Dancing Once th Music Has Stopped: The Reflections of South Indian Devadasis

Davesh Soneji
“Living History, Performing Memory: Devadasi Women in Telugu-Speaking South India”

This was a thoroughly enjoyable article. It’s only Sunday, so I may yet address Orr (or the extent of which I managed to plough through by Tues), but since Soneji’s article is fresh in my mind, I thought, ‘why not write about it?’ At the onset of his paper, he asserts that for retired women (e.g., the five women mentioned: Manikyam, Anusuya, Varahalu, Seshachalam, Maithili) to call themselves devadasis (which he parenthetically defines as “women artists who served I temples and/or courts”) is problematic since they do not retain the markers thereof, i.e., public song and dance, temple ritual, tax-free land, home-blessings. However, as Soneji’s fieldwork aims to demonstrate, these women maintain their devadasi status through memories where they identify themselves to past activity.

Soneji, as an ethnographer, hopes to gain insight into these embodied memories, but insight into what, I wonder – into the past, or into these women’s personal recollected experiences thereof? These are by no means mutually exclusive, but they must not be conflated. He argues that identity may be produced through acts of memory (31) and that these devadasis of Andhra employ such a memory-wrought sense of identity in order to “affirm their subjectivity in the present”. I wasn’t sure if he was at all interested in claiming the survival of devadasi performance in the community as a whole. But by the end, I think it’s clear he is referring only to these women’s nostalgic realities. Indeed, these private renditions of ancient performances are living artifacts, covertly attesting to the survival of Devadasi performance in South Asia. However, to what extent is an artifact “living”? (I suppose we need look no further than Davis book, and hopefully we can draw parallels next class.) It is, of course, existent, but existent as a relic. These nostalgic performances are reenactments of past performances, not extensions thereof. The key, I think, is the absence of audience. But this begs the question as to whether a performance requires an audience. I am tempted to say yes, in some sense. What I mean, is that a chef who hasn’t cooked in 50 years, may very well consider himself a chef, and may even self-identify as a chef, but is he contributing to the culinary world in any meaningful way? Sure, he may make his own meals, but is he then a chef-proper? If so, aren’t we all? In any case, these private expressions of memory are not living performances which serve to enliven the culture. Is Soneji’s focus then, these women, or their surrounding culture? For him to say that devadasi performances are alive in these woman (arguing the inextricability between memory, identity, and performance existing within them) is different from saying that it thrives within their culture. Toward his conclusion, he states that these isolates relics they may not be socially effective, but are effective on the level of individual identity.

As an aside, I can appreciate the issue of naming which he addresses at the outset. Although Sanskrit culture associates the term ‘devadasi’ with homogenized pan-Indian understandings of these often-sexual performers. He refers to these women as kalavantulu (those trained in music and dance), which are only a sub-set of bhogam, or women serving as “embodiments of enjoyment”, referring to their “non-normative sexuality”. This goes beyond the services of the kavalavati category, but is apparently comparable to the connotations of a devadasi in general. So, basically, he uses the term devadasi to refer to kalavati, and not bhogam. In harnessing the vernacular culturally-specific terminology, he a) emphasizes how problematic existent terminology can be in implicitly propagating misrepresentation, b) demonstrates the various meanings and connotations which a term such as “devadasi” can hold in from differing perspectives. I definitely need to be mindful of this in future employment of terms such as “aesthetics”, “kavya”, etc.

Soneji talks of troupes of kavalantulu arising in late nineteenth century which operates as professional guilds of sorts. They performed both in temples and in private settings, though the repertoire for each was the same. He demonstrates the tripartite context of postcolonial devadasi performance: temple, court, and residence. We are told that the private variety of such dance survived the Madras Devadasi (Prevention and Dedication) Act of 1947, but eventually perished due to an amendment of this act in 1956 which prohibited such dancing at all social affairs. This amendment, as we learn through saddening testimony, robbed these women of their art, their status, and their livelihood. Soneji argues that such dance has survived, but occurs behind the scenes, without an audience.

Also, he mentions that “in the early twentieth century, when traditional systems of patronage were dismantled, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, some younger devadasis indeed turned to prostitution” (39). However, where is the source of this information? Is it not feasible that although there clearly is a thriving non-sexual artistry at work, that the association between sexuality and this type of artistry (as exemplified by the “businessmen from the city, tax collectors, and ministers” who frequently requested songs subtly implicating these dancers as prostitutes ) was prevalent before this? Could it not be that there have always been a subset of devadasis who engaged in some form of prostitution? If this was not the case, then the association between devadasis and prostitutes would have originated in the early twentieth century and not before.

Soneji’s work outlines a fascinating distinction between the sphere of the family and the sphere of the devadasi, and the construction and regulation of sexuality manifesting in each sphere. I get the sense that the presence sexual services in the repertoire of a devadasi by no means imply that all other skills and services are subsumed or eclipsed by their sexuality: they are dancers, who can be sexual, not prostitutes who can dance. They were not ultimately defined by their relations with men, nor their ability to produce children. In this context neither marriage nor reproduction is a requisite aspect of womanly life. An equally fascinating dimension to devadasi-ship is the unique relationship they enjoy to the purity-pollution dichotomy. This is the first I have heard, among those concerned with ritual purity in the Hindu context, where menstruating women would not be considered impure. Likewise, this is the first I’ve heard of any community exempt from the impurity of death upon losing a loved one. I’m hoping someone out there studying purity and pollution catches wind of the devadasi scenario. However, I think that the very act that they are exempt from ritual purity does not reneder their artistry as separate from the religious sphere, but ironically, binds them tighter to it. They are always ritually pure!

This brings us to the million dollar questions: to what extend does this craft belong in the sphere of religion versus that of aesthetics? To what extent does it straddle both. Of course there were devadasi performances at homes, but were these not at occasions such as marriages and festivals, indeed occasions heavily imbued with religious overtones? Also, the unique social status of these devadasis, as operating slightly outside the rubric of social expectation (marriage, children, etc.), is conferred on them due to a relationship they enjoy with the sacred sphere. They aid in ritual acts and dance for the enjoyment of the gods. I’m sure we’ll have lots to discuss on Wed. And now the even bigger question, because it directly pertains to the lives of these women, what is a dancer who is forbidden to dance? One of the most disheartening realities of this work is that these women who reconstruct their identity from “scattered fragments of remembrance, knowledge, and experience” will soon enough become themselves such fragments. Once they cross the threshold of death, their skills, knowledge, and personal identifications will die with them: These women who so vividly remember will only be vaguely remembered.