuska (jestor) in utiyattam is Kept Alive …...... 136
Performing “Contemporariness” via the Vidhushakan…………………………………140
x Subjectification of Culture and the Shaping of Femininity within the Local Social Psyche in (Kerala), India………………………………………….…………………………….147
The Paradox of the Vidhushakan…………………………………………………….…157
The Struggle of the Vidhushakan Today……………………………………………….167
Racialization and the Disciplining of Bodies………………………………………...... 172
Racialization, Cultural Labor, and Pedagogy………………………………………………………………………………..176 Racialized Power, Neo-orientalism and Universal “Value” …………………………...190
Conclusion Notes…………………………………………………………………………………....199
References……………………………………………………………………………...203
Appendix with Glossary of Malayalam Terms…..………………………………….213
x v NTRODUCT ON
This dissertation explores the politico-cultural dilemmas that emerge when
UNESCO designated utiyattam “universal” property of humankind in 2001. More
specifically, I will address how utiyattam practitioners’ legal, moral and cultural rights
have been affected as a local art form from Kerala, India, enters into a global heritage
economy. Throughout this dissertation, legal rights are explored in terms of Intellectual
Property (IP), moral rights concern the racialized assumptions undergirding the category
of “universal” intangible heritages, and cultural rights refer to artists’ distinct gendered
privileges affecting citizenship status.1
I present a succinct historical background of utiyattam as well as basic
information to readers unfamiliar with this artistic cultural practice. utiyattam is a
South-Indian Sanskrit dance-theater form from Kerala, India. Its origins have been traced
to the ninth century CE.2 The Malayalam term utiyattam means “combined danced-
theater”3 and refers specifically to those parts of a utiyattam performance (usually the
Legal rights refer to Intellectual Property rights—the system of legal protection over (cultural) expressions and cultural property like utiyattam. Moral rights refer to the collective demand of local artists to the worth and dignity of the artistic practice and their individual labor on their own terms. Cultural rights refer to the ways in which practitioners (of utiyattam) are able/not able to effectively exercise their rights of democratic and cultural citizenship.
2 G. Venu, Production of a Play in utiyattam (Irinjalakuda: Natankairali, 989), 3.
3 K.G. Paulose, utiyattam Theater: The Earliest Living Tradition (Kottayam, Kerala: D.C. Books, 2006), 84. Paulose explains the word utiyattam as a combination of two words uti which means “combined” and attam which means “dance”. He translates the term utiyattam roughly as “a dance like presentation by multiple actors.” However, the term attam”has been variously translated by scholars as “dancing” and “acting” and thus the term utiyattam itself has also been translated as “combined acting”
last three days4) when multiple actors appear together on stage. The majority of a
utiyattam performance consists of the solo acting of portions of a Sanskrit dramatic text.
I follow most scholars in Kerala in using the word utiyattam to refer both to the tradition in general and to the specific practice of “combined danced-theater” within the tradition.5 utiyattam performances usually present selected acts of a play and rarely, enact a whole drama. During the course of acting, textual elements of the play are performed alongside extraneous, though relevant, materials interwoven into the play, adding to its artistic and socio-political significance. The presentation of the play usually extends over several days, due to the minute and nuanced details in which characters and their nirvahanam (solo recapitulation of past events of a character) are explored.6 The nirvahanam itself is extraneous to the text, skillfully added on by utiyattam performers.
Prior to 1956, utiyattam was exclusively within temple precincts, as part of temple rituals or religious seasons. Only Cakyars, caste-specific male dancer-actors, Nangiars, caste-specific female dancer-actors, and Nambiars,7 caste-specific male drummers, who
(Venugopalan,2007). I have thus translated the term utiyattam as “combined danced- theater” to incorporate both meanings of the word attam.
4 A typical utiyattam performance can take last 5 to 45 days.
5 G.Venu, K.G. Paulose, and Dr. P. Venugopalan use the term in this sense
6 Venu, Production of a Play in utiyatam, 2.
7 Nangiars are women from the Nambiar caste who perform female roles both as a solo form (called Nangiarkoothu) and as part of the “combined danced-acting” of utiyattam. Nambiars are the males from this caste who provide the accompaniment on the drums called mizhavu.
2 had hereditarily learnt utiyattam, performed the art.8 In 1965 the art-form also began to be taught outside the temple precincts via the secular art institution of Kerala
Kalamandalam.9 In 2001, utiyattam was declared “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible
Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO. This dissertation thus explores the politico-cultural complexities that arise when utiyattam, which belongs to a local cultural community, becomes designated “universal” property of humankind by UNESCO for purposes of
“safeguarding.”
Although I have consulted extensively utiyattam’s historiography,10 in this dissertation, I have chosen to rely on scholars/ performers’ interviews to capture
utiyattam’s history from a Keralite and practitioners’ viewpoint. I strive to amplify the
8 Although the first performance of Cakyarkoothu (solo verbal renditions by the Cakyar in utiayttam) took place outside of the temple at a private home in Kottarakkara, this was an isolated incident. See Dr. P. Venugopalan, utiyattam Register (Tiruvananthapuram: Margi, 2007), 23. In 956, a full scale utiyattam performance was staged at Ganapathi High School in Kozhikode Kerala, with support from the National Broadcasting Corporation, All India Radio. Soon after, it began being performed on public stages with the support of theater artists and art connoisseurs. See Venugopalan, utiyattam Register, ibid.
9 Venugopalan, utiyattam Register, 24.
0 These include but are not limited to: Nirmala Paniker, Nangiarkoothu: The Classical Dance-Theatre of the Nangiars (Irinjalakuda, Kerala: Natanakairali, 990). Saktibhadra Clifford Reis Jones, and V. Raghavan, The Wondrous Crest-Jewel in Performance: Text and Translation of the Ascaryacudamani of Saktibhadra with the Production Manual from the Tradition of utiyattam Sanskrit Drama (Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 984). John Steven Sowle, "Traditions, Training, and Performance of Kutiyattam, Sanskrit Drama in South India.” (Phd Dissertation, University of California–Berkeley., 982). Farley Richmond, "“Kutiyattam.” in Indian Theatre: Traditions of Performance," ed. Darius L. Farley P. Richmond and and Philip B. Zarrilli Swann (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 990). Diane Daugherty, "The Nangyar: Female Ritual Specialist of Kerala " Asian Theatre Journal 3, no. ( 996). Ji Venu and Natanakairali, Into the World of utiyattam: With the Legendary Ammannur Madhava Chakyar, Documentation of Kutiyattam Series, No. 3 (Thrissur District, Kerala: Natana Kairali, 2002). Margi Madhu, Attathinte Vazhiyadayalangal. (the Signposts of Performance; Malayalam) (Kottayam: Current Books, 2002). K.G. Paulose, Introduction to utiyattam: The Living Tradition of Ancient Theater (Kalady, Kerala: Sree Sankaracharya University, 998).
3 meaning-making in which utiyattam practitioners and scholars are actively involved, concerning contexts of “universalization”, “nation-building”, and practices of cultural citizenship. Therefore my sources on utiyattam history are ethnographic and at times critical of Western scholars, including historians. I follow Mundoli Narayanan in “Over-
Ritualization of Performance: Western Discourses on Kutiyattam”11 where he shows how scholars writing outside of Kerala on utiyattam seem to simplify the socio-cultural complexities of the art form resulting in an unproblematized representation of the form as a “ritual.”12 He convincingly argues that ritualization serves to disarticulate the practice of the art form from its practiced reality-- as something happening in the real world, in
Kerala, today—presenting utiyattam as an “ancient practice” that, even though
(actively) surviving today is perceived to be about the “past”.
“Intangible Heritages” as a category devised by UNESCO to “safeguard” living heritages, I will argue, produces new forms of subjugations in global heritage economies.13 utiyattam is “safeguarded” as intangible heritage precisely because it is understood as being under the threat of elimination/extinction. However, in recognizing
Mundoli Narayanan, “Over- Ritalization of Performance: Western Discourses on Kutiyattam.” TDR: The Drama Review 50, no. 2 (2006)
2 For example he quotes Diane Daugherty’s, work, "The Nangyar: Female Ritual Specialist of Kerala " Asian Theatre Journal 3, no. ( 996),. Farley Richmond, "“Kutiyattam.” in Indian Theatre: Traditions of Performance," ed. Darius L. Farley P. Richmond and Philip B. Zarrilli Swann (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 990).
3 Etienne Balibar, "Difference, Otherness, Exclusion," Parallax , no. (2005):3 . Balibar explores (internal) exclusion as a metanarrative of racism where he points out that this anthropological category is the most generally used in understanding relationships between processes of globalization and victims of “new” racisms, 3 .
4 the “endangered” art form, value is placed is placed on intangible heritage as an
“inexhaustible” property resource14 resulting in undervaluing the tangible, material lives
of cultural performers of utiyattam themselves. There is currently a plethora of student
artists from underprivileged caste and economic bases, who have adopted utiyattam as a
profession in light of the potential earnings stemming from increased state funding for
those who learn and perform the art. Yet, even as heritages are seemingly “valued” and
“safeguarded” in a globalized context, this stands in sharp contrast to the widening gap
between the “value” bestowed on the cultural good and the “value” placed on the cultural
laborer producing it.
Additionally, in the process of utiyattam’s circulation15 as “universal” heritage,
geopolitical boundaries are transgressed where the art form now belongs to “humanity”
rather than the nation-state (India) from where it originates, pointing to tensions
concerning the control of meaning and of capital. What might the cultural and legal
implications of transgressing political boundaries be for the practitioners and the art of
utiyattam? Etienne Balibar argues that globalization as such has no exterior
(boundaries) at least in principle, but rather constructs political boundaries as a tool for
4 See James W. Child, "The Moral Foundations of Intangible Property " in Intellectual Property: Moral, Legal, and International Dilemmas, ed. Adam D.Moore (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 997), 57 -80).
5 G. Venu and Diane Daugherty maintain that foreign tours of performance provide the major chunk for economic sustenance of Keralan art forms, specifically, utiyattam. Daugherty, Diane Daugherty, "Fifty Years On: Arts Funding in Kerala Today." Asian Theatre Journal 7, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 242,243.
5 controlling the flows of capital and populations.16 Having no outside, (internal) exclusion thus warrants a paradoxical process of inclusion, such as the “recognition” of immigrant populations. Although seemingly a positive move, such recognition can only happen when a status like citizenship is granted establishing the possibility to belong to a
(political) community,17 claimed via specific occupations, marriage, and such. Similarly,
“Intangible Heritages” as a category devised by UNESCO to “safeguard” living heritages is a symptom of internal exclusion (an anthropological category that points to a form of racism as understood by Balibar), producing new kinds of subjugations even when subjugation comes with new advantages such as increased visibility in global heritage economies. Thus, I suggest that heritage sites and practices survive in modern capitalism by participating in heritage economies, where the unnecessary becomes the very performers who create the art—constructed as such by a violent disarticulation of dancing bodies from the art they create. What can we learn from examining heritages as imbricated within contexts of the politics of heritage economies? What implications do disarticulations of cultural products (“heritages”) from their political economy (here heritage economies), have on racialized cultural laboring (dancing) bodies as they participate in globalization? Where does an impetus to (cheaply) “maintain” dancing bodies in order to participate in a global heritage economy come from?
6Etienne Balibar, "Difference, Otherness, Exclusion," Parallax , no. (2005):2.
7 Ibid.,32.
6 UNESCO’s list of intangible heritages of countries whose cultures seem under the
“threat” of extinction under globalization seem more catered to “safeguarding” projects rather than to the actual translatability of ethical issues concerning cultural labor and representation.18 Such lack of translatability of, for example, the equitable redistribution of resources (knowledges, jobs, pay checks, and cultural capital)19 is especially highlighted when “traditional” art forms are displayed for global corporate consumption.
Rustom Bharucha in his article, “When ‘Eternal India’ meets the YPO,”20 vividly describes the challenges entailed in presenting performances of traditional arts like
utiyattam21 to international audiences. utiyattam is structured on the dilations of time, and, typically the enactment of a single verse requires six to eight hours. Adjustment to foreign expectations require a reduced spectacle of the “authentic”, to be performed
8 The rationale behind the UNESCO program of “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Human Heirtage” implemented in 200 is centered on the principle that “urbanization, modernization, and globalization” pose a great threat to the diversity of human culture. The UNESCO program thus declares its desires to create new forms of community identification. See Peter J.M. Nas, “Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Culture: Reflections on the UNESCO World Heritage List” Current Anthropology, vol 43, no. (2002), 42. Nas also quotes comments by H.R.H Princess Basma Bint Talal, Board of Trustees, Hashemite Fund for Human Development. Tala asserts that, “the threat of globalization—its power and predominance over numerous identities and intrinsic values—makes it imperative that further research be directed to the ethical issues of globalization and its effect on local culures.” See ibid., 43. Richard Kurin in the same article comments that the UNESCO program of “Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible and Human Heritage”, advocates the existence and flourishing of varied cultures and for asserting the rights of the practitioners to benefit from their cultural works. Ibid, 45.
9 Marta Savigliano, "Worlding Dance and Dancing Out There in the World," in Worlding Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
20 Rustom Bharucha, "When 'Eternal India' Meets the YPO: FIfty Years of Dependence," Third Text , no. 39 ( 997): 39-58.
2 For example, utiyattam employs gestural language and eye movement, in minute detail to explicate a single mythological verse.
7 within a matter of minutes to cater to a global business audience (such as the YPO Young
Presidents Organization as discussed by Bharucha) for whom the “best spectacle” amounts to giving a taste of living India. For countries from the Global South like India, performance cultures become a significant site where nations display their “culture” and
“tradition” through dancing/performing bodies and where cultural products possess
“value” only insofar as it can represent the “authentic” cultural spectacle that must be staged/marketed for the “quick pleasure” of global delegations or business executives, as in Bharucha’s article). Separating the cultural practice from the staged cultural product sustains an unequal flow of capital (product) over labor (process), masking the economies of cultural production. Thus the subtle meaning-making of the “traditional” performances of utiyattam, as a local practice of political dissent22, turn out to be a total bore
(following Bharucha) for an international corporate audience ignorant of the contexts of the ancient art.23 How might the aligning of cultural products with geopolitical shifts (in terms of deregulatory markets) intersect and collide with concerns of “democratic”,
“secular” national citizenship for practitioners of utiyattam? What effects might this have on citizenship rights for practitioners of “traditional” art forms whose practices enter the patrimony of “intangible heritages”?
22 In utiyattam, the narrator (Vidushaka) weaves matters of socio-political concerns in to the mythologies being enacted.
23 Bharucha, "When 'Etenrnal India' Meets the Ypo," 42, 5 .
8 My Encounter with utiyattam
In the mid 1980’s, when I was about 9 years of age, my dad took my brother and me for a utiyatam performance. utiyattam has several performance formats like the
Nangiarkoothu (female solo performance), Cakyarkoothu (solo verbal renditions of the male jester) and utiyattam, (combined danced-acting of multiple utiiyattam performers). The one that my dad took me to was a Cakyarkoothu (mostly referred to simply as koothu) performance where the male Cakyar who plays the role of the vidhushakan (jester) performs his solo verbal renditions. The performance was in
Ernakulam, Kerala at the TDM hall, close to the Shiva temple.
As the three of us (my father, brother and I) walked into the performance hall, the
Cakyar pointed directly at us and smirked, saying, “There they are, fashionably late and yet they saunter in as if it’s their home!” I wished I could dig a hole in the ground and disappear. I wished we had never come. I wished it were someone else the Cakyar was referring to. There seemed to be no escape. I could not believe the audacity of the Cakyar on stage talking to an audience of about 200 people. My father proceeded to his seat nonchalantly as if nothing had ever transpired. There was merely a hint of a smile playing on his lips. Quite a few audience members had turned their heads to see who the
“fashionably late” people were. This was my first experience of oothu and it sticks to my memory two and a half decades later as a personally unsettling experience. However, soon after his public disciplining of our performance etiquette, the Cakyar continued his verbal rendering of the Prahlada Caritam (story of Prahlada). Even though I had not
9 recovered completely from the Cakyar’s publicly delivered comments about my family and me, I was suddenly not sure if he was talking about us after all. The Cakyar’s attire verged on the edge of comic and commanding. He had a long black moustache that curled up and his body was smeared with ash and marked with red dots all over. His classical Malayalam made it difficult for me to follow him verbatim at such a young age, but I had a general understanding of his oral renditions. I soon realized that other audience members were also being subject to similar criticisms/critiques. Another
(overweight) audience member was told that if he did not pay attention to his consumption habits his wife might soon replace him for the mattress in his home.
The Cakyar also weaved expertly, current local and national news and events. I heard the name of then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as well as names of local politicians that seemed to become part of Prahlada’s story. I was often left wondering if
Prahlada’s story was merely a ruse to mention these political figures or whether the
Cakyar was simply not sure of the story being delivered. How could the Cakyar make such caustic remarks, about audience members, his locality, about his country—all within the public space and get away with it? His bodily gestures imbued his verbal comments with a potency that instantly drew me to his performance.
A decade and a half later in 2001, UNESCO declared utiyattam, “Masterpiece of
Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity,” by UNESCO. I began noticing solo female performances of Nangiarkoothu and combined performances of multiple dancer-actors
( utiyattam) emerging more frequently on public stages. I looked for the “funny guy”
0 though, the one who unabashedly points at people and makes fun of them. Gradually his
role seemed to be receding and I tried to seek him out. I was now a dance research
student pursuing a Ph.D in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California,
Riverside. Almost two decades after my first experience of the vidhushakan, I
encountered him in a nine day festival meant just for him at Irinijalakkuda,24 far away
from the city precincts of Ernakulam, Kerala. Irinjalakkuda is a rural town where
training, performances and staging of utiyattam is active and rigorous due to the
presence of several traditional utiyattam communities and training institutes.
Undoubtedly, UNESCO’s declaration seemed to be shaping the cultural form of
utiyattam in complex, new and interesting ways. Although it was a personal experience
that initially piqued my interest in utiyattam, now having been exposed to works of
dance scholars who engaged with race-ing25, gendering, and the politicization of dance
and dancing bodies, my understanding and interests began to incorporate a broader scope,
from the personal to its imbrications within larger socio-political frameworks. In 2007
during my visit to India, I had travelled to Irinjalakkuda, Kerala, to see how utiyattam
was being performed at the time. The vidhushakan “caught” me again, while I was
slipping out of a performance. My dance teacher in Bharatanatyam, who accompanied
me to the performance that night thought she had planned her exit well. However, the
24 At the Vidhushaka Festival in 20 0 at Irinjalakkuda, Kerala (July 30 –Aug 8, 20 0).
25 A term I borrow from Anthea Kraut’s work. She uses the term to indicate how copyright laws undergird a racialized system. See Anthea Kraut, "Race-Ing Choreographic Copyright, " in Worlding Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 76-97.
vidhushakan commented, “City folk pretend they can get away without being noticed!”
My training in Indian Classical Dances, namely Bhartanatyam and Mohiniyttam has provided me a technical framework through which I tend to compare and understand the technique of utiyattam. Although I have not been trained in utiyattam, several students/ teachers of utiyattam have explained the usage of its gestures to help me better follow the story delineation during my fieldwork in 2010. I am especially thankful to
Kalamandalam Sangeetha and Kalamandalam Sindhu for this kindness. My extensive and thorough training in Bharatantyam began when I was four years of age and continued well into my twenties with my official training culminating in a Masters in Performing
Arts in Bharatanatyam from HCU (Hyderabad Central University). I was first trained in
Bharatanatyam, and about fourteen years later in Mohiniyattam as well.26 The gestural language of Mohiniyattam parallels that of utiyattam in some ways, as it follows the same text for gestures, namely, Hastalakhanadeepika. Yet, utiyattam employs gesture in a hyper detailed manner and this seemed to sharpen my sensitized responses to the
Cakyar’s bodily renderings.27 Without deliberation I was also comparing notes on how
26 Bhartanatyam and Mohiniyattam are established solo classical dance forms from Tamil Nadu and Kerala respectively. Mohiniyattam is considered a solo female dance form, while Bharatanatyam incorporates both female and male genders in its practice. Although, I was trained by several teachers in my young age, my Guru with whom I had extended training in both Bharatanatyam and Mohinyattam is Shyamala Surendran, artistic director of Dharnani School of Performing Arts, Kochi, Kerala.
27 For example, the mudra, “hamsapaksha” is used to depict a mountain in both Mohiniyattam and utiyattam. In Mohiniyattam, the mountain is depicted using a comparatively swift movement accompanied with usage of eyes and appropriate body alignment, to represent the width or height. In utiyattam, the same mudra, “hamsapksha”, is used along with specific and detailed breath control, elaborate eye movements, gradually incorporating the entire body. Such a depiction adds rich textures and multiple hues to the “idea” of the mountainand the audience is directed to feel its height, weight,
2 standard mythologies of Ramayana and Mahabharata seemed vastly different between
utiyattam, Mohiniyattam and Bharatanatyam renderings. Typically a single verse of text or a small part of an act is elaborated for days by the male Cakyar or female Nangiar and so the immense scope for dancer-actors personal interpretations of the was exceedingly invigorating to me as a dancer. When the Cakyar nodded his head thoughtfully or sarcastically, I seemed to preempt his next bodily maneuver, a swerve for a change in character or a lift of his eyebrow when he ended his verbal question.
However, the Cakyar often took me by surprise, delivering the most piercing comments in a calm, even careless manner. Where I was expecting dramatic bodily movements that paralleled the weight of his comments, he chose to opine, as if he was making a passing remark, thus making me simultaneously doubt his compelling remarks. The Cakyar switched characters seamlessly with adept changes in gestures, bodily stances, movements, and tones of voice all within the same sentence that he delivered verbally.
Yet, while he created an interesting “other” world within the stage, I was acutely aware that he was watching, observing the audience. Would the Cakyar pick me out again? My mom who had accompanied me on the second day of the Vidhushaka Festival (in August
2010)28 was surreptitiously having a snack of nuts to quell her hunger. She was barely chewing on the nuts, trying hard to escape the Cakyar’s “radar,” and then I heard the darned vidhushakan’s comment—“How will the jury make informed decisions when their mind wanders and they pop stuff into their mouth like this?” He proceeded to mimic breadth, might, etc, such that the body makes a metastory of the “mountain” within the larger play of utiyattam.
3 my mother’s actions, slipping his hand into an imaginary bag and popping a nut in his mouth, chewing, making a crunching sound “karr, karr karr,” not once glancing in her direction! My mom was blushing as red as a beet. Yet this time, rather than being merely attentive to personal remarks, the vidhushakan (as a character whom I had to”seek out”) also prompted larger questions of markets, labor, and its imbrications within heritage economies. Course work as a Ph.D. student at UCR gave me rich opportunities to engage with expert works of dance scholars who argued for the need to attend to the dancing body as a principal rather than subsidiary text, to help significant understandings of the contextual nature of “culture”.29 Reading and discussing Jane Desmond’s "Embodying
Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies," for example, made me aware that it is through the material body that “tenacious categories of identities” such as race, gender, nationality, sexuality, and class are performed. Considerations on outsiders’ interest in the form of utiyattam made me especially attentive to the need to engage the form within broader artistic and globalized socio-cultural implications that utiyattam’s practice as “intangible heritage” mandates. My professors who helped me prepare for my qualifying exams asked to be shown videos of utiyattam as they were unfamiliar with the form. Their thoughts, reactions and inputs have pushed me to think and explore from perspectives beyond my personal considerations limited by the familiarity with the form.
Professor Susan Rose who worked at analyzing performance materials with me, especially videos of the female Nangiar and the male Cakyar, guided me to rethink how
29 Jane Desmond, "Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies," in Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. Jane Desmond, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 997), 49.
4 particular gestures allow performers to bodily craft affects like “sacredness”, “humor,”
“ancientness” and “contemporariness.”
Although my formal fieldwork in utiyattam took place between July 2010 and
December 2010 in Kerala, I began my scholarly investigations in the “field” a few years earlier in 2007, after I commenced course work at UCR. In the summer of 2007, I travelled to Irinjalakkuda, Kerala, where a five day utiyattam manuscript preservation workshop was being held at the Ammannur Chachu Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam. While the morning sessions were devoted to issues of “preservation”, the afternoon sessions presented an array of interesting performances, including koothu and Nangiarkoothu. I began to wonder about the problematics of manuscript preservation given that original dried leaf manuscripts seemed to be owned mostly by caste-specific families. Where would the manuscripts be housed once they were digitally transferred and “preserved” (as recommended by the National Manuscript Mission officials who spoke at the workshop)?
What might the effects of “preservation” be on particular new outside caste artists who do not have ownership of these historical materials? Since only the male was historically allowed to pen these manuscripts that contain acting and stage directions, how and where did women fit within the contexts of “preservation” and ownership--especially since
utiyattam female artists were gaining increases visibility on local, national and international scales? These questions that took their nascent shape in 2007 became my central questions in the first chapter of this dissertation. From numerous performances I witnessed and interviews conducted with utiyattam dancer-actors and scholars in the
5 summer of 2010, I was able to better articulate my understandings. In chapter one, I study interviews with three female scholar performers (both non-caste and caste-specific) as well as a male utiyattam scholar and author to explore particular claims, positions and understandings of authorship, ownership and “preservation” within a collectively practiced art. The well-established female artists whose interviews I explore in this chapter are, Margi Sathi (non-caste performer), Usha Nangiar (hereditary performer) and
KapilaVenu (young, private school, English language educated and non-caste practitioner). I was able to meet with Margi Sathi during a twelve day Nangiarkoothu festival held at Ambalapuzha Srikrishnaswamy Temple held in September of 2010. I met with her on Sep 2, 2010, the day after her opening performance. During the festival, I was also able to dialogue with male utiyattam scholar and writer, Dr. P. Venugopalan, the organizer of the festival. Talks with Dr. P. Venugopalan materialized from a happy chance meeting, while I was conversing with practitioner, Margi Sathi. Interviews with him became a significant source for understanding (lack of) concerns about copyright from a researcher’s perspective. Dr. Venugopalan is the author of Shaktibhadrande
Ascharychoodhamani, a work that brings together for the first time the attaprakaram
(acting manual) for seven acts and the kramadeepika (stage manual) of six acts of
Shaktibhadra’s play Ascharyachoodhamani in Malayalam.30 The work was funded by
UNESCO Japan-Funds-in-trust aid program.
30 P. Venugopalan, Shaktibhadrande Ascharychoodhamani: Sampurnamaya Attaprakaravum ramdeepikayum (Thiruvananthapuram: Margi, 2009).
6 The Nangiarkoothu festival was also a grand opportunity to witness the superb all night performances of Margi Sathi, Kapila Venu, Usha Nangiar, Kalamandalam
Sangeetha, and Kalamndalam Sindhu among other accomplished artists. Each night showcased the work of a single female artist and they typically last three to five hours each. I was fortunate to meet with Margi Sathi at the venue of the festival. However, due to time constraints of other artists that I wished to meet, I had to make alternative arrangements to meet them at a later time and place. These materialized a few months after September 2010 when two of the female artists had returned from their travels and performances. I journeyed to their resident towns in Chathakkudam and Irinjalakkuda.
Travelling to Chathakkudam, where Usha Nangiar resides also enabled me to procure a photocopy of her groundbreaking work in Malayalam, Abhinetri, which is no longer in publication. This work details how female mythical characters are re-imagined and re- worked by Usha Nangiar and thus was tremendously valuable for the purposes of my study. In Irinjalakkuda, I was able to meet with Kapila Venu. All the interviews were conducted in Malayalam, except for my interviews with Kapila Venu which was mostly in English. Since different languages capture ideas differently, speaking with Kapila
Venu in “local” English allowed for another layer of interpretation in my writing process.
Interviews with female practitioners helped me piece together understandings and questions regarding “preservation” and ownership that I had begun formulating after attending the manuscript workshop at Irinjalakkuda in 2007. I place these analyses in conversation with information and opinions I gathered in 2010 from utiyattam scholar- performers and writers previously mentioned. I weave these materials from interviews
7 with theoretical frameworks on appropriation, authorship and copyright law within contexts of intangible cultural heritages.31 Transcribing interview materials for the chapter required significant work of translation from Malayalam into English as well as active interpretations. The mentioned master artists were generous in giving their time to express their complex points of view. The transcribed material in the four interviews mentioned in chapter one has been culled from roughly 8 hours of conversations. After going through interviews multiple times, I had to considerably limit my choice of citations so as to maintain topical focus while attempting to retain hesitations and differences in opinion. I have tried to interpret artists and scholars opinions by staying as close as possible to their words, pointing at discomforts and highlighting possible misinterpretations. In this chapter, I also draw from my personal memories and notes of the staged performances these artists presented at the Nangiarkoothu festival.
During my stay at the Srikrishna Lodge in Ambalapuzha (close in location to where the Nangiarkoothu festival took place), student artist Kalamandalam Sangeetha with whom I shared a room for a few days, made me privy to her own practice sessions
3 Anthea Kraut, "Race-Ing Choreographic Copyright, " in Worlding Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) ,76-97. " Stealing Steps" and Signature Moves: Embodied Theories of Dance as Intellectual Property." Theater Journal 62, no.2 (20 0): 73- 89. Rosemary J. Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law, Post-Contemporary Interventions (Durham: Duke University Press, 998), James W. Child,"The Moral Foundations of Intangible Property, " in Intellectual Property: Moral, Legal, and International Dilemmas, ed. Adam D.Moore (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 997), 57 -80. Diana Taylor, "Performance Studies and Intangible Cultural Heritage," in The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, ed. Tracy C. Davis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
8 prior to her performance at the festival. I watched her as she made specific decisions on how to interpret text, mapping them on her body. Several teacher-artists, including
Kalamandalam Sindhu and Margi Usha, spent the night with us in the lodge after their respective performances. Our extensive informal talks, have significantly informed the formulation of my opinions regarding individual work and my analyses of “ownership” and access. Although I have not specifically mentioned each artists’ personal opinions, my encounters with them have undoubtedly shaped my understandings of how (young) women operate as performers and creators of the art of utiyattam. The long talks held in our small room extended well into early hours of the next morning. These discussions
(for which I was mostly a silent listener) included critiquing each evening’s
Nangiarkoothu performances and dissecting them in detail. These naturally occurring conversations allowed me a unique opportunity to gain a clearer understanding of how artists themselves “value” the technique of utiyattam. I also became privy to stories and gossip on artists’ lives, their struggles, accomplishments, relationships. These chat sessions have thus greatly enriched my speculations on how personal, political, quotidian and glamorized aspects of artists’ lives matter and do not matter to understandings of
utiyattam. The numerous moments of shared laughter and the admonishments I kept receiving to go to bed and be well rested for each evening’s performance (due to my advancing stage of pregnancy) have been endearing and much appreciated.
In my ethnographic accounts, throughout the dissertation, I have particularly drawn inspiration from Kamala Visweswaran’s treatment of “experimental ethnography”
9 that allocates space for a feminist questioning of its own assumptions in her Fictions of
Feminist Ethnography.32 Here the “’pursuit of the other’ becomes problematic, not taken for granted”, thus tolerating ruptures in opinions, making spaces for communication and, even more importantly, relieving me of the mission of “total understanding and representation.”33 The surprising gap between the urgent need to “preserve” ancient manuscripts written by male Cakyars (concerns expressed in the manuscript workshop of
2007) and the lack of concern for authorial rights of currently expressed by female artists who have penned down their own attaprakarams and enacted them on stage them is a telling difference that I investigate in this dissertation. The fact that private, family owned manuscripts are simultaneously considered to be “universal” intellectual property,” constitute a paradox, that even when dismissed by most utiyattam artists, as it could reveal, as I will argue reveal who gets to be part of the universal framework and who remains excluded.
My memories of performances, talks with student artists, and notes from workshops I attended in 2007 continued to serve as a springboard to better frame my research questions during the two years of course work at UCR and the writing of my project in preparation for fieldwork in 2010. In addition to the manuscript preservation workshop in 2007, I also attended a utiyattam performance workshop at a public school
32 Kamala Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 995), 20.
33 Ibid., 20.
20 in Tripunithura, Kerala. Here, I had the opportunity to witness a Nangiarkoothu
performance of scholar and performer Indu G. The powerful solo performance of the
female Nangiar in utiyattam greatly intrigued me. It was well attended, well received
and much applauded. The audience was comprised mostly of urban locals in the city of
Tripunithura. In contrast, the (manuscript) workshop which took place in Irinjalakkuda, a
rural area, was attended mainly by locals Irinjalakkuda and a few foreigners
(Westerners). Film, theater and Indology international specialists, amidst high quality
film equipment, were present. I took note of the audiences’ demographic difference (rural
and urban, national and international) at these two performance sites where utiyattam
was presented for distinct purposes. Throughout the dissertation, I explore these
differences in audiences composition in terms of who artists labor for, how, and to what
ends.
During course work at the Critical Dance Studies doctoral program at UCR, Priya
Srinivasan’s seminal work, "The Bodies beneath the Smoke or What's Behind the
Cigarette Poster: Unearthing Kinesthetic Connections in American Dance History,"
introduced me to the concept of “bodily archives” and to how performing bodies make
visible cultural danced labor.34 Srinivasan’s work, on Nautch women from India brings
to light the historical appropriation and marketing of performing bodies that operate as
“real” goods rather than ephemeral traces when presented to American audiences via the
34 Priya Srinivasan, "The Bodies beneath the Smoke or What's Behind the Cigarette Poster: Unearthing Kinesthetic Connections in American Dance History." Discourses in Dance 4, no. (2007): -39.
2 white body of Ruth St. Denis. As a result, appropriation and transmission of living dancers embodied labors are simultaneously enabled and invisibilized.35 Srinivasan’s among other dance scholars greatly helped me articulate questions pertaining to gendered and casticized cultural danced labor. At the time, I also began to follow closely following press reports on utiyattam published in The Hindu, a widely circulated newspaper in
India. In 2006, Nottam, a popular Malayalam film on utiyattam, bagged the Kerala State
Film Award. While utiyattam was becoming a site of post nationalist cultural specatcularization, the media intervened in specific ways to construct the modern and the
“traditional” ideal citizen via the body of the female performer of utiyattam. The overt visibilzation of the female utiyattam performer in the public sphere and the paradoxical limitations of caste and gender to which women are subjected within the private religious sphere of the temple posed an intriguing scenario to understand how Woman is being constructed via utiyattam in post nationalist India. Drawing from works on practices of cultural and abstracted citizenship36 and establishing connections with cultural labor plus the workings of class and race in uityattam as it enters the world patrimony of intangible heritages thus drove my inquiries in chapter two. While in chapter one I explore the implications of utiyattam’s “universalization” for female authorial rights, in chapter two I explore the implications of notions of the “ideal” Indian citizen (operating in globalization) for women’s cultural and performing rights. I study in particular, how
35 Srinivasan, 3.
36 Anupama Roy, Tejaswinn Niranjana, Susie Tharu, Toby Miller, Seyla Benhabib
22 women subtly manipulate public and private spheres, incurring and deflecting victimization as they strategically negotiate Hindu and democratic contradictory pulls inherent to cultural citizenship in contemporary India. In chapter two, I make extensive use of journalistic reports on utiyattam, published in The Hindu, a nationally circulated
English newspaper in India. I also discuss at length, an award winning film of
utiyattam, and bring in interview materials into conversation, focusing on artists’ reactions to utiyattam’s portrayal in the media. In my attempts at articulating my multiple strands of thought, I have drawn from media studies, cultural studies, dance studies literature as well as postcolonial studies that focus on Kerala.Toby Miller’s work
Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism Consumerism and Television in a Neoliberal Age on the role that the media and consumerism play in the making of cultural citizenship in globalization influenced my view on utiyattam’s media coverage and cinematic representations. Miller argues that the media, and in particular television actively intervene in the politics of knowledge concerning production. Aligning with current business shifts, the media contribute on how commodities come to be, while delivering knowledge on what should be consumed.37 The way in which consumers (of media) in a globalized context are crafted for purposes of nation building and shaping of citizenship helped me understand how utiyattam as a site of national, mediatic spectacularization obscure female artists and performance rights was a useful vantage point for me in exploring how media like the newspaper and cinema intervenes to shape the post national
37 Toby Miller, Cultural Citzenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism and Television in a Neoliberal Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 2- 5.
23 citizen of India. I particularly try to understand how utiyattam as a site of national spectacularization obscures female artistic and performance rights and their status as post national Indian citizens. News, films and live performances of utiyattam feed each other, creating a culturally specific object of consumption that foregrounds “tradition” as national culture while pushing actual woman’s cultural labor into exclusion. Nottam, the above mentioned film shows how specific ideals of gender and caste are constructed subtly endorsing Hindutva—that is, India as democratic and Hindu. I present these materials and the paradoxical figures of traditional/modern Indian women alongside first hand interviews with Margi Sathi, Usha Nangiar and Dr. P Venugopalan to learn how
utiyattam artists and scholars actively shape cultural citizenship to avail themselves of artistic and activist rights. These interviews were conducted in Malayalam and I have transcribed and translated them into English, trying to pay close attention to artists’ view points. Their intelligence and insightfulness at navigating t his complex terrain have rendered it hard for me to traverse. I remain anxious about my ability to present their views while crafting my own linear narrative. Translating specific Malayalam terms has often been challenging in trying to capture the flavor and richness of the intended idea with English words and I have often stumbled upon awkward moments in my writing process.
My third and final chapter brings to a head my current inquiries pursued in chapter one and chapter two. Here I examine more closely how moral concerns over claims to ownership and to gendered and casticized cultural labor rights intersect with
24 racism as utiyattam operates as intangible heritage. Given that the vidhushaka is purported to perform “contemporariness,” linking the mythical with the here and now ,38 his receding presence in utiyattam live performances is intriguing. I try to understand the vidhushaka’s lack of marketability in heritage economies, as well as his local appeal in the name of “universalization.” but have to be maintained locally in the name of
“universalization.” In chapter two, I explore utiyattam’s precarious position between the secular and the sacred spheres arguing that representations of “ideal” Indian femininity in the media are practices of cultural citizenship informed and forged by an interplay of the two spheres. In chapter three, I build on this notion to understand how, under the premises of ICH (Intangible Cultural Heritages) a blurring of the secular and the sacred enables the disarticulation of utiyattam’s cultural labors from the dancing body as
utiyattam operates as ICH (Intangible Cultural Heritage). I examine how the (visual)
“difference” of the vidhushaka’s material dancing body navigates, parleys with and is subjectified to a process of racialization. Studying where the vidhushaka does/does not perform allows me to glimpse matters of pedagogy and representation of artistic process in utiyattam. How is utiyattam packaged for circulation, by shunning the vidhushakan? How do (male) artists and scholars infuse new “value” to the craft of the vidhushaka? Why is the vidhushaka maintained nationally even as he is refused internationally? How does a sanskritized pedagogy and representation of uityattam uncomfortably fit into the Hindu democratic nationalistic agenda? How does an honoring
38 See G. Venu Production of a Play in utiyattam, 9
25 of that which is eschewed—the vidhushaka--point to a symptom of racism? In chapter three, I also ponder on indigenous artists’ moral rights which I touched upon in chapter one. Here I study how moral rights and (collective) ownership concerns intersect as
utiyatttam enters a racialized system of “universalization.” Since only the men don the vidhushaka character in utiyattam (at least currently), I have chosen to use interviews with male respondents to understand why the elusive vidhushaka, the one who makes
utiyattam contemporary, cannot be found easily on proscenium stages and how artists who bodily enact the vidhushaka opine about this.
I gain a clearer understanding of these questions by bringing the intimate process of conversations (via interview) to the center of my investigations. Opinions of male scholars, performers, and activists, namely Dr. K.G. Paulose, G.Venu, and Margi Madhu, are analyzed and explored. Two of these interviews that address the paradox of the vidhushakan were conducted in Malayalam. Again, in the process of translation from
Malayalam, I try to highlight possible misinterpretations as a way to remind myself readers and myself of my intersubjective position as “ethnographer.” The recorded interview material l transcribed for developing my study of the vidhushakan consisted of about seven hours of conversation material. In this chapter as well as in previous ones, I have struggled with the decision to use real names or pseudonyms in order to protect artists’ identities. The level of education of utiyattam artists has enabled them to author books in uityattam in Malayalam. I study interviewees’ written works (which I cite) in relation to their live interviews. Thus their identities have been revealed. I remain
26 concerned about how my interpretations will be received by these scholars and artists
(even though permission was obtained from them during interviews) and I hope that rather than pointing at personal views, interview materials will help understand flawed systems such as the racialization and nationalization processes in which utiyattam is imbricated. I position the interviews on the vidhushakan at the intersections of studies in neo- orientalism, and particularly Amercian orientalism, race studies, and dance studies, all of which helped me better understand the contexts within which utiyattam gains currency.
By the time the interviews I use in my final chapter were conducted, in December
2010, I was approaching my due date of delivery. Often, respondents were attentive to my uneasiness at sitting long conversations. They enquired if I needed a break, or a drink of water. I am appreciative of their thoughtfulness. In addition to interviews, I also draw upon my memories and experiences as an audience member to two full-fledged
utiyattam plays at Moozhikkulam, Kerala. The stagings of Mayaseethankam and
Balivadham lasted eighteen days from Aug 1 to Aug 18 of 2010. I was able to attend five of the eighteen days, accompanied by my daughter and mother. The staging and documentation of the entire plays were funded by the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and were attended by several Theater, Performance and Sanskrit Studies students from Israel.
My encounters with them, although not addressed in detail, have contributed to the analysis of international audiences’ assessment of utiyattam’s value presented in the final chapter. Full -fledged utiyattam performances began each day around 7.00 pm and
27 lasted past midnight. I travelled each day accompanied by my mother and daughter for about three hours to attend these extraordinary performances. Travelling alone was not an option as it was considered unwise and dangerous to do so at late night hours. These were taxing journeys that however enriched my fieldwork with my mother’s observations and my daughter’s innocent but pertinent questions: Why did men speak so much more than women? Why did a character have to “die” for so long on stage? Such questions have served me as a pointer as to how utiyattam is staged for consumption today.39
Finally, and most importantly, I also wish to highlight thoughout my dissertation the commendable ways in which utiyattam performing bodies create new meanings and carve effectice ways of living while operating within national and international contexts.
In this dissertation, I have interpreted their many accomplishments through a particular lens, informed by my research interests focusing on notions of notions of ownership, practices of cultural citizenship and the operation of racism. Ella Shohat in her article,
“Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge” brilliantly argues that a PC (politically correct) multiculturalism within a framework of “global plurality of cultures” could easily result in sliding back to a false dichotomy of modernity versus tradition.”40 Therefore in order to re-articulate “traditional” ritual performances, I think it
39 When multiple characters, male and female appear on stage together, the female has hardly any line to speak, while the men speak profusely. In Balivadham (Death of Bali), the character Bali enacts his death via controlled techniques of breath and the death scene can be enacted for an extended duration (usually depending in the ability of the actor).
40 Ella Shohat, “Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge,” Social Text 72 20, no.3 (2002): 67-9.
28 is crucial to understand them within a relational web of discourses, so as to avoid a theory/practice binary where even as performers in the case of udiyattam, undo essentializing myths (of “irrevelant, past, static, tradition”), scholars, particularly western and western-influenced scholars re-ify these myths and binaries. This has also been my difficulty in writing this dissertation--that in trying to undo an aura of “tradition” and
“ritual” and understanding it in current contexts, I have had to explain numerous
Malayalam terms and certain culturally specific customs and practices, that my writing could unwittingly pose the possibility of re-ification of binaries—tradition vs modern.
29 Chapter One: Female Authorial Rights and the ntangible Heritage of utiyattam
Upper-caste middle class women practitioners of utiyattam are making huge gains in terms of global visibility and national gains. This seems to be the case for both
Nangiars who are caste-specific hereditary practitioners and non-hereditary practitioners.
Yet, their cultural and, more specifically, authorial rights have received a severe backlash. In this chapter, I argue that since utiyattam started operating as “Intangible
Heritage,” female practitioners face contradictory situations. On the one hand, entry of the art form into the world-heritage economy has enabled women artists to consciously challenge gender stereotypes, by penning their own acting manuals traditionally considered a male domain.41 On the other hand, real possibility of loss of authorial claims to these works (that are bodily performed and written down in text) has emerged as the practice of utiyattam is “safeguarded” by UNESCO and ownership of the art (as intangible property) is transferred to “humanity”. Women artists, including non-caste specific members, gain increased visibility as utiyattam operates globally as Intangible
Heritage. However, while they are able to labor, perform, create and author their own works, they are also undermined as equal co-owners of the cultural heritage of
utiyattam. Boatema Boateng in, The Copyright Thing Doesn’t Work Here identifies a distinction between “creators” and “owners” of a work as an important feature of current
4 For example, Usha Nangiar and Margi Sathi, famous female practitioners of utiyattam have recently penned their own acting manual challenging gender stereotypes of male privileges for authoring acting manuals that detail choreography and linguistic privileges, and questioning normatively ascribed language usages of Sanskrit for the male actor and of Prakrit, for the female actress.
30 Intellectual Property Law.42 She explains that since individuals are increasingly unable to
economically fund their own creative works, corporations, businesses, and universities
that have the resources to fund these creative processes become legal owners of these
works. This is inspite of Intellectual Property Laws being designed to protect the works
of individual creators. Instead organizations like the university and business corporations
take on the identity of personhood and thus attain status as owners of creative works. I
draw from Boateng’s distinction between “creator” and “owner”, in employing the terms
“author” and “owner” in the case of utiyattam. However, rather than economics and
funding being the premise for such a distinction, caste and hereditary rights in utiyattam
become the premise to distinguish “author” from “owner” as Kutiyattam operates as ICH
(intangible cultural heritage).
Diana Taylor, in her seminal work, “Performance Studies and Intangible
Heritage,” critiques current UNESCO archival approaches adopted to revive or transmit
live performance cultures designated as “Intangible Cultural Heritage” (ICH).43
Safeguarding paradoxically implies the loss of cultural agency, which includes
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) when practices are valued as “heritage” and ownership
42 Boatema Boateng, The Copyright Things Doesn’t Work Here (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 20 ), 7-9. Boateng also points out that Intellectual Property laws create property rights in intangible cultural goods allowing them to be conducive for commercial exchange and making them vulnerable to questions of “ownership” and “exploitation.” See ibid.,7
43Diana Taylor, "Performance Studies and Intangible Cultural Heritage," in The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, ed. Tracy C. Davis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). For example, Taylor disagrees to the argument by Mounir Bouchenaki, Assistant Director-General for culture) who believes that translating living practices into “materiality” (via documentation and other archival methods) could be a viable option to “safeguard “ these practices from extinction.
3 is transferred from a specific community to “humanity.”44 Taylor’s argument is further complicated by looking at how in utiyattam increased visibility allows some artists increased agency (via increased practice and authorship of utiyattam works), as it disallows ownership of the practice of utiyattam. Hegemonic sociopolitical systems of caste in India together with cultural capital (that favors the West) in a global arena dictate differential access to ancient and current documented materials. These dynamics, in conjunction, leave the local outsider45 of Kerala bereft of ownership to the culture s/he labors for. This results in a morally justified bifurcation between ownership and authorship of the practice of utiyattam as it circulates as Intangible Heritage.
Legal, cultural, and economic disarticulations/maskings enable locally performed art to become “universal” and globally circulated. Seeking to counter unproblematized disarticulations where product is favored over process/practice/place (in the circulation of world dances), and to challenge the hegemony of Western capital, Marta Savigliano in
“Dance in Asia, Dances from Asia (On World-ing Asian Dance)” proposes a “place based analysis.”46 This might help trace the actual labor of Asian dancers as they shift between positionalities that consume “Asianness” as “high art” and or as a mass cultural product.
44 Taylor, "Performance Studies and Intangible Cultural Heritage." 97-98.
45 By local outsider, I mean the non-hereditary-caste-artist of Kerala.
46 Marta Savigliano, "Dance IN Asia, Dances FROM Asia (on World-Ing Asian Dance). Invited Presentation at The "Contemporary Dance in Asia: Mapping out a Discourse"." Yogjakarta: international workshop, Sanatanadharma University, 2008.
32 My (“place-based”) ethnographic fieldwork in Kerala, India complicated my assumptions of “loss” of intellectual property and what this means to local utiyattam practitioners of Kerala. Prior to my fieldwork, I assumed that UNESCO’S declaration of
utiyattam as “Universal Property of Humankind” translated into broader public access to archived knowledges of utiyattam, especially those archived with the help of government (or public and international) aid.47 UNESCO touts this categorization,
“Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Human Heritage,” as a way to safe guard
utiyattam.48 Old acting manuals and manuscripts are held as closely guarded private property by families that own them. UNESCO and the Indian government have supposedly digitized these acting and stage manuals called attaprakaram and kramadeepika respectively and archived them for the benefit of humankind.49 Both the attaprakaram and kramadeepika are considered as choreographic texts of utiyattam that provide detailed nuanced instructions for enacting and interpretation of texts and hence are considered the “real performance texts” of utiyattam.50 However, via fieldwork and numerous interviews I have come to understand that instead of broader /”universal”
47 “where practices are viewed as “heritages” and ownership is transferred from a specific community to “humanity”, Diana Taylor, "Performance Studies and Intangible Cultural Heritage," 97-98.
48 "UNESCO World Heritage Center: What Does it Mean for a Site to be Inscribed on a List?" UNESCO.org, http://whc.unesco.org/en/faq (accessed Novemeber 20, 20 ).
49 Attaprakarams are acting manuals that describe in detail methods of performances such as gesture,elaboration, recitative mode, bodily movements, etc. ramadeepika are stage manuals that describe matters of stage organization like stage production, costumes, payment to artistes and such. See P.Venugopalan, utiyattam Register (Thiruvananthapuram:Margi), 23.
50 See ibid., 22
33 access to documented material, there is narrower differential access to archived and documented materials of utiyattam, favoring caste-specific performers. Cakyar and
Nangiar as well as international and westernized clients are favored while local
“outsider” student/ client are increasingly limited.51 This situation rigidifies rather than blurs caste differentialities in the otherwise socialist state of Kerala, India.52
Furthermore, it complicates my assumptions of what the UNESCO declaration implies in terms of intellectual rights, specifically for female artistic and authorial rights. What is/is not at stake in terms of claims to “ownership” of “traditional” knowledges for current local practitioners of utiyattam as they negotiate between local and global dance market requirements? How does “universalization” of a local cultural practice (differentially) narrow, rather than broaden access to archived knowledges, and more specifically, to
(ancient family owned) written acting manuals that are now supposedly digitized? It is these questions that I would like to address and grapple with in this chapter.
In order to understand how individual works might or might not be protected, or open for appropriation in the name of “universal” property, I draw from first hand interviews and dialogues I had with three female practitioners between September and
December 2010. The practitioners are, Margi Sathi, (senior, upper-caste, non- hereditary
5 Cakyar is a male caste-based utiyattam practitioner and Nangiar is a female caste-based utiyattam practitioner. The Nangiar occupies a caste positionality below the Cakyar. Both are considered upper- caste Hindus.
52 Kerala was the first democratically elected communist state ( 957) in the world. Communism in Kerala enabled major social upheavals in the fight for social equality against caste and class discriminations. See N. Krishnaji, “Kerala Milestones: On the Parliamentary Road to Socialism,” Economic and PoliticaL Weekly 42, no. 23 (2007): 2 70.
34 performer), Kapila Venu (young, Englished, non-hereditary, upper-caste performer), and
Usha Nangiar (senior, caste-specific performer). These interviews occupy the center- stage of my chapter as I engage with their views and opinions through my own interpretations. These choices in my feminist ethnographic writing are intended to make space for readers to reinterpret what the artists have to say. In some instances, I also hope to question my own analyses (beyond the moments when discrepancies with their views surface) via the interplay dialogues and interpretations. Each interviewee adopts a different strategy in connection to their positionalities as hereditary or non-hereditary performer. In the first interview the intervention of a male utiyattam scholar reframes particular artistic and scholarly interests. I parse them in order to understand how their placements of “value” are entwined with questions of moral rights, cultural rights and individual rights. How do these entangling issues point toward or away from issues of
“ownership”?
I arrive in India on July 2, 2010. On July 4, 2010, I attend the “Vidhushaka
Festival” at Irinjalakkuda, Kerala.53 I attend the all night performances (that lasts from
7.00 pm to 2.00 am) for two consecutive nights. By the third night, the mosquito bites that accompany the performances make my body break out into an uncontrollable rash. I am in my early stages of pregnancy and I have to make an emergency visit to a clinic a few miles away. The doctor instructs that it is critical at this point that I travel as less as
53 Vidhushakan is the jester or comic figure in utiyattam. The jester performs solo verbal renditions that interpret and translate the play to be enacted. His performance can last from a few hours to a few days depending on the play.
35 possible and stay indoors until my bodily rashes have calmed down. She also instructs that I undertake no long road trips until my twentieth-twenty fourth week of pregnancy is completed. According to the obstetrician gynecologist (OBGYN), my body will be more resilient to the new environmental conditions by then. The “foreign” environment, she presumes could be a reason for the allergic breakout. I am on cortisone shots to alleviate my rashes.
After getting a second opinion from another gynecologist, my travels for field work are stalled for about five weeks. I wait impatiently, working on calming the allergies. It reminds me how unpredictable the body can be. It is also ironic how my body is deemed medically and politically “foreign”. I was born and raised in India for twenty two years before I moved to the United States. Even more interesting is how the period of four to six months--twenty to twenty four weeks-- seems to be of significance from a medical and political perspective. While my OBGYN states that my (pregnant) body will need about six months to adapt to the “foreign” environment (Kerala’s tropical climate), my visa papers state that I am granted an Indian visa for six months. If my plans to reside extend beyond the allotted period I will need to exit the borders of the country to renew my visa or pay a hefty fee ($400) to petition an extension as a “Person of Indian Origin”.
During my five week medically imposed hiatus, I make arrangements to stay for twelve days at Ambalapuzha for the upcoming Sri Krishna festival. My mother insists that she has to see and approve of the lodge where I stay before I confirm arrangements.
My mother and seven year old daughter travel with me in a taxi from Kochi city to
36 Ambalapuzha (which is about a three hour bumpy and perilous drive).54 I plan to stay at the Sri Krishna Lodge located right next to the famous Srikrishna Swamy Temple at
Ambalapuzha. My daughter had initially planned to stay with me for the twelve day festival. However, the incessant sting of mosquitoes, wet bathrooms and musty rooms quickly drive her to quickly choose to return to the comfort of ammamma (grandma’s) apartment in Kochi. My mother implores the land lady (of the lodge) to take extra care of me while I am out all night for the performances. The land lady’s concerned demeanor and verbal assurances seem to calm my mother’s anxieties a little. She reluctantly leaves.
Being accompanied by my mother and daughter, rather than arriving by myself serves to make my presence at the lodge culturally acceptable to Kavitha, the land lady.
She seemed quite curt over the phone, while I was trying to make arrangements for the twelve days of the festival. However, now in response to my mother’s questions and concerns regarding my stay and safety, Kavitha is very forthcoming. She begins to recount loving memories of her late mother. This encounter, where I am accompanied by my mother (and daughter) perhaps helps her to forge a link between us and her. She mentions that she does not personally involve herself with other visitors like international art enthusiasts, students, or devotees who stay at the lodge during the festival season at the temple. In addition, despite a hectic schedule (which constitutes managing a steady
54 Roads between Kochi and Ambalapuzha have become increasingly heavy in traffic since my past visit in 2007. The number of road collisions has increased exponentially in the past few years and several road signs in English display cautionary warnings such as “danger zone,” “accident zone”, “Haste makes waste,” etc.
37 stream of visitors, their hospitality requirements and such, Kavitha voluntarily makes arrangements to escort me back and forth from the Nangiarkoothu performances at the temple which conclude around 2.00 am. The Sri Krishna Lodge is only a stone’s throw away from the Srikrishna Swamy Temple, yet I feel thankful knowing I do not have to walk unaccompanied on the lonely, pitch dark roads at 2.00 am from the temple to the lodge.
Kerala is notorious for female harassment, often referred to as “eve-teasing”.
Groping and lewd comments are an “everyday experience” for most females in public spaces like buses, bus stations, trains, railway stations, movie theaters, etc. This is in spite of high literacy (92%, including females), low mortality and high life expectancy rates that the state boasts of.55 While growing up in Kerala, my friends and I have often experienced such humiliating situations. I quickly learnt the art of deflecting sexual bodily assaults, (especially while walking in crowded streets), by well-timed bodily maneuvers such as quick turns, twists, and creating temporary shields (with text books or bags) to protect my breasts, butt and vagina. In fact, if you have mastered this art of deflection, a walk on busy streets in Kerala could be an effective work out that enhances
55 The Official Web Portal of Government of Kerala, "Literacy Rate 20 ," http://www.kerala.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4007&Itemid=3 87 (accessed October 2, 20 2).
38 your reflexes and flexibility—a form of dance that should be, in my opinion, included within the ever-increasing “classical” dance canon in India.56
I check into Sri Krishna Lodge, Ambalapuzha in Kerala in the afternoon of Sep 1,
2010. Close to sunset there begins a huge procession on the road right in front of the lodge, leading to the temple grounds. The procession consists of boys and girls between the ages of one and ten dressed up as Krishna and his lover Radha, accompanied by their parents and relatives. People from different parts of Kerala come here to participate in this procession as an offering to Lord Krishna, the deity of this popular temple. I can view the procession from the balcony of the lodge. Several thousands of people take part in the procession. The temple road is lined with shops displaying devotional and worship ware, music CDs, books, mobile phones and cheap Chinese toys and electronic goods.
Curious young girls at the lodge enquire (in Malayalam) where I am from and what my name is. My response of “Elizabeth” makes them visibly startled and they begin whispering among themselves. They seem unsure how to respond to my perceived
Christian bodily presence within the temple grounds.57 I smile at them and they perhaps
56 The Soumya rape and murder case in Kerala (20 ) where a female was thrown out of a moving train, robbed and raped and the gang rape and murder case in Delhi 20 2 (on a moving bus) are but two instances out of thousands that have gained public attention. See “At a Glance: Saumya Rape and Murder Case,” The Hindu, November , 20 , http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/kerala/at-a-glance- soumya-rape-and-murder-case/article26 8029.ece (accessed Nov , 20 ). "Delhi Rape Victim's Condition Deteriorates, Say Doctors," The Hindu, December 8, 20 2, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/delhi-rape-victims-condition-deteriorates-say- doctors/article42 40 6.ece (accessed December 8, 20 2).
57 Non-Hindus are not allowed to enter temple premises, especially the shrine, in Kerala. Most temples explicitly deny (via statements on sign boards), entry to non-Hindus. If a non-Hindu is caught within
39 decide to befriend me anyway. One of the older teenaged girls, Devu, offers to walk with me to the natakasala (theater stage) where the utiyattam performances are scheduled to begin by 9.00 pm.58 She is busy giving “missed calls” on her mobile phone to her friends who are not yet at the temple for the festival, waving and talking to acquaintances she meets on the way, and conversing with me at the same time. Mosquitos buzz around and feast upon us if we linger, if our bodies are still even a few moments. Soon my material body is itching beyond the boundaries of bearable and is screaming to leave the venue of the natakasala while the intense drum calls of the mizhavu, suck me into the audience space. I have to see, I have to hear, I have to feel. The opening night performance is by the famous Nangiarkoothu artist Margi Sathi.59 She is one of the most popular female
utiyattam practitioners in India today. She is a non-hereditary performer and has authored her own attaprakaram (acting manual) titled SriRamacharitam
Nangiarammakoothu. Traditionally, attaprakarams could be penned only by the male cakyar as part of their caste rights. Sathi was also featured in the award winning Keralan movie Nottam, in which she played the role of a Nangiar artist, thus making her familiar to the public eye in Kerala as well. temple premises, they are not only asked to leave, but temple premises are purified with water and prayers. However, presence of westerners or “white bodies”, I am told now is often not considered as traumatic as Indian non-Hindus. I am careful to clearly saty away from the shrine area.
58 Most utiyattam performances within temples are performed in specially constructed temple-theaters called uthambalam. At the Srikrishna Swamy temple, a similar structure called the natakasala (drama space) will showcase the Nangiarkoothu performances for the next twelve days.
59 Nangiarkoothu is the solo female performance in utiyattam. The dancer-actress usually performs self- interpretations of Sri rishna Caritam or the Story of Krishna.
40 The lamp is lit by the mizhavu (drum) players and Sathi begins her marayil kriya
(rituals behind the curtain).60 Only her feet are visible to the audience at this point. The audiences-- varying widely in age between infants, youngsters, adults and elderly people who appear between ages eighty and ninety-- settle down on the floor mats. The night’s
Nangiarkoothu performance is part of the temple festivities and audience members are relaxed and casual in demeanor. Some older folks lay down on the grass mats, while little children run about. This is a marked difference from utiyattam performances in secular proscenium settings where the audience is bodily disciplined—sitting straight up, often on chairs, silent, seemingly attentive, very much akin to westernized concert etiquette. I pick a spot among the rest of the audience to settle cross-legged on the grass mat. Infants cry in the background while their mothers tend to them. The intense drum calls drown the audience noises and call for their attention.
Sathi’s appearance is arresting, her corporeal presence compelling with strong foot stamps, high lifts of the thighs and fluidly moving mudras. Her Nangiar head gear called mudi, is expertly crafted from wood, and embellished with silver pendants and golden bands. Her golden ornaments and red and white attire (mostly new additions to the Nangiar costuming) create beautiful hues in the lamp light.61 Sathi’s facial
60 Mizhavu is the main percussion instrument of utiyattam. Traditionally male members of the Nambiar caste play the mizhavu, while female members of the same caste called Nangiars play female roles in utiyattam. The mizhavu player closely follows the artists’ hyper-nuanced bodily movements like mudra usage, eye and head movements, while seated behind the actor on stage.
6 For details see Nirmala Paniker’s Nangiarkoothu: The Classical Dance-Theatre of the Nangiars, (Irinjalakkuda: Natanakairali, 2005), 38.
4 expressions, detailed and hyper-intricate are even more amplified with the light of the oil lamp. She skillfully and elaborately enacts the nirvahanam, events prior to Sri Krishna
Avataram- the incarnation/birth of Krishna. On stage right, Dr. Venugopal (the organizer of this festival and a scholar of utiyattam) uses a mike to give a running commentary in
Malayam (the language spoken in Kerala) explaining what is being performed by Sathi.
This sort of commentary is a relatively new (and distracting) addition in the presentation of utiyattam in Kerala. The audiences are continually directed via this commentary towards the meaning-making of the art- a maneuver which I think is symptomatic of trying to make utiyattam, which is deemed a “universal heritage”, intelligible at the locality where it is practiced.62 During my prior visit to Kerala in 2007, presentation technique even in the metropolitan city of Kochi was limited to brief verbal summaries and printed outlines of the story. In Kochi city, the presence of non-Malayalam speaking peoples (especially from other parts of India) is significant. Therefore it was surprising that presentation techniques (in 2010) at Ambalapuzha for a mostly Malayali audience entailed more interpretation than for an unrbanized audience in Kochi (in 2007).63
Nangiarkoothu is a solo female performance and the Nangiar enacts multiple characters, including male characters. Sathi takes a good portion of the performance time (about an hour and a half) to explore the character of Kamsa, the evil king who is destined to die by the hands of little Krishna. Kamsa’s life is dealt with sympathetically by Sathi. His
62 The highly codified gestures of utiyattam seem to need “decoding” even for the local audiences who are generally uninitiated in utiyattam’s gestural language.
63 The performance took place at an English medium private school in Tripunithura, Kochi.
42 abandonment in the jungle by his royal parents and his emotional longings to be cared by his family are enacted by Sathi. “Kamsa” watches (from afar) his parents play with his half-sister Devaki. Here Sathi highlights a very humanistic part of the otherwise normatively retold story of the evil demon king. This is a refreshing twist to Kamsa’s story. Since childhood I have mostly seen Kamsa categorized simplistically via different cultural mediums (like the popular Amar Chitra atha Comics, television series and classical dances forms of Bharatanatyam and Mohiniyattam) as the demonic/evil king.
The attaprakaram for Sri rishna Caritam as given in Nirmala Paniker’s Nangiarkoothu:
The Classical Dance-Theatre of the Nangiars does not mention such a sympathetic treatment of Kamsa.64 So this individual conceptualization via Sathi’s dancing body serves to re-write Kamsa’s character in this performance. Sitting on a stool called peetham, Sathi elaborates through detailed facial expression and codified mudra usage how each weapon is sharpened by Kamsa as he prepares for battle with his father King
Ugrasena. This ritual of preparing weapons is called padayorukkal. The bodily cadences of Sathi’s movements and the sounds of the mizhavu are intense, powerful, and violent.
Sathi’s brows, cheeks and upper lips hold beads of sweat that glisten. Her facial muscles, including cheeks, chin, brows, eye lids, pupils, temples, forehead, and lips move expertly, intricately. The conclusion of the first night’s performance (which lasted over six hours), is marked by a privileged ceremony for Sathi, a Nangiar by virtue of performance, not caste. She receives prasadam (food offered to the Gods) in her hands and rings the
64 Paniker, Nangiarkoothu, 59 -8 .
43 temple bells, a privilege otherwise strictly reserved only for the priest called the pujari/thanthri who is a male Brahmin. At the Ambalapuzha Srikrishna Swamy temple,
Sathi, female and a non Nangiar can avail of this privilege, because she has just performed Nangiarkoothu and is temporally considered as endowed with godly powers.65
Sathi climbs the steps leading to the sreekovil or sanctum sanctorum, to receive the flowers and sweet payasam (milk sweet offered to the deity). Thus momentarily Sathi transgresses caste and gender boundaries.
Sathi has been performing annually for the Ambalapuzha festival and taking part of this ritual for the last seven years. This is a rather unique occurrence in Kerala as most other temples, even now, do not allow non-Nangiars to perform utiyattam within the kuttambalam (temple-theater).66 For example, at the Vadakkumnathan Temple at Trichur and the Sri Poornathrayesa Temple at Trippunithura, particular Cakyar and Nangiar families have traditional performance rights.67 A non-Nangiar is not allowed to perform
Nangiarkoothu in the kuttambalam (temple-theater). Diane Daugherty, in her article “The
Nangyar: Female Ritual Specialist of Kerala”, mentions a ritual for the (caste-specific)
65 Diane Daugherty in her article “The Nangyar: Female Ritual Specialist” mentions that the Nangiarkoothu performance is considered a caksusha yagnam (visual sacrifice) whose fruits are shared by the deity, the performers, and the devotees. See Diane Daugherty, "The Nangyar: Female Ritual Specialist of Kerala," Asian Theatre Journal 3, no. ( 996): 56.
66 This was made possible, I am told by Dr. Venugopal, majorly due to the efforts of him and the Kathakali Kendra, who through consistent dialogue with the family (who has performance rights at Ambalapuzha and the temple authorities), managed to gain permission to re-stage this twelve day festival at Ambalapuzha.
67 Tripunithura and Trichur are cities in Kerala that are actively involved in promoting cultural performances.
44 Nangiar at the end of her arannetam or initiation ceremony at the kuttambalam. This ritual is akin to the one that Sathi performs at Ambalapuzha Temple.68 However,
Daugherty mentions that only a “Nangyar” may perform this ritual and that inclusion of non-Nangiars, even outside of the temple grounds for purposes of performance seemed horrifying to the older Nangiar women.69
After attending the all night performance by Sathi at Ambalapuzha Temple
Kavitha’s relative, a lively lady (in her late fifties) walks me back to my room at the lodge. She is a bank officer. She mentions her son is an upcoming utiyattam artist (non- caste specific). Her daughter, I later come to understand, is a popular actress on
Malayalam television soap operas.70 The lady is here at Ambalapuzha to see Margi
Sathi’s opening night performance and to pay obeisance to Lord Krishna. The day after
Sathi’s performance, I make arrangements to meet with her. Kalamandalam Sangeetha, a young non-caste-specific Nangiar artist, and student of Sathi, kindly agrees to introduce me to Sathi.71 The prefix of “Kalamandalam” is indicative of the state institution,
Kalamandalam, where she has been trained.
68 Daugherty “The Nangyar: Female Ritual Specialist of Kerala,” 58.
69 Ibid., 57
70 Increasing numbers of actors from middle class families are entering the field of acting in Kerala, signaling a change in concerns over morality and the lives of actors.
7 Sangeetha is in her mid-twenties. I met her initially in 2007 during a Nangiarkoothu performance. She was providing accompaniment on the talam (cymbals). Today she is an upcoming Nangiarkoothu artist. She is performing at the Ambalapuzha festival and we share a room at the Sri Krishna lodge for the few days that she is staying. A talented and soft-spoke artist, she allows me to be privy to her solo practice sessions in the tiny space of the lodge room.
45 Sponsorship of utiyattam, Access to Documented Materials, and Ownership of
Practice
My interview with non-hereditary performer Margi Sathi was held on Sep 2, 2010 at Ambalapuzha Srikrishna Swamy Temple, in Malayalam. Sathi as mentioned before is a very popular Nangiarkoothu artist residing in Trivandrum.72 After having performed for the opening night, she is now helping prep her daughter for her performance for the evening (Sep 2, 2010). Sathi seems quite pleasant and open to dialogue, as if we have known each other for a long time, quite different to my previous encounters with other well established utiyattam practitioners, who have been rather guarded, un-forthcoming in discussions.73 After having exchanged pleasantries, Sathi comments on how closely I resemble Kapila Venu, a very accomplished young utiyattam performer. This reminds me of my “insider” privileges as a Keralan, the visual markers of race which probably help Sathi identify me as one of “them”. She also notices my bulging belly and with a sparkly smile comments that the “Unni Kannan” (Baby God Krishna), growing in my belly will be a good dancer.74 We walk together from the green room into the natakasla
(theater space). It’s breezy and pleasant and we settle into chairs in the now empty
72 The capital city of Kerala
73 Several artists who were “guarded” in their responses mention that the influx of international scholars to “study” Kutiyattam has left them feeling disappointed, and taken advantage of in terms of their time and knowledges without being given due acknowledgement. I elaborate more on this in chapter three.
74 The Ambalapuzha temple enshrines the idol of Lord Krishna and Krishna is popularly referred to in the form of Unni Kannan or baby Krishna.
46 natakasala. Sathi’s powerful performance belies her calm demeanor. She asks me what I would like to know from her. I begin by briefly explaining that my project is about exploring property rights in utiyattam.
Elizabeth Kurien, nterviewer (EK): In terms of utiyattam being classified as universal property – what is your opinion, Sathi edathi (elder sister)75? How do you view this situation with influxes of people on an international level into the local scene of utiyattam practices?
Margi Sathi (MS responds thoughtfully): Many traditional family practitioners of
Kutiyattam who had long before abandoned their kulathozhil (family-occupation), have made a come-back to performing Kutiyattam as a profession after UNESCO’S recognition, perhaps anticipating economic gains. Numerous Kutiyattam establishments have cropped up and I have stopped keeping track of them76. However, people like me do really want the art to be preserved, nourished and taken care of. For me this means most importantly carving out another new generation that can perform and practice this detailed art form. Several maestros died after 2001 when UNESCO recognized the art without their works being documented or preserved in a needed way.
Even if their work has been documented, I don’t know whom to contact, whom to
75 Edathi is a Malayalam term for “elder sister.” As a custom older people are not addressed by their names, rather as “elder sister” or “elder brother”.
76 There seems to be a general consensus among the well established artists that there are only a handful of schools that are able to provide thorough training in utiyattam.
47 approach, if I wanted to gain access to their works.77 Therefore having an organization like UNESCO certainly does not help in that aspect [of access]. For example, the
Nangiarkoothu that is happening right now; there is nobody to help out economically.
What we have revived here in this [Ambalapuzha] festival for the past five or six years was previously a discontinued tradition (since the last forty years or so). The one who organizes the festival [in this case, Dr. Venugopalan] has to personally fund for the event. It is a very pitiable state of affairs—these artists need something –at least their transportation charges to be met. So, ‘What is the use of this UNESCO?’ is a question we must ask. What needs to be done as part of UNESCO’s help or recognition is at least [to facilitate] access to manuscripts [that are archived by UNESCO].
Huge brass temple bells chime loudly. At the same time multiple cell phones, including mine, ring in the background. Concerns of access to ancient leaf manuscripts mingled with sounds of temple bells and multiple ring tones from various cell phones remind me of the ways in which seemingly distant/past localities and current global realities are so thoroughly enmeshed. utiyattam is a living cultural practice in Kerala today, not just an ancient archived cultural form. Considering issues of UNESCO’s aid and local concerns of access, I wonder how the two--i.e. international economic aid via
UNESCO and local access to materials--might be linked/how they implicate each other.
77 Sathi is pointing to the difficulties in access of uityattam documents archived by UNESCO, digitized by the nation-state via the Sangeet Natak academy, as well as ancient manuscripts held by family practitioners.
48 Peter Nas in his work, "Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Culture: Reflections on the Unesco World Heritage List,”78 attempts to explore some of the socio-cultural effects of the politicization of culture and folklore when certain forms gain entry into the
World Heritage List as “Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Culture”. He does this via examining and identifying specific “values” (such as national pride, authenticity and tradition) that enable certain forms/genres of Intangible Heritages79 to be recognized variously as significant markers of (cultural, national) identity, vulnerable to globalization and in need of “preservation”. He argues that globalization of the phenomena of identification and protection engenders new forms of networks among grass roots organizations, family and religious communities80. These new networks ironically are being implemented/mobilized to resist the effects of the same globalization that pose a threat to identity and conservation. Nas articulates the complex procedures and intense work by an expert jury of eighteen members involved in decision-making processes for the “Masterpiece” initiative implemented by UNESCO.81 He asserts that this endeavor by UNESCO is able to place a multiplicity of cultural phenomena “on the world agenda in a practical way” as well as garner the attention of the media and the
78 Peter J. M. Nas, "Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Culture: Reflections on the Unesco World Heritage List," Current Anthropology 43, no. (2002).
79 such as ritual (in Jongmyo Jerye of Korea), cosmopolitan cultural expression (in Jama’el Fna Plaza in Morocco), endangered languages (Garifuna in Belize), etc.
80 Ibid. 42.
8 Ibid., 39.
49 public. Thus for Nas, the UNESCO intangible heritage program of humanity is successfully able to bring to international attention the significant role of cultural expression in intergovernmental policy.82 However, he fails to question the unequal flow of economic and cultural capital that undergirds the institutional organization of
UNESCO.
Dr. P. Venugopalan, male scholar83 who is the organizer of the Nangiarkothu festival at Ambalapuzha pulls up a chair next to us and joins in the conversation. He is the author of Shaktibhadrande Ascharychoodhamani, a work which brings together for the first time the attaprakaram for seven acts and kramadeepika of six acts of
Shaktibhadra’s play Ascharyachoodhamani in Malayalam. This undertaking was funded by the UNESCO Japan Funds-in-Trust aid program and significantly helps broaden the current repertoire of utiyattam.84 He has also been a key person in reviving the
82 Ibid. 43. RIchard Kurin, Director, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, USA, was also a member of the jury in assessing candidates for the UNESCO declaration of “Masterpieces of Oral and Intagible Heritage of Humanity.” Kurin in Nas’s article, articulates that the UNESCO program rightly “deserves kudos for advocating the existence and flourishing of varied cultures and asserting the rights of practitioners to enact their culture and benefit from their efforts.” He also asserts that the work of UNESCO (its scholars and jury members) to identify and define cultural forms in need of preservation and advancement is a challenging one. See ibid., 45.
83 P. Venugopalan is his “full” name as it appears in his work. The prefixing of initials to the last name stands in as the full name and is a common way of expressing “full name” in Kerala. Dr. P. Venugopalan Shaktibhadrande Ascharychoodhamani: Sampurnamaya Attaprakaravum ramdeepikayum, (Thiruvananthapuram: Margi, 2009).
84 “Japan, where the concept [of “intangible heritage"] had been recognized legally since 950 (Cultural Property Law), puts this experience at the disposal of UNESCO through the Japanese Funds-in-Trust for the Preservation and Promotion of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (created in 993) to support and promote the world's oral heritage and traditions (financed by Japan).” As quoted in "Promoting the Oral Heritage and Traditions: The Japanese Funds-in-Trust for the Preservation and Promotion of the
50 NangIarkoothu festival at Ambalapuzha. The festival was re-started seven years ago after careful dialogues with the family that has performance rights at the temple as well as temple authorities and Governmental organizations. Since then the festival has been conducted every year with the efforts of M and other artists and scholars. Prior to this the
Nangiarkoothu was discontinued at this temple for almost forty years.
P. Venugopalan (PV): UNESCO’S main aim is not economic help. Although in the beginning they did help monetarily, today most monetary aid happens via Japanese funds. UNESCO helps direct Japanese funds toward utiyattam.85 After that they
(UNESCO) made India and the State government interested in this project. Rupees five crore (approximately one million USD) was allocated. However it was not properly
Intangible Cultural Heritage," Permanent Delegation of Japan to UNESCO, http://www.unesco.emb- japan.go.jp/htm/jporalheritage.htm (accessed March 3, 20 2). In 993, Japan and UNESCO entered an agreement to create a special Funds-in-Trust to aid UNESCO’s projects in favor of ICH (Intangible Cultural Heritage). Upto 2007 (icncluding 2007), Japan’s total contributions to the funds has approximated twelve million USD. See "Japan Fund-in-Trust for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage." Unesco.org. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00 5 (accessed March 3, 20 2). Richard Kurin in Peter Nas’ article, “Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage,” states that the “awkward term ‘intabgible heritage’ has grown out of Japan’s living-national-treasures program, established in 950 an d its law for the protection of Cultural Properties. Two hundred two “important intangible folk cultural properties” had been chosen by Japan’s government by April 2002. See ibid.Here ICH (Intangibe Cultural Heritage ) “is seen as property, or asset or resource, to be protected, appreciated, utilized, and managed.” See Peter J.M. Nas, “Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Culture: Reflections on the World UNESCO Heritage List” Current Anthropology vol 43, no. (2002), 45.
85 Japanese- Funds-in-Trust for the Preservation and Promotion of ICH program, initiated in 993 form a major chunk of the funds received for utiyattam. See "Japan Fund-in-Trust for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage," Unesco.org, http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00 5 (accessed March 3, 20 2).
5 managed. The funds go to Sangeet Natak academy.86 Each time according to the newly elected ruling committee’s interests the fund’s distributions are affected.
This Ambalapuzha festival [at the Srikrishna Swamy Temple] is an example. It is one of the only Kutiyattam festivals that has been revived after a period of forty years and is currently being enlivened mostly by non-caste members. This has materialized with the permission of the family that has performance rights at this temple. If such a festival cannot be funded by UNESCO then what is the use of these funds [supposedly allocated for the propagation of Kutiyattam]?87 Particular Cakyar families have the rights to perform Kutiyattam in specific temples/kuttambalams as part of religious festivals and other ritualistic functions. For this festival at Ambalapuzha, the family in charge has not been active for many years and so I asked them for permission to organize a Nangiarkoothu festival in the temple, since they were not doing it. 88 The temple continues to give a token monetarily remuneration to the family according to what was being given to them forty years ago! Even four decades ago, this sum of money was not enough to sustain themselves. For twelve nights of performance they were being paid a mere hundred Rupees (about two USD) daily wages. Thus the
Cakyar family had to stop performing due to poor wages. I asked the concerned Cakyar family (they reside in Aluva) for permission to organize the festival where performers
86 Sangeet Natak Akademi is an organization founded for the propagation of scholarship and performance of Indian cultural art forms. Its center is in Delhi and is often referred to as endra.
87 This festival is organized by Dr. Venugopalan who has arranged for payment of artists and such.
88 The utiyattam Register mentions the Ambalapuzha family. See Venugopalan, Kutiyattam Register, 0 .
52 from outside caste would be brought in. Fortunately the family agreed. Without their agreement, it is not possible to continue the festival even if they themselves are not doing it. Yet, nowadays, in most places neither the family performs, nor do they allow others to perform. Like this there are many places where as a tradition this has had to be discontinued merely because permission has not been granted by that family. What does it mean then that Kutiyattam is ‘universal property?
He laughs dismissively. In the background a baby cries.
PV (continues): These kinds of practices must change. I had asked the Academy
[Sangeet Natak Academy, SNA] last time for help in funding the festival here at
Ambalapuzha, but SNA did not help. The Academy then made a utiyattam Center in
Trivandrum through which fund allocations are now decided.89 So we have to now apply to Kutiyattam Center. What we are asking for is not consistent and significant economic help, merely a small sum [about eight to ten thousand Rupees or $200), which is a negligent amount, considering the large fund allocation [Rs.5 Crore or one million USD] to help aid these local festivals. Even the secretary of SNA did not allow this. Now what is happening with the funds is that students and artists of Kutiyattam establishments are being paid a salary. Most of the fund monies are being spent like this now, not in a way that helps the performance of Kutiyattam (only the dissemination/instruction of it). In fact large amounts of money are being spent for
89 Thiruvananthapuram is the new name for Trivandrum—as was called under British India.
53 Kutiyattam by the state and nation; but before the proclamation [by UNESCO in 2001] this Academy [the SN , which was set-up in 1990] had done very useful work for
Kutiyattam which is not being done now. Before 2001 a lot of performances and recitals used to take place. Now the money is all for salaries.90
MS (nodding her head knowingly): Even that salary is not being paid on a monthly basis. They [including Sathi who is employed as an instructor by Margi and whose monthly salaries are funded by the Academy] are being paid erratically (every four or five months), not regularly on a monthly basis as they should be paid.91 Additionally it comes with a lot of restrictions--practitioners are not allowed to perform or teach outside the instructions of Margi, not allowed to take leave, nor allowed to make extra money from anywhere else--even though they are not being paid regularly. If artists have to survive in such an environment, they must perform outside of the Center’s instructions. There is no point in getting six months of salary clumped together; the money merely pays off debts. Such systems need to be changed. It is well over time.
90 Here teaching aids to replicate utiyattam (as a product) via institutionalized dissemination within truncated time-frames. I elaborate more of this in chapter 3, see pages 56-67. Considering, utiyattam performances have historically allowed ample space for personal interpretation of text, the limiting of performance could thus point to an impetus to place value on the product of utiyattam, rather than the practice and performance of it.
9 Margi is an organization that supports the training and performance of utiyattam and athakali. Established in 97 in Trivandrum, by D. Appukkuttan Nair, today Margi has a performing group of utiyattam that performs on a weekly basis and extends training in new productions. See P. Venugopalan, utiyattam Register, 33.
54 There is clearly a tension between Dr. P. Venugopalan and Margi Sathi’s opinions on the misallocation of funds. While Venugopalan bemoans the fact that performances are not funded, but salaries are, Sathi emphasizes that salaries are not paid regularly.
Here, it is interesting to note that the methodology of interview (as a way of obtaining life histories) becomes available for highlighting respondents’ own agendas. Boatema
Boateng, in her work The Copyright Thing Doesn’t Work Here points out that it is however this very method that also opens up spaces for respondents to provide
“unanticipated insights on the subject.”92 Margi Sathi is a performer and teacher
(previously employed by Margi), thus once dependent upon Margi for her primary income. In 2005, she left Margi to teach at Kerala Kalamandalam State Institute.93
Venugopalan is a scholar and organizer of utiyattam performances and is currently the
Vice-President of Margi, a position that is held on a voluntary basis. Clearly the stakes are different for each of them as a performer and organizer, respectively. However, they both agree that international and national economic funds are grossly mismanaged due to political, governmental, and international interference with direct impacts on individual artists’ lives and their performance practices. Veugopalan mentions that after UNESCO’s proclamation, money has been directed mainly for salaries rather than performances.
Traditional utiyattam families attached to temples (who were initially well compensated
92 Boatema Boateng, The Copyright Things Doesn’t Work Here, 4.
93See utiyattam Register, 35.
55 (9th century AD -1970’s)94 gave up the practice of utiyattam precisely because they were not being paid fair living wages (due to land reform laws enacted by the
Government of Kerala in 1970).95 It had become an economically unsustainable family practice.
I am concerned that this scenario could repeat today, with implications that undermine the local (and favor the international practitioner). The local outsider (non- caste member forms the bulk of cultural laborers of utiyattam currently. The problematics of funding, including funds being improperly managed and unfairly distributed, have implications on how a cultural practice is enabled or thwarted. Current local performers could give up the performance of the art due to unsustainable economic conditions. Economic aid, particularly international aid, then shifts the control of meaning making of the cultural practice of utiyattam from the local practitioner to the funding agent. The link between economic aid of utiyattam and transfer of ownership of a particular cultural practice is complex, yet strong and real. In August 2010, I was at
Nepathya which has its own newly built kuttambalam in Moozhikkulam, Kerala to see the utiyattam performance of Mayaseetangam96. The performance of the entire play (in
94 G.Venu, Production of a play in utiyattam, and Nirmala Paniker, Nangiarkoothu.
95 G.Venu, Into the World of utiyattam, 6-22.
96 ‘Mayaseethankam', the third part of Sakthibhadra's Ascharyachoodamani'and ‘Balivadham', the first part of Bhasa's Abhisheka Natakam were being performed for the third utiyattam festival organized and performed by Nepathya and funded by Hebrew University. Bhasa and Saktibhadra are Sanskrit playwrights whose plays are popularly performed in utiyattam repertoire. Bhasa’s plays are purported to be written between 5th and 4th Centuries BCE (Venu.G. Into the World Of utiyattam, Natanakairali: Irinjalakkuda, 2002, pg 76.)
56 this case Saktibhadra’s Ascharyachoodhamani and Bhasa’s Abhisekha Natakam), not just
one act as is the common performance practice in utiyattam today, was accomplished
by Nepathya, a training and performance institute headed by Margi Madhu.97 The entire
performance lasting eighteen days was however documented by the Hebrew University,
Jerusalem. Professor David Schulman, Humanistics Department, Hebrew University led
the enterprise.98 This is one of four such elaborate festivals, all four of which were
documented by the Hebrew University and performed by artists of Nepathya.
Documentation helps enrich research and performance. However, numerous students of
utiyattam (mostly non-caste-specific) mention that they do not get to see these
documented performances as Margi Sathi points out in the beginning part of her
interview. There is also considerable infighting between various utiyattam
establishments that are mostly led by caste-specific utiyattam practitioners or their
relatives. There must be equitable access of material for both researchers and performers
(especially in their own locality) for a performance practice not to be skewed in favor of
those who talk for the culture. The documented materials which are being added as part
of a digitized library at the Hebrew University99 are asymmetrically accessible to cultural
97 Nepatya was established by Margi Madhu, a highly trained and accomplished caste-based practitioner.
98 For documentation report by Hebrew University of Jerusalem see "Kudiyattam: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to the Living Sanskrit Theater of Kerala," The Hebrew University Kudiyattam Project, http://kudiyattam.huji.ac.il/innerpage.php?p= (accessed March 2, 20 2).
99 The Hebrew University’s Department of Comparitive Literature promotes research on religions of Asia, particularly, those of India and Iran. The Sanskrit dance-theater of utiyattam provides an ideal arena for the department’s research area of “Hiindu Mythology in Sanskrit and South indian Religious Traditions.”
57 laborers of uityattam in Kerala, since these two localities are in two different countries
altogether. What is at stake is who gets to labor locally for the practice of utiyattam and
who gets to own and represent it on an international scale.
Rosemary Coombe in The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship,
Appropriation, and the Law, Post-Contemporary Interventions, identifies that a
dichotomy between laws of intellectual property and cultural property prevails such that
owners of intellectual property (like the academic experts) are able to speak on behalf of
“universal “values of reason while owners of cultural property may only speak on behalf
of their cultural tradition.100 Such a loss of cultural autonomy101 also signifies a loss of
cultural agency.
Diana Taylor, in "Performance Studies and Intangible Cultural Heritage," links
loss of cultural agency to cultural practices designated as “heritage/treasures”.102 The
loss of agency also means a considerable loss of IPR/authorship rights from the specific
community which practices the form to “humanity” in general. The interesting paradox of
who constitutes legitimate “humanity” becomes clearer when Coombe mentions
categories of peoples or organizations that claim the right/ ability/expertise to speak on
00 Rosemary J. Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law, Post-Contemporary Interventions (Durham: Duke University Press, 998).
0 Cultural autonomy for Coombe “signifies a right to one’s history and origins as told from within one’s culture and not as mediated from without” See ibid., Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties : Authorship, Appropriation. 240.
02 Diana Taylor, "Performance Studies and Intangible Cultural Heritage".
58 behalf of a whole culture. In the case of utiyattam, it seems as if a blurring between
intellectual and cultural property rights (rather than a dichotomy between the two),
enables a loss of cultural autonomy.
My research on utiyattam is also premised on the argument that artistic heritage
of a community when defined (limitedly) in a “universal”/global context by UNESCO
and WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) as cultural expressions, results in a
double disadvantage for the concerned citizens of the artistic community. In addition to
denying the community’s authorial claims, the ownership to their works, “universal”
heritage declararion also enables to sidestep national laws that might protect performing
arts of communities and its practitioners in specific ways. For example, according to
Article 29 of the constitution of India, the protection of the culture of minorities is
recognized as a fundamental right.103 Here citizenship rights of minority cultures are
directly invoked and assured at least in law. Yet, at the international level of International
Property Rights (IPR) laws, citizenship rights and thus national support could be
undermined or even denied to cultural practitioners of community based art forms when
(cultural) heritage is considered clinically and pragmatically as Intellectual/Intangible
Property—i.e. as a resource or product (divested from its practitioner/artist) to be
harnessed for “universal” (benefit of humanity), cultural, and commercial gains even
when international organizations purport to “safeguard” Intangible Heritages.
03 P.V. Valsala G. Kutty, "National Experiences with the Protection of Expresssions of Folklore/Traditional Cultural Expressions:India, Indonesia and the Philippines," (World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 2002): 9.
59 EK (turning to MS): You have written down an attaprakaram. Are there copyright issues on this? Can you claim your rights?
None of the participants who were interviewed, including famous established practitioners or students of utiyattam or research students like me seem to know for sure what exactly the term “intangible property” implies in terms of property rights. The general sense I have come to understand is that everyone recognizes, that the declaration has brought a lot of Western, interest as well as national recognition to the art form in general. This is one of the reasons UNESCO’s proclamation can be powerful in terms of
“unquantifiable value.” In short there is no property right per se that is “universal” or for
“humanity”, other than the resulting prestige from the UNESCO declaration that often helps raise awareness among citizens and governments for heritage protection.104
MS (somewhat hesitantly): I don’t think that [copyright issues] has much impact today
[for utiyattam], maybe in the future.
PV (interjecting): It [ utiyattam] has not become property as such. The work Sathi has written is still hers. She can claim copyrights to it.
04 UNESCO World Heritage Center: What Does it Mean for a Site to be Inscribed on a List?" UNESCO.org, http://whc.unesco.org/en/faq (accessed Novemeber 20, 20 ).
60 EK (turning back to MS): I am also wondering, since you have brought in performative changes to this art form, can you claim them as yours in a world forum?105 What if someone else is performing parts of your work? Do you have protection for your work?
MS (pensively): Yes, I understand.
PV (intervening decisively addressing EK): Oh you can’t say that. Like I said, Sathi’s written work is hers. But written work of ancient times—even today, it is in the home of old Cakyars. A lot of money is needed to buy this from the families and make it accessible to people; to actually make it universal property, I mean.
EK: Is the preservation, printing of manuscripts not happening?
PV: In Ascarychoodhamani, I published eight attaprakarams. For this work I had received UNESCO’S funds via Japans Funds-in-Trust. This is now universal property because I have no copyrights on this book. Otherwise simplistically saying “universal property, universal property,” makes no sense to me.
In mentioning his work Ascharyachoodhamani as Universal Property, Dr.
Venugopalan explains it does not belong to him anymore—i.e. it belongs to no human in particular, but is accessible to all. The process by it became “universalized” entailed first
05 Margi Sathi’s works Sri Rama Caritam Nangiarammakoothu and annaki Caritam have been recognized as “ground breaking” in Nirmala Paniker’s book. See Nirmala Paniker, Nangiarkoothu, xxi-xxii. utiyattam as an art form is also a major participant in world theater forums. G.Venu’s Into the World of utiyattam cites innumerable examples.
6 gaining access to certain original manuscripts held as private property. He thus highlights the stark tension between personal and public property.
MS (explaining her own position): What I desired from UNESCO’S recognition is that fundamental texts of Kutiyattam—the attaprakaram and kramadeepika--become available to outsiders. These texts are in the hands of Cakyars whose traditional family occupation (kulathozhil) within the caste system) was Kutiyattam. One family does not even show these texts to the other. I desired that thaliyolas (dried leaf manuscripts that contain attaprakaarams and kramdeepika) be seen by artists of the outside caste like me.
I am surprised at Margi Sathi’s comment. I had assumed that her caste positionality (upper-caste Hindu, hailing from a Namboothiri or Kerala Brahmin family which is considered higher than the Cakyar or Nangiar community within the hierarchical caste-system) might not be a hindrance for her in terms of accessibility to the
Cakyar families. ulathozhil, the system of caste-based family occupation means that occupational secrets are closely guarded. However, being upper-caste definitely has its advantages for Sathi—at least she has the clout to mingle bodily with members of the
Cakyar and Nangiar caste, as she is not considered “inferior” in caste. Here I take a slight detour to briefly point at the complexities of what UNESCO’S declaration of Intangible arts like utiyattam as “universal property” means to practitioners, scholars and artists of
utiyattam. None of the participants who were interviewed, including famous established practitioners or students of utiyattam or research students like me, seem to know for sure what exactly the term “Intangible Property” implies in terms of property rights. The
62 general sense I have come to understand is that everyone recognizes, that the declaration
has brought a lot of Western, interest as well as national recognition to the art form in
general. However, there is no property right per se that is “universal” or for “humanity”,
other than the resulting prestige from UNESCO’s declaration that often helps raise
awareness among citizens and governments for heritage protection.106 Yet, we must ask
who gets to be part of this elusive “humanity”?
Returning to Margi Sathi’s concern about lack of accessibility to privately owned
acting and stage manuals due to caste differentialities, I ask, “So even now, caste
differentialities are a problem?
MS (replying emphatically): Even now! Manuals used to be a closely guarded secret.
After certain written verses (within the manual), the rest is mentioned as “continued in
such and such [other] manual.” In some ways these ancient manuscripts survived
precisely because it was closely-guarded as a secret. Nobody, but the cakyar within the
family, had access to it then.
My concern, as a research student, about copyright issues (constructed within a
Western racialized power structure), is that individual practitioners who innovate within
the field of utiyattam today, or families whose traditional occupation is utiyattam
might no longer have sole rights to the manuscripts. However, for non-hereditary female
practitioner, Margi Sathi, the concern is quite contrary—she sees non-accessibility to
06 UNESCO World Heritage Center: What Does it Mean for a Site to be Inscribed on a List?" UNESCO.org, http://whc.unesco.org/en/faq (accessed Novemeber 20, 20 ).
63 ancient manuscripts as the pressing problem. This hints at certain privileges or lack of privileges that might be at stake for her as a performer. Thus caste-based rights to secrecy seem to be more of a concern for her than individual property rights (IPR).
MS (continues): Universities like Sri Shankara Sanskrit University documented performances of maestros (like the late Ammannur Asan),107 yet local outsiders are not gaining access to it.108 We only know it was documented. We do not know whom to approach, whom to ask, in what manner to gain access to these. How do people like me know where to look for them? Can you as a research student gain access to it? The manuscript people from Delhi supposedly came and visited Cakyar families and documented all this. But did they finish with the documentation? Is it ready for viewing? Where is it? Most non-caste members do not gain access to it.
I find this situation of non-accessibility surprising, considering she is one of the foremost artists of Kerala, alluded to as the “treasure of Trivandrum, the capital city of
Kerala.”109 I would think she has the cultural clout to gain access. Yet, I learn that caste- anxieties over artistic and cultural labor rights are at play here. I am also struck by how local outsiders become uneasily folded into the historiography of utiyattam today.
07 Asan means master in Malayalam. Ammannur Mani Madhava Cakyar (a maestro of utiyattam) was called Ammannur Asan by members of the utiyattam community.
08 Sri Shankara University in Kalady, Kerala has a department of utiyattam and caste-specific members are part of the utiyattam faculty.
09 Trivandrum is the capital city of Kerala. Margi Sathi resides in Trivandrum and her performances are often broadcasted by the state-run television channel, erala Doordarshan.
64 Clearly international, westernized bodies are able to gain access to ancient uityattam manuscripts. For example, an article dated Oct 28, 2010 in the The Hindu, a nationally circulated newspaper in India mentions, German scholar and performer of utiyattam,
Heike Moser who is currently scientific coordinator at the Institute of Asian and Oriental
Studies, Tuebingen University. She is deemed a dedicated scholar and recognized as a major contributor to the process of safe-guarding and propagating the art of Kutiyattam.
Among her projects she has been able to photograph all available manuscripts in the possession of Cakyar and Nangiar families as part of her Ph.D project.110 How was she able to gain access while Margi Sathi could not?
So, according to Margi Sathi, accessibility for locals (especially practitioners and students of utiyattam) in Kerala help the traditional community-based art to thrive, while individualistic recognition or protection of their own artistic works remain unaddressed, affecting their access to much needed materials for utiyattam’s local preservation. As foreigners gain recognition and access to ancient manuals, tensions and confusions arise, affecting Sathi’s sense of self as an individual artist, privileged, but still outsider in terms of caste, and her concern for locals more broadly. These concerns seem not to be framed in terms of IPR.
0 See Suganthy Krishnamachari, "Bowled Over by Koodiyattam," The Hindu, October 28, 20 0, http://www.thehindu.com/arts/dance/bowled-over-by-koodiyattam/article855044.ece (accessed November 3, 20 0).
65 ndividual Artistic works and “Unproblematic” Authorial rights Considering the weight of authorial rights in Western debated on IPR and how much has been invested in trying to address “intangible” art works and artists’ rights, I decide to insist on this topic.
EK: I am really interested in knowing more about your own works in Kutiyattam. Can you talk about your work annagi Caritam (Story of annagi)?111 Although I understand that you have penned down the attaprakaram for it as well as performed it, I haven’t yet had a chance to read the work or see the performance.
MS (replying matter-of-factly): You haven’t read it because it is not yet published. I wrote several attaprakaarams but only Sri Ramacaritam Nangiarammakoothu was published. annagi Caritam was based on the famous ancient work Silappadikaram, written in Tamil, not Sanskrit.112 The key is that in Kutiyattam and Nangiarkoothu the scope for expression or abhinaya is immense. Our bodily enactments draw from only a couple lines of text from one act or parts of acts. Thus most of the performance is expressed via individual interpretations, unlike other theater forms where the script and dialogues are written and set before it is performed. However, in Kutiyattam and
Nangiarkoothu only a couple lines from the text are used and we take days to explore
Kannagi is the central character of the Tamil Epic Silappadikaram. In the story, Kannagi’s husband is mistakenly beheaded on a false accusation of stealing the Queen’s anklet. The furious Kannagi sets out to prove her husband’s innocence. She tears out a breast and flings it into the city and curses that the kingdom be destroyed by fire.
2 utiyattam is normatively a Sanskrit theater form and its texts are drawn from Sanskrit plays. Silappadhikaram is a famous Tamil epic and it is unusual that non-Sanskrit texts are used in utiyattam.
66 just one act. Thus the scope for imagination, multiple analogies and individual conceptualizations is paramount in Kutiyattam. The mention of Kutiyattam in such a famous epic like Silappadhikaram (dating to 3 AD) itself was an inspiration to me.
While writing the attaprakaram for annagi Caritam, I wrote the slokas (verses) in
Sanskrit after receiving the translation of the Tamil work in Malayalam. I wanted the slokas and attaprakaram to be published in Tamil also. However it has not been published yet due to issues of funding and things like that. I received an invitation to perform annagi Caritam at Attukal temple. I was told later by some audience members that during certain moments of the performance they felt that the stage might be set on fire by the intensity of the abhinaya (modes of acting)! annagi is that mighty a female character! Tamil University then invited me to perform this. I received a couple invitations in Tamil Nadu to perform this and annagi was much better received than I anticipated. Then I did Sitayanam, which re-imagines the character of
Sita. I explored sringaram (erotic love), viraham (separation), shanta (peace) as various stages of experience in the life of Sita. Many experiences of Sita were re-written in the performance of this piece. These were experiences drawn of course from my own ordinary life as well.
Nangiarkoothu normatively performs the story of Krishna, the male god.
However, both annagi Caritam and Sitayanam are women-centered roles which although imagined by male authors in its original text have been re-conceptualized by nonhereditary female practitioner, Margi Sathi. I am curious about Dr. Venugopalan’s
67 remarks over Sathi’s ownership of her published written works, since questions of ownership of bodily performed works remain un-addressed. Within the framework of
utiyattam, operating as “universal property,” the practice cannot be owned by an individual, but certain (written) manuscripts and works of utiyattam can be copyrighted or privately owned. Thus the limits and stakes of ownership must be questioned. Who benefits from such individual ownership? Significant improvisations and the details of innovations in utiyattam are mapped on the body, rather than in written text. Bodily performed text must be recognized as a significant space of individual creativity in
utiyattam. In addition, current written works often do not get published (due to economic and logistic constraints), as Sathi mentions. The majority of utiyattam performances today are done by local outsiders in Kerala, but its archived materials
(including documented performances) are majorly owned by caste-based practitioners, the state (via Sangeet Natak Academy), and foreign utiyattam enthusiasts, scholars, and artists. The local outsiders who perform the bulk of the cultural labor are left out or denied access.
James Child in his work, “The Moral Foundations of Intangible Property”, shows that intangible/intellectual property which is the most prized form of property in current capitalism, is understood as a “pareto improving process”, (making owners “better off” while making no one else “worse off”) precisely because it is understood through the
Lockean proviso.113 The Lockean proviso enables one to morally justify the accumulation
3 James W. Child, "The Moral Foundations of Intangible Property".
68 of private property by assuming an inexhaustible resource pool of natural and intangible property.114 Yet, for Locke value is added to a property only when mixed with labor.115
In terms of utiyattom and its designation as “intangible heritage”, it is the archived materials or the danced products rather than the laboring/dancing bodies that are valued.
The attribution of universal value to intangible heritage simultaneously erases the specific bodies that labor toward this art form, especially the local but outside caste members who practice utiyattam. Within the Lockean proviso that undergirds modern capitalism, such an erasure of laboring bodies is also morally justifiable, clearly revealing the gaps in the
Lockean proviso that “resources” in practice are not necessarily inexhaustible or at least are made unequally accessible to different peoples. While the “others”--here, local outsider, non-caste members--who are Keralan or Indian are excluded or denied access to manuscripts and documented materials the beneficiaries of access to these materials become the caste-specific member and the international/Western client. The laborers of
utiyattam as “universal heritage” thus are mostly the local outsiders while the keepers are the caste-specific and international clients. What is at stake is clearly meaning- making and who controls it. While Diana Taylor in her essay, “Performance Studies and
Intangible Cultural Heritage” argues, that cultural agency is lost in the process of endowing/designating value as “heritage,” James Child’s work spurs me to question
4 Ibid., 72.
5 Ibid., 6 .
69 whether the loss of such cultural agency can be considered a moral theft.116 Here, not only is cultural agency lost or at least compromised in the process, but the value of the cultural practice needs to be endorsed by an outside organization, namely UNESCO.117
I wish to gain a different vantage point--from that of a local outsider who also works extensively with international artists in a world theater forum-- to understand this complex and toubling issue of non-accessibility to family-owned manuscripts and how it might or might not impinge on the practice of her art. So, I decide to dialogue with
Kapila Venu, a young, Englished, private school educated, and highly trained (non-caste specific) practitioner. She is the daughter of G.Venu, (one of the key persons involved in aiding the recognition of utiyattam as “intangible heritage of humankind” by
UNESCO). She often travels internationally to work with theater artists, especially from
France, Japan and Germany. My interview with her is in English. She has just returned from Japan after participating in an intensive workshop with the renowned Japanese dramatist Min Tanaka.118 The interview was held on Dec 8, 2010 at her home in
Irinjalakkuda where she resides with her artist and scholar parents, G. Venu and Nirmala
Paniker.
6 The problem of such a theft seems to be that there is no specific perpetrator since there are multiple stakeholders—national, international, state and local interests.
7 Although UNESCO’s intervention seems to add value to the practice of Kutiyattam, the specifc local meaning-making of the art is undermined by national and international interference. I elaborate more on this in chapter three.
8 Min Tanaka, is an award winning Japanese actor and dancer who experiments with new ways of bodily movement including exploring dance and farm work.
70 Kapila Venu (KV): Regarding my art—I consider it a process, a flow, not as something that can be taken away from me. I have not given authorship rights or copyright much thought. I simply can’t imagine a situation where my work can be manipulated, replicated simply because it is deemed as “international property.”
Universal property is merely a kind of recognition, isn’t it? Is there really a problem of copyright for intangible heritages? Is there something specific on paper? Is there a specific clause that mentions that a particular artist’s work belongs to humanity? As an artist I have very little to do with bureaucracy or politics while making my art. When I work in World Theater Forums, for example, with Beijing Opera, abuki, or Noh artists, it is not political, rather a personal exchange for me. I do not even think that what I do can be replicated, it is my soul, my thinking, my ability. How can someone else “steal it”, so to say?
Here, I think Kapila Venu attests to both a sense of collective participation and ownership of a tradition, as well as personal concerns related to the creative process of artists operating within the tradition of utiyattam, a form that has been passed down through generations. Yet, I am concerned that her works could go under recognized, when presented in mixed genre works, considering she actively participates in world theater workshops.
I ask her if she would agree that “universalization” coerces certain ways in which she might need to package her art, so as to be marketable to a broader art community.Kapila Venu responds that we do not have to succumb to international forces
7 for packaging: “Each artistic practice is locally and regionally practiced. I am concerned about my locality, about the here and now, not about the international context. It is meaningless for me. I do not care.”
Sensing her irksomeness, I attempt from another angle, enquiring about the status of manuscript preservation that was undertaken in 2007, near her locality (Irinjalakkuda).
I had a chance to attend this workshop.
KV (responding quickly): Oh, the last time that people came for the preservation of manuscripts, it was more like a scientific thing, to provide equipment for the preservation of the manuscripts.
EK: Do you think that this process of documentation or preservation helped democratize access? Is there like a library where the public can access materials? Or would you say it is still considered personal property? Looks like it might be a very long and tedious process to even take a look at these family owned manuscripts. Of course we need to be very attentive to the families’ anxieties over their traditional (and private) property. It’s not like their family property really belongs to the public, just because UNESCO declared it as “universal property.” Have you ever had a chance to see them [the manuscripts]? Like, when you were a student?
KV: Previously, it was much easier to go to a cakyar’s home and be able to read it.
Now it looks like it’s a much more difficult process.
72 Something remarkable happens in this exchange of thoughts between Kapila and me—I have become sensitized to the fact that family owned property must be more attentively, delicately dealt with, precisely because it is protected as “universal property” by the Indian state and UNESCO. In turn Kapila Venu begins to acknowledge that perhaps international coercions do impact the practice and form of utiyattam, at least the ways in which accessibility is being shaped.
Kapila Venu mentions that if she wants a copy of one of Mani Madhava Cakyar’s performances, she can “never ever” get one.
KV: We can go to the endra in Delhi and observe for a few hours and that is it. The laws do not allow for it. The laws have to bend. The law is stupid. It has to bend a little bit or it is of no use to students. I am grateful that somebody did document such great performances and that one day it might be possible to view it. It is at least not lost. I know some foreign universities have documented my master, [Ammannur Mani
Madhava Cakyar], but I don’t know how to get access to even that material.
Regarding family manuscripts Kapila believes that the matter must be given careful consideration.
KV: Yes there are ways around it. It need not be made a public issue. I don’t know whether the government interference on legal terms is helpful or not. It has to be dealt with on a personal level. The practitioner needs to be trusted by the family. It is
73 someone’s personal property. It is not Universal Property; it has to be dealt with delicately.
Kapila Venu’s concern points to the complexities in access to materials of traditional knowledge which have only become overtly politicized with UNESCO’S recognition. Although, she mentions the difficulties in accessibility, she does maintain that being culturally attentive to the anxieties of the families who possess manuscripts is of moral significance. Prior to undertaking field work, loss of recognition of particular artistic contributions/ loss of copyright was my primary concern. I presumed that
“universalization” of a heritage would help me gain access to traditional manuscripts and materials precisely because it is now universal property. But a “place-based” analysis reveals quite the contrary: recognition by UNESCO has differentially narrowed rather than broadened access to utiyattam archives with almost a blatant discrimination of the local outsider affecting directly authorship/ownership rights. When utiyattam operates as “intangible heritage”, local women practitioners move within a relational web of hierarchical caste-frameworks. Here the Nangiar occupies a caste positionality below the
Cakyar. Although the female gains greater artistic visibility in globalization, it does not translate into increased female artistic rights leading to a recognition or legitimization of their works. At least not vis-à-vis the canon of (“real”) traditional works of utiyattam owned and performed by caste-specific male Cakyars. Instead a disconnect between female authorship and female ownership rights occurs where the woman is often coerced
74 to labor by writing, creating, and choreographing while remaining undermined or delegitimized as equal co-owners of the tradition of utiyattam.
Access to Ancient Manuscripts and the Expansion of Female Characters in
utiyattam
The last interview included in this chapter was held with caste-based practitioner
Usha Nangiar, a highly accomplished artist in her forties and one of the only two performing Nangiars today.119 In her book Abhinetri, she writes the attaprakaram for
Kaarthiyaani (the goddess Devi) as outlined in Bhagavathi Purappad. Usha Nangiar has challenged not only gender norms via writing down acting manuals, but her claims to
“tradition” enable her to bend normative patriarchal rules of utiyattam performance. For instance, Usha Nangiar ventures into performing “missing” female characters of traditional utiyattam plays by claiming their prominent presence in earlier, more
“ancient” versions of currently used traditional dramatic texts. This also enables her to explore cross-gendered costuming such as using the chutti (a white rice “beard” worn by heroic male characters) in her portrayal of female roles in utiyattam.
Usha Nangiar has graciously agreed to meet with me at her home in
Chathakkudam (a rural area of Kerala with thick tropical vegetation). Usha Nangiar together with her husband Hariharan Nair, an accomplished mizhavu drummer, own a
9 The other being Aparna Nangiar who is almost a decade younger than Usha Nangiar.
75 utiyattam and Mizhavu alari (studio).120 Her home is beautiful, built with both ancient and modern Keralan aesthetics and materials. The wood and granite structures look exquisite and bold. I am grateful that she offered her time to me generously in spite of a hectic schedule of performances and travels, including an international travel (to
Dubai) scheduled for the same evening of our meeting. The interview was conducted in
Malayalam on November 29, 2010.
Usha Nangiar (UN): Visually there is lot of variety of costumes for male characters, but female characters look the same, there is no variety visually/in costumes—whether she is a divine being, mother, daughter, or friend, young or old. Her role is also very limited in both Kathakali, and Kutiyattam. Purusha Vesham (male roles) have the basic pacha, kathi, kari, thaadi and many variations of these basic types which enable visual and characteristic nuances. When I ask older people in the field of Kutiyattam why there is this difference between male and female roles, they all say the same thing—it’s because she is the goddess (Devi’s) character, which is a very divine character. When you glance through Sanskrit dramas you quickly understand that there is not much for the female to do. The lack of character representations for the female could have been a reason why women characters don’t have much variety. When I began performing, I felt there was a need for multiplicity in roles, visual and character nuances for the female. When, for example, a Nangiar performs consecutively for seven to nine days and the character’s age and youthfulness progresses she is still portrayed visually in
20 The name of the studio is also Mizhavu alari. Both utiyattam and Mizhavu lessons are taught here.
76 the same way. When the audience sees this unchanging face of the nangiar all of these days, how do they feel? What might they take away? It made me wonder whether this is a problematic representation (or not) of the female character. In Sanskrit Drama on the whole, the role of women is quite limited. Now I feel that we can bring in modern or current or new experiences. Different characters need to be brought in, isn’t it? This is my thinking.
Usha Nangiar continues elaborating on the history of utiyattam as it relates to the female characters she is interested in exploring, that challenge current practices considerd
“traditional”—an assumption which she doesn’t share.
UN (continues elaborating): As a sacrifice or offering in the temple, it used to be done more as a family duty, not as an art form.121 Kutiyattam was part of many rituals to be performed by the family. In Kutiyattam and Nangiarkoothu, the idea of the character is a recent one. This is a result of new influences. It used to be primarily a ritual. For example, mala kettuka (threading the garland) was primarily the job of the Warrier and
Nambeesan castes; it was not an art, it was just labor, a job that needed to be done – a reflection of their existence. If they [the people of the community] have an artistic bend of mind they might incorporate aesthetics into their job or labor. Yet, when we do something so beautifully and have no body to watch, it becomes a chore. Then it is difficult, no? Perhaps because it was primarily performed as a ritual, female characters
2 Between fourteenth and twentieth centuries CE.
77 were done singularly as Devi, but today we are exploring the performative aspects and therefore I am seeking pluralities of female characters. I don’t think we need to be overtly rebellious or stubborn about bringing “new” characters into Kutiyattam when there is already a variety that is lying unused in the manuscripts. We just need to delve deeper into them. The question to be asked, I think, is not why the characters died, rather how quickly can we bring the lost characters back? Instead of inventing a new character from scratch, which I think is an easy job, (to create something out of seemingly nothing), reconstructing an older character needS a lot of dialoguing with the past. This also enables to acknowledge and understand the links it has to the past.
We can also actively learn about some of the parameters and regulations within which this art operates and thus helps it to better thrive today. This for me is important. I think this art form survived over 2000 years precisely because of the exacting rules that it followed.
Usha Nangiar mentions that the changes in performance happen because
utiyattam moves from being a ritual to being an art. It begins to be performed outside of the temple under the bold initiative of Rama Cakyar in 1965, and then four decades later
(2001), UNESCO’s declaration of utiyattam as “intangible heritage” enables the art form’s entry into the international heritage economy. The audiences today include mostly the local (Hindu audiences) and the international, westernized audience. The urban, secular population of Kerala is mostly absent (unless utiyattam is presented in schools).
Diana Taylor mentions that in order for UNESCO to ensure an international cooperation
78 and assistance in promoting respect for International Cultural Heritage (ICH), it actively seeks to increase its “stakeholders” which include local communal interests, national
(governments) interests, and those of the international community.122 This could often mean a clash of interests between these entities, for example national visibility and tourism versus a life affirming practice in isolation.123 For Usha Nangiar, there seems to be a tension between a coercion to perform for globalized market requirements and her sense of caste-allegiance (“there is no need to be overtly rebellious”).
UN (continues): Mandothari Purappad mentions in detail how Mandothari (wife of
ing Ravana) can be enacted.124 However, presently nobody wants to work through these materials to understand how it used to be done in the past. It could be because nobody really wants to claim to be part of that history. They just want to do something
“new”. I have heard asans (master teachers) talk of the fierce arthiyaani (goddess
Parvati) who comes on the elephant with one leg propped up on the animal. So I searched intensely and found arthiyaani Purappad (introduction to the character of
arthiyaani) in a grantha (manuscript) in Irinjalakkuda. The taaliyola grantha describes
arthiyaani’s role and costume in detail in “ arthiyaani Purappad.” She wears pacha
(green, a character make-up) and the white rice beard (chutti) like the male heroes. It mentions the measurements of her crown, the heaviness of her hair, she carries the
22Diana Taylor. “Performance Studies and intangible cultural heritage” 97.
23 Ibid., 97.
24 Mandothari and Ravana are characters from the epic, Ramayana. Mandothari Purappad is a manuscript that details enactment methods of the character Mandothari.
79 bow and arrow, and drapes yellow cloth on her body. arthiyaani speaks Sanskrit. The character of arthiyaani is mentioned in the play Subhadra Dhananjayam (Wedding of
Subhadra).125 Only the first act of Subhadra Dhananjayam is usually performed today.
Sometimes the second act is also performed. However, the character aarthiyaani is described only in Act Five. What caught my interest was how this female character is depicted differently from the norm, and the depth in which her character is explored.
Even more interesting is that arthiyaani speaks Sanskrit in sloka (four line verse) form in this Kutiyattam play. Typically the female character in Kutiyattam speaks
Prakrit126 sentences (in bits and pieces), not Sanskrit slokas.127 Similarly, Mandothari also speaks Sanskrit in some parts of the play. However, such allowances for the female character come about only during rare, momentous instances (like war and such), when the circumstances call for the treatment of a female role in depth.
Although I have heard from many older folks that arthiyaani’s character appears on an elephant with her leg propped up, I have not seen this mentioned in the grantha.
Even the word “elephant” is not mentioned. Before the Nangiar performs the role of
arthiyaani she has to observe nombu (fasting) by abstaining from rice foods, do her evening prayers and bath before she enters the temple to perform this character. She
25 This is a play in utiyattam which portrays the events leading to the wedding of Arjuna and Subhadra. The authorship of the play is attributed to the Keralan King Kulasekara Varman, eleventh century AD.
26 Prakrit is a mixture of the local language and Sanskrit. According to caste-rights, Nangiars were to speak in Prakrit and not allowed to use Sanskrit verses on stage.
27 Sloka or verses written in Sanskrit texts are usually chanted or said by the male cakyar. Unlike sentences, verses allow the dancer/actor more space to play with the words and enact them bodily.
80 appears from the temple itself, not from the kuttambalam as it is usually done. Just like idols of the temple are taken out in procession, the Nangiar is brought out from the temple with lamp and umbrellas and the playing of pancavadayam (temple orchestra of five instruments)128 before she enters the kuthambalam. After her performance, she is taken back to the temple nada (entrance to the temple) where the performance ends. I did arthiyaani Purappad in this way, wrote the attaprakaram and published it in my work Abhinetri129. There are five female characters in this and two male characters. It was published in Bombay 7 years ago. But when it was published, every page had the name of a sponsor as if I had taken all the money or something. It was also translated into English.
So Stree Vesham (female roles/characters) are usually not done. It is so frustrating that we are trained in the same way as men, but when it comes to performance, we do not have a space to perform female characters while the plurality of male characters is quite commendable. When I sit on the side of the stage doing the talam (cymbals to keep time or recite slokas for the Kutiyattam actors), I often think I can do even more than what the men are currently doing. I used to even pray that these people allow me to don the male character. May be it was good I was not allowed to do the male character, otherwise I would not have probed into the female character much.
The strict limitations became for me a possibility because I took all my energy into
28 This includes percussion instruments timila, edakka, maddalam, ilatala and wind instrument kombu.
29 Usha Nangiar Abhinetri (Keli: Mumbai, 2003).
8 finding a way to make space for the female. What is missing now is the personal perspective in the art form, especially when students are trained. Usually students are technically brilliant. However, there is no more pushing of the boundaries. This is a huge problem. Words are very important in utiyattam. For example, when we speak, the stress we give to particular words shapes or changes the meaning of the sentence.
These kinds of realizations are not happening for students. They merely replicate, they do not conceptualize.
Claiming the existence of certain female mythic characters in “older traditions” seems to allow for a quicker more significant leverage and legitimization for caste-based practitioner, Usha Nangiar, than one can imagine today for the female performing within codes of traditional utiyattam plays. However, it is primarily her caste positionality as
Nangiar that enables her to access family owned manuscripts in order to explore older mythical characters like Mandothari and Karthiyaani that both non-hereditary practitioners Margi Sathi and Kapila Venu are otherwise denied today. Interestingly, although Usha Nangiar is one of only two performing Nangiars (from the cast-specific community of Nangiars), she was denied her performance rights in 2006 at the
Vadakumnatham temple due to her marriage with Hariharan Nair, a man from the Nair caste (considered lower in caste-hierarchy than the Nangiar).130 Within religious codes of
utiyattam performance a Nangiar can retain her performing rights only if she marries
30 To view online news report in The Hindu (2006) about Usha Nangiar’s denial of performance rights see K.K. Gopalakrishnan, "At the Crossroads," The Hindu, March 26, 2006, http://www.hindu.com/mag/2006/03/26/stories/2006032600240500.htm (accessed, June 26, 2006).
82 within her caste, above her caste,131 or remains unmarried. However a Cakyar may retain his performance rights irrespective of marital status. Thus, even if Usha Nangiar, female caste-specific performer, is able to avail of certain privileges like access to family manuscripts, she is denied access to other key performance rights (which are otherwise part of her caste-privilege) due to her marital status. Here the gendered limits of ownership as “legitimate” or “real” owners of the practice of utiyattam are explicitly revealed. Although she enjoys certain privileges as a caste-specific performer, she is deemed “unfit” (within religious rules) to be considered a “real” Nangiar. As a performer of utiyattam, who travels nationally and internationally to represent utiyattam, Usha
Nangiar is coerced to straddle two opposing realities—that of caste-allegiance (reviving
“older” characters without being “overtly stubborn”) and face de-legitimization as a
Nangiar within religious codes of performance. Such a careful straddling of two opposing spaces, I think is also a strategic maneuver that is symptomatic of trying to avoid marginalization within a globalized market of heritage economies. Although Usha
Nangiar has authored new works and made commendable innovations in the field of
utiyattam, she is delegitimized as an equal co-owner of her family tradition of
utiyattam because of being a woman who married a lower-caste man.
3 For example, she may marry a Namboothiri, Cakyar, or Nambiar.
83 In the case of traditional dance practices circulating as “World Dances”, Marta
Savigliano in “Dance IN Asia, Dances FROM Asia (On World-ing Asian Dance)” 32 shows the problematics between binaries of Western and “traditional” or “unique” arts - parameters fixed from a Western perspective.133 Not only does such a binary help reserve qualities of
“originality” and “creativity” for the “modern”, westernized dancer, it also sets clear limitations and boundaries for marketability of “traditional and classical” dances. The only way (not to be marginalized, but) enter into the discourse of World Dance seems to be through the process of Western domestication – i.e. postcolonialism and globalization in the current context.134 In Usha Nangiar’s case, she circumvents local/religious marginalization by exercising her limited caste privileges135 in the secular sphere of proscenium stages, both on a national and international scale. In this case, “traditional dance” of utiyattam enters the discourse of World Dance by denying its marginalization within its immediate religious locality. Thus, in-spite of Usha Nangiar’s creative innovations as a caste-specific performer within the practice of utiyattam, her legitimacy as co-owner of the tradition of utiyattam (via her local performance rights) is always at risk. Usha Nangiar concludes by saying that when an artist takes a scissor, she
32 Marta Savigliano, "Dance in Asia, Dances From Asia (on World-Ing Asian Dance). Invited Presentation at The "Contemporary Dance in Asia: Mapping out a Discourse"." (Yogjakarta: international workshop, Sanatanadharma University, 2008).
33 Ibid., 5.
34 Ibid., 5- 6.
35 Within the secular sphere, she is able to avail of other existing caste rights like access to family owned materials like attaprakaram and kramdeepika to expand her performance repertory.
84 must be very cautious of what it does: “She must keep a commitment or tie to one of the four, either to her Guru, the audience, the art form, or to the self. Otherwise you do it without care, without even knowing why you receive a pay check.” Hence, Usha
Nangiar continues to highlight her allegiance to her caste-specific art, for example, by reconstructing mythical female characters in utiyattam. Thus, according to her, acknowledgement of links to past methods of utiyattam performances in order to re- imagine new ways of performance, is significant for the protection and survival of
utiyattam in meaningful ways.
Yet, I am left with too many questions crowding my thoughts. It strikes me that in spite of individual, innovative contributions made by each of the female artists that were interviewed, not one of them considers the loss of authorial/ownership rights to their works as an existing problem for utiyattam (or for themselves). Is it because the local contexts enmeshed (but not in-separable) within international market demands don’t allow for a clear formulation of individual demands? utyattam circulates today as
“Intangible Heritage.” Intangible Heritages belong to communities (not individuals) and are recognized for their “universal” value. This also clearly supports the logic of
‘worlding’ where non-Western art forms are recognized for their collective cultural, (not individual artistic or intellectual), value.136 Yet, Intangible Property of utiyattam is
36 The category of world dance is explained as a Western construction, where researchers, documenters, deem particular non-West cultures with dance traditions as “unified wholes”, meriting their study and documentation, Anthea Kraut, "Race-Ing Choreographic Copyright " in Worlding Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster, Studies in International Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 77.
85 categorized as part of IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights), supposedly to“safeguard”, cultural forms like utiyattam, from cultural “deterioration” but does not take into consideration particular gendered, casticized and racialized limits of access and ownership.
Recognition of “resources”/”values” of cultural heritages clearly have negative implications on the material body. Cultural heritages as placeholders of “value” often operate via the erasure of the presence of the laboring dancing body that helps create the cultural art form in the first place. In the case of utiyattam this erasure happens in multiple instances via denial of access to family owned manuscripts or performance rights. This differential narrowing of access to the information and practice rights of
utiyattam has implications on rigidification of caste-boundaries which have become more pronounced after UNESCO’’s recognition of utiyattam as “intangible heritage”.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in her influential work, “Intangible Heritage as
Metacultural Production,” explores the asymmetrical relationship between UNESCO’s projects of intangible heritage production as a professional enterprise and the supposed
“safe-guarding” of culture-bearers who produce the intangible cultural form.137 She builds on her previous work, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage in which she argues that heritage is a tool of cultural production which revives a cultural
37 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production," Museum International 56, no. (2004): 55-56.
86 form by making an exhibition of itself.138 Echoing Diana Taylor’s thoughts, Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett does not believe that intangible heritages require “safeguarding” in order to survive. Her concern is rather the effect of how value comes to be placed between contemporary and contemporaneous life. While the contemporary become those who relate to their past as heritage the contemporaneous become those in the present who are valued for their pastness.139 What is revealed in such a tension between the contemporary and contemporaneous is a blurring of “evanescence with disappearance”, which she argues (paradoxically) allows for the possession of heritage (and museums) as a mark of modernity.140 In other words, recognizing a culture’s worth as belonging to the past allows for the possibility to elide “presence” (which requires the action of the performing body, and in this case, the female performing body), from the equation thus enabling the form’s possession as a product and, not as actionable practice. While the labors and artistic works of these female performing bodies are required for the “safeguarding” of
utiyattam, the bodies through which these works are produced are denied legitimacy as equal co-owners of the practice of utiyattam.
In the next chapter, I study how gendered and casticized markings of the female performing body of utiyattam impinge upon the ways in which she is or is not able to
38 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Destination Museum” in Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 998), 56.
39 Ibid., 56.
40 Ibid.,.59.-6 .
87 exercise certain cultural and performing rights. How does utiyattam, a cultural practice that bestrides both the secular and religious spheres of performance, serve as a fruitful space to understand some of the conundrums of practices of cultural citizenship in India?
How might formations of gender, caste, class, and religion intersect and at times clash in
Kerala, as utiyattam becomes a site of postnationalist spectacularization? What specific strategies does the female utiyattam practitioner adopt, to negotiate multiple and opposing demands of global markets and “ideal” Indian citizenship?
88 Chapter 2 utiyattam and the Postnationalist Modern ndian Citizen In this chapter I explore parallels between utiyattam as a site of postnationalist spectacularization (of “culture”) and certain paradoxes of cultural citizenship as India struggles to shape nationhood. A diversity of skills is expected of utiyattam practitioners who seek to negotiate between artistic and religious premises that are imbricated within broader local, national and international demands. I want to especially look at how specific (and skillful) maneuverings, like gestures of “forgetfulness” and
“betrayal”, can mark and unmark the utiyattam body along seemingly benign premises of the religious and secular. These premises in postnationalist India always seem to remain at potential risk of sociocultural violence.141 I here suggest that an attention to the simultaneous marking and unmarking of the utiyattam body can help reframe, and in some instances, negotiate contradictions of cultural citizenship in India as Hindu and democratic.
I will begin by trying to understand how gestures of “betrayal” are avoided by the casticized female body of utiyattam that performs “national” culture. I do this by parsing material I gleaned from first hand interviews with caste-based female practitioner, Usha Nangiar. I will then examine how the media intervenes in shaping
uityattam as national culture via international appeal. To do this I mine newspaper
4 See Arvind Rajagopal, Politics After Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Shaping of Politics in India (Cambridge University Press: UK, 200 ). The author explores various registers of Hindu nationalism in India via media and television.
89 reports on utiyattam that appear in The Hindu (between 2006 and 2012)142 and study the
Keralan movie Nottam to examine how lives of utiyattam practitioners get folded into the spectacularization of utiyattam as a site of national culture and “universal heritage.”
I will particularly pay attention to how gestures of “betrayal” and “forgetfulness” are performed by utiyattam practitioners in these media. I will finally look at the real and less glamorous backdrop of fundamentalism and social upheaval in Kerala seeking for gestures of “betrayal” and “forgetfulness” in order to better understand the struggles that the utiyattam community must face as India struggles to shape nation-hood.
nterview with female caste- based performer Usha Nangiar (November 29, 2010) held at her residence studio Mizhavu alari in Chathakkudam, Thrissur district, Kerala. As previously mentioned, she is one of only two remaining caste based female utiyattam practitioners in Kerala today. The interview was held in Malayalam. EK (shifting her posture during talks with Usha Nangiar): I am curious to hear more from you about the Vadakkunatham Temple Case. Usha Nangiar (UN): As for Vadakkunatham [Temple] it is not that somebody prohibited me or prevented me from performing there, it is only that I didn’t go. That’s all.
However, a newspaper report in The Hindu (2006) explains that Usha Nangiar, one of the most accomplished and extensively trained Nangiar artists of India was denied an invitation to perform at the famous Vadakkunatham Temple after her marriage to a
42 In the previous chapter, I mention Usha Nangiar’s case as reported in The Hindu in 2006.
90 Nambiar.143 There is a factual error in the report. She is married to a Nair, (considered
lower in hierarchy than the Nambiar caste which she hails from). Traditionally a Nangiar
(female member of the Nambiar caste) that performs uityattam could only retain her
performing rights (within the temple) if she married, within her caste, to a Nambiar;
above her caste, to a Cakyar--male hereditary utiyattam performer; or a, Namboothiri
(Brahman); or if she remained unmarried. The Cakyar however is able to retain his
performance rights regardless of his choice to marry within or outside his caste. While in
contemporary India female utiyattam practitioners may perform in secular spaces
regardless of their caste or community affiliation, the limits are exposed in a religious
setting where a hereditary performer is denied an invitation to perform in the temple
famous for utiyattam patronage due to her matrimonial alliance/marital choice. The
2006 newspaper report in The Hindu states that nobody within the nation (politicians,
philanthropists, Indian feminists), or the artist herself, has challenged the denial of
invitation. Usha Nangiar did not approach the authorities of the Kerala State Devaswam
Board that now owns the temple or the families that have the rights to perform at the
temple, to address the issue.144 Vadakkunatham Shiva Temple in Thrissur has
historically played a prominent role in supporting the practice and performance of
43 The Hindu has nation wide circulation and is catered to the educated, Englished reader in India. For report on the Vadakunatham Temple Case see K.K. Gopalakrishnan, "At the Crossroads," The Hindu, March 26, 2006, http://www.hindu.com/mag/2006/03/26/stories/2006032600240500.htm (accessed, June 26, 2006).
44 See ibid., http://www.hindu.com/mag/2006/03/26/stories/2006032600240500.htm
9 utiyattam. Since 1990, Usha Nangiar has performed consecutively for seven years at the temple during the festival seasons in September and October. After her marriage, however, she was denied an invitation to perform at the temple theater space.
EK: The Hindu report says that you were not invited.
FCP: It is not that I was not invited. I did not go because I felt I might upset my gurunaathan’s (master teacher’s) family which has been practicing this tradition for many centuries. Maybe, I could have been audacious and perform. Nobody might have asked. But this is my very personal opinion. For seventeen continuous years,
Nangiarkoothu is being performed in Vadakkunatham. Seven out of these seventeen years, I was the one doing the performance. The family that has the rights to perform here is the Ammannur family, i.e. my gurunathan’s family. That family has a very sacred life-style. They follow a highly disciplined life-style. I did not want to upset their feelings. This was my decision. However, I was quite astounded that nobody, not, the
Ammannur family, or other Kutiyattam colleagues, or audiences ever questioned this.
“Why isn’t Usha performing? You must come.” Nobody said this, nor did they say,
“Don’t come.” Even Devaswom [a erala state organization that owns the temple] didn’t ask. So what is the implication then?
Four years later, her body still tenses up as she verbalizes memories of the incident.
UN (shrugging her shoulders): Somebody should have asked right?
92 EK (leaning toward UN): Why dint you ask, Usha chechi?145
UN: I think because of issues of tradition. Before, when a Nangiar married she could preserve her performance rights only if she married someone above or equal to her caste —like a Cakyar, Namboothiri, or even a Nambiar. Hari ettan [her husband] is a
Nair [“lower” to her caste positionality]. Actually you can claim caste positionality along with performance rights as Cakyar, Nambiar, or Nangiar only after your training and arangettam (debut performance with ritualistic significance for Kutiyattam).
In other words, (traditionally) you are not considered a Cakyar or Nangiar merely by birth, but one must also actively train and do the ritual arangettam (debut performance) in order to attain the respective titles.146
UN: Today not one mizhavu player under the age of fifty from a Nambiar caste has finished arangettam147, so he is not a Nambiar. Like that there are not many Cakyars or
Nambiars today. It is like being baptized for you. Only after that you can claim to be a
Christian right? Only then you belong, so to say, to that community.
Here, I appreciate the ways she tries to speak to my assumed religious affiliation to highlight issues of belonging. I think she makes this effort to “bring me on board”, to
45 Chechi means elder sister in Malayalam.
46 The arangettam or debut performance is conducted after several years of training. The performance takes place within the temple premises and requires the debutante to observe certain religious codes prior to the ritual performance.
47 Playing the mizhavu is a caste-based tradition of the male Nambiar.
93 make me understand, precisely because belonging to her caste of traditional family practitioners of utiyattam is of deep significance to her. Being only one of two remaining Nangiar artists in Kerala today, she might well be the only one to speak for herself and her community’s cultural and performance rights within local contexts.
Interestingly, in claiming that she has fulfilled all the “technical” requirements to be a
Nangiar while many other caste-performers have not, she re-marks herself as “Nangiar.”
UN (tilting her chin slightly): Maybe nobody will stop me if I actually go to perform.
Temples are just continuing a tradition that’s all. Ammannur family has two to three generations of people to do this performance, so it does not make much sense for me to go there and say that I want to perform. In other places like Ambalapuzha Srikrishna
Swamy temple, there are no families anymore to continue this tradition, so it is easier or less questionable for an outsider to perform. However, in Vadakkunatham and
Irinjalakkuda temples it is still going on with traditional families. That time there was an unwarranted but heated controversy and I wrote an 18 page letter to India Today148
All they published was that I have no problem with the situation. Then in Sthree
Sabdam149 my opinion came out. Historically it is fifty years since Kutiyattam came out of the kuthamblam, so there are umpteen problems to address; the changes in venue, its impact on the artist, its changed history and such.150 Without thinking of any of this,
48 India Today is a premier Indian Magazine with national circulation.
49 Sthree Shabdam (Woman’s Voice)--a local Keralan magazine issued weekly.
50 The practice and performance of utiyattam was opened to outside caste- members in 965 as part of the Kerala Kalamandalam curriculum, See Dr. P Venugopalan, uityaattam Register (Trivandrum: Margi,
94 gender is highlighted and women [activists] start discussing about this in
Vadakkancherry.151 The women said jokingly, “Usha, you are a Nangiar but we are not!” Even among women, I was an outsider because I was a Nangiar, not one among them. The temple is giving you (the family) a salary to perform for 48 or 28 days. I asked the women, “Can you follow the rules of the temple and perform? If you can do so, I won’t stand in anyone’s way.” Everybody has a desire to perform in that structure. It is built for Kutiyattam performances. “Oh all that is not possible,” they replied. “We just want to enter it one day.” I want to ask, when families have dedicated their lives and their life-styles for Kutiyattam, why would others want to perform just for the sake of it?
Here Usha Nangiar highlights caste over gender issues, and thus attempts to
“normalize” the event as a private family issue. In doing so, she re-establishes her caste positionality. However, Usha Nangiars attempt to underplay caste (as a family issue) is quite contrary to what a local non-caste specific utiyattam artist had to say about the denial of her invitation. Veena (pseudonym) mentions that the Tantris (high priests from the Brahmin caste) and Pujaris (other priests at the temple) were very much agitated when Usha Nangiar’s case was challenged, albeit privately.152 Veena mentions that this
2007), 24. The first performance (oral rendition via koothu) outside of the temple premises took place in 948 and a full- fledged utyattam performance took place outside of the temple in 956 under the aegis of All India Radio. Painkulam Rama Cakyar was instrumental in doing this, and it was considered a revolutionary act among the utiyattam community.
5 A place in Thrissur district, Kerala.
52 Here, I am not told clearly as to who specifically has questioned the issue.
95 was also a huge public issue –in the sense that the public was talking about it although no action was being demanded against it.
It is interesting to note that Usha Nangiar deliberately chooses a “non- confrontational” stance in insisting that it is merely a matter of “tradition” or
“familial/caste rights” even as she calls attention to the fact that nobody in the locality challenged the issue. Regardless of whether she was not invited or whether it was her choice not to perform in order to be attentive to her guru’s familial tradition, she upholds dominant notions of tradition via her non-confrontational stance. Yet, in seemingly allowing tradition to trump over individual concerns of her lived realities as a female casticized practitioner in India today, Usha meaningfully prepares a space where her denial of invitation can begin to be dialogued, even if in a minimal way. She is able to do this without having to face the “wrath” of her community or giving up her familial ties to her caste precisely because she upholds dominant filiative notions of “tradition.”
Esha Niyogi De’s work, mpire, Media, and the Autonomous Woman: A
Feminist Critique of Postcolonial Thought, submits that in lithely and pleasingly shifting between positions of normative notions of the feminine under patriarchy (such as the cultural bearer, nurturer, self-sacrificing mother etc.) and the liberal “self- choosing” woman, the two categories become conflated such that dominant filiative
96 categories are upheld.153 I want to support Niyogi’s argument, but with a slight difference, by suggesting that in upholding dominant categories, Usha Nangiar has made a dent in (not a mere re-establishment of ) dominant filiative categories, because her case has now begun to be dialogued (even if in a minimal way) while ensuring negligible damage to her status within her community. People in the locality continue to hold her in high esteem as a master Nangiar artist.
Susan Seizer’s work, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage: An Ethnography of Special
Drama Artists in South India, explores how artists, specifically Speshal Natakam
(Special Drama) actresses who occupy a historically stigmatized social position, in their very pursuit and desire of upward mobility, are able to subtly rather than radically change and re-make the extant dominant Tamil social hierarchies while simultaneously accepting these hierarchical distinctions, a social phenomenon she recognizes as “stigma management” ( a term drawn from Erving Goffman’s work, Stigma: Notes on the
Management of Spoiled Identity.)154 However, rather than pursuing upward mobility,
Usha Nangiar seemingly upholds caste affiliations in order to protect further cessation of her rights. Her strategy is that of an upper-caste woman, who while defying normative social rules, seeks to protect her status from downward mobility.
53 Esha De Niyogi, Empire, Media and the Autonomous Woman: A feminist Critique of Postcolonila Thought (India: Oxford University Press, 20 ), 24.
54 Susan Seizer, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage: An Ethnography of Special Drama Artists in South India (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 9. While Seizer explores “stigma management” within a disavowed genre of drama in India, I use the term to understand how it might operate differently in utiyattam which occupies a glorified position as a national cultural form.
97 Trinh T. Minh-Ha in Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and
Feminism argues that whenever a woman of color takes up the feminist fight she immediately qualifies for three possible betrayals, which the author terms as “triple jeopardy”: she can be accused of betraying either man (the ‘man-hater’), or her community (people of color should stay together to fight marginalizing forces like racism, communalism), or woman herself (you should first fight on the women’s side).155
Interestingly Usha Nangiar’s non-confrontational stance artfully avoids the first two gestures of “betrayal”. Yet, she eschews the position adopted by the women activists due to their failure to address her specific lived reality (‘we are not Nangiars, but you are’).
Even though newspaper and magazine publications have not yet translated to a change in the cultural rights of the caste-based practitioner they are significant (though not revolutionary) spaces of dissent that Usha Nangiar “pleasingly” and lithely carves via avoiding specific gestures of betrayal – that of the “man-hater” and that of “betraying community.”
Issue of class hierarchy contributes heavily to Speshal Natakam’s (Special
Drama) paradoxical position as popular and marginalized. Special Drama actors hail from different ethnic, caste, religious, regional and sexual identities, but the actors almost always hail from an economically low class.156 While the slapstick humor and bawdy
55 Trinh T. Minh-Ha Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 989), 78- 6.
56 Popular stage-acting in Special Drama is a “low class” profession in Tamil Nadu. See Seizer, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage, 23.
98 entertainment is popular with the masses, the dismissal of the genre as “a dead art- form” (by many Indian historians)157 is a gesture of forgetfulness, symptomatic of a larger “elite” dismissal of popular deemed as “vulgar”.
Seizer also points out that Special Drama was developing at a time (turn of the twentieth century) when the middle class throughout India was re-inventing tradition by devaluing the popular and striving for the classicization of “high-brow” cultural forms such as Bharatanatyam.158 The educated middle class involved in the reform and nationalist movements in India helped actively re-invent “Indian tradition”. They generally included the high-caste, urban, modern Hindu and have been key to defining the official cultural and national narratives of the Indian nation where the role of “ideal female behavior” came to hold great symbolic power.159 In these nationalistic narratives,
“tradition” is aligned not with the rural but with the modern, yet pitted against the
“Western” while arguing for a unique classical culture. In other words “traditional” (at least for those who re-invent and argue for “Indian” culture) means modern and non-
Western, but the two categories (“modern” and “non-Western”) are twinned together. It is this paradoxical functioning of cultural citizenship in India as modern and non-Western
57 Staging of Special Drama, in spite of including popular modern concerns and themes is restricted to rural areas of Tamil Nadu like Madurai, Pudukkottai, Dindigal such that many Indian historians consider it a dead art form. See Seizer, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage, 4, 27.
58 Ibid., 2.
59 Ibid.,75.
99 but based upon a Sanskritized (“traditional”) ethos that Usha Nangiar has to negotiate by avoiding particular gestures of “betrayal”.
Such a Sanskritized ethos that upholds the “ideal” citizen as upper-caste, male and Hindu in national culture come to be underscored when the Indian nation displays its cultural forms to the world via utiyattam whose narratives are crafted to tout the uniqueness of Indian culture as they circulate globally. Michael Di Giovine in his work
The Heritage Scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism points to the ways in which national narratives might collide with those of indigenous owners of heritage- sites or heritage-cultures when nations offer particular heritages for universal valorization via the lens of UNESCO’s natural and cultural categories.160 In the first few years as a signatory to the World Heritage convention, India lined up a series of cultural heritage properties/practices while choosing not to nominate its numerous natural sites, for possible world heritage designations.161 This is in spite of the natural sites satisfying the criteria of UNESCO’s “natural site” designation. According to Di Giovine, it is a conscious State-party decision to tout the Indian nation’s modern cultural practices that are uniquely “Indian”--a reaction “by a post-colonial state against Western hegemonic conceptions of its pre-modern culture.” In the case of India (as with other countries entering the heritage-economy), national narratives might not be in alignment with
60 Michaal A. Di Giovine,The Heritage Scape: UNESCO, World Heritage, and Tourism (Lanham MD: Lexington, 2009), 259.
6 India first signed the World Heritage Convention in 977.
00 cultural narratives of the local minority communities—owners of the heritage practices.
utiyattam, designated by UNESCO as intangible heritage, is thus a classicized theater traditionally practiced by high-caste Hindu performers. Today, however, it is inclusive of outsiders, cutting across caste, religion and national boundaries. In this “inclusivity” of bodies (of different caste, religious and ethnic identities162) that perform the art, it shares a common trait with the previously mentioned Special Drama (Speshal Natakam) of
Tamil Nadu. Yet, Sanskrit Drama ( utiyattam), unlike Special Drama, contrary to being a dismissed genre is a prized genre both for UNESCO and the Indian nation, precisely because it touts a Sanskritized, Hindu Indian culture, unique and traditional, while at the same time non-Western and modern. Women actresses, instead of being stigmatized, are uniquely revered, even more so than in other classical Indian dance forms like
Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam, etc. They are revered with strict limitations though: to the extent that their codes of behavior fit within the boundaries of “tradition”, or else they must face erasure from the traditional “sacred” settings. The “rule-abiding” female performer of Kutiyattam is thus able to gain entry even into the sanctum sanctorum of the temple during specific ritualistic performances. In the context of utiyattam entering the global heritage economy as intangible heritage, agency for the female artist in secular settings is translatable to even non-caste specific members as mentioned in
62 For example, Jahnara Rahman, a Muslim girl, performs Nangiarkoothu today and this is a rarity. See Aswathy Karnaver, "Mosque for Faith: Temple Dance for Worship." The New Indian Express, October 27, 20 2, http://newindianexpress.com/magazine/article 2857 0.ece?service=print (accessed October 29, 20 2).
0 chapter one.163 Yet, this “reverential exploitation” of the woman’s body, specifically that
of the female utiyattam practitioner, happens differently in secular and religious
settings. In religious/traditional settings it happens via the absenting of the “self-
choosing” hereditary caste-specific female practitioner’s bodily presence from the
religious stage setting, namely the kuthambalam in Kerala. In secular settings it happens
via an overt/deliberate visibilization of women’s bodies that cut across caste, religion,
class, and nation that upholds notions of the “self-choosing”, modern Indian woman.
Thus Usha Nangiar’s simultaneous absentation (from the temple stage) and
continued visibilization (on the secular stage) reflects the paradoxical demands that
women are expected to play as they negotiate between the “sacred” and the “secular”
because utiyattam straddles both the sacred/private and the secular/public. The
polarization of arguments by feminists in the public sphere and traditionalists in the
private sphere come to be highlighted by the media that often valorize utiyattam as both
“traditional” (i.e. non-Western) and “modern”.164 While feminists who decry caste (“we
are not Nangiar, but you are”) highlight concerns of democratic citizenship rights for
women in general, traditionalists (like the temple priests and family practitioners)
63 For example, Margi Sathi is able to garner enough cultural clout to challenge gender norms by penning her own acting manual (normatively the privilege of the male Cakyar). She was also featured in multiple noteworthy documentaries (including the film submitted to UNESCO) and the Keralan movie Nottam which bagged several Kerala State Film Awards in 2006. “Kerala State Film Awards for 2005 Announced”. The Hindu, February 8, 2006. http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/08/stories/2006020808 50600.htm (accessed March 3, 2007). Awards for best lyricist, best playback singer male and female.
64 Nita Sathyendran, "The Kalari and the Arangu are not the Same," The Hindu, September 25, 2009, http://www.hindu.com/fr/2009/09/25/stories/2009092550930200.htm (accessed October 5, 2009).
02 underscore concerns of “community in danger.”165 What remain unaddressed are the performance rights of the female caste-based artist within the temple stage/kuthambalam which are now effortlessly erased from the equation. Individual concerns arising from current lived realities and rights of the caste-based female practitioner remain unaddressed in being confined to the private sphere (of culture, tradition, caste, and community). More importantly, confining the invisibilization to the private sphere provides a sacred warrant for the cultural displacement of the casticized woman practitioner’s body. Eliding the female ( utiyattam practitioner’s) bodily presence from the temple stage thus whisks away spaces for participatory female bodies to be seen and their voices to be heard.
Nangiarkoothu (solo female performance of utiyattam) is the only extant solo
Sanskrit female traditional dance-theater form in the world today.166 Therefore the erasure of a Nangiar’s bodily presence from the local temple theater is of crucial cultural and political significance. Spatially confined to the non-religious/proscenium stage, not only is the Nangiar denied the sacrality (read: honor and worth) that is vital to the meaning-making of the caste-based practitioner, but also the foundations are being laid
65 A phrase borrowed from Tejaswini Niranjana, "Nationalism Refigured: Contemporary South Indian Cinema and the Subject of Feminism," in Community, Gender and Violence, ed. Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan (London: Hurst and Company, 2000), 38-66.
66 UNESCO Information Services Section: Mulitmedia Archives e-services, “Intangbible Heritage: The Drama of Sentiment India, Kutiyattam Sanskrit Theater, 2002," UNESCO.org, http://www.unesco.org/archives/multimedia/index.php?s=films_details&id_page=33&id_film=9 (accessed, January, 2007).
03 for the decline of her existing rights and status in society. The (absented) woman’s body
becomes the site of exploitation and misogynistic systems continue to be rationalized as
“tradition”, “religion” etc. Even without mentioning that women are inferior, the
implication comes to be so when the erasure of the female (performing body) is
rationalized, endorsed and “forgotten” in the name of “tradition”, “culture”,
“community”, “caste” or “religion”.167 In addition, Usha Nangiar is only one of two
remaining (female caste-based) Nangiar artists today in Kerala. Therefore in
remaining almost alone--none to share her lived reality or to argue for her rights--
her body is positioned as lone and abject. Her exclusion from the temple- stage remains
publicly unchallenged even today.
Today the local practice of utiyattam has become glocalized in gaining entry
into the patrimony of “intangible heritages” where it is valued as a “Masterpiece of Oral
and Intangible Human Heritage.” We must therefore ask, what are the implications of
valuing the cultural expressions/products of utiyattam on a global scale while devaluing
or undermining specific laboring cultural bodies on a local scale? And, more specifically,
how does this glocal situation affect the citizenship rights for practitioners of “traditional”
art forms? Ettienne Balibar in "Difference, Otherness, Exclusion," proposes that
processes of discrimination and identification, such as religion and colonialism, produce
their own unique subjects and objects, where racism becomes the final product of such
67 My understandings also draw from Riffat Hassan’s essay, “Muslim Women and Post Patriarchal Islam,” in After Patriarchy-Feminist Transformations of the World Religions, ed. Pamela M. Cooey, et al. (New York: Orbis Books, 99 ) 39-64.
04 discriminatory processes.168 Social phenomena like market culture, liberalism, nationalism, religious intolerance, etc., are but multiple manifestations of/ interconnections with racism. Therefore, at stake in not critically understanding the epistemological category of racism is the issue of human rights, since a neutralization of racism’s historical narratives could easily lead to its rationalization (as a positive value).169 Balibar examines discrimination/ otherness as one of the effects of (interior) exclusion from recognition, status, dignity, rights, and access to normal social activities and relations on workings and conceptualizations of the legal framework and the Nation- state. Here the exclusion process for Balibar is seen as a preparation for elimination--the extreme forms of which is exemplified in the extermination camps.170 Following
Balibar, I suggest that at stake in not working through the problematics of casticized bodily exclusions (specifically that of the female practitioner) from performance spaces like the kuthambalam, is that this could easily lead to its rationalization as a positive value in the name of “tradition.” The process of “othering” which Usha Nangiar is subject to (due to her matrimonial choice) unequivocally excludes her from familial rights of performance within the kuthambalam. What is disconcerting to me is also the current apathy in responses of younger non caste-based artists who maintain that in a couple years there will be no more “pure” caste-based performers left and therefore such
68 Etienne Balibar, "Difference, Otherness, Exclusion," Parallax , no. (2005): 9-34.
69 Ibid., 27.
70 Ibid., 25.
05 unjust traditional systems will simply not continue.171 It seems to me as if they are waiting (inactively) for specific caste-based practitioners to die out/ be exterminated/”forgotten” in order for the “traditional” system to fall apart.
Seyla Benhabib in The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global
Era argues that the “task of democratic equality is to create impartial institutions in the public sphere and civil society where the struggle for the recognition of cultural differences and the contestation for cultural narratives can take place without domination.”172 This might help counter the shortcomings of discourses of marginalization which often focus on what the group is (in terms of ascribed identities of race, ethnicity, and religion), instead of what their demands are. Usha Nangiar’s specific
(albeit underplayed) demand is the lack of public questioning of the erasure of her performing body (“Somebody should have asked, right?”). Her case, if addressed simplistically as an issue of family rights/religion/caste, can easily lead to cultural conformity rather than individual agency, where the practice of banning specific casticized female bodies can come to be regarded as “tradition” due to negotiations between the state, the public media and the elites. Here negotiations take place
7 Usha Nangiar is only one of two remaining Nangiars in Kerala today. Progenies of other caste-based Cakyars cannot effectively maintain their caste positionality due to a dearth of caste- members eligible for marriage / inter-caste marriages. In my conversations with younger non-caste based artists and students during field work between July 20 0 and Dec 20 0, and over phone conversations in January and February of 20 3 they point out that caste-based practitioners will not be in existence soon. I do understand that younger artist’s lack of engagement with this social issue so close at hand might also be a result of frustrations and exclusions experienced by younger artists; over in-fighting caused by issues of caste, and school/styles of training, etc.
72 Seyla, Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), 8.
06 between the Keralan state (Devaswom board which owns the temple), the upper caste religious figures (Brahman Pujaris, tantri), and upper caste middle class consumers of
Indian (Englished) media like The Hindu and India Today, which have been ineffective in providing a space for Usha Nangiar’s personal voice (“All they said was, I have no problem with the situation”).
In the context of globalization, multiculturalist aspirations can be quite compatible (rather than radically incommensurable) with liberal democratic universalism, according to Benhabib, if pluralist structures do not violate the three normative conditions of “egalitarian reciprocity”, “voluntary self-ascription” and “freedom of exit and association.”173 However, the author’s third normative condition—that of “freedom of exit and association”--is not a condition that Usha Nangiar can avail of without having to further give up her caste privileges and rights. Benhabib’s work clearly shows (via numerous case studies) that multicultural institutional arrangements and legal compromises very often work against women where their rights are either stifled by arguments of “cultural” practices that advocate a dependency on a patriarchal system (as
73 Ibid., “Egalitarian reciprocity” envisions equitable political, economic, civil, and cultural rights of its members (as enjoyed by the rest of the majority), regardless of religious, cultural, and linguistic affiliations. “Voluntary self-ascription” is the possibility for the adult individual to subscribe to a group membership by choice (rather than by virtue of birth or one that is automatically ascribed by the state) so as to permit maximum self- identification and self-ascription. “Freedom of exit and association”, defines voluntary self-ascription more clearly in that it argues that the freedom to exit a space (geographical, political, cultural, etc.) or group must be unrestricted and must also necessarily mean at least a freedom to seek admission to enter another space or group even though membership might not be guaranteed, 6, 70-73.
07 in the Shah Bano case),174 or render them vulnerable to oppression, either by withdrawing the legal protection to which they would be entitled were they not considered members of cultural minorities, or by making them objects of state regulation to teach the nation a lesson, as In the case of scarf affair in France.175 Therefore, Usha Nangiar’s case is not an exception but rather another example that demonstrates a repetitive pattern; a pattern in which discourses of tradition, religion, and culture butt up against national
(democratic) citizenship rights in India, often working against the female.
Thus, while female performers of utiyattam seem to gain access to cultural capital in globalization, their cultural rights within the nation seem to be severely compromised. This points to the possibility that the Nangiar (female, caste-specific performer) could be denied equitable religious and cultural rights (to perform within temple precincts) due to “democratic” and “secular” concerns of the nation, was she to contend her case in a court of law as in the Shah Bano case in India and scarf affair in
France.
74 Ibid., 00. The case of a divorced Muslim woman’s petition for matrimonial alimony in India was denied on the basis of secularism where religious communities were declared “free” to practice their own customs.
75 In September 994, the French government issued a referendum banning Muslim women from wearing scarves in public.
08 Labor Rights of the Caste-based Performer and the “Un-marking” of Caste
Usha Nangiar highglights familial performing rights as a way to downplay the “marking” of caste and thus, allows caste to trump gender in her case. She then parallels familial performing rights to modern labor rights in socialist Kerala to further strengthen her statements.176
UN (continues): Madhu Sir cannot perform at MoozhikkulamTemple, even though he was born a Cakyar and lives as a Cakyar.177 Performance rights in that temple belongs to his father’s family and since it is a matrilineal society (where rights are inherited between maternal uncle and nephew) he does not have the right to perform.
Even though the Cakyar and Nambiar families follow a matrilineal system, it operates within a patriarchal framework. Here performance rights are not transferred between women in the family, but rather between males in the woman’s family.
UN: The initial idea of this was the preservation of labor rights, just like the load worker or laborer who belongs to a union. They do not take people outside of the union
o labor there. I say just acknowledge it like that, see that plus point (rather than make it just a gender issue).
76 In Kerala, labor rights are actively defended by labor union groups and the communist/socialist parties. Thus Keralan laborers in Kerala are paid a much higher wage than laborers working in the rest of India. Interestingly, nowadays, laborers from outside Kerala are increasingly sought in Kerala for “cheap labor.” Thus most homes, I visited had gardeners and maids from other states in India, like Bihar or Tamil Nadu. Restaurants and malls also regularly recruit cheap labor from Assam, Bihar, and Orissa.
77 She is referring to Margi Madhu, caste based male practitioner from the community of Cakyars.
09 Kerala being a socialist state in India, labor rights are of significant importance.
Socialist reforms majorly included the overthrow of inequitable caste and class privileges within an unjust hierarchical system of caste-based labor. In fact it was the sweeping land reforms of 1970 in Kerala that took away the lands of the Cakyar and Nangiar, making them almost destitute.178 It is therefore meaningful that Usha Nangiar equates socialist labor rights of the load worker with current contexts of caste-based performance rights.
She does this in order to evoke equitable cultural labor rights of the performer without having to highlight issues of gender or caste. Yet in Usha Nangiar’s instance, labor rights were not preserved. Rather they were withdrawn with direct impacts on the performing body (her erasure from the temple stage), operating within a system where performance rights are based on gender and caste affiliations. Usha Nangiar was denied her existing rights after she chose to marry outside and below her caste. Hence, it is ultimately her personal choice that warranted her erasure from the temple stage (private sphere).
Therefore, rights to choose become the lynchpin on which benefits and privileges are bestowed or withdrawn from the female caste-based performer of utiyattam.
Tejaswini Niranjana in “Nationalism Refigured: Contemporary South Indian
Cinema and the Subject of Feminism” argues that the “woman who chooses, the woman who acts independently, the woman who takes the initiative” is considered a positive national symbol, especially within contexts of neo-liberal market economy in India.
Yet, upper-caste and middle class women, in laying their claims to the “national-
78 G. Venu, Production of a Play in utiyattam (Irinjalakuda: Natankairali, 989), 3.
0 modern” space, simultaneously invisibilize both men and women of the lower castes,
while upholding the status quo of the upper-caste and middle class Hindu male as the
“secular”, modern Indian citizen.179 Here, the decrying of caste differences is identified
as a symptom of “post-nationalist-modernism in India” where the upper-caste and middle
class Indian citizen by disavowing caste, is able to lay claim to both the modern and
secular.
Media nterventions in the Spectacularization of utiyattam
Nottam (Gaze), a Keralan movie,180 premiered in international film festivals and
bagged the Kerala State Film Award in 2006,181 showcases subtle complexities of private
lives of utiyattam artists that often fail to fit in with modern economic liberalization.
Yet, the movie celebrates the triumph of utiyattam despite Western liberalism. A noted
Indian website that posts reviews of Malayalam movies writes, "‘Nottam’ focuses on the
ability of utiyattam to transcend space and time and heralds the awakening of the world
to the 2,000-year-old dance-theatre tradition. “182 In this movie, utiyattam is performed
on a national scale, within the nation state, for Indian politicians, visiting Western
79 Tejaswini Niranjana, "Nationalism Refigured: Contemporary South Indian Cinema and the Subject of Feminism," 40 - 44.
80 Nottam, Digital Download Video, directed by Sasi Paravoor (2005; Kerala, India: Film Focuz, 2006).
8 The movie Nottam won several Kerala State Film Awards, including, best lyricist, best playback singer female, best playback singer, male. “Kerala State Film Awards for 2005 Announced”. The Hindu, February 8, 2006. http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/08/stories/2006020808 50600.htm. (accessed March 3, 2007).
82 Malavika Vettath, "'Nottam'-a Visual Treat Celebrating Kerala's Heritage," Nowrunning.com http://www.nowrunning.com/movie/2588/malayalam/nottam/6 5/review.htm (accessed, April 2009).
diplomats and delegates, and on an international scale, in American and European universities and to Indian diasporic communities. The website also describes the movie as depicting the “significance of utiyattam both on stage and beyond” (italics mine).
The well-credited Keralan director, Sasi Paravoor, decided to film this movie after utiyattam was declared “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of
Humanity” by UNESCO.183 According to the website, Paravoor thoroughly researched the life-style and social mores of the tradition bound community for almost three years before he began the making of the film. The movie is shot in Pattambi, a quiet, rural, and picturesque town of Kerala. It is reminiscent of my visits to places where caste-based artists reside.184 All members of the utiyattam troupe in the movie are caste-specific practitioners. The lead actor Nedumudi Venu, who is not an actual utiyattam artist, plays the role of “Vasu Cakyar,” the major artist of the uityattam troupe being filmed.
He is quoted as beginning every day’s film shoot after praying to the gurus of utiyattam for their blessings so that he is able to be attentive to their long lineage of histrionic abilities. It is notable that utiyattam, which is brought to the center of the movie, becomes the ideal platform to negotiate issues of modernity and tradition where ultimately the tradition-bound practice triumphs in the modern world.
83 Ibid.,
84 Due to their close affiliations to temples, artists I visited, live in scenic rural areas of Moozhikkulam, Irinjalakkuda, and Chathakkudam.
2 What particularly interests me in this movie is the portrayal of the ability of the
utiyattam body to “talk back” to Western culture. In many instances the body is recognized as a site of effective resistance. For example Nambisan (the troupe organizer) introduces the mild mannered troupe members to a visitor in these terms, “Do not be fooled by their appearance (the mild and gentle demeanor of the troupe members), they are “bheegarar” (capable of invoking terror) on stage. This begins to hint at how performers are able to invoke intense responses in audiences via mastery of bodily techniques specific to utiyattam. When Vasu Cakyar declares that he feels anguish and anger in having to perform this sacred art before a bunch of drunken delegates,
“Saraswathy Ammayi,” (a Nangiar in the movie), played by Nangiarkoothu artist Margi
Sathi, reminds him that once the performance begins, the audience will stay quiet. The implication is that even the unruly audiences will pay rapt attention once the utiyattam performance begins. The movie ends with a grand finale where the supreme ability of the
Cakyar’s acting skills successfully deceive both, the audience members as well as the troupe members. Vasu Cakyar in portraying the death of Bali is able to realistically enact the various breaths that a human body supposedly experiences before death.185 When he
“dies” on stage and lies in a lump for a prolonged duration, the audience is restless, unsure of whether the Cakyar has actually died. Some of them come closer to inspect.
The Cakyar continues to play “dead”. After a few moments, “Saraswathy Ammayi”,
85 Balivadham (Death of Bali) is a popular scene in utiyattam. Guru Ammannur Madhava Cakyar’s name is commonly associated with this act. His technique of linking breath control and emotive elements (developed during his extensive training in odungallur alari, a training center in Kodungallur) is considered a major contribution to Kutiyattam.
3 uncertain of the Cakyar’s situation, cries out his name, runs onto stage and lifts the
Cakyar’s head. The mizahvu (drum) players move in silently not knowing what to expect.
The entire audience and stage space is silent when the Cakyar open his eyes and looks pointedly at the previously “disrespectful” and “unruly” spectators. They give him a standing ovation for his ability to “betray” death. The male Cakyar’s body thus successfully “talks back” such that the audiences are unsettled and left in awe of this ancient art –a spectacularization of the “vibrant” male ( utiyattam) body.
However, it is through the “acquiescent” body of the female artist that the movie portrays notions of ideal Indian femininity. In fact, in real life, it is through the performing bodies of the (female) Nangiar that dominant notions of local society come to be challenged.186 The links between portrayals of the traditional and modern Indian woman are performed overtly and covertly via the two main female characters of this movie, “Saraswathy Nangiar” (also referred to as “Saraswathy Ammayi”), and Vasu
Cakyars’ wife “Saudamini”. In the movie, the character of Saraswathy Nangiar (caste- based practitioner), is played by Margi Sathi, who is a master Nangiarkoothu artist in real life. The character “Saraswathi” (her name meaning the goddess of learning) is introduced in typical Keralan costume, wearing a simple white cotton mundu and veshti
(two pieces of cotton cloth that wrap around the body). She wears no make-up or ornamentation except for the pottu (a red dot or circle design) and chandanam (sandal
86 For example several women practitioners have successfully re-written and performed major female characters of Hindu mythology like Draupadi, Sita, Mandothari, Kaarthiyaani as discussed in Chapter .
4 paste) on the forehead (both read as symbols of Indian female (Hindu) “purity”.
Saraswathi is soft spoken, yet has a firm determination about her. She speaks her mind albeit gently, is able to provide the Cakyar with wise and strong counsel when the Cakyar falters when having to make major decisions for the utiyattam troupe. She has also chosen to remain unmarried which by itself is an act of resistance, in Kerala.187 Her bodily demeanor is proud and upright (controlled, thoughtful reactions and responses to difficult situations), yet “pleasing” in words. In contrast, Vasu Cakyar’s, wife,
“Saudamini” is humble, compliant to both the son and husband and defers to both for decisions that need to be made in the house.188 The stage is thus set to valorize both the traditional and the modern, via two “ideal” Indian female roles.
Saraswathy Nangiar and the Performance of “Modern” ndia
As the plot unfolds, “Aby”, a young Keralan Christian male who resides in
America comes to make a documentary on utiyattam. Aby, his friend “Vishnu” (Vasu
Cakyar’s son, who is urban educated and works in Bangalore, a major metropolis in
South India), and the troupe organizer Nambeesan arrive in an SUV (Sumo Traveller) to
Nadanagramam.189 The arrival of the SUV is in stark contrast to the peaceful settings of
87 As a Keralite born and raised woman, this is my personal opinion.
88 The wife does not participate (or rather her opinions are not sought) in decision making processes such as the international travels that her husband and his troupe plan to undertake. It is assumed she will be in willing compliance to whatever decisions are made by him regarding the matter.
89 Natanagramam is the registered name of the utiyattam institute that the troupe performers in the movie are associated with.
5 the place—the harsh sounds that the large heavy vehicle makes against the lulling sounds of folk chants in the background and the peaceful unhurried and simple rural settings.
The vehicle serves to symbolize “modern” transportation and economic status. The building sports the name “Nadanagramam utiyattam Sammithy” (Organization of
utiyattam Dance Village) on a black board painted in white and printed in Malayalam.
It is reminiscent to me of “Natanakairali” the premiere institute of utiyattam in
Irinjalakkuda.190
Saraswathy Nangiar strokes Vishnu’s (Vasu Cakyar’s son) head lovingly as she welcomes him at the doorstep. Vishnu hails her as Ammayi (aunty) and her mother as mutthashi (grandmother). Saraswathy Nangiar’s mother says it’s a great blessing when a
“grandson” brings a gift with his hard earned money like Vishnu does. Such gestures indicate close ties within the community that blur the personal family with the extended community. In juxtaposition, the name of Vishnu’s friend, “Aby”, though a pithy two syllabled word, seems to be a tricky one for Nambisan to enunciate while introducing him to Saraswathy—implying the “foreignness” of the name and thus his status as
“outsider”. This is in spite of “Aby” being a common name among local Christians in
Kerala.191 Nambisan says that the name doesn’t come easily on his tongue. In contrast,
Nambeesan introduces Saraswathy (who is named after the Hindu Goddess of Learning)
90 The institute is run by G.Venu who played an instrumental role in attaining the recognition for uityattam as “Intangible Heritage” by UNESCO.
9 Kerala has the highest density of Christian population in India and a long history of their presence, believed to be dating back to the arrival of St. Thomas in Kerala A.D. 52. See Susan Visvanathan, “The Legends of St. Thomas in Kerala,” India International Center Quarterly 22, no.2/3 ( 995): 27.
6 to Aby and says that the name Saraswathy suits her perfectly--she is just like “Goddess
Saraswathy”.
In India, names (and specifically last names) often bear markings of caste and religion. Last names typically indicate your caste, if you are Hindu. For example, “Nair”,
“Menon”, “Namboothirippad”, Nambiar”, “Cakyar”, etc. indicate their commensurate caste affiliations. This also means that nomenclature can directly affect privileges you can avail of or be denied when understood and marked as an “outsider”.
After they take leave of Saraswathy Nangiar, Aby asks “Unni Cakyar” (the jester) on the next evening, “Why are the mother and daughter living together? 192 Doesn’t
Saraswathy Ammayi have a husband?” Unni Cakyar replies, “To have a husband without marriage might be common in America, not in this land. We don’t have such a samprathayam (culture/tradition).” In saying this, America comes to stand in for the West whose people lack “morality”. In contrast, the culture of the people of Kerala (“this land”) is highlighted as “pure”, morally “chaste”, one that supposedly disallows sexual relationships outside of marriage. This is quite contrary to the social history of Kerala where the practice of culturally sanctioned sexual relationships of Brahmin males with females outside of the institution of marriage called sambandham prevailed until 1970193.
Sexual exploitation of women based on caste and class via the practice of sambandham
92 The role of “Unni Cakyar” is played by one of Kerala’s most popular movie comedians, Jagathi Sreekumar.
93 George Kurian, “Structural Changes in the Family in Kerala, India,” in Socialization and Communication in Primary Groups (The Hague: Mouton, 976), 64.
7 (sexual relationships without marriage) were socially, religiously and culturally sanctioned for the supreme benefit of the Brahmin male. By upholding the symbol of the
“chaste” Indian woman-- represented by Saraswathy Nangiar (who is both upper-caste and Hindu)—narratives of the modern neo-nationalist “Indian” come into being.
However, in this case, the notion of the ideal Indian is construed by a blatant gesture of
“forgetfulness” of Kerala’s sexually exploitative history. Such an obvious overlooking of its own history thus enables narratives of the “chaste”, “protected” Indian woman to materialize in contexts of globalization while simultaneously leaving the filiative orders of patriarchy undisturbed (“chaste” for and “protected” by the upper-caste Hindu male).
At some point, the movie showcases a clip of the utiyattam documentary that
Aby makes in order to showcase it on the World Wide Web. In the documentary “Vasu
Cakyar” claims proudly that the Cakyars created a revolution when they brought the female out of the home and onto the stage. This was at a time when it was taboo for women to perform on public stages. The uniqueness of utiyattam dance-theater is that females perform female characters, unlike males who donned female characters in other
Keralan theater forms like athakali. The Cakyar states that in the female solo form of
utiyattam called Nangiarkoothu (formerly called Nangiarammakoothu), women were historically given a space to explore artistic and performance concepts freely in an unrestricted manner.
However, this “freedom” was limited only for specific casticized women like the female caste-based Nangiar. Illodamma, women from a Cakyar clan are banned from
8 stage appearances, while the Nangiar, who hails from a caste positionality below the
Cakyar, was made to appear on stage. In declaring utiyattam as revolutionary from a social perspective, issues of caste, class and gender are swept under the rug upholding the glorious culture of Kerala. Thus, a crafting of the historiography of utiyattam, which comes to stand in for the glorious history of Kerala, with caste and class issues erased, is mediatized via this movie which premiered in 2006.
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana in “Problems for a contemporary theory of
Gender,” argue that in the context of economic liberalization in India and the gradual erosion of the public sector, the neo-nationalist Indian subject proclaims its Indianness even as it internationalizes itself.”194 The neo Indian subject now claims equality with the
Western subject totally on its own terms, even if it means aggressively denying anything that hinders its equal place in the New World Order (we don’t have such a samprathayam/tradition in this land). Newspapers often portray utiyattam as both traditional and modern, and its innovativeness is often represented via the female performing body of utiyattam.195
Coming back to the movie, “Unni Cakyar “(the jester) goes on to explain
Saraswathy Nangiar’s personal story. “Vasu Cakyar” wanted his stage companion,
94 Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, “Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender,” Social Scientist 22, no. 3/4, ( 994): 98.
95 See Meena Menon, "From Ritual to the Contemporary," The Hindu, February 25, 2007, http://www.hindu.com/mag/2007/02/25/stories/2007022500060200.htm (accessed March 3, 2007). The news article represents Usha Nangiar as a “symbol of innovation.”
9 Saraswathy to also be his life companion/wife when he was younger. However, he did not reveal his desires to her, merely hinted it to “Unni”. Operating within a matrilineal system, Vasu Cakyar didn’t have the courage to go against his uncle who had chosen another lady to be Vasu’s wife. Neither did Saraswathy marry in spite of numerous good proposals that came her way in her youth. However, even though Saraswathy Nangiar exists outside of the framework of marriage she, is considered talented and chaste, not subjected to disrepute—a rare privilege for the single female in India, especially if you appear on public stages.
“Unni Cakyar,” elaborates that Saraswathy was born to act, not to be someone’s
“housemaid”. The term “house-maid” literally stands in for “wife” in this conversation.
The assumption here is that once you are married, you are meant for the man, not as his equal but as one who serves him within the structure of the home. Such an assumption is so deeply rooted in Keralan culture (despite high levels of education in the state), that women who have more successful careers or financial advancements than the male are considered “dangerous” or “unfit” for the home.
Vasu Cakyar’s Wife, “Saudamini” and the Portrayal of “Traditional” ndia
In contrast to Sarasathy Nangiar who is talented and self-reliant, Vasu Cakyar’s wife, “Saudamini” is portrayed as attending to her husband’s every need—serving him at the dining table, waiting to offer him medicinal powder after his bath, dutifully and pleasingly bringing him his blood pressure medication and water while the perfectly
20 healthy Cakyar politely accepts the services as an everyday affair. The Cakyar’s wife even considers herself lacking in intelligence when she remarks (in a humorous, pleasing tone) that her daughter who failed the high school exams numerous times, inherited her brains, while her son, who is good at software programming, inherited his father’s sharp intellect. “Saudamini” is portrayed as a perfect “fit,” ideal for the home.
“Jessica”, the Foreign Woman and the Portrayal of the Western Other”
Jessica, the German musician who comes to learn mizhavu (the drums played for
utiyattam), is told that mizhavu is usually not taught to females in Kerala. However,
“Unni Cakyar” says it might be possible to make an exception in her case (because she is a foreigner/white woman). The bodily stance that the drummer assumes to play the mizhavu is probably not considered “appropriate” for the female. The drummer climbs on to the wooden frame within which the mizhavu is positioned and sits astride the frame with the mizhavu between the drummer’s legs in order to beat them. Such a bodily stance with the drum between the legs—clearly an index of phallic strength--seems
“inappropriate” for the female (read threatening to the male). However, “Jessica”, a
German who falls outside the framework of Indian femininity is told that she might avail of mizhavu lessons. The foreign woman here serves to remind viewers on how the “ideal”
Indian female behaves.
The framework of “Indian” femaleness is thus very proscriptive as portrayed in the movie. While the self-choosing (in choosing not to marry), and talented, yet chaste and
2 uncorrupted female is allowed to come into being outside of marriage in the public sphere, (via “Saraswathy Nangiar”), the traditional and subservient female (to the man) must materialize within the framework of marriage (restrictive domestic space). Notions of the “liberal” Indian woman are allowed to exist in the public sphere precisely by limiting her (making sure her memory exists via “Saudamini”) as inferior /“made for man” within the private sphere of the domestic household. Such entanglements of notions of the female--her freedom to choose or not—are indicative of the “place of the woman” in Keralan society. In this movie utiyattam thus becomes the cultural space through which such narratives of gender come to be crafted and mediatized.
Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana in trying to understand how gender is configured within economic liberalization in India feel that the kinds of contradictions that confront gender analysis also face class analysis, caste initiatives, and more broadly democracy and secularism today.196 utiyattam, as it operates in globalization warrants the inclusivity of members from different caste and class ascriptions and thus is a fruitful place to understand the how these social markers intersect and get performed. For the same reason, it also offers great potential to rework, rethink, and perform gender, caste and class formations within Kerala and how they in turn shape narratives of democracy and secularism in India.
96 Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana, “Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender,” Social Scientist, 95.
22 Mediatized Lives versus Real Lives
The performance, practice, and representation of the female utiyattam practitioner (via documentaries and newspaper reports), is an especially fruitful place to examine the construction of the modern “secular” Indian citizen. “Real” life narratives of female practitioners help highlight a constructed gap between the mediatized product and the actual practice of utiyattam. Nationally circulated newspapers, namely, Indian
Express and The Hindu, that cater to an educated middle class reader often portray
utiyattam as an ancient and modern art, where artists innovate profusely, and women effectively re-imagine new spaces for themselves. Women artists have done this via individual interpretations that are bodily performed on stage. For example, Margi Sathi’s
Seethayana and Usha Nangiar’s Draupadi are cases in point where their written and bodily texts have re-worked and challenged traditional notions of the female within
Hindu mythologies that are deeply embedded within the local cultural imagination.197
Younger artists like Margi Usha, Kalamandalam Sindhu and Kalamandalam Sangeetha are also performing individually conceptualized works. Although they have not yet had an opportunity to publish written texts, they have successfully performed them in public venues. The social significance of utiyattam, and especially of Nangiarkoothu, is repeatedly represented as having supposedly broken barriers of religion, caste and class.
Non- caste members like Kalamandalam Girija and Margi Sathi as well as young Muslim
97 For more information on this see newreport, G.S Paul, "Sathy's Sitayana," The Hindu, Aug , 2008, http://www.hindu.com/fr/2008/08/0 /stories/2008080 50 40300.htm (accessed Aug 5, 2008).
23 female, Jahnara Rahman have been pointed out as examples of the inclusivity of the art form.198 Yet the reality of Usha Nangiar’s bodily erasure from the temple stage stands in stark contrast to the supposed increasing visibilization (read agency) of the female.
utiyattam and its Uneasy Links to Fundamentalist Tendencies in Kerala
While mediatized representations of utiyattam often construct this artistic and cultural practice as having successfully crossed barriers of caste, religion, gender, and class, interviews with utiyattam practioners and scholars reveal ruptures in these simplistic narratives as having “successfully” crossed social barriers and instead point to certain fundamentalistic tendencies in Keralan society.
nterviews with non-hereditary performer, Margi Sathi, and utiyattam scholar, Dr. P. Venugopalan (September 2, 2010) at the Ambalapuzha Srikrishna Swamy Temple. nterviews conducted in Malayalam. Margi Sathi (MS): We went to idangoor Temple in ottayam to shoot the documentary for the UNESCO submission with Adoor Gopalakrishnan at the kuthambalam there. 199 The locals came to gherao (threaten) him about the artists
98 For news report on Muslim Woman, Jahnara Rahman, utiyattam artist, see Aswathy Karnaver, "Mosque for Faith: Temple Dance for Worship," The New Indian Express, October 27, 20 2, http://newindianexpress.com/magazine/article 2857 0.ece?service=print (accessed October 29, 20 2).
99 Adoor Gopalakrishanan is a celebrated director of Keralan movies, his works having received numerous international film festival awards. For details on his documentary of utiyattam submitted to UNESCO, see Diane Daugherty, "Documentation of Koodiyattam (review)" Asian Theatre Journal 2 , no.2 (2004): 220-22 .
24 involved.200 They came with sticks and swords to physically harm if needed. They said that the camera cannot be taken into the kuthmablam. They told Adoor Sir and the men in the Kutiyattam group that they cannot enter the theater space with their shirts.201
The artists including me were afraid. We had reached the night before, and the locals were angry right from then. They are not interested in Kutiyattam. Some of them have never even seen a Kutiyattam performance before! But if there was a chance to fight, they were prepared for it. Finally Adoor Sir had to wear a mundu [traditional piece of long cotton cloth that wraps the body below the waist], take off his shirt and wrap another cloth over his chest. Probably they bathed the camera too! After we left they purified the entire area. It’s that kind of system there.
The temple ground here is used as an opportunistic space to discipline bodies and mark them specifically as “Hindu” or at least as compliant with codes of Keralan Hindu attire. The movie director’s body clothed in pants and shirt (read western/ “secular”) is thus required to be re-marked as “Hindu” within the traditional Keralan temple space in
Kidangoor202
200 The term “gherao” is associated with a form of industrial action in India in which workers imprison their employers on the premises until their demands are met.
20 The kuthamblam/temple theater is separate from the temple sanctorium, where people usually view performances in everyday clothing, yet the locals insisted they follow Keralan temple etiquette. In most Keralan temples, people may enter to worship only after their bath. Some temples have a pond where you may dip in before worship. To enter the temple premises men have to be bare chested, wear a mundu (not pants). Women are to wear saris or skirts or such-- no pant like costumes.
202 It is also possible that all of the camera crew was not Hindu and the physical presence of (local outside non-Hindu) bodies was an added disrutption to the locals.
25 Dr. P. Venugopal (PV) (relating local religious issues and utiyattam’s
“universalization”): The art form of Kutiyattam was universalized by bringing it out from the confines of the temple to the secular stage by Painkulam Rama Cakyar in
1949, not by UNESCO.203 The fact that the Cakyar was willing to teach in a state- institution to outside caste members was a bold and courageous act at that time.
However, now with the UNESCO declaration, things seem to have gotten worse.
Today, only one temple in Harippad [a town in Southern erala] allows non-Hindu members to perform-- regardless of caste, religion, nationality. A French Lady has performed there twice.
EK: Is there a problem with local non-Hindus performing within other temple spaces?
PV: Oh you as a local should not even be mentioning that your name is “Elizabeth” here at the Ambalapuzha Temple!
EK: Yes, when I arrived here a few days ago there were a lot of hushed tones and whispers when I uttered my name at the lodge near the temple. The younger girls’ mouths opened wide, they began whispering amongst each other, but I smiled and then they seemed okay. Interestingly, one of the girls, Devu even seemed “protective” about me while walking through the Ambalapuzha Temple grounds and talking with her
203 Painkulam Rama Cakyar performed Cakyarkoothu (oral presentation) format of uityattam for the first time outside of the temple at a home in Kottarakkara, Kerala, in 948. This was followed by a public performance of utiyattam at a high school in 956 in Kozhikode, Kerala. Later on in 965, Painkulam Rama Cakyar also taught to non- caste members in the state run art institution Kerala Kalamandalam. See Venugopalan, utiyattam Register, 23.
26 acquaintances. She seemed to deliberately address me only as chechi (older sister) without mentioning my name.
My name is non-Hindu and Western (English), but my body bears the visual markings of the local Keralan. I am expected to be Hindu, but my name signals disloyalty, westernization. The visible bodily responses are clearly indicative of this disloyalty/betrayal. Devu, as an individual seems willing to accommodate me. Yet, she also senses the potential risks of revealing my non-Hinduness and her complicity in aiding such a transgression.
PV: Local Christians are a big issue, not foreigners. The thing is we do not know when and where someone might decide to make this a problem. Foreigners can come but if local Christians enter the temple here, there could be trouble. It is simply to make an issue, mainly by BJP and RSS [Hindu right wing groups].204
I am reminded of several occasions I have covertly entered local temple grounds in Kerala during my high school years with Hindu friends to avail of the delicious prasadam (food offered to the gods). My friends often remark that Bharatanatyam made me more Hindu than them. What they implied is the ease with which I perform embodied gestures that are specific in temple worship. For example, gestures like anjali hasta
204 BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and RSS (Rashtriya Swayam Sevak) are Hindu nationalist groups in India. Both political parties played a major role in inciting the gruesome Babri Masjid massacres in India. The RSS operations in Kerala have often been linked to mistreatment of Muslim locals in northern Kerala.
27 followed by catura hasta205 are performed for paying obeisance before the idol. The gesture of pushpaputa hasta is employed to receive prasadam and such.206 Yet, my friends and I would be a little nervous lest someone from the locality spotted me as non-
Hindu.207 Likewise, my Hindu friends often accompanied me to church worship, in the hopes to invite all possible forms of divine interventions to attain good grades for the final exams.
Anupama Roy, in “Community, Women Citizens and a Women's Politics” explores the identity formations of ‘the citizen’ in India, as fluctuating between discourses of tradition and secularism, where the citizen is either marked by caste and religion or unmarked as the abstract (secular) citizen. However, In Kindangoor Temple, the local right wing Hindutva groups demanded a re-marking of Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s
“neutral” (urban attired) body within the temple settings. Although one needs to be specifically attired only within the space of the sanctum sanctorum/worship altar of the temple, the rules at Kidangoor are forcefully enforced even within the temple-theater space. (The theater is situated outside of the temple sanctorum and falls outside of the rules of temple worship etiquette). Generally the local (Hindu) public comes in everyday attire to view utiyattam at the temple theater, as was my experience in Ambalapuzha
205 Anjali hasta, hands folded near your heart, and chatura hasta with right hand lightly dabbed on each eye to indicate a quick obeisance.
206 Hasta or gestures employed in Bharatanatyam technique parallel some of the gestures used in temple worship.
207 Interestingly, non-Hindus are allowed entry to most temples outside Kerala.
28 Temple. While the “secular” body might be read as neutral in public spaces, it is specifically marked as Hindu in the private religious sphere of the temple in Kerala. A mapping of “Hinduness” on the body becomes a requirement within the extended temple premises, or else one could be forcefully asked to leave, or even threatened with physical harm as in Kidangoor Temple. Authoritarian acts that directly threaten the safety of the
“secular,” (read as non-compliant and possibly non-Hindu) body that infiltrates its religious borders thus come to be legitimized within the religious/private sphere. The fact that such religious “war” zones often bleed into public spaces enable fundamentalist/communalist religious practices to become uneasily folded into public life in Kerala, such that boundaries between public welfare and private believes become unclear.
Hindu Aikya Vedi (Hindu United Front) is a Keralan Hindu organization formed in 1992 that aims to bring together all Hindus, irrespective of caste under one umbrella and re-awaken an awareness of a true Keralan culture as Hindu.208 One of their major goals is to secure Hindu places of worship to be used by Hindus only. Their website proudly claims that a bandh (forced public closure) in Kerala was “successful” due to the public support they received on February 2, 2013.209 The Hindu AIkya Vedi (HAV), along with other nationalist right wing Hindu groups like the VHP (Vishwa Hindu
208 Hindu Aikya Vedi, "Sasikala Teacher: Featured Video of Speech against Terrorism," http://www.hinduaikyavedi.org (accessed March 2, 20 3). Speech by one of this group’s woman leaders, Sasikala, hailed as “Sasikala Teacher”.
209 Hindu Aikyavedi, "Hartal Called by Hindu Aikyavedi and Sangh Parivar was a Great Success," http://www.hinduaikyavedi.org (accessed March 2, 20 3).
29 Parishad) enforced this bandh in Kerala. It was to protest a State Government’s decision to allow a Muslim league conference on the banks of the Periyar River (public space) in
Aluva, Kerala. Aluva has a high density of Muslim population. Yet, the Hindutva groups argued that the Shiva Temple is located on the banks of the Periyar River and so the space cannot be used by non-Hindu groups. The fact that religious/communal spaces can encroach into secular spaces such that “communal” propagandas often materialize within public/“secular” contexts is noteworthy.
What is fascinating to me is the paradoxical dance of the secular (social) and the religious (communal) in Kerala. Kerala is the first democratically elected socialist state in the world (in1957).210 “The Kerala Model”, highlighted by Nobel Peace Prize winning economist Amartya Sen, exemplifies a state that has accomplished significant success via public action in the spheres of education, health, and in general, the social, despite low economic development.211 Ashwini Deshpande, in her article, “Does Caste Still Define
Disparity? A Look at Inequality in Kerala,” quotes that the “Kerala Model” has often been offered as an alternative to high-economic growth models, on the basis of sustainability and well-rounded quality of life that transcends mere material growth.
Kerala also has a long history of working class and labor movements, as well as Hindu reform movements with a strong anti-caste-emphasis. Yet, today, it is hailed by the
2 0 John Kurien, "The Kerala Model: It's Central Tendency and the Outlier." Social Scientist 23, no. /3 ( 995): 7 .
2 Ashwini Deshpande, “Does Caste Still Define Disparity? A Look at Inequality in Kerala,” The American Economic Review Vol 90 no 2, May 2000: 323.
30 nationally circulated newspaper, Indian Express as a victim of “perpetual bandh” or frequent forceful closure of public businesses and civic life by left wing labor unions and political parties, often citing unjust living conditions due to “neoliberal labor policies”.212
In 2008 alone there were seventy-five bandhs (forceful closures) of civic life.213 This is in spite of a ban by the Supreme Court against such forced public closures almost a decade ago. Although, such closures happen in the name of “secularism” and “equitable working conditions”, the violent nature of the resistances (including pelting stones on people who venture out on public streets, setting private vehicles on fire, etc., points to its radical and “communal” nature. A recent two-day national bandh (the most severe since
Indian Independence) on 20th and 21st February 2013, was endorsed by national trade unions (like the CITU, Center of Indian Trade Unions) to protest “anti-people” and “anti- worker” policies by the Union government of India.214 While most previous closures lasted only until 6.00 pm in the evening and allowed two wheeler vehicles on road, this bandh lasted for a complete 48 hours. Phone conversations with my mother who resides in the city of Kochi, Kerala, revealed that public life was stifled in a very harsh manner.
2 2 Tavleen Singh, "75 Strikes in Kerala Already This Year and Losing Count," Indian Express, Aug 29, 2008, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/75-strikes-in-kerala-already-this-year-and-losing-count/354906 (accessed September 5, 2009).
2 3 "Hartal Hits Commuters," The Hindu, February 3, 20 3, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp- national/tp-kerala/hartal-hits-commuters/article4374532.ece (accessed February 4, 20 3).
2 4 "Turn Two-Day Strike into All-India Bandh," The Hindu, February 2, 20 3, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/turn-twoday-strike-into-allindia- bandh/article4404699.ece (accessed February 5, 20 3).
3 Those who ventured out on two wheelers, were stopped, their helmets forcefully removed
and flung onto the streets. On 24 July, 2010 (during my stay in Kerala for fieldwork), a
college professor’s right hand was hacked at the wrist by the student wing of a radical
Muslim group, People’s United Front, for supposedly setting a derogatory question
against Islam in the semester exams at the Newman Catholic College, Thodupuzha in
Kerala. The radical group of Muslim students was armed with knives and home-made
bombs. The professor’s sister and eighty-five year old mother, who were travelling with
the professor, were also attacked and thrown out of the vehicle.215 Surprisingly, the
Congress Government in Kerala dealt a heavy hand on the professor by dismissing him
from service and denying him his retirement benefits despite twenty-five years of
teaching service.
Bodily assaults in public places, and bomb blasts at bus stations, movie-theaters,
and subway stations causing human and civic life unrest, become a serious issue of
human rights. The most recent bomb blasts in India, on February 22 of 2013 were the
twin blasts at a bus stop and movie theater in Hyderabad city, home to offices of Google
Inc. and Microsoft Corp.216 These attacks, which claimed about sixteen lives and injured
2 5 Rajagopal, Arvind Rajagopal, Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India (UK: Cambridge University Press, 200 ), 2 .
2 6 Sharang Limaye, and Andrew MacAskill, "Twin Bombs Show India Vulnerable 4 Years after Mumbai Seige," Bloomberg Businessweek, February 22, 20 3, http://www.businessweek.com/news/20 3-02- 2 /three-blasts-in-india-s-hyderabad-kill-as-many-as- 5-people (accessed February 23, 20 3).
32 as many as 117 people, were linked to both fundamentalist militant Muslim groups as well as right wing Hindu groups.
Arvind Rajagopal’s extensively researched book Politics after Television: Hindu
Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India, deftly articulates the historical link of communalism as an outcome of British divide-and-rule policies in order to explain that, in post independent India, “secular” was defined by national politics in opposition to and as “above and beyond existing communities”--thus sidestepping critical engagement with such a political contradiction.217 It is precisely such a failure to engage with the
“secular” and “communal” paradox that enabled the Hindu right wing, particularly the
BJP, to rationalize liberalization as democratization, and extend political participation to minorities while at the same time reducing protections available to them, culminating in the gruesome Hindu-Muslim riots and the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.218 Almost
2000 people lost their lives, mostly Muslims in the riots. A 16th century mosque was demolished by Hindutva groups in Uttar Pradesh, claiming that the land on which the mosque stands is where the Hindu God, Rama was born.
Rajagopal examines various discursive locations and registers that relate to Hindu
Nationalism (propagated mainly through the BJP)219 on Indian state television, its
2 7 Arvind Rajagopal, Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India (UK:Cambridge University Press, 200 ), 2 .
2 8 Ibid., 7.
2 9 BJP or the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party) is a key political organization that espouses the ideology of Hindutva or “Hinduness” as a tool for political mobilization in India.
33 audience, the English and vernacular press, and U.S.-based expatriates. By exploring the paradoxical workings of Hindutva or “Hinduness” as both authoritarian (not democratic) politics and its ability to expand popular participation, Rajagopal argues that television, specifically the national broadcasting of the mythic series Ramayan (which lasted from
January 1987 to September 1990, excluding re-runs,) along with the print media, re-shape
(rather than have a causal effect on) the context in which politics is fashioned, performed and understood.220
Cultural practices shape the context in which politics is fashioned in India. While inter-religious issues and secular resistances are met with intense public action in Kerala, the erasure of the casticized female body from the temple stage was met with apathy.
Furthermore, cultural participation of outside caste members that cut across religious and class identities in the practice of utiyattam as an “intangible heritage”, without having to work through caste and gender issues serve to uphold a specific ideal citizen—the upper- caste, middle-class and male Hindu. Specific gestures of “betrayal” and “forgetfulness” thus serve to mark and unmark the casticized utiyattam body within seemingly banal spaces that couch the “religious” and “secular.” It is within such messy social contexts that communalist activities gain strength in Kerala.
In this chapter, I have examined implications of cultural and performing rights of the female body of utiyattam in relation to how India shapes nationhood. In the next chapter (chapter three), I expand upon these studies, to examine how cultural labor of
220 Arvind Rajagopal, Politics after Television, - 2.
34 utiyattam practitioners—both male and female--are implicated in the “universalization” process, as utiyattam enters world heritage economies. What kinds of local utiyayttam performances are internationally marketable and how might they construct “new” values as utiyattam performances seek sacred endorsement in secular settings? How does undermining cultural labor of utiyattam artists and highlighting cultural symbolism for national and international markets point to neo-Orientalist rendencies of racialization?
35 Chapter 3
Why the Vidushaka is Kept Alive in utiyattam In this chapter, I closely follow the vidhushaka (jester) of utiyattam in order to understand how utiyattam gains sacred sanction within secular settings and how the
utiyattam body is implicated in the “universalization process” that Intangible World
Heritage implies. Today, the vidushaka is compelled to let live as a token for the possibility of political dissent in Kutiyattam, whose bodily performances are not yet made marketable internationally, confined within local contexts due to limitations of translatability of verbal language.221 However, its function and “value” as an emblem of cultural force must be recognized internationally. G. Venu (one of the key persons involved in aiding the recognition of utiyattam as “intangible heritage of humankind” by UNESCO) and Dr. K.G. Paulose (formerly professor of Sanskrit college, Tripunithura,
India) insist that the significance of the vidushaka (jester/narrator of utiyattam) lies in the potential for political resistance.222 Unlike these artist scholars, eminent hereditary performer and scholar, Margi Madhu points out that political resistance or dissent is not the main aim of the vidushaka, rather it is the clever and virtuosic translation of the play
22 The Cakyar employs sanskritized Malayalam (and sometimes dialects of Malayalam) that are not commonly spoken in Kerala today.
222 Dr. K.G. Paulose is currently the managing trustee of International Center for utiyattam, Tripunithura. He has authored several seminal works in utiyattam in both Malayalam and English. Example, Introduction to utiyattam: The Living Tradition of Ancient Theater (Kalady, Kerala: Sree Sankaracharya University, 998). utiyattam Theater: The Earliest Living Tradition (Kottayam, Kerala: D.C. Books, 2006).
36 from Sanskrit and highly codified body language to vernacular, local language.223 Madhu even points out that highlighting political dissent undermines the artistic labor of the performer, who works on multiple levels—verbal, textual, contextual, and kinesthetic — weaving them seamlessly, expertly in order to present the translation to the audience.224
Madhu’s statement seems to point to the disarticulation of intense cultural labors from the dancing body (within the context of intangible universal heritages), which must be made in order to enable a locally practiced art form to enter the global market of “universal” heritages.
Even as claims to ownership can hardly be legalized in a context where a cultural heritage is recognized as “universal” property, a sense of “ownership” of the art form is implied by artists and art institutions that help re-create, re-imagine and thus sustain the practice of Kutiyattam today. However, in the zeal to “preserve” the art form, what is being overlooked is how the art form takes shape in the real world, in the present, in globality as opposed to contributing to an understanding of the form as belonging to a mythic past, an ancient art, an “out of the world” dance-theater form.
223 Interview with G.Venu was conducted during in September, 20 0, during the Nangiarkoothu festival at Srikrishnaswamy Temple at Ambalapuzha Kerala. Interview with Margi Madhu was conducted In early December at his residence in Moozhikkulam, Kerala and interview with Dr. K.G. Paulose was conducted in late December, at his residence in Tripunithura.
224 utiyattam presents mostly Sanskrit plays and since Sanskrit is not a spoken language in India (rather textual or “sacred” language), the vidhushaka translates the plot and text into Malayalam for the local audiences.
37 The Indian nation “treasures” the art of utiyattam, offering it up to UNESCO for its recognition as “intangible heritage of humankind,” probably due to its almost seamless alignment with and endorsement of its modern nationalistic narratives ideal of citizenship- the upper-caste and middle class Hindu male as I discuss in chapter 2. Yet, such international support and recognition undermines the complexities and implications of artistic rights, identification and subjectification when a global art must adopt
UNESCO’s recommendations in order to maintain itself in the collection list of
“intangible heritages”. What are the direct impacts of these processes on the dancing
utiyattam body? How might the (visual) “difference” of the material dancing body negotiate and be subjectified in the racialization process?
Art institutions like Margi Madhu’s Nepathya (in Moozhikkulam, Kerala) and G.
Venu’s Natanakairali (in Irinjalakkuda, Kerala) are major venues for the support and practice of utiyattam. Regular performances comprising a significant number of international artists –documentarians, videographers, artists, etc. come here to witness and document shows. Drawing from first hand experiences as an audience member and my talks with student practitioners at both Nepathya and Natankairali, in particular, I will try to understand how the local and international frameworks negotiate (and hybridize) the pedagogy and representation of the form. What specific kinds of bodily labors must be performed in order for the art to be “appreciated” and “valued” by an international
(westernized) audience? How do the local students and audiences of utiyattam come to hierarchize/understand the practice in relation to other local art forms of Kerala? How are
38 students’ bodies disciplined in order to represent a sanskritized ethos? How might the current (sanskritized) practices and pedagogy subtly endorse a Hindu Brahminical ethos of the nation? How is this kind of training packaged for global circulation?
This chapter thus presents what I have learnt from local utiyattam scholars and scholarly performers’ multiple arguments on political dissent versus cultural labor225 in the name of maintaining a “universal heritage.” I draw from first hand experiences as an audience member at the Vidushaka Festival in Kerala during Aug 2010—to articulate some of the bodily labors that the vidhushaka undertakes in order to perform
“contemporariness.”226 I will primarily draw on first hand interviews with Margi Madhu,
K.G. Paulose and G. Venu to show the difficulties entailed in recognizing the labors of the vidushaka. I argue that a close attention to the body of the vidhushaka is indicative of how cultural labor, including utiyattam’s pedagogy and formation of cultural “value”
(which implicates the local female body), participates in a racialization process as
utiyattam circulates as “intangible” heritage.
225 As mentioned before, artists like Margi Madhu argue that highlighting political dissent undermines artistic labor.
226 While translating ancient mythological texts into Malayalam, the vidhushaka weaves current local issues as well as audiences’ preoccupations into his verbal renditions, thus engaging ancient stories with the present contemporary world.
39 Performing Contemporariness via the Vidhushakan
nterview with Dr. K. G. Paulose,227 utiyattam scholar, retired Professor of Sanskrit, and currently the Managing Trustee of nternational Center for utiyattam, Tripunithura, Kerala. This interview was held on Dec 21, 2010, at his residence in Tripunithura. t is mostly in English with a few parts in Malayalam. Dr. K.G. Paulose (KGP): The way Western Missionaries spread Christianity in India was to learn the local language. They learnt the local language not out of a love for the language [but for purposes of empire]. This technique was closely similar to what the
Brahmins did as well. The Brahmins came from the North (of India)228 and brought with them the Sanskrit language and drama as well. They subsequently adopted local
Malayalam into Sanskrit Drama but continued to call it Sanskruta Natakam (Sanskrit
Drama), the precursor of Kutiyattam.229 Let me explain this with an example. Different manuscripts of the play Bhagavadajjukam that appear at different times in eralan history show that it historically went through many changes in content and length.
This play during the time of ulashekhara230 (10CE) was presented in about three days according to the Paliyam manuscripts when Budhhism and Jaininsm were widespread
227 “K. G. Paulose” is presented as his “full name,” in Paulose’s written works. Presenting initials of name along with last names stands in for “full name” and is a common practice in Kerala. Thus, the names G. Venu, K.G. Paulose, P. Venugoplan, etc., are considered “full name” and printed as author’s names in their written works as well.
228 K.G. Paulose, utiyattam Theater: The Earliest Living Tradition (Kottayam, Kerala: D.C. Books, 2006), 85. The time frame when Brahmins established in Kerala is given as 2th - 7th centuries.
229 The format of utiyattam as we see today began taking shape between 4 CE and 7CE.
230 Kulashekhara is a prominent figure in utiyattam (6th century) to whom the format of utiyattam as it is today is attributed.
40 in erala.231 In the fourteenth century when Brahminical culture was being established, utiyattam came to be presented in thirty-five days instead of three days!
While the first day would introduce the play, the next twenty to thirty days would have extraneous elements of Sanskrit culture mixed with local stories. Sanskrit culture was upheld as the ideal way of living the value of Buddhists and local cultures were undermined. This was a sort of propaganda to establish Hindu Sanskrit culture in
erala and for the renunciation of Budhhism. For example, in the popular play
Bhagavadajjukam, “Shandilya” (the poor Brahmin disciple) presents on the first day how he renounced Budhhism due to its insignificant philosophy and instead adopted
Brahminical Vedantic thought.232 Mixed with local stories the Brahmins used to present Vedantic Culture for the next twenty to thirty days. The last three days would be the theater proper or natakam again. This came to be called agapporul (inner meaning) where the supremacy of Sanskrit culture is repeated.
I welcome this recollection of Keralan history that K.G.Paulose provides me. In spite of being schooled in Kerala (elementary through undergraduate degree), I am reminded that a critical historiography of Brahminical culture as having usurped then existing Buddhist culture in Kerala is not included in social history lessons within
Keralan school syllabi. The caste system has mostly been explained within an economic
23 K.G. Paulose, utiyattam Theater: The Earliest Living Tradition (Kottayam, Kerala: D.C. Books, 2006), 83.
232 For more details see ibid., 80.
4 framework based on occupation and birth right. This tends to mask the functioning of the caste-system in India as a way to sustain power differentialities between religious and ethnic identities. The lower castes of Kerala – the natives--were former Buddhists who later adopted the Hindu religion. Today the state’s population consists of 56% Hindus and 1% Buddhists—a religio-cultural genocide that is muffled within current historiographies of India.
KGP: Thus the entire Sanskrit Drama during the 14th century was crafted for
Brahminical ascendancy. At the same time they transferred this theater from the proscenium stage to the premises of the temples. It is now made religious. During the
14th, 15th and16th centuries uthambalam or temple theaters comes into being along with the temples in erala. In this way it becomes a well-established temple art. The cultural problem was that the elasticity of the theatrical form lent itself to the theater becoming a tool for Brahminical ascendancy.
My interest is really piqued, especially to know that elasticity or flexibility enabled cooptation rather than resistance to cultural propaganda. I have come to understand the term “flexibility” within current contexts of globalization and transnationalism --as a strategy of subversive resistance against hegemonic systems to decentralize power. Women of the two-thirds world living within oppressive patriarchal/national frameworks, native communities striving within national agendas, global denizens within transnational businesses and such often exercise “flexibility as a strategy to maximize their rights while working within the dominant socio-political
42 system.233 Today universalization of art forms like utiyattam mandates flexible networking. So what is at stake in being flexible today? How might flexible networking produce local victims? How does flexibility enable cultural regimes like Brahminism to be propagated via Indian national cultural forms, and more specifically via utiyattam? Is flexibility one of the limited choices that must be adopted to counter the subjectification of identity/racism as it emerges in globalism?234
Aware of these contradictory uses of flexibility in Keralan history, I continue my conversation with KGP.
Elizabeth Kurien (EK): Do you think Kutiyattam favors an upper-caste and middle class Hindu culture today?
KGP (replying quickly): No, let me come to that later.
Paulose is insistent that I hear him out before I interrupt him with my pressing thoughts. He continues with his brief but clear and excellent exposé of a cultural historiography of utiyattam.
KGP: Buddhists and Jains have disappeared in erala by the15th century. This temple art of Kutiyattam can now be used as a Brahminical tool to aid feudalism and its land
233 See Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 999).
234 I am thinking of the paradoxical ways in which flexibilty is used as a strategy for co-optation or resistance to dominant socio-political systems.
43 owning Brahmins rather than for vimarshanam (resistance).235 Kutiyattam thus becomes a tool for [proclaiming the glory of] feudalistic power. Vulgar erotic desires of the powerful male landlords (janmis) now find a space in Kutiyattam.236 Formerly
Kutiyattam was used as a tool to teach locals about Brahminical culture including their life-style. Now the power accorded to the caste of Kutiyattam practitioners (specifically the vidhushakan who is a male Cakyar) is significant enough that he can criticize social structures within monarchy including local rulers and kings profusely without having to face consequences. The vidhushkan [who hails strictly from the Cakyar caste] is deemed equal [in social status and caste] to the temple priest [from the Brahmin caste].
The priest within the temple and the Cakyar within the kuthamblam may not be questioned. This is a lot of power to wield. Therefore staging of Koothu (the solo performance of the vidhushakan or jester within Kutiyattam) is akin to a sadassu (jury).
The locals would tell the Cakyar if they are facing a social problem. The raja (local king) would come to see the koothu and be able to listen in to the messages and critiques that the vidhushakan delivered during his performance. In fact, it can even be understood as a sort of (investigative) journalism. For example, during the early twentieth century, the local chieftain once brought a prostitute from Edapilly [a town in erala], to live in his house. She was kept under the pretext that she would take care
235 Here he means the resistance to the prevalent local Malayali/Keralan culture of Budhhism and Jainism.
236 Land owning Brahmins and upper-caste land owners were referred to as Janmis. utiyattam performances during this time often include demeaning and vulgar descriptions of women’s body parts for an exclusively male audience.
44 of their cows. Since the chieftain’s wife could not complain against a woman who is brought to take care of the cows, she told this problem in secret to the Cakyar. The
Cakyar during his koothu talks about rishna and gopikas (milk maids) and their love play. Then he mentions, “Now here to take care of cows there are some gopikas brought from Edapilly. Instead of milking the cow though, she milks the Lord/chief.”
Next day the lady was sent back to Edapilly.
Open discussions between the powerful/elite audience members consisting of rulers, chieftains and high-caste Hindu male members of the locality thus materialized within the performance space of the Kuthambalam. There were no newspapers at that time, so this role of the vidhushakan in Kutiyattam plays a crucial social role. This is what I mean when I say Kutiyattam was contemporary (engaging with the immediate and current social contexts)). People came majorly to listen to the local news, not just to witness the drama.—because of the drama’s contemporary relevance to society. By
17th century Kutiyattam became established as a crucial venue for public criticism. The limitation however was that it was confined to the temples. All the lower castes were out of range of the temple space –i.e. the old Buddhists. So one cannot say there was yet a discrimination against the common man, rather this was merely a social forum for the raja (royal) folks.237
237 I think here, KGP uses the term “discrimination” to mean “exclusion”. .
45 In 1948 this was brought out of the temple –a revolutionary move by a single caste-based male practitioner, Painkulam Rama Cakyar. Then this became part of the world theater.238 Twentieth century was thus a century of liberation for erala arts in shifting its performances from the sacred [read limiting] to public stages.
Post Indian independence [1947] also saw the emergence of a new kind of audience [the audiences of the proscenium stages]. Their aesthetic tastes were vastly different from the temple audiences. In 1977 Ammannur Madhava Cakyar [one of the foremost master practitioners of utiyattam who died in 2008] had not started performing outside yet. He was more conservative, unlike Painkulam [Rama Cakyar who was the first to perform Kutiyattam outside of the Kuthamablam in 1948 and] whose actions were not approved by the Cakyar community. Even now outsiders are not accepted. But this is not our issue.
I want to say this is an issue I am keenly interested in, especially how new outsiders are created but in a different way today. Fortunately, I allow him to continue as
Paulose delves into issues of cultural subjectification and femininity.
238 This provided the impetus for utiyattam to move from the temple theater into the arena of World Theater. Following 948, a decade later in 958 the first full-fledged utiyattam performance (with multiple performers) took place outside the temple. In 965 this came to be taught and practiced by outside caste members as well.
46 Subjectification of Culture and the Shaping of Femininity in ndia
KGP (continues): I was a professor at Pattambi College and I organized a Koothu by
Ammannur Madhava Cakyar in 1978 or 1979. A young educated crowd which included women teachers was invited.239 Everyone (men and women) showed up.
However, Ammannur was accustomed to the temple audiences whose culturally masochistic ethos was markedly different from a more democratized ethos of a secular public.240 Ammannur did not understand that difference. There were some vulgar and obscene descriptions of women in his verbal renditions and it was quite uncomfortable for the women amongst the audiences. They were hanging their heads low and not watching anymore. These kinds of descriptions were not expected on the public stage.
I am pleasantly surprised that Paulose draws attention to the denigrating treatment
(obscene and vulgar comments) of the female in certain utiyattam performances-- analogous to a “Gentlemen’s Club”.241 The fact that sexually explicit descriptions of
239 The educated Keralan audiences of post independent India.
240 The elite class and upper-caste male members comprised the main audiences of utiyattam within the temple. In keralan history, the males of the Namboothiri/Brahmin and upper-castes often had socially sanctioned sexual relationships outside of marraiage, called sambandham with women (often from below their caste). Some families of lower castes even considered it an honor to have their women forge these “sexual relationships” with male Brahmins. This meant that the sexuality of the female was often regarded as a commodity for male pleasure and consumption as well as a way toward upward social and economic mobility. Among such socio-cultural contexts, the temple space of the kuthambalam within which the performance of utiyattam was strictly restricted became a “safe” space to overtly sexualize the female (via graphic descriptions (both verbal and bodily performed), doubly endorsed via weaving them with religious mythological stories. In a more democratic space with the inclusion of both female and male members as well as non-Hindu audiences (for utiyattam) meant that such a disparaging treatment of the female could not be easily sustained.
24 Billboard advertisements of the “Gentlemen’s Club” in the U.S. mainly promise the sexy female body for pleasurable male consumption.
47 female characters, (except for goddesses), by the male cakyar are often broached in a derogatory (even violent) manner is rarely talked about.242 Rather, the staging and performance of utiyattam as it happens today, carries with it an aura of “sacredness.” It is systemically glorified as a national tradition and as a universal heritage. In the summers of 2010 and 2007 I had chances to view the portrayal of Surpanakha (the demoness)243 by Vinay (fictitious name), a young non caste- specific male practitioner and Kalamandalam Rama Cakyar (caste-specific practitioner) respectively.244 In the former staging (2010), the young actor kept caressing his long needle-like “breasts” on stage which made me wonder if he had misplaced his phallus (es). In the latter staging
(2007), the sexual violence against the demon-ess Surpanakha is quite graphic. Her breasts and nose are cut off by Rama’s brother, Lakshmana, after Surpanakha’s attempts to entice Rama and Lakshmana.245 Surpanakka enters the stage screaming, nose and breasts mutilated, bearing a torch which lights up her gruesome appearance within the pitch dark theater space. It was visually a painful event for me as an audience member,
242 For example, shape and sizes of sexual organs like breasts and buttocks are directly linked to “good” and “bad” female characters. Surpanakha the demoness, for example appears on stage with exposed needle- like breasts, while Arjuna’s lover, the beautiful and virtuous heroine has golden bowl- like breasts. In utiyattam performances, Surpanakha also suffers explicit sexual mutilation where her breasts and nose are cut off by Lakshmana, the virtuous and brave brother of Rama from the Ramayana.
243 Surpanakha is the evil and widowed sister of the evil King Ravana in the epic story, Ramayana.
244 I use the fictitious name “Vinay” in an effort to protect artist identity. I saw his performance in 20 0. Rama Cakyar, however was popular for his particular enactment of Surpanakha and is widely praised in newspaper artices and by audience members. I saw Rama Cakyar performing in the staging of the act Surpanakhangam in Irinjalakkuda in 2007.
245 Rama is an avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu, the Hindu god, in the epic Ramayana.
48 especially since the spectacle initially seems to elicit awe (audible gasps) and then laughter from audience members (female and male). The cutting off of Surpanakha’s breasts is an addition by Rama Cakyar the actor himself as it is not mentioned in the stage manual/text.246 The explicit sexual mutilation thus takes place within the “safe” space of the theater stage and appears as if endorsed by religious mythology. The laughter filled response of the audience members seals the local social endorsement as a fit punishment for the transgressing female body. Thus the mythologizing of violent punishments against the transgressing female body encroaches into the local social psyche in this performance. In fact, the highlight of Surpanakhangam (The Act of Surpanakha) in
utiyattam is the ghastly portrayal of a sexually mutilated Surpanakha as one who
“deserves” punishment. Several utiyattam practitioners, like Chachu Cakyar, Painkulam
Rama Cakyar, Ammannur Madhava Cakyar, and Rama Cakyar247 were famous for their enactment of the demoness. The degree of popularity of the male actor enacting
Surpanakha paralleled the degree of violence committed on the“demoness.”
Interestingly, the heroism of the one who commits violence in this act (in this case,
Lakshamana) remains intact while the one demonized becomes Surpanakha, the victim of violence, Surpanakha is one of the only female characters in utiyattam that is played by a male precisely because it requires the graphic portrayal of “sexual organs” like the
246 “Producing Plays in the Tradition of Kutiyattam”(295) in Sanskrit Drama in Performance. Edited by Rachel Van M. Baumer and James R Brandon, University of Hawaii Press 98 .
247 G.venu, Into the World of utiyattam with the Legendary Ammannur Madhavachakyar (Irinjalakkuda, Kerala: Natanakairali, 2002), 4 .
49 breasts and its mutilation. The unabashed display of female breasts by the male actor
leaves intact the “purity” of the chaste Indian female, because chaste Indian women do
not display their sexuality in public and if they dare to, they must face punishment which
can include sexual violation.248 In contrast “vagrant”, adult males who display their
penises in public street corners as a form of female harassment rarely face legal or social
penalites. The entire staging of a utiyattam performance from the moment the lamp is
lit, to the marayil kriya (rituals behind the curtain) and the mizhavu (drum) calls crafts the
event as sacred. Such a feeling of sacrality pervades the narrativizing process of
utiyattam even in the public arena. What makes me uneasy is that in upholding the
practice of utiyattam as sacred, specific practices that are explicitly violent against
women not only come to be considered as part of “Indian culture” but as also something
248 For example, in January, 2009 several young women were violently attacked in a pub in Mangalore, Karnataka, by a pro-Hindu organization called Sri Rama Sena (Lord Rama’s Army). This group with alleged links to the Hindutva political organization BJP, claimed the women were “punished” for consuming alcohol, dressing “indecently” and mingling with “youths of other faiths. See "Girls Assaulted at Mangalore Pub," The Times of India, January 26, 2009, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009- 0 -26/mangalore/28039529_ _mangalore-pub-activists-sri-rama-sena (accessed January 27, 2009). About 40 members of Sri Rama Sena group barged into the pub and finding the women in “objectionable positions” with men, slapped and kicked the women, and chased and tripped those whoe were trying to escape. See "Mangalore Pub Attacks by Sri Rama Sene, condemnded by BJP, RSS," Dancewithshadows.com, January 28, 2009, http://www.dancewithshadows.com/politics/mangalore-pub-attacks-by-sri-rama-sene-condemned-by- bjp-rss/ (accessed February 3, 2009). These attacks were apparently carried out in the name of “preserving Indian Culture.” Ironically, the group’s leader was arrested on the grounds of “communal disharmony” rather than female torture and violence and the political Hindutva group BJP was quick in clarifying their disassociation with Sri Rama Sena rather than condemning violence against women. Additionaly, the Right Wing websites such as Haindava Keralam (Hindu Kerala) endorsed such a “moral policing” by Sri Rama Sena by saying the women were interacting with Muslim men. In “Surpanakhangam”, Surpanakha is sexually mutilated because she roams “wildly” in search of a handsome husband.
50 that needs not be critiqued; especially as this happens in a different time (mythological) in Indian history—i.e. does not apply in current Indian contexts.
KGP: However, we cannot fault Ammannur Madhava Cakyar for his comments.
These are staple comments on the temple stage. The temple audiences like such comments. Women usually do not go there!249The Namboothiris [ erala male
Brahmins] and the like sit in front among the audiences. They like such descriptions about women. However, new young audiences [that frequented the public stages where
Kutiyattam used to be performed] did not. There was a rift in the sensibilities of the audiences and according to these sensibilities the Cakyars were forced to change.
Secondly inside the temple it was considered a ritualistic performance. When it’s a ritual the Cakyar performs for the deity, not for the audience and therefore he can perform whatever he pleases! As he chooses! However, when the Cakyar caters to a human audience [within a proscenium setting], he has to please the audience otherwise they will not return for the next performance. Ammannur says. “I do it only in front of this lamp, for the lamp.” This might work in a ritualistic context [within the temple space] but does not suffice for the new social context [of the proscenium stage].
Foucault in Society Must be Defended claims that “History [before the end of the
Middle Ages (i.e. prior to end of 16th century] was a ritual that reinforced sovereignty.250
249 KGP is talking about the late twentieth centuries ( 950 - 970) when Ammannur performed extensively within temple stages
250 Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975-1976 (New York: Picador, 2003), 69.
5 The aim of recounting history (that of kings and the mighty sovereigns) as a ritual was to serve two purposes a) to demonstrate a continuity of law itself –to establish a “juridical link” between the king and power and b) to use “the glory of power… to fascinate men.”251 The discourse of the historian –a sort of ceremony, oral or written in reality produced a justification of power and a reinforcement of that power. Similarly, the rituals connected with utiyattom reinforced the (juridical link through) justification of the power of the monarch and the feudal (agrarian based) economy, dependent upon the caste-system and the temple-centered social order252 to maintain its functioning. The intangible economy of rituals also served to glorify power, to dazzle and to fascinate subjects and thus reinforce the “uninterrupted” nature of the right of the sovereign. As remuneration for their service, the Cakyar families were provided agricultural lands by the temple (funded by the monarchy and the land owning Brahmins of Kerala),” the income from which enabled them a life of reasonable comfort,” notes G.Venu in his book, Production of a Play in utiyattam.253
The fact that specific “vulgar” comments are normalized, endorsed, and even
“liked” within the religious precincts of the temple points to how economic power and religion intersect in ways such that the disparaging treatment of the female is made
25 Ibid., 66.
252 Mundoli Narayanan, “Over- Ritalization of Performance: Western Discourses on Kutiyattam,” TDR: The Drama Review 50:2 (2006): 42.
253 G. Venu, Production of a Play in utiyatam, 3.
52 “sacred” and thus unquestionable. Ammannur had become so conditioned to talking about women in this way to an exclusive male upper-caste audience (who are the main members within a ritualistic context) that he found it quite acceptable to talk in the same manner to audiences that included the female as well as non-Hindu audience (the new social context). K.G.Paulose explains that an eschewing of demeaning descriptions of women can be attributed to a change in sensibilities of the audiences. However, this fails to take into account how inclusion of “other” bodies makes a dent in the power dynamics.
The mere presence of the female and non-Hindu audiences allowed for a major shift in
“the sensibilities of the audience”
Ritual in utiyattam historically served the function of producing a narrative of knowledge mostly from the point of view of the sovereign and dazzling the audience with its ritualistic glory (as Paulose and Foucault might have it). The problem of portraying
utiyattam as “sacred” and ritualistic even when it is performed on public stages is that the entire process of the performance of utiyattam gains sacred sanction within secular settings. Sacrality endows a certain agency for the performer of utiyattam (within local contexts), enabling the actors to transgress otherwise morally sanctioned limits. The juridical link established via ritual allowed for the derogatory treatment of women to trespass into the legal and sacred realms.
Today, however there seems to be a change in how ritual comes to be narrativized in utiyattam as it operates within the economy of intangible heritages. Mundoli
Narayanan in his article “Over-Ritualization of Performance” points to the problematic
53 tendency of recent (western and western-influenced) scholars of ritual/performance studies to overemphasize the importance of ritual and religion in a utiyattam performance.254 For example, Narayanan quotes the works of Diane Daugherty, Farley
Richmond and Bruce Sullivan stating that ritual becomes a defining feature of utiyattam in their works255. According to Narayanan, Diane Daugherty’s work “Nangyar: Female
Ritual Specialist of Kerala”, erases all theatrical performances from the Nanyar’s identity and instead frames her as a ritual specialist.256 Farley Richmond explains the performance of utiyatttam as a cakshusha yagna (visual sacrifice) and Bruce Sullivan articulates that the audiences are invested in search of some sort of “religio-aesthetic” or devotional experience (138). Narayanan explains that such a misconstrued focus on ritual shows a lack of understanding of the history of utiyattam itself, the way in which ritual is employed in traditional societies and a “general silence about the rich performance techniques” of Kutiyattam. I would like to add that such a narrow focus that foregrounds the ritualistic aspect of utiyattam by non-native scholars plays a major role in the process of “othering” in discourses of multiculturalism. A different process of racialization begins to takes shape here. Narayanan astutely points out that not only does this lead to a tendency to (superficially) explain away the active performative aspects of performance, but it also leaves unquestioned the lack of the ethnographer’s efforts to try and grapple with the dense content of a utiyattom performance and the meaning
254 Mundoli Narayanan, “Over- Ritalization of Performance”,139
255 Ibid., 38 256
54 makings it involves. Thus in the hands of western (and western-influenced) scholarship ritual and religion become the defining features of utiyattom while scant attention is paid to its performative aspects and techniques; consequently snatching the art-form of its history, prying it loose from its social contexts and viewing it in isolation.257 For example, Narayanan claims that one of the major aspects of utiyattom--the role of the sutradhara/vidushaka (narrator/jester)--is neglected in Western studies. Narayanan argues that there could not be a more anti-ritualistic figure within the framework of
utiyattom performance than the vidushaka who the author compares to the clown in
Elizabethan drama. “If ritual is serious, reverent, and participatory, the vidushaka is irreverent and non-participatory. With verbal narrative being his forte, he takes up a position somewhere between the onstage and off-stage worlds…”258 He also points out that although the rest of the characters do not acknowledge the presence of the audience, nor directly interact with them, the vidushaka makes direct remarks to the audience, makes fun of them, asks them questions, and even critiques on events/actions that figure in their personal/political lives while ingeniously weaving these contemporary events with the mythological characters and events of the play. In the summer of 2007, I was one among the audience for the play Mantrankam staged at G.Venu’s art institution -
Natanakirali - at Irinjalaluda, Kerala. The vidushaka’s (jester’s) role was played by the
257 This line of argument suggests that the frame of ritual obscures the artistry of the performance form.
258 Ibid., 48.
55 senior artist Rama Cakyar (Vasanthaka’s Purappadu in Mantrankam)259. As time constraints did not permit me to stay for the entire duration of the performance, I had to
“slink” out from the dark audience space. No sooner did I begin exiting (with my bag in hand), than I heard the vidushaka’s quick response (in Sanskritized Malayalam) that one of the characters of the play slipped out like a thief taking away all the treasures in a satchel! The audience (which includes me in this case) however, is limited to a passive response of laughter or expressions of appreciation (or disapproval). Narayanan argues that the vidushaka occupies a “time/space matrix” between that of the play and the audience, acting as a link between the two worlds/spaces. In other words the fact that the vidushaka labors to make a link between the two spaces (the stage and the audience), establishes that a utiyattam play aims to perform primarily for a human, not divine audience (at least for Narayanan), and is thus clearly more a performance than a sacred ritual. However, I am also concerned here that Narayanan might be resorting to oversimplification for the sake of responding to exoticism (re-centering the focus on the
Western perspective). The fact that only the vidushaka (narrator) acts as a link between the spaces of stage and audience, while the rest of the actors’ performances attempt to conjure an outworldly/divine reality, could be used to argue that utiyattom can be considered both a performance as well as a ritual. Yet, his point is well taken--current
(textual) narratives/discourses of ritual in utiyattam, direct attention to the problematics
259 Natanakairali Ammannur Chachu Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam, "Conservation of Kutiyattam Manuscripts by Ammannur Chachu Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam in Collaboration with the National Mission for Manuscripts, New Delhi and UNESCO Japan Funds-in-Trust," http://www.ammannurgurukulam.com/events-manuscripts.htm (accessed Decemeber 9, 2007).
56 of a particular kind of scholarship (western-influenced). Such scholarly investigations hierarchically order knowledges within contexts of transnational circulation of cultural heritages with direct impacts on subjectifications and glorifications of cultures (which are but two sides of the same coin)—a new symptom of racism.
What interests me is how the Indian Nation also plays an active role in the ritualization of utiyattam with pernicious effects on “secularism” as it operates in India today. In chapter two, I mention that when India offered up utiyattam to be considered for the UNESCO nominations, the documentary for utiyattam was shot within the ancient Hindu temple theater of Kidangur to highlight its ritual and sacred aspects being performed by caste specific members. What was never mentioned in the documentary was that women are still not allowed to enter this temple-theater. Here ritual trumps gender. Therefore, how the aura of ritual pervades the practice of utiyattam today such that the “feelings of Hinduness” trump the actionable performative aspects in utiyattam
(for Indian audiences) needs to be further explored.
The Paradox of the Vidhushakan
KGP (discussing the contemporary relevance of Kutiyattam): Today there are new kinds of media, the press etc for social criticism. The power accorded to the common man to critique societal workings is more or less democratized and therefore the Cakyar’s power is no longer of crucial importance. We now have open forums. In the morning before heading out of the house we read and hear people critiquing the political system, the president, the chief minister etc. via newspapers and the numerous radio
57 and television channels. So we don’t need [to depend on] an actor/Cakyar to address social issues. We can seemingly do it ourselves [via public access to social media like the internet, call in talk shows, etc).Yet, there is a role for the Cakyar.
KGP takes a sip of water and continues.
Only few Cakyars today have the ability to skillfully critique societal issues [as this requires significant honing of verbal skills in Malayalam and an ability to weave seamlessly the mythological and the contemporary]. The sensibilities of the audiences are sharper today. They do not accept things blindly [because they have access to multiple sources of social media]. So unless the Cakyar is clever and subtle, the audience will not relish his performance. For example, Oh! I forget his name… you know the famous Cakyar?
EK: Umm do you mean Rama Cakyar [Painkulam]?
KGP: Yes, that’s right, Painkulam Rama Cakyar. I don’t know how I could forget his name. Well, during the late 1930s -1940s, Malabar [Northern] erala was part of
Madras (present day Chennai), capital of Tamil Nadu.260 People were very scared of communists [in erala] at that time.261 The local land owners and elites were especially terrified for their lives, due to the militant nature of the communists. It was a time of
260 The state laying East of Kerala.
26 Kerala was the first democratically elected communist state ( 957) in the world. Communism in Kerala enabled major social upheavals in the fight for social equality against caste and class discriminations. See N. Krishnaji, “Kerala Milestones: On the Parliamentary Road to Socialism,” Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 23 (2007): 2 70. Communists also had members of the Brahmin caste.
58 famine and locals often did not have rice to feed their families. Communists often raided the pathayams (rice quarries) belonging to landlords in order to distribute rice to the hungry locals. Land owners were scared due to threats to their lives. Many land lords were murdered by the communists. During this time (1937) A Gopalan
[communist leaser] sent a Malabar Jaatha (a public march) to Madras. Janmis (local landlords) and Namboothiris ( erala Brahmins) were very scared about a revolution or violence against them.. This is the political context in which Painkulam Rama Cakyar was doing a Koothu. Sri rishna Dooth ( rishna as messenger) is the story. rishna is going to the Rajasadas (royal court) for doothu (conveying a message). Duryodhana (the
aurava ing) gives strict instructions that when rishna comes, he is not to be welcomed. Painkulam acting here as Duryodhana says, “No one should stand in respect when rishna comes. Why are you all so scared? Who is coming after all?
Gopalan is just a cowherd.” [Goplalan is another name for rishna. The name also connected directly with the communist leader A . Gopalan]. People loved this contemporary connection that Painkulam was making. This was so subtle. So the audiences liked it.
Similarly, there was a koothu by Ammannur Madhava Cakyar during
Adiyantharaavastha [National emergency declared by Indira Gandhi that curbed civil liberties in India between 1975- 1977]. Achutha Menon was chief minister of erala but resigned when emergency was declared. During the elections after the emergency
(Adiyantharaavastha), Achutha Menon did not take part. Although he was a
59 communist, he did not like people being killed and the violence that was happening in the name of communism. But before he could speak out about this he was threatened with his life. During Ammannur’s program, Achutha Menon was among the sadas
(audience). Ammannur during his oothu said, “How can you not listen? If Indira says, won’t Achuthan listen? Then he looked straight at Achuthan. Such a brilliant play with words, having multiple layers of meaning was quite effective among the audiences.262 Today, social forums and newspapers provide the space to openly criticize. Yet, if a utiyattam artist can draw upon nuanced verbal skills then such a subtle technique of the vidhushakan doing oothu is still very effective from a social perspective. It is different from the printed media.
In saying that oothu can effectively challenge politico-social workings, KGP highlights the significance of the live performing body as an agent of free speech, and a site that is uniquely different, able to articulate social issues in a way that other sources of media are unable to tap into.
KGP: Unfortunately though, today’s young artists are unable to rise to that level because of the power differentialities of the artist and the audiences. When Ammannur delivered his political comments, Achutha Menon almost cowed down because of the artists might. Today if a young artist does things like that he might be beaten up.
262 The ability to weave mythology and contemporary realities made the delivery effective. In invoking the name of the Vedic Sun God Indira and Achutha, (another name for Krishna), the Hindu God, Ammannur was able to directly connect the political situation between Indira Gandhi, India’s Prime Minister during the time of emergency and Kerala’s chief minister Achutha Menon.
60 Therefore critique can often get blurred with ridicule.263 Yet, it is the vidhushakan that makes Kutiyattam contemporary.
Here K.G.Paulose implies that in current contexts if only few cakyars
(performing locally) have the ability to effectively perform social issues, the significance of utiyattam as “universal heritage” is being registered not in its contemporaneity but elsewhere. It is significant that Paulose attributes the diminishing role of the vidhushakan to power shifts between audience and actor. However, from my experiences as an audience member, power differentialities between caste and non-caste practitioners would seem to be at stake. Well-versed (caste-based performers) enacting within small audience spaces continue to exercise significant cultural clout to carve powerful moments that effectively critique contemporary local society, precisely because they are able to avail of the language of the Cakyar (classical Malayalam with particular methods of delivery, not lay Malayalam )—a skill that is not easy accessible to outside-caste members.
KGP: Kutiyattam itself has changed culturally from it performance within temple theaters to public prosceniums in late 20th century. Now, even if Kutiyattam is presented in Paris it is almost the same from a cultural perspective.
263 What he means is the tendency for vidhushakans to limit their comments on audience members, rather than being able to make comments that connect with broader social and political concerns of the immediate society. For example, a vidhushakan might comment on a particular audience member’s “lack of attentiveness”, attire, late arrival, etc. in a humorous way. Yet, this gets limited to ridicule rather than as effective political dissent/critiques like previous vidhushakans were able to accomplish.
6 The fact that utiyattam in Paris and utiyattam in Kerala operate homogenously
(from a cultural perspective) is a pointer to me that utiyattam performances can no longer be considered a way of specific cultural expression, rather a uniquely packaged world consumer item.
KGP (admonishes me): You have to keep these complexities in mind when writing.
Now that you have a broader picture, you can begin to ask specific questions about
utiyattam. Some foreign scholars come and mess up things in their writings. You need to understand the history at least in a broad sense before you begin to write about it.
I have to admit that my knowledge of utiyattam’s historiography has been considerably broadened through my talks with K.G.Paulose. My ethnic affiliation as
“Indian” and cultural affiliation as “Keralan” have, I believe, allowed me to be a privileged recipient of information and knowledeges that foreground local, artistic, and scholarly concerns and minimize exoticization as a strategy to gain honor in Western eyes.. Exoticzation often becomes a tactical move by native artists of traditional cultural practices to gain “awe” or “respect” from Western enthusiasts, who might be unfamiliar with the nuances of the cultural practice. Yet, I want to acknowledge that my inter- subjective position as an Indian from America does shape the thrusts of my writing.
KGP (asserting his authority, continues): Now I want to talk about the focus on different aspects of utiyattam that have come to be highlighted in different times of
62 our cultural history. During Sanskritization [9th- 14th centuries] of the local eralan, the populist aspect was foregrounded.264 Then, during the feudalistic era [14th-early twentieth centuries] it was the suggestive (political) aspect.265 Today, post- Indian
Independence however, it is the abhinaya or aesthetic aspect that is highlighted in almost all utiyattam performances. Aesthetics has gained prominence today. People ask, “mindunnathaano, mindaatha thaano (“Is it with speech or without speech?)” What they mean is, whether it is the kind of Kutiyattam which employs the vidhushakan’s verbal renditions, or not.266
I am surprised to hear that abhinaya which means “expression” in Indian dance becomes categorized solely within aesthetics rather than understood as a way of communication/expression. According to Paulose, only speech (of the vidhushakan) is now understood as communicative within utiyattam for the local Keralan. Abhinaya, as explained in the oft quoted classical dramatic text, Natyashastra, is understood as using four strategies of communication-- angikam via the body, vaachikam via speech, lyrics, text, ahaaryam via costumes/ ornamentations, and saatvikam (engaging the soul). Such a major shift in understanding abhinaya as merely aesthetized performances which are
“non -communicative”, is telling. For this reason Paulose says, “Today utiyattam is
264 Using native language and myths to popularize Brahminical culture via utiyattam.
265 utiyattam as a tool for suggestive political critiques.
266 utiyattam performances have several formats—Chakyarkoothu or oothu where the vidhushakan primarily delivers solo verbal renditions, utiyattam as combined danced-theater where multiple actors enact specific characters (speech is limited here) and Nangiarkoothu, solo female danced- theater where the actress does not employ speech.
63 same if performed in Paris or in Kerala”. The mummification process in utiyattam
(“mindathathaano”—that which doesn’t talk or speak) indicates a lack of effective meaning-making and instead a replication or spectacularization of a glorified past. In my interviews most of the artists and scholars (Usha Nangiar, K.G.Paulose, G.Venu, Margi
Madhu) point to this problem. Yet, this is precisely what is marketable.
Paulose asserts that the vidhushakan is present in only Sringara (love) plays as the king’s companion to fulfill love issues. Not all plays have the vidhushakan. Bhasa natakangal (Plays written by Bhasa) don’t have the vidhushakan. This means in the larger history of utiyattam the majority of plays do not have the vidhushakan.
According to Paulose, plays with vidhushakan are not given prominence, post UNESCO declaration. Abhinaya pradhaana natakangal or plays that necessitate bodily acting rather than verbal renditions of the Cakyar are more prominent. It seems as though the value of abhinaya shifts from communication to aesthetization as it enters world danced theater.
Marta Savigliano in “Worlding Dance and Dancing out There in the World”, explores the construction of World Dance as an effect of globalization, (a response of the
Dance field as it operates within globalization).267 World Dance is a discursive practice that, for Savigliano, parallels Foucauldian logic of biopolitics by “ordering things” and
“disciplining” bodies, desires and pleasures such that the geopolitical trafficking of
267 Marta Savigliano, "Worlding Dance and Dancing out There in the World," in Worlding Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6 .
64 World Dance can be understood as “aesthetized biopolitics.”268 Thus, Savigliano argues for the recognition of World Dance collections as a practice (not a product), where mobilized/mobilizing life is made ready and available for recuperation.269 Savigliano mentions that World Dance is an institutionalizing project that similarly to UNESCO’’s recommendation (adopted on 15 Nov 1989,) organizes “the intangible patrimony of humanity,” establishing administrative and scholarly order in its collection.270 Here
“discoveries” of “otherness” (of World Dances that have not lost their cultural moorings), are included as an addition to the Dance Field, rather than as (“newly found” but traditional dances). Thus rather than assimilation, World Dance signals a reconfiguration following geopolitical frames, creating an acute awareness of infinite intangible sources of wealth.271 The encounter between traditional “new world” dances (or World Dance) and “old world” dances (the Dance field as defined in the West) “has the potential effect of installing all dances in the world, in geopolitics and of provoking a reassessment of
Dance as a universal aesthetic expression, above and beyond politics.”272 In other words,
Savigliano is alluding to geopolitical imperatives that help shape the construction of
World Dance as a collection of “universal” possessions that seemingly operate atomistically within the sphere of aesthetics, severing their situated links to nation or
268Ibid., 66.
269 Ibid., 78.
270 Ibid., 75.
27 Ibid., 74.
272 Ibid., 69.
65 community such that, they can transgress and even ignore political boundaries. Here
“culture” and “ethnicity” as (anthropological) categories of studies have simply replaced
“race” and “tribal” categories leaving the biological/social ambiguity intact. Thus heredity, descent, and tradition are linked and operate together as the racialization of cultures and as cultural racism273 where culture is not only a marker of difference, but of race. This, Savigliano argues, is the biopolitical paradigm at work through anthropology.
World Dance collections like World Music requires “physicalized performance” in order to be displayed, where the “authentic” is signaled by racialized markings of culture. This also means that racialized “cultural” bodies must be “kept alive/”safeguarded” in order to revitalize the resource pool of intangible heritages.
Thus physicalized performances of utiyattam by native artists signal authentic
“Indian” cultural markings that perform “universalized aesthetic expressions” rather than specific cultural expressions that are integral to the meaning making of utiyattam practitioners in Kerala. However, if aesthetized performances of utiyattam are more prominent today, then what is the role of the vidhushakan in utiyattam whose performances and verbal renditions consistently fail the aesthetized market?
273 Ibid., 73.
66 The Struggle of the Vidhushakan Today nterview with Margi Madhu at his residence in Moozhikkulam, held on November 29, 2010, in Malayalam. Margi Madhu (MM): Addressing social issues is not the main job of the vidhushakan.
The main jobs of the vidhushakan are vyaakhyaanam (translation) and bhaasha samrakshanam (preservation of language).
EK: Whatever I have read (including, G.Venu and apila Vatsyayana’s works) have highlighted the vidhushakan’s significance in addressing political issues.
MM (responding very animatedly): It is true that political resistance or critique is a possibility via the vidhushakan, but that is not the major goal. To make that the major goal is a maneuver to make it contemporary-- for its own survival. Such narratives are crafted. Then we often step outside of the frameworks of Kutiyattam to deliberately incorporate this aspect. Also if the vidhushakan does address certain social issues, he should never be direct. When he suggests, it allows people to think for themselves increasing the potency of his verbal renditions. This is my point of view.
Prior to print media like the newspaper, addressing social issues was an important job for the Cakyar/vidhushakan. However, now the contexts are different.
The vidhushakan’s contribution of bhaasha samrakshanam is significant. It is a big job.
I acknowledge that “preservation” is a contested and elusive concept. Yet, now is a time when there are so many arguments about Malayalam [the language spoken in erala] and the directions it is moving in. Classical Malayalam language is used by the vidhushakan. These are now being forgotten even by rural or village folk. For example
67 using the words “color” and “side” are not even thought of as “English” words by local villagers now. But these words cannot be spoken by the vidhushakan since he has to use strictly Malayalam terms. Using “pure” Malayalam without dependency on
English terms is key for an effective verbal rendition by the vidhushakan. I acknowledge there is no such thing as “ pure”, yet it is important to know we do have a language that stands on its own. Perhaps you might hear such usage of Malayalam only in Koothu today, because even villagers are forgetting proper usage of Malayalam.
In saying that “translation” and “preservation” are major tasks, Margi Madhu wishes to highlight the labor required to skillfully weave written text and bodily performance by the vidhushakan and the unique significance of his performance in contemporary Kerala. Since social media like print and television are now considered major spaces to express socio-political concerns, Madhu believes the “value” of the vidhushakan’s labor today lies in his ability to deliver Malayalam language, without a dependency on English terms. This is a direct resistance in my opinion to India’s long history of British colonization. Shifting the focus of the vidhushakan’s labor from political resistance to preservation of “pure” Malayalam language, allows Madhu to imbue new value to the labors of the vidhushakan. Yet, the audiences of utiyattam are in most cases well initiated elderly Keralan audiences, who already have a considerable command of Malayalam, who do not need “disciplining” of their Malayalam. The rest of the audiences comprise Western audiences from different academic and artistic backgrounds, including Indology, Sanskrit Studies, Asian Theater Studies and so on.
68 Attention to “proper” Malayalam language thus reflects a deliberate attempt to showcase the “real” to local and international audiences, thus revealing many of the conflicting yet intersecting cross- currents of glocalized art.
MM: Introduction of epics and Purana Kathakal [stories that eulogize Hindu deities] is also a unique contribution of the vidhushakan. When I say Puranas it is not in a devotional sense but in a poetic sense, the way we imagine--the kavya sankalpam. For example, when one says “the river is the wife of the mountain and they had a child together” it seems quite novel or foreign to current generations today. They are unable to visualize such stories. Therefore, a child who watches these Purana stories being performed has a completely different experience than merely reading Purana literature or poetry.
I am reminded of K.G.Paulose’s view of how myths were introduced into
utiyattam as a powerful tool for Brahminical ascendancy. The gruesome depictions of
Surpanakha and the place it occupies in the popular psyche is yet another attestation to the impossibility to disentangle myths from lived culture. Epics often leave intact hierarchies of caste, gender, and religion. Thus a bodily performance of epics that are intricately linked with a particular religion cannot serve to isolate religion from cultural imagination. Margi Madhu’s claim, that the introduction of (Hindu) religious epics serves to nurture poetic imaginations rather than religious understandings of people, therefore seem like a moot argument. Glossing over the intricate links between mythology and religion enables Hindu religion to stand in for Indian“culture”. Thus alternate religious
69 cultures (like those of Islam, Christianity, Budhhism, etc.) that exist within the Indian nation come to be understood as “foreign” to that land, not part of its “culture”.
EK: I attended the Vidhushaka Festival at Irinjalakkuda in July. The fact that there is a festival specifically for the vidhushaka signals to me a dearth of the vidhushaka in
Kutiyattam. Where can we find the vidhushaka performing other than in the
Vidhushaka Festival? What kinds of stages accommodate him?
MM: In temples, it is still mainly the vidhushakan who performs Koothu. Vidushakan as a character is something we are losing. It is largely because of outside and foreign influences where they simply cannot understand the language. Outside erala, the language is a problem and so it has now become accepted that Kutiyattam’s focus is abhinaya (the art of facial expressions/acting)274. Word and text are as important as vesha (character in costume) in Kutiyattam. However, market requirements are a problem for the performance of the vidhushaka (who must use verbal renditions). So in many ways Kutiyattam has now become a market ulppannam (product).
It is compelling that today koothu of the vidhushakan is limited mostly within the religious space of the temple. This means that in Kerala it is mostly a Hindu audience that witnesses oothu. However, in public spaces that accommodate secular audiences,
Nangiarkoothu (solo female performance) and utiyattam are becoming increasingly popular. According to Diana Taylor in “Performance Studies and intangible cultural
274 uityattam trains extensively in using facial muscles in isolation.
70 heritage”, performances are at all times “in situ”, i.e. their meaning making arises from the surroundings in which the performance happens.275 Taylor alludes to Joseph Roach’s theory of “vortices of behavior” where specific spaces like the church, theater or marketplace become interstices or places wherein “certain behaviors and values are learned and certain memories and values are transmitted.”276 In pointing toward communal changes in behavior in terms of where and for whom “Masterpiece” art forms are performed, Taylor then implies a shift in rewriting memory. Therefore audiences within the temple are explicitly schooled in “proper” (read Sanskritized) Malayalam language and Hindu epics via translation and interpretation of religious mythologies by the Cakyar who performs oothu. In contrast, a Hindu ethos subtly gains entry and endorsement within public prosceniums via bodily performances of utiyattam and
Nangiarkoothu, since they do not employ speech. Hence, they are often read as aesthetized “cultural” performances.
The performative aspects of utiyattam are valued by the Indian Nation because it can be narrativized as an intrinsic part of Sanskritized temple art. The Hindufication process therefore happens boldly via the vidhushakan’s performances in the religious space of the Keralan temple and subtly via Nangiarkoothu/ utiyattam performances on public stages within India. In utiyattam the lack of the vidhushakan on public international and national stages enables the art form to be brought into the realm of
275 Diana Taylor, “Performance Studies and intangible cultural heritage,” 9 - 04.
276 Ibid., 98.
7 aesthetics. Yet, the vidhushakan must be kept alive but confined within local temples in order to imbue utiyattam with the pulse necessary to be maintained as a “living” heritage. Thus the lack of the vidhushakan in a globalized context and the deliberate maintenance of the vidhushakan within local contexts enable the active meaning making processes within the locality of Kerala to be completely undermined as a living practice when it is circulated as “universal heritage.” The vidhushakan in his paradoxical, ubiquitous visibility/invisibility enables utiyattam to be both universal and culturally specific, adding value to utiyattam’s global consumption.
Racialization and the Disciplining of Bodies
MM: The problem I find in Kutiyattam today is in the disciplining process – the
“gentlemanly” ways of behavior that is seeping in. The foreign ways of discipline are fundamentally different. While the Western “gentleman” speaks softly, is very restrictive in movements and such, the vidhukhakan speaks loudly, moves funnily etc.
EK: This might be one of the reasons that the vidhushakan does not make it into the world market.
MM: This kind of westernized disciplining is interfering in almost all of our expression and acting here now. In a way it is a dangerous thing. I don’t mean to say that we here don’t have discipline. I mean to say that our understandings of discipline are different.
For example, our local audiences come to watch Kutiyattam plays for days together.
72 However, they might watch for some time, if needed the person might go smoke a beedi
(a thin Indian cigarette),277 have some tea, come back, and continue watching.
I experienced this relaxed atmosphere being one among the temple audience in
Ambalapuzha where the elderly settled themselves by laying down on grass mats, close to the stage to watch comfortably. Toddlers and babies were running at the rear end of the natakasala, pausing to watch when something caught their interest.
MM: But today the audience is getting serious, the performance is getting serious. A lot of tension is produced. Then the exchange between the artists and the audience is not fluid or dialogical as it should be. This seriousness and “propriety” is a trend among the locals here also. They think nobody is supposed to leave during a performance and such. I am not saying that audiences shouldn’t watch attentively or something. Rather, the focus should not be on disciplining the audiences to the point it becomes stressful. This intrusiveness is a vaideshika (foreign) influence. As if the whole thing is something that needs to be treated with utmost respect. If we look at earlier attaprakarangal (acting manuals) for Kutiyattam, we come to see that not all parts were dealt with equal seriousness. Some portions were very intense, and some parts could be done with ease, without intense thought, so you can do it in a relaxed way.
277 It is filled with tobacco and wrapped in a leaf.
73 The provision of relaxed spaces during utiyattam performances might have allowed for the element of humor, a key ingredient of the vidhushaka’s performance, to flourish. When clever political critiques are delivered subtly, with humor, audiences often find it effective, as KGP and Madhu attest to. In general, I find that most classicalized Indian dance forms like Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam, athak, etc. don’t seem to play much with humor. Rather the whole experience of watching and performing the “classical” dances of India is construed as a serious and “sacred” event. Sacrality also legitimizes the unjust treatment of women who fail to fit into the framework of “ideal femininity and upholds a brahminical ethos within the temple. However, the aura of sacrality that pervades proscenium stages seeks to counter the increasingly delegitimized position of the practice of utiyattam within modern social settings.278 In order to survive in globalization, utiyattam must therefore be made sacred. Barbara Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett in "Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production”, shows that although traditional/“past” practices might not align themselves with economic development and national ideologies, valorization of those ways of life as “heritage” allow for the recognition of heritage economy as a modern economy.279 Therefore integration of heritage into economies of cultural tourism for example, makes it an economically viable
278 utiyattam is mostly viewed by members of the immediate rural localities in which utiyattam is practiced, or by Western audiences. The urban and popular audiences of Kerala seem to be mostly absent nowadays. 279 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production" in Museum International 56, no. (May 2004): 61.
74 product, a tool to be used for furthering national ideologies of cultural uniqueness and
modernity.
MM: The serious Kutiyattam is something that has been crafted very deliberately by
the buddhijeevikal (intelligentsia) and the foreigner. I am not saying it does not have its
benefits. I am just saying it was done very intentionally.
The sacrality or seriousness also enables the practice of utiyattam to be
unmoored from its situatedness and assume an “otherworldliness”; not happening in this
world at this time (as Marta Savigliano might have it), as happening within an abstract
realm. The result is an aesthetized art form disconnected from real life issues, considered
as spiritual and apolitical, not an active agential practice. While the vidhuskan in
utiyattam consistently re-connects the audiences to the contemporary world, the lack of
the vidhushakan allows utiyattam to live reclusively in the world of spirituality and
aesthetics. Yutian.Wong in her article, "Towards a New Asian American Dance Theory:
Locating the Asian American Body,” explores the socio-political, artistic, and historical
interconnections that have marginalized Asian and Asian American bodies in American
modern and postmodern dance history.280 For Wong, the idealization of dance as
apolitical art or entertainment in the U.S. and its failure to recognize dance as a
meaningful cultural practice further informs racialized workings of U.S. orientalism.
Such racialized mechanisms, according to Wong, are revealed specifically in American
280 Yutian Wong, "Towards a New Asian American Dance Theory: Locating the Asian American Body," Discourses in Dance , no. (2002): 69-90.
75 modern and postmodern dance where the Asian American dancing body is constructed as bereft of political and cultural agency,281 in spite of significant Asian American artistic and cultural contributions marking every shift in American dance history.282 In this article, Wong points to twenty-first century American orientalism as a form of racism that fails to recognize its insidious historical affiliations to its predecessor –19th century orientalism. Stifled within the confines of ‘universal art’ and
‘world/ethnic/cultural/dance’,283 Asian American dance thus becomes devoid of political agency although labeled as possessing ‘universal value’ since world dance as a concept undergirds racialized workings. This also speaks to the racially though “objectively” rationalized way in which the list of Intangible cultural heritages comes to be in a globalized context. The recognition of its racialized workings continues to be masked by a superficial (or even hyper focus) on aesthetic values of Asian American arts. This also undergirds an undermining of real bodies performing a heritage art.
Racialization, Cultural labor and Pedagogy
nterview with G. Venu284 on September 3, 2010 at Ambalapuzha Sri Krishna Temple, conducted in Malayalam. G. Venu (GV): The most important thing in protection of Kutiyattam is its abhyaasam
(effective training and practice)285. My immediate concern is that students today don’t
28 Ibid.,70.
282 Ibid., 84.
283 Ibid., 86.
284 The name G.Venu appears as his full name in his written works and so I mention his name as mentioned in his works.
76 have an opportunity for abhyaasam. The preservation or sustenance of a cultural art
form primarily means allowing abhyaasam of the art to thrive. There should not be a
restriction of time there. To shape an effective, accomplished master practitioner of
Kutiyattam it takes a minimum of 18 years286. Nothing much can be accomplished
within five or six years of training [which is the training period in alamandalam [the
eralan state institution of art, fully funded by the state].
GV: When you teach Koothu or Kathakali you first see if the student has talent. After
that there should not be a restriction of time frame to “finish” learning. Along with
abhyaasam, there should be rangaparijayam or familiarity with stage. You must also
have opportunities to learn under the best of teachers. Till about 30 years ago this kind
of a [pedagogical] system was prevalent I can say. Today that is not possible.287
EK: But thirty years ago, wasn’t the teaching restricted to only certain kinds of people?
GV: That is a secondary issue. How an art form thrives is dependent upon master
teachers and practitioners. For example, the expert training provided by masters like
285 Abhyasam is a Malayalam word that has a rich understanding of the term “training.” In addition to learning bodily techniques, it includes making available resources and creating contexts to train in an in-depth manner.
286 Considering the multiple levels of training—speech, textual knowledge, Sanskrit language, character roles, bodily renditions of specific characters, as well as the ability to successfully sel-conceptualize with a deep understanding of the technique of utiyattam, the training often takes between 5- 8 years as most accomplishes artists attest to.
287 G. Venu began his training in the late 970’s under the maestro Guru Ammannur Madhava Cakyar, whose documented performance enabled Kuityattam to win its recognition as Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Human Heritage.
77 Ammannur Madhava Cakyar or Painkulam Rama Cakyar enabled the shaping of effective practitioners of Kutiyattam like Usha Nangiar who have the scholarly, verbal and technical expertise to perform today [to link traditional myths to contemporary contexts, to re-think and re-imagine the art for today’s context]. Just because hundreds of people learn the art, it does not allow the practice to flourish. It merely produces replicas or dummy versions. Look at the long list of students who have graduated from
alamandalam in the past twenty years. Maybe there are one or two artists who are still in the field. Where are the others?
The utiyattam Register (2007), compiled by Dr. P. Venugopalan is a well- researched work published by Margi Tiruvananthapuram with funding from
UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust.288 It lists current utiyattam training institutions, their performance repertories, names of master teachers, prominent student and senior artists as well as major publications in utiyattam. The utiyattam Register is the only one of its kind that lists such data in an orderly fashion. It documents fifty students as currently registered in the utiyattam department of Kalamandalam.State Institute. Fifty students have a (limited) faculty of about two or three teachers—a rather low teacher to student ratio, considering the extended time and individual attention required to shape a single
utiyattam artist.289 In the past twenty years, one can estimate at least two hundred
288 P. Venugopalan, utiyattam Register (Thiruvananthapuram: Margi, 2007).
289 Master practitioners like Usha Nangiar, G.Venu, Margi Madhu, Margi Sathi, etc. teach no more than 4 students for the period they tutor them.
78 students to have graduated in utiyattam from Kalamandalam. In contrast to the large number of graduated students, only nine names are listed in the utiyattam Register as currently practicing artists trained in Kalamandalam between 1965 and 2007.290 Of these nine artists most had to seek further training with other Kutiyattam institutions like
Margi, Mizhavu alari, Natana airali, Nepathya and such before being able to establish themselves as effective utiyattam practitioners.
GV: Also, being an excellent practitioner or master teacher are not the primary requirements to get a job as a teacher in state institutions like alamandalam. Rather, a college degree and political influence become primary contributors to attain a teaching position there. Such a system directly impacts the quality of training in state institutions. Without thoroughly qualified teachers, the institution cannot bring forth successfully trained utiyattam students.
G.Venu’s comments point to current governmental (state and national) emphasis on numbers of students rather than on quality of training in utiyattam. The learning of
utiyattam requires extended years of training (between 15 -18 years as most accomplished artists attest to) in order to imbibe the heavily nuanced and codified bodily techniques, character roles, the understanding and enunciation of Sanskrit and textual
Malayalam. Thus a truncating of training periods by the state reflects the institutionalizing of an artistic and cultural practice and the impetus for “quick”
290 Venugopalan, utiyattam Register, 70-9 .
79 packaging of the practice as it circulates as world danced theater. The focus is on mass production of utiyattam practitioners with scant attention to the transmission of artistic and cultural nuances of the practice.
GV: When Vallathol founded alamandalam [in 1930, the period of Indian
Renaissance], he looked for the best artists to teach in his institution.291 For example,
Mathu unju Pillai Panicker was one of the top artists of athakali when he was invited to teach at alamandalam. After him master practitioners and teachers like
Guru unju urup and Pattikamthodi [Ravunni Menon] taught at alamandalam. So students at that time received the best of training in athakali at alamandalam.
Today [after the state has taken over the institution] students do not have such a privilege or choice to learn from the best practitioners, A committee who might not have an in depth knowledge of the art form will decide who qualifies to teach. Then, ministers must agree for that teacher to be appointed. In no other country, have I seen this kind of a system.
I started Irinjalakkuda Gurukulam in 1982,292[an institution for specialized training and research in Kutiyattam] along with Guru Ammannur Madhava Cakyar
[hereditary performer and master practitioner]. Ammannur was 68 years of age
29 Kalamandalam was instituted in 930 by Poet Laureate, Vallathol Narayana Menon during the time Indian Rennaissance and the Freedom Movement.
292 Ammannur Chachu Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam is also referred to as Irinjalakkuda Gurukulam.
80 then.293 Painkulam Rama Cakyar and Mani Madhava Cakyar [both caste-based male master practitioners] were Guru Ammannur’s contemporaries. I met them, and wrote down by hand how they learnt the art. They had themselves trained for 18 -19 years.
They were a generation of artists who could perform powerfully and with such nuances in expression.294 Ammannur began training at seven years of age and practiced until
68. But nobody was there to learn from him [after erala’s social upheaval beaded by the communists during the 1970s]. This is how I began the training program at
Irinjalakkuda. The first disciple was Usha Nangiar. She was eleven years at that time.
There was one more girl named Rathi, but she didn’t pursue it like Usha. Those days there were no performance opportunities like today. We are committed to teaching students for fifteen years. We have no syllabus, no exams, no degree, and no diploma.295 However, there will be ample opportunities to perform, see performances, collaborate with world class artists, and such. This is our system here. The second batch of students who trained under Ammannur [Madhva Cakyar] is made up of
apila, Sooraj, Rajneesh, Rathish [current generation performers]. In addition to the excellent training they receive, they are also given annual kalari uzhicchil [massage
293 He has a rare performance record of 76 years. See Venugopalan, utiyattam Register, 53.
294 The three are known today as the utiyattam Trinity.
295 Margi Madhu also endorses the need for training without limitations of syllabus or specifc time frames during my talks with him. According to Madhu, a syllabus treats everyone homgenously, “as if everyone must learn the same thing without considering their individual potential and interests. Madhu says, some students can chant well, some use speech well, some act well, some dance well. Accordingly, they are trained with a focus on student’s abilities as well as master’s interest. (Interview conducted at Margi Madhu’s residence in Moozhikkulam on Novemeber 29, 20 0).
8 techniques based on Ayurveda that keep the body, specifically the performing body, supple, the joints well lubricated, and a clear mind]. We bring the best oils that erala has.
E : How do you manage the expenses?296
GV (firmly): Don’t ask that. Single handedly I do this. The focus is on abhyasam
(which is directly linked to the well- being of the student), not on expenses. We manage financially from performances and such. We never send away a student. They will always be part of this institution. I cannot accept the state institutional training that
alamadalam gives—in six years you finish learning. After that there is no going back.
Such a sampradayam (practice) is not conducive for art forms like these. The work that
Appukkuttan Nair started at Margi is also not happening in Margi.297 When I manage
Irinjalakkuda Gurukulam by myself, even if I have only one student, they are chosen very carefully, their commitment, their quality of work and their personalities are
296 I have been the beneficiary of effective Ayurveda treatment for a case of partial foot drop (paralyses) of my right foot. Having availed of skilled and intensive Ayurveda treatment in Kerala, my foot regained significant movement to the point I could drive a car and walk without falling (after thirty days of consistent treatment). However, Ayurveda requires intense labor for effective treatment and is thus expensive. Prior to receiving Ayurveda treatment in India, I had received a short bout of treatment at an American hospital in California. The hospital informed me very matter-of-factly that there is “nothing left to be done” within a couple sessions of physiotherapy. They seemed to brush me off quickly. Physiotherapy rooms were crowded with “more serious” cases. Left to fend for myself, I sought Ayurveda treatment in India.
297 Margi institution was co-founded in 97 by Appukuttan Nair, a theater legend of Kerala and considered a visionary of utiyattam and other Kerala art forms. See P. Venugopalan, utiyattam Register (Trivandrum: Margi, 2007), 29.
82 assessed. So maybe every year I might not have a student come in. Students must also be eligible for receiving such good training. Nobody can ask me why I didn’t take student such and such—a particular year.
Venu’s comments seem to imply personal frustrations of trying to work within the state bureaucracy. He has worked tirelessly to help revive utiyattam by training artists carefully at his art institutions Ammannur Chachu Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam and
Natanakairali. He condones the compromised quality of training by a fully funded state institution Kalamandalam precisely because it thwarts abhyaasam (effective training and practice) of utiyattam. This severely compromises artistic freedom and the ability to self-express within a collective cultural practice, according to him. He also worked to aid the international recognition of utiyattam by UNESCO and other international theater organizations.
GV: Such an ineffective system is a result of the state’s interference, the overt politicization of the form. But this does not seem to be the case in China or Japan, where art institutions supported by the state employ the best of teachers.298 In the case of Noh, for example, cultural activists have the skills to recognize the quality of a Noh or abuki artist while here in erala such an ability to discern good utiyattam is lacking. This is a problem for erala in particular in comparison to the rest of India.
298 Venu travels frequently to China and Japan for workshops in utiyattam as part of world-theater intiatives.
83 What constitutes a “good” performance of utiyattam and who gets to decide what is good also reveal why and for whom we perform. In the case of Kalamandalam
State Institute, alignment to national interests seems to be of primary importance, offering up its cultural “jewels” for quick display and circulation via state tourism and world festivals. I also think a lack of ability to discern a “good” utiyattam performance by a cultural reporter or activist, might be a result of mass produced dummified versions of
utiyattam that are alienated from the life of Keralan peoples. Richard Kurin in
“Safeguarding Intangible Heritage: Key Factors in Implementing the 2003 Convention,” states that ICH (living Intangible Cultural Heritage) has to be vital, dynamic and sustainable in order to be considered safeguarded.299 He adds that the definition assumes the agency of a group of people who recognize their cultural expression as a symbol of their communal identity, and ICH cannot retain its designation as such if it is appropriated by others who are not members of that community – whether they be government officials, artists, businessmen or anyone else.300 From the standpoint of the
ICH convention it is the dynamic social processes of creativity, identity making, taking and re-making it as one’s own (even if it has changed over time)that is to be safeguarded.
Here the arbiters of value must be the members of the concerned communities themselves. UNESCO’s programs--“Living Human Treasures” and the “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible History of Humanity”, implemented in 1993 and 1997
299 Richard Kurin, “Safeguarding Intangibe Heritage: Key Factors in Implementing the 2003 Convention,” International Journal of Intangible Cultural Heritage 2 (2007): .
300 Ibid., .
84 respectively as part of the World Heritage Project were conceived to honor masters and value practices and transmission, processes of the art. Yet, the opposite seems to be happening at Kalamandalam the state institution where students are mass produced– valuing of the art for purposes of nationalism rather than cultural expressions of its community members. According to Diana Taylor, the result is a bureaucratic transformation of the practices into treasures—a thing, a product that “obviates community as active cultural agents.”301 In other words, when embodied practices are
“protected” as heritage/treasure and endowed value by cultural arbiters of taste, it produces a novel cultural commodity rather than maintains a meaningful practice. What is different between the “new” and “old” practice is not merely changes in the practice itself. The “new” focuses on becoming a product--by transmitting the art form via rigorous training and repeated enactment, (without much room for play and experimentation), to successive generations, thus undermining the centrality of creative practice. It is also significant to note that when a cultural practice is designated as
“Masterpiece” of humanity, it needs to also become a universally intelligible cultural product in order to be “preserved” and “protected.”302 What is lost then, according to
Taylor is the “here and now of performance”. The specific meaning making process between the performers and participants is transformed for consumption (as a universally
30 Diana Taylor. “Performance Studies and intangible cultural heritage,”94.
302 Ibid.
85 intelligible product). Thus, in spite of “good” intentions by UNESCO, the practice tends to get pried away from daily life revealing unequal shifts in identity making.
GV: The other major problem is the interference of numerous western researchers and performers in utiyattam. Their interference has been largely negative for the practice.
None of them have done a thing for utiyattam. Western scholars are often funded for documentation in addition to their research works. For example, Debby Fuller
(pseudonym), came to erala from the United States with a Fulbright scholarship for research in utiyttam. She took about a thousand photographs of Usha Nangiar after bargaining endlessly on the amount she could pay. She finally paid a mere 800 rupees or twenty dollars (USD) for all the long hours of work of this excellent artist.303 We needed an American lady to revive Nangiarkoothu.304 We have suppressed our art, our artists to such a level that we were forced to allow documentation for a pittance! And she had the audacity to claim she reclaimed Nangiarkoothu. This is after all the ground work, everything done by us [teachers and students within his institution] and other artists.
(Vehemently, he adds):
303 To gain some perspective, a daily wage laborer in Kerala earns about Rs. 500-600 ($ 5.00) a day for unskilled labor and a junior level skilled laborer earns about Rs. 5000 or $75.00 a day. Usha Nangiar would have needed at least a day or two to have worked for the photography sessions, thus being paid less than a daily wage worker by the American researcher.
304 Her name is popularly associated with helping “revive” Nangiarkoothu, especially in the West (America).
86 So what about all the work we do? The cultural labor is done by us but the benefit is to the Western “scholar”. The work we do for Kutiyattam is intensive, but we are hardly given due recognition for our works.
G.Venu’s claim that they were “forced to allow documentation for a pittance” points to who leads negotiations and who is forced to comply. Venu has been instrumental in re-activating utiyattam from an unrecognized, dying art form in the
1970s to its active practice today. He has worked consistently for almost thirty seven years in the field of utiyattam as a scholar, performer and director.305 He established two institutions Guru Ammannur Chachu Cakyar Smaraka Gurukulam and Natanakairali to help further practice and learning of the art under master practitioner Ammannur
Madhava Cakyar. Having worked closely with Cakyar families for years together until he gained their confidence and acceptance, he was able spear- head several key projects that helped the learning, practice and performance of utiyattam on an international scale by both caste-specific performers as well as non-caste-specific performers. Here Venu’s demand seems more for due recognition to the community that practices the form than commercial gain. Yet, in a world capitalist economy affects such as honor, worth, and recognition are closely tied to economic rewards and it is for this reason Venu objects about the low wages paid for the hard labor of an excellent artist . The fact that Debby
Fuller is majorly associated with the revival of Nangiarkoothu, while indigenous artists are drastically undermined, points to hierarchical and unequal flows of cultural capital
305 Venugopalan, utiyattam Register, 6 .
87 contingent upon the artistic labor and imaginations of indigenous practitioners. It is important to note that master artist Usha Nangiar, caste-based practitioner was trained at
G. Venu’s institution, Ammannur Chachu Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam. She received training from maestros Guru Ammannur Madhava Cakyar and Guru Parameswara
Chakyar (both caste-based practitioners). It is also ironic that although Kalamandalam
State Institute mass produces amateur utiyattam artists, the “real” artists that are sought after by the Western researcher and documented by UNESCO and the Indian nation are master practitioners who have received specialized training over extended years (non-
Kalamandalam trained) like Usha Nangiar, Margi Madhu, Margi Sathi, and Kapila
Venu.306 There seems to be an unfeigned demand for protracted documentation of nuanced techniques by Western scholars such that they pass off as “real” authorities or scholars of utiyattam.307
306 Although Margi Sathi received her primary training in Kalamandalam, she was able to establish as a master practitioner after receiving extended training at the Margi institution. (See Venugopalan, utiyattam Register, 168).
307 Extensive photography and video documentation of full-length plays of utiyattam panning more than thirty-forty days are some examples. For example, The performance of an entire play, Saktibhadra’s Ascharyachoodhamani and Bhasa’s Abhisekha Natakam), not just one act as is the common performance practice in utiyattam today, was accomplished by Nepathya, a training and performance institute headed by Margi Madhu. The entire performance lasting eighteen days, was however documented by the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Professor David Schulman, Humanistics Department, Hebrew University led the enterprise. This is one of four such elaborate festivals, all four of which were documented by the Hebrew University and performed by artists of Nepathya. See "Kudiyattam: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to the Living Sanskrit Theater of Kerala," The Hebrew University Kudiyattam Project, http://kudiyattam.huji.ac.il/innerpage.php?p= (accessed March 2, 20 2).
88 Rosemary Coombe, in her ethnographic work The Cultural Life of Intellectual
Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law,308 identifies that a dichotomy between laws of intellectual property and cultural property prevails such that owners of intellectual property (like the academic experts) are able to speak on behalf of “universal
“values of reason while owners of cultural property may only speak on behalf of their cultural tradition. For example, Coombe quotes Ward Churchill who argues that in academic settings representations and misrepresentations of indigenous spirituality are so prevalent that Native peoples own experiences of religious traditions are not legitimized without the validation of non-native experts.309 Drawing on Coombe’s work, Anthea
Kraut in “Race-ing Choreographic Copyright” shows that a racial logic undergirds
“world dance” as a category enables non-Western cultures to be regarded as unified wholes, worthy of study and documentation by westerners.310 Such a racial logic that depends on the tactic of hierarchical cultural capital permits “universal” ownership of specific cultural practices. The designation of the atomistic white male “expert” within the gradational positioning of cultures, civilizations and practices thus authorizes the functions and futures of racialized bodies as obsolete; no longer needing them after the labor is done.
308 Rosemary J. Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties
309 Ibid., 240.
3 0 Anthea Kraut, "Race-Ing Choreographic Copyright," in Worlding Dance, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 77.
89 Racialized Power, Neo-orientalism and Universal “Value”
Considering the rising numbers of different ethnic nationals like Koreans,
Mexicans, Chinese, Pakistanis, and Indians happening within the US, it is significant to understand how a US racial logic permeates not only within the country but also as a global cultural arbiter. Lisa Lowe in "Immigration, Citizenship, Racialization: Asian
American Critique," in Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics astutely points to the problematics of Asian immigration to the U.S. from the late eighteenth century to current contexts, as a site which reveals the contradictory formations of the
Asian American citizen.311 By exploring legalized immigration in the U.S. as the site that produces the Asian American citizen as included but not effectively represented in national citizenship, Lowe exposes the contradictions between granting of rights and an economic system that profits from racism.312 In other words she is arguing that the system of property and “universal” (read white male) citizenship rights are premised upon a system of differentiation, racialization and exploitation. Here the law of value functions by creating, preserving, and reproducing racialized and gendered labor power.313 Assignation of “universal value” within Intangible Heritages similarly functions by reproducing, preserving, and creating racialized cultural labor of nonwhite peoples. While ascribing “universal value” seems to promise economic benefits and
3 Lisa Lowe, "Immigration, Citizenship, Racialization: Asian American Critique," in Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 996), 5.
3 2 Ibid., 26.
3 3 Ibid., 28.
90 cultural inclusion to the practitioners of the art form and the nation from which the form emerges, what is actually upheld is a notion of (“universal”/modern) citizenship of the white, male, and propertied-- the upkeep for which particular nonwhite, unpropertied, cultural bodies labor. What is valued (as cultural property) is the cultural form or artifact for the benefit of a few, not the cultural rights of particular racialized practitioners.
GV: The issue of “tradition” is also largely made by the westerner. We worked so hard with Ammannur to teach it to outsiders in such a way that the focus was on the teaching and learning of the practice of Kutiyattam, moving beyond jati (caste).314
Then after we of the outside caste were accepted, the problem of “caste” was re- invented by the Westerner in Kutiyattam. For example, Debbie Fuller commented after one of my performances, “It was fascinating to watch him perform. However, he is not a Cakyar.”
I wish to unpack this poignant comment: What does GV mean by “moving beyond caste/jathi?” I think he means focusing on learning the nuanced art and technique of utiyattam without highlighting “caste”. When he says, “after we were accepted”, he strives to show that local artists and scholars who were outside caste-members were successful in gaining the confidence of caste-based utiyattam practitioners and their communities by working closely with them, learning from them while giving them their due recognition. Outside-caste members were able to speak with and for the utiyattam
3 4 G.Venu, his wife Nirmala Panikkar, Dr. K.G.Paulose, Dr. Venugopalan, Margi Sathi, etc are all non-caste specific practitioners and scholars of utiyattam who have worked tirelessly and effectively for the revival of the practice and knowledge of utiyattam and Nangiarkoothu.
9 communities’ demands and needs. For example, GV established Ammannur Chachu
Chakyar Smaraka Gurukulam with the help of Ammannur Madhava Cakyar, male caste- based practitioner to teach students in the nuanced way that Madhava Chakyar desired it to be taught to outsiders. Having helped build a new viable way of life for the practitioners whose art seemed on the verge of extinction, the community probably feels they have not been subjected to appropriation, rather there is an equitable sharing of interests that ensures due dignity and respect for the utiyattam community. When GV mentions that the Western scholar (of indigenous practices) has not “given back”, he is alluding to ineffective interdependencies between the Western scholar and the local artist and stark inequalities in cultural and capital flows that favor the West—a direct impact of
UNESCO’S “safe-guarding” projects of Intangible Heritages.
GV: When I did Shakuntalam, another American scholar Cain Drydon (pseudonym) has criticized my work for 21 pages. His approach was not right. His sense of entitlement to be able to criticize without really knowing my work is not right. I go to
Japan very often-- frequently for the past twenty six years. I work with Noh and kabuki artists once or twice a year on a regular basis for extended periods. But I do not think I have gained enough knowledge of the art to criticize it. This person [Drydon], I am not able to recall his face due to the brevity of time for which we met. He “interviewed” me during one of the most packed days in my schedule for no more than half an hour. He had come for the Shakuntalam premier during which there was an interactive seminar.
Out of many people present, he was merely one of them. He says he was present for 4
92 days. He was seeing utiyattam for the first time. The rest of the material he got from the internet and books. He has the language and the skills to write. But mere skill of language does not entitle one to critique an artistic practice.
Venu’s angst at how his work has been treated points to issues of who gets to set value, the imperialism of language and the differential powers accorded to the players in the game of “intangible heritages”. There is a familiar cry for dignity and honor by indigenous artists—first to be treated with dignity before they desire artistic gains, be it cultural, commercial or personal. Through his words I begin to get an inkling of why none of the local artists or scholars of utiyattam that I interviewed seemed to be interested in or concerned about copyright issues in utyattam. Copyright often evokes commercial protection of artistic works. Here, the collective demand of local artists seems to be the protection of, the worth and dignity of the artistic practice and their individual labor on their own terms, i.e. their moral rights. According to Anthea Kraut,
IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) laws that are itself constructed within racialized entanglements amass commercial and cultural capital for Euro-American interests (coded as “universal” trade/IPR laws). Ironically it is via a validation of the worth/value of these indigenous knowledges seemingly according dignity and honor to these cultures that current global (cultural) capital is mobilized.
G.Venu and I were talking in the nataksala, (theater space), at the Ambalapuzha
Srikrishna Swamy Temple where the Nangiarkoothus festival is going on. Dr. Venugopal comes in to tell Kapila Venu, G. Venu’s daughter who is performing for the evening that
93 the performance must finish by 8.00 pm at the latest as distribution of appam (local sweet fried bread) is planned for 8.15 pm and the temple audiences will surely go for that. This locally imposed restriction on performance duration time reminds me of similar time restrictions when performing utiyattam on international stages.
Kapila Venu responds that she can finish in two hours because she wants to perform Ambadi varnananam (the description of the garden) where she plans to describe gopanmarude kreeda (playful acts of cowherds). Dr. Venu says that would work well.
This negotiation of time is interesting to me—the organizer and the artist seem to have reached a successful compromise that works in both their interests as well as the audiences’ convenience. In contrast, on international stages, traditional performances are often restricted in time without negotiating power for “indigenous artists” who needs to display their wares for quick consumption by an uninitiated audience.315
GV (continuing about issues if Western intervention): I got an opportunity to understand the gravity of the situation when I went to Delhi [India’s capital]. Some people had come from the American Institute of Indian Studies (in the US) to Delhi for a study and I went to take part in it. I realized that all the written research work on
Kutiyattam is by the Western [Euro American], scholar, even bibliography is based on
Western works. I felt that this is not right. That is why I was forced to write and publish books in English. I had to get involved in writing and publishing, because it
3 5 Rustom Bharucha, "When 'Etenrnal India' Meets the YPO: Fifty Years of Dependence," Third Text , no. 39 ( 997). G Venu, Into the World of utiyattam : With the Legendary Ammannur Madhava Chakya (Thrissur District, Kerala: Natana Kairali, 2002).
94 became a necessity. It is the right of a culture to change on its own terms, not for outside research to enforce change. Such a duraavastha (bad situation) happens when we care unable to recognize ourselves. For example Phillip Zarrilli and Farley
Richmond’s works are widely read for utiyattam. So they are the utiyattam scholars now.316 That is because of the English language. This is the problem. What is at stake is our own identity. From our side [the local perspective] if we do not have a” good” language,317 we cannot put out our point of view or perspective. Our opinions and perspectives must be articulated and so I started writing and publishing. Academically, it is difficult to get our word out there, because we are not publishers. Without an
ISBN we cannot get our word out there. Regular people don’t understand this attack by the Westerner, their terrible interference. Western research cannot really recognize, understand, or appreciate changes or innovations within this field because they leave the scene. Thus to establish their authority over an entire culture like that is not right—if this were to happen in Japan they would not have their heads on their shoulders. (He laughs).
GV’s remarks of the “attack by the westerner” imply a skewed debate over
utiyattam that favor the westerner (mainly American) rather than the utiyattam
3 6 Interestingly the utiyattam Register provides a “select list of Contemporary Scholars of utiyattam”. It lists names of fourteen scholars, ten of which are Western. See P. Venugopalan, utiyattam Register (Thiruvananthapuram: Margi, 2007), 89-9 . Farley Richmond, utiyattam: Sanskrit Theater of India, CD- ROM (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,2002); Indian Theater: Traditions of Performance with Darius L Swann and Phillip B. Zarilli (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 990); essays in The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theater ( 99 ) and The Oxford Illustrated History of Theater ( 993)
3 7 “good” language is widely read as English
95 community of practitioners. Scholarly “drone surveillances” deployed by U.S. research institutions to collect cultural data about the “rest” of the world thus becomes an effective tactical operation that enables the expansion of U.S. cultural empire—with the advantage that they can leave the scene without leaving a “trace”. Thus the modern combat zones seem to include the cultural field where the gaps are widest and messiest-- since it cannot be disentangled from sociopolitical and economic issues. Yet, I wish to understand the contexts in which the dichotomized debates between Western “attacks” and indigenous artist “forced compliances” arise.
Although, GV’s statements are quite relevant, I would like to go beyond his claim of “attack by the westerner” which fails to take into account the complexities of transnational capital and its attendant cultural identity politics. Aihwa Ong in Flexible
Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality argues that the moral politics of the entire discourse on (a universal nature of) modernity and transnationalism requires revisiting in the current global context where “capitalism is no longer centered in the
West but distributed across a number of global arenas.”318 Cultural symbolism plays a significant role in the particular discourses of nation-states where in shaping their political economies and in discursively representing themselves as “moral-political projects”, they borrow extensively from the West while seeking at the same time to
3 8 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: the Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 999), 3 .
96 deflect the West’s multiple domination.319 The glitch in the case of GV’s comments is
that when he speaks against Western exploitation, he frames it in nationalist terms, thus
omitting the conciliatory role that nation plays as a partaker in transnationalism. GV,
KGP, and MM –the scholars/practitioners interviewed in this chapter-- all speak as
cultural laborers and as Indian. In contrast, both the state and global markets participate
in downplaying the labor these artists provide-- as maintainers of “tradition” for national
and international interests--in highlighting symbolic capital via Kerala State’s funding320
of the art, through tourism and participation in world-theater festivals (which promotes
“cultural uniqueness” of the state) and the international funding by UNESCO thus
simultaneously invisibilizing the cultural labor of the artists. Hence, I understand the
paradoxical nature of native discourses on utiyattam (which borrow heavily from
Western scholarship). utiyattam depends upon Western cultural capital to facilitate
circulation on a global scale; by the same token, as a politics of representation, native
scholars/practioners demand cultural recognition in the transnational framework.
utiyattam’s decalaration by UNESCO, in 2001 as a “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible
Heritage of Humanity” and the ratification of its status in 2008321 may thus signify an
active manipulation of cultural/symbolic capital that reflects a new Indian modernity that
3 9 Ibid., 36.
320 Diane Daugherty, “Fifty Years On: Arts Funding in Kerala Today,” Asian Theatre Journal 7, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 238.
32 "Elements on the Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage," UNESCO.org, http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=EN&topic=mp&cp=IN, (aceessed December 5, 20 3).
97 seeks to downplay the significance of Western contributions and highlight “cultural genius”, while being able to participate in transnational global flows. Therefore, I argue that exoticization of utiyattam (via scholarship, feticization of ritual and such) is also one of the ways to create spaces for marketing particular Indian aesthetics through the cooperation of national and international interests. Thus in order to understand how
utiyattam operates today in transnationalism it is important to situate it within the contexts in which it is imbricated in so as to avoid quick statements that polarize arguments between the “North” and the “South”.
98 Conclusion Notes
This dissertation has explored how moral, legal, and cultural rights of local
utiyattam practitioners in Kerala are affected as utiyattam enters a heritage economy.
This work offers substantial study of utiyattam from the perspectives of Intellectual
Property Rights, racialized assumptions undergirding the category of “universal” intangible heritages, and specific gendered and casticized privileges affecting citizenship status in India. Although, I have only begun to articulate these complexities, I wish to establish that the dance-theater of utiyattam provides a unique field to understand how constructions of gender, caste, nationhood, and race are made visible in India. In chapter one, I have explored particular gendered, casticized and racialized limits of access to and ownership of utiyattam as a globally circulated, but locally practiced cultural art form.
In my further writings, I would like to explore how these limits are made (in)visible on the performing body and how they are “read” by international audiences when
utiyattam is performed outside of Kerala. This would be a useful angle for approaching how “race”/culture/ethnicity are constructed differently when a cultural form is performed outside of its locality, by distinct dancer-actors and to various ends. In chapter two, I studied how Keralan women perform citizenship (maximizing their rights within patriarchy) in India today in contexts of conflicting Hindu and democratic tendencies under globalization. In particular, I studied the “silent” absentation of female caste-based performer, Usha Nangiar, from the Vadakkunatham Temple. I interpret her unquestioned absentation as a symptom of fundamentalist tendencies that deny caste-hierarchies as the
99 Indian nation struggles to constitute itself as a homogenous entity. While consulted studies on Hindutva322 in India have looked at how the public, media and fundamentalist
Hindu political parties operate in tandem, the practice of utiyattam offers a unique perspective to understand how gendered and casticized bodies negotiate the contradictions of democratic Hindu India. What has intrigued me in watching utiyattam performances is that, unlike other Indian classical dances such as Bharatanatyam and
Mohiniyattam323, advancing age and proscriptive views of body shape and weight do not seem to be a hindrance in the appeal of the solo female performance of Nangiarkoothu.
Paradoxically though, women actors are often made to play a very limited and passive role when they share the same performance space with men. This is in spite of both genders being trained in the same rigorous way, according to Usha Nangiar.324 What I would like to explore in my future projects on utiyattam is this relationship—the freedom for the female to inhabit non-proscriptive physicalities but face highly prescriptive feminine behaviors. Studying this contradictory correlation might help to pursue the problem of “aestheticization” of cultures that undermines women’s (gendered) bodily labors but upholds particular symbolic capital. In chapter three, I have examined how gendered and casticized cultural labor rights intersect with racism as utiyattam operates universally as “intangible heritage”. In particular I have explored how the
322 India as Hindu and democratic.
323 Female dancers’ physical attributes such as “sculpturesque figure”, “enticing smile”, “charming eyes”, etc. are often highlighted in newspaper reviews of female performances of Bharatanatyam and Mohiniyattam.
324 See her interview in chapter one of this dissertation.
200 (visual) difference of the vidhushaka’s body negotiates and is subjectified in the racialization process. Studying where the vidhushaka is made to perform or not has allowed me to begin to articulate how performing bodies in utiyattam are subjectified in the racialization process as utiyattam becomes glocalized. The glocalization of
utiyattam has resulted in an overt international exposure, but limited local exposure of the art to public audiences of Kerala. For example, most utiyattam performances in
Kerala seem to take place in niche rural areas where members of most utiyattam communities reside and practice the art. Therefore audiences of utiyattam performances mainly consist of the immediate locals of the town or village and the international/Western audience. The urban Keralan and the popular folk, outside of these localities, seem to be missing, resulting in uncertainties on how the general population comprehends the art form. Recently, (in July 2013), during a trip to New York, I met one of my aunts who was visiting from Kerala. She expressed her disappointment when she learned that I was doing research on utiyattam. She pointed out that I am a really good
Bharatanatyam dancer, and she did not understand why I was researching such a
“backward” form. She assumed that since utiyattam is not “popularly” performed, it must be a “backward” form of art. Even though, my aunt is from Kerala, she had not seen a utiyattam performance before. In fact, during my 2010/2011 fieldwork, several local people in Kerala were curious to know what exactly utiyattam is. Unlike
Bharatanatyam which has been “polished” as a globalized art form, made “fit” for consumption by Indian local elites and Anglicized consumers, utiyattam, remains unfamiliar to most Keralan people. Interestingly, though, Nangiarkoothu performances
20 have gained recent entry in 2012 to the Kerala state youth festivals as a “competition item”. This not only opens up employment opportunities for women teachers of
Nangiarkoothu (as many students seek to take lessons and take part in these state competitions),325 but it also shapes the packaging of the art to Keralan peoples themselves. This would be an interesting area of exploration that will help bridge the gap between studies in the glocalization and transnationalization of utiyattam.
Although, I completed fieldwork toward the end of December 2010, I left Kerala six months after, in June of 2011. I had delivered a baby boy amongst a life-threatening medical situation in January of that same year. Considering my inability to travel due to my medical condition, one of the teacher-artists, Kalamandalam Sindhu, who had become a good friend during my fieldwork, offered to mail me certain books on utiyattam, I had wished to procure. These particular books by Keralan writers were not immediately available in Ernakulam, where I resided at the time. She kindly volunteered to collect them from the specific institutions located in different towns and cities in Kerala and sent them to me via postal mail. Such gestures continue to serve as reminders of people’s generosity as well as to how eagerly local dancer-artists of utiyattam desire to inform researchers and scholars from outside India, about their local cultural practice. I hope to be able to continue incorporating local artists’ points of view in my further research works on utiyattam.
325 Winning competitions in the state youth festivals comes with significant academic privileges like 5% grace marks for state exams for winners of these competitions. Thus these competitions are not only highly politicized but become a space for contentious rivalries.
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2 2 Appendix with Glossary of Malayalam Terms
Abhinaya: modes of acting/expression, especially via facial and gestural expression.
Abhinaya pradhaana naatakangal: Plays that necessitate bodily acting (rather than verbal renditions of the Cakyar—the male performer of utiyattam).
Abhyaasam: effective training and practice. In addition to learning bodily techniques in utiyattam, abhyaasam also includes making available resources and creating contexts to train in an in-depth manner.
Adiyantharavastha: National Emergency. It refers to the period between 1975 and 1975 in India under Indira Gandhi’s primeministership.
Agapporul: inner meaning. The term in utiyattam refers to specific intentions that the drama was used for. For instance, religious propaganda.
Ahaaryam: costumes and ornamentations as a mode of expression.
Ammamma: maternal grandmother
Ammayi: aunt
Angikam: mode of expression that employs the entire body.
Appam: short for unniappam sweet fried bread.
Arangettam: debut performance with ritualistic significance for utiyattam.
Asan: Master teacher.
Attaprakaram: Acting manual that details acting methods of the character
Avataram: avatar/incarnation/birth
Bandh: forceful closure of civic life.
Bhaasha samrakshanam: preservation of language
Bheegarar: mighty, able to invoke terror
Cakyar: male caste-specific performer of Kutiyattam. He occupies a higher caste- positionality than Nambiar (male caste-specific drummer).
2 3 Cakyarkoothu: also called koothu are solo verbal renditions of the male jester called vidhushakan.
Chechi: older sister. Since people older in age are not usually addressed by their names in Kerala, it is common to call them as “older brother” or “older sister”
Chutti: a white rice beard, usually worn by male hero characters in utiyattam.
Doothu: Messenger/conveying a message
Duraavastha: bad situation
Edathi: another term for older sister
Gherao: threaten. The term is associated with a form of industrial action in India in which workers imprison their employers on the premises until their demands are met.
Gopikas: milk maids
Grantha: manuscript usually written on dried leaves called taliyola.
Gurunaathan: Master teacher. The system of learning Kutiyattam from a master teacher typically entails prolonged years of association extending between 15 -18 years of training.
Hasta: Gesture or hand
Hartal: Strike, or civic protest
Illodamma: women from the Cakyar clan.
Jaatha: public march
Janmis: local landlords
annagi Caritam: Story of Kannagi. The acting manual for this was written by Margi Sathi for Nangiarkoothu.
avya sankalpam: poetic imagination oothu:
Cakyarkoothu is often simply referred to as koothu and consists of solo verbal renditions
ramadeepika: stage manual that details stage techniques—like placement of characters, timing of entry and such.
2 4 ulathozhil: family based occupation.
uthamablam: Specially built stages within temple grounds for the performance of utiyattam.
utiyattam: Traditional Sanskrit danced theater from Kerala, India. It is traditionally performed by caste-specific members called the Cakyar (male actor) Nangiar (female actor), and Nambiar (male drummer).
Mala kettuka: tying the garland. Since flower garlands are a staple offering at the temple this was a caste-based occupation of the Warrier and Nambeesan castes.
Marayil kriya:Rituals performed behind the stage curtain.
Mindaathathaano?: [Is it] that which doesn’t talk or speak?
Mindunnathaano mindaathathaano?: Is it with speech or without speech?
Mizhavu: Drum that is used specifically for utiyattam. Traditionally, the drums were played by males of the Nambiar caste.
Mudi: Nangiar head gear
Mudra: Hand gesture
Nada: Entrance to the temple.
Namboothiri: Kerala Brahmin
Nangiar: Women utiyattam actors from the Nambiar community are called Nangiars
Nangiarkoothu: female solo performance of utiyattam.
Natakam: Theater proper, where multiple Kutiyattam characters appear on stage together
Natakasala: Theater-space (usually within temple grounds).
Nirvahanam: solo recapitulation of past events of a character.
Nombu: fasting observed by caste-members, usually connected with prayers. In the case of Kutiyattam, nombu, included abstaining from rice foods, and observing specific prayers and rituals.
Nottam: Gaze
2 5 Pacha: green character make-up, usually for heroic characters
Padayorukkal: preparation of weapons
Pathayam: rice quarries
Payasam: milk sweet (usually offered to deity).
Peetham: a wooden seat with four legs on which the utiyattam dancer- actor sits (to elaborate story via gestural and facial expression).
Prasadam: food offered to the gods.
Pujaris: Priests at a Hindu temple.
Purana athakal: ancient stories that eulogize Hindu deities.
Purusha Vesham: male roles.
Raja: king.
Rajasadas: Royal court
Rangaparijayam: familiarity with stage performances.
Saatvikam: engaging the soul
Sadas/sadassu: audience/jury
Sampradayam: culture/tradition
Sanskruta Natakam: Sanskrit Drama
Sloka: verses written in usually four lines of text.
Speshal Natakam: Special Drama (Speshal is a localized Tamil version of the English term “special"
Sringaara: love
Sthree Sabdam: Woman’s Voice
Stree Vesham: Female characters.
2 6 Subhadra Dhananjayam: Wedding of Subhadra (an act in Kutiyattam that enacts the story leading to the wedding of Arjuna and Subhadra.
Surpanakhangam: Act of Surpanakha
Talam: cymbals to keep time or recite slokas for the utiyattam actors.
Taliyola/taliyolagrantha: Dry leaf manuscripts. Ancient Attaprakaram and Kramadeepika used to be written in taliyola.
Tantris: high priests from the Brahmin caste.
Ulpannam: market product.
Vacikam: mode of acting via speech
Vesham: character in costume,
Vimarsanam: resistance
Vidhushakan: male jestor of utiyattam who performs solo verbal renditions called Cakyarkoothu.
Vyakhyaanam: translation
2 7