Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

by Pavan K. Varma

  The essential point is that, like classical music, classical dance is by definition a complex form of creative expression, encompassing within it not only pure dance but theatre, mime, music, poetry and, above all, rasa. It cannot be ‘simplified’ without destroying its soul. A student of Kathak who is not steeped in the lore of Radha and Krishna and has no knowledge of Brajbhasha—the offshoot of Hindi in which the poetry of their love is written—can only perform the dance mechanically. An intrinsic part of all classical dances is abhinaya, the portrayal of emotion. Only a dancer who has studied the poetry that is at the heart of a dance composition, and has a knowledge of the music and the raga in which it is being sung, and is, over and above this, familiar with the philosophy and mythology underpinning the composition, can make the authentic emotional investment that abhinaya requires. Most young dancers, sadly, are inadequate in all of the above. They are lured to dance because of its glamour, or because it is regarded as a befitting social embellishment by ambitious parents. Leela Venkataraman quotes the lament of the great doyen of Kathak, Pandit Birju Maharaj: ‘Aajkal ke students item seekhna chahte hain, Kathak nahin’ (Today’s students come to learn items, not Kathak). ‘This race to become a performer,’ Leela says, ‘has led youngsters to seek short-term goals, and [there is] an all-pervading mediocrity and lack of depth in the dance scene.’19

  This is a truly unfortunate development, especially in a culture where dance was conceived as an aspect of the divine. Shiva is Nataraj, the king of dance, and Krishna is Natwar, the prince among dancers. The timeless bronze images of Shiva doing the tandava, the cosmic dance of destruction and regeneration, have inspired countless generations, and continue to do so, with their sheer poetry, elegance, poise and suppressed energy. In what manner, then, can this ancient discipline be experimented with? Obviously, creativity cannot be shackled and stunted by the legacy of the past. But it is legitimate to interrogate the quality and motivation of what passes for ‘contemporary classical dance’. Madhu Natraj is the director of the Stem Dance Kampini in Bangalore, which specializes in contemporary dance forms. She staunchly defends the need for experimentation, but accepts that a great deal of what is touted as ‘contemporary’ is a copy of what was being done in the London School of Contemporary Dance some decades ago. With a few Indian touches added, these become compositions that receive western attention because they appear ‘different’. At home, mere plagiarism will work: Natraj gives the example of a well-known contemporary danseuse creating a production about walking on water which was a straight lift from the Broadway hit Stomp.

  Experiments with established and highly evolved art forms succeed only in the hands of those who are rooted in that tradition and know the limits of what can change and what cannot. When the famous Stanislavski theatre in Russia sought to stage Kalidasa’s Shakuntalam in the 1970s, the veteran Kathak dancer Maya Rao, who was recruited as an adviser, found that the most difficult part was to make the Russian ballerinas walk on their feet and not on their toes. Certain forms of dance suit certain body types, and it is ridiculous to deny this. The world may be flat, but not everything lends itself to ‘fusion’. One morning in Bangalore I sat in the dance studio of Jayachandra Palazhy, watching him and a group of his students perform a contemporary dance piece. Jayachandra has learnt Bharatanatyam and Kathakali, as also the martial arts dance form of Kerala, Kalaripayattu. For some years now he has been experimenting with contemporary dance. That morning, I watched with interest as two men and two women moved vigorously on the stage, rolling on the ground and contorting their bodies in time to a soundtrack of modern, near-surrealistic music. Elements of Kalaripayattu could be discerned in some of their movements, but for the rest it came across to me as a clear emulation of western contemporary dance. Jayachandra is a talented artist, deeply committed to expanding the traditional dance repertoire of India; but while his intention is good, I got the distinct impression that in his search for the new he was inflicting a terrible violence on the old, an artistic tradition which, even if he is not prepared to accept it, has a greater claim on him than what he was emulating.

  Classical dance in India can do with some carefully thought out and original experimentation, bringing in contemporary themes and reworking the ‘officially’ sanctioned hand and body movements, but the manner in which this is done is crucial. I once watched Malavika Sarukkai, a leading exponent of Bharatanatyam dance, depict a contemporary story about the Ganga in Varanasi. The theme was refreshingly different; the choreography was startlingly new; the music was from north India and not Carnatic classical as is the norm for Bharatanatyam; and even the words were in Hindi, not Tamil. For purists this was a clear violation of established rules, but Malavika carried it off with great élan. Her attempt was to gently push the horizons of tradition, creating space for the new without fatal injury to the old. Without a firm grounding in her or his own tradition, no artist can successfully borrow from the rhythm and vocabulary of another’s. Daksha Seth, one of the pioneers of contemporary dance in India, learnt Kathak for eighteen years, Mayurbhanj Chhau for another seven and Kalaripayattu for over a decade. Only then did she begin to experiment with the new. Some of her productions, at least on the surface, seem to have nothing to do with her long training in the Indian dance forms, but she herself has confessed that ‘there is forty years of Kathak training in my body, and it will never leave me, and I don’t want it to, because that is my base. My sense of music comes from my classical training, the way I explore rhythm comes from Kathak … The classical is my resource, the background for all the technique that I use and transform according to my imagination …’20

  Dancers from the classical tradition need not cut themselves off from what is happening in dance internationally, and certainly there cannot be a case for unthinking insularity. But it is precisely because they are the product and custodians of a centuries’-old and sophisticated tradition that the transition must be made very carefully. To land enthusiastically but clumsily on the floor of somebody else’s dance tradition, without considering what can be assimilated and what cannot, does injustice to both the authenticity of the old and the potential of the new. Interestingly, Jayachandra told me that in the 1930s leading choreographers from the west, such as Ruth Saint Denis, came to India to see what they could borrow from Indian classical dance, especially the choreography relating to Shiva and Parvati. The modern dance legend Martha Graham studied yoga to enrich the repertoire of her school. Anna Pavlova recruited Uday Shankar, who played a young Krishna, in her productions (and advised Rukmini Devi Arundale, who was fascinated by ballet, to rediscover classical dance in her own country instead). None of them, however, began immediately to attempt Bharatanatyam or Kathak or Kuchipudi. This should be instructive for practitioners of contemporary Indian dance: if they borrow uncritically and completely jettison the tradition that has shaped them, they will not earn acceptance and respect abroad, nor will they make any significant impact on audiences in India.

  The state of contemporary Indian theatre is even sadder. Lilette Dubey, the well-known theatre person and actress, once used a phrase, perhaps unconsciously, that is incredibly apt. Speaking about the shoestring budgets and lack of professionalism that plague Hindi theatre, she said the productions look rather ‘apologetic’. The word captures perfectly the shabby, half-hearted and diffident state of theatre in India. There are a few—just a few—well-known playwrights, and even among them, those who have a national following can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There is little funding, no committed audiences, except perhaps in Maharashtra and Bengal, and very little original work of high quality. This in the land of Kalidasa, whose plays were being staged 2000 years ago on sophisticated principles for drama developed a couple of hundred years earlier. India is nowhere near having its own Broadway, or an audience that would queue up to buy tickets for a good play. I recall seeing in Moscow, during the years of transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union, people standing in queue in sub-zero temperatures to
buy tickets for a new play by a celebrated Russian playwright, even though many of them probably hadn’t been paid for months.

  I met Girish Karnad, arguably India’s most famous playwright and theatre person, over lunch in Bangalore, where he lives. Girish said that he could think of only two theatre centres in all of India where someone who went to see a play could later sit down and discuss it over a cup of tea. It is not enough, he said, to have halls which can stage theatre, although these too are in short supply. What is required is for a stage to be part of a vibrant cultural complex where audiences can ‘see a play and then chat about it’. Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai and the Rang Shankara in Bangalore are the only theatre places which offer this ambience. Rang Shankara was built only recently, in 2004; although it is a small auditorium with a capacity of 300, it is in addition a cultural centre with a buzzing cafeteria, and has staged a play every single day since it opened. This one institution, Girish said, has the potential to transform Kannada theatre, but we need many more like it across the country. Unsurprisingly, nobody—and least of all the government—cares. It is not that the government cannot deliver. The Sangeet Natak Akademi, the country’s premier agency for the promotion of theatre and dance, set up in 1952, did pioneering work in the early years; it identified and promoted the beautiful Chhau dance form from the north-east, nurtured the near-extinct Manipuri classical dance from the same region, and gave much-needed support to the compellingly pristine yet nearly forgotten Dhrupad form of classical music. But the original inspiration got hopelessly mired in bureaucratic inertia in the decades that followed. As a result, things are hopelessly skewed in our cultural landscape. No one can deny the space that television and films command today. It is not a phenomenon peculiar to India. But, as Girish Karnad mentioned to me, the lament is not that the space for popular entertainment has grown, the tragedy is that the space for anything more cerebral has shrunk so dramatically. Popular music, for instance, has its place, but something is seriously wrong if tickets sell briskly only for film, pop or fusion artists and halls go half empty—even when entry is free—for great performers of classical music and dance. This either–or scenario diminishes the canvas of an ancient civilization.

  The only reason for this can be a lack of respect for our own cultural traditions—as if we have internalized the criticism of our indigenous culture by our old colonial rulers—which manifests itself as a shocking neglect of the humanities in our education system. In our schools, the science and commerce streams are hugely privileged, especially at the senior secondary level, and a student opting for ‘arts’ (as the humanities stream, comprising history, literature and political science, is popularly known) is an embarrassment to his or her teachers and parents. The humanities departments of the universities are mostly cess-pools of mediocrity, where original thinking is discouraged and learning by rote is encouraged. Teachers who can engage the minds of the young with fresh ideas and concepts are rare to find, and there are few students willing to go beyond the routine preparation for exams. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and some of our medical colleges compare favourably with those in the rest of the world, but mature civilizations cannot be reduced to an unsustainable linear simplicity: good engineers and doctors and little else. This bias has ensured that the humanities departments of an overwhelming majority of our universities are obviously substandard. There is hardly any original output; doctoral works are usually collations of secondary material, laboriously footnoted to give the illusion of research. With the exception of some elite institutions, a pervasive sense of shabby weariness informs these departments. Gunnar Myrdal, who wrote a monumental work in the mid-1960s on the unfolding drama of development in Asian countries, had noticed this malaise even then. His comments cover South Asia as a whole, but have a special relevance to India:

  Every western visitor to South Asian universities is struck by the uncritical attitude of the average student: he expects the professor and the textbooks (often only certain pages are prescribed reading) to impart to him the knowledge he needs, and accepts what is offered to him without much intellectual effort of his own … His submissiveness in this respect stands in curious contrast to his readiness to protest if he feels that requirements in examinations are unduly taxing … Teaching in South Asian schools at all levels tends to discourage independent thinking and the growth of that inquisitive and experimental bent of mind that is so essential for development. It is directed toward enabling students to pass examinations and obtain degrees and, possibly, admittance to the next level of schools. A degree is the object pursued, rather than the knowledge and skills to which the degree should testify.21

  Contrast this with Hieun Tsang’s description of the Nalanda University in the seventh century AD, and the dramatic decline in excellence becomes vivid. ‘All around pools of translucent water shone with the open petals of the blue lotus flowers,’ wrote Hieun Tsang of the university campus where he lived as a student. ‘Here and there lovely kanaka trees hung down their deep red blossoms; and woods of dark mango trees spread their shade between them. In the different courts, the houses of the monks were each four stories in height. The pavilions had pillars ornamented with dragons, rafters richly carved, columns ornamented with jade, painted red and richly chiselled, and balustrades of carved open work.’ Nalanda was founded in AD 427 (and burnt down by Bakhtiyar Khilji in AD 1197) and attracted students from as far as China and Japan in the East to Turkey and Persia in the West. It was a genuine centre for intellectual debate and enquiry in the fields of philosophy and metaphysics, linguistics, medicine, mathematics, astronomy and politics and statecraft, playing host in its heyday to 10,000 students in the hands of 2000 world-renowned teachers. Universities distinguished for their academic excellence and original thinking existed also in Kashi, Kanchi and Takshashila.

  Today, the glitter has gone from almost all educational institutions which are not institutes of technology or medicine or management. Few schools, including the government-run Kendriya Vidyalayas, have a subject on art or art appreciation in the higher classes. If the young are not exposed to art, where will the discriminating and knowledgeable audience, so necessary to sustain and develop culture in any country, come from? Ramnivas Mirdha, the erudite octogenarian who is the president of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, once lamented to me that this ancient land may be losing the ability to create the rasiks who can appreciate culture and help promote and nourish it. He said that if the country’s GDP falls by a percentage or two, it will recover, but if the country’s culture is neglected, the damage will be irreparable.

  ‘Bollywood’ has grown in confidence and output, and acquired popularity abroad as well, especially in countries where there is a significant population of Indian origin. But very few of the thousand or so films that India makes every year are of quality, and a great many are straight lifts of Hollywood productions. Innumerable websites give graphic details of this plagiaristic orgy, listing film after film—many of them hits—which have liberally ‘borrowed’ from some foreign film’s story, music and screenplay, often without acknowledgement. To mention just a few recent examples: Akele Hum Akele Tum is a copy of Kramer vs Kramer; Hey Baby is a copy of Three Men and a Baby; Road is a copy of The Hitchhiker; Dhamaal is a copy of Rat Race; Black is a copy of The Miracle Worker; Salaam Namaste is a copy of Nine Months; Murder is a copy of Unfaithful; Partner is a copy of Hitch; Kaante is a copy of Reservoir Dogs; Main Hoon Na is a copy of Never Been Kissed; Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin is a copy of It Happened One Night; Baazigar is a copy of A Kiss Before Dying; Phir Hera Pheri is a copy of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; Bunty Aur Babli is a copy of Bonnie & Clyde; Ghulam is a copy of On the Waterfront; Chachi 420 is a copy of Mrs Doubtfire. The list can be endless. Where the story is not a complete rip-off, the ‘look and feel’ of a film is borrowed—entire scenes are deftly swiped. For instance, the opening train sequence of Sholay, a film that is universally celebrated as a watershed in popular Indian cinema, is a frame by frame lift from
the 1950s’ classic Northwest Frontier.22

  The same syndrome afflicts film music. This is particularly painful because songs are the distinguishing feature of Indian films, and were of a very high quality—both for their lyrics and composition—in the early years. But even then, plagiarism was not unknown. The popular composer duo of the 1960s and 1970s, Shankar Jaikishen, did not bat an eyelid when taking Elvis Presley’s ‘Who makes my heart beat like thunder’ to fit the song ‘Kaun hai jo sapnon mein aaya’. Even earlier, a respected music composer like Salil Choudhary did not think it was in any way wrong to set the song ‘Itna na mujhse tu pyaar baddha’ to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. This fine art of plagiarism reached its apogee under the baton of composers Anu Malik and Bappi Lahiri; the former makes the fine point that unless a tune is a complete lift it cannot be called plagiarism. With such original ethics the industry is doing just fine. The theme music of the 2008 blockbuster Race is a direct copy of two South Korean tracks; Shantanu Moitra’s popular ‘Pal pal’ song from the 2007 hit Lage Raho Munnabhai is a straight theft of Cliff Richard’s ‘Theme for a Dream’; Bappi Lahiri’s ‘famous’ tune for the song ‘Hari Om Hari’ is entirely a copy of ‘One Way Ticket’; ‘Jahaan teri yeh nazar hai’, the hit song of the Amitabh Bachchan film Kaalia, is clearly ‘inspired’ by the Persian song ‘Heleh Maali’ by Zia Atabay. Even R.D. Burman’s hugely popular number ‘Mehbooba Mehbooba’ from Sholay is an almost complete copy of ‘Say You Love Me’ by the Greek singer Demi Roussos.

  Why does the Indian film industry need to copy so much? Of course, there are people of great artistic calibre within it who would wince at this blatant infringement of copyright. However, even they sometimes get co-opted into the great mimicry game. True, the industry has to keep commercial considerations in mind, but so does film-making anywhere in the world. Do our mimics believe that the audiences of India will never know? Do they genuinely believe that a cut-and-paste job is a good enough substitute for creativity? And are they happy at this devaluation, so long as the copied film turns out to be a money maker? Why have the standards of one of the oldest—and certainly the most prolific—film industry in the world fallen to this extent? Are Indian storywriters incapable of developing an original plot of their own? Why do producers and directors and musicians knowingly devalue their creative credentials and acquiesce in this shoddy, unethical short cut? These are questions that need to be asked, even as we take legitimate pride in the expansion of our cinema and its growing appeal world-wide.