Art at the Heart of India

Recently I came across a viral video on Instagram. The video was recorded by a well-known dance teacher. She is seen recording her student, a girl in her early 20s, dressed in a bright purple saree, at the gateway of a South Indian temple. The girl is initially seen getting into the pose of a Devi. Within a few seconds, we see a slightly elderly woman passing by, who pauses for a second and then approaches the student. Quickly, the elderly woman adjusts the saree of the student, gathers the pleats together, positions the helm of the saree such that the foot tip of the goddess is revealed. Then, as the student settles in the seated posture, the lady goes on to adjust the arms of the devi, lending so much more grace and poise to the student’s attempts.The remarkable thing about this hardly thirty second video is not the final pose that the student settles into, it is the seemingly ordinary woman who was capable of making these adjustments. The lady, as described in the video, seems to be a commoner. But she revealed such intuitive knowledge of the posture… Perhaps, by her exposure to the goddess statue at the Chidambaram temple every day..Though the subject and performance of classical arts such as Bharatanatyam or Carnatic music seem to be restricted to an elite section of the society, and concert halls filled with a similar class of practitioners and audience—the truth couldn’t be further away. Juxtaposed to this viral video is an ongoing controversy regarding the premier Carnatic music institution, Music Academy in Chennai, granting a prestigious award to an allegedly wayward musician. The said awardee comes from an illustrious family which has been patron to the Academy, also having political and cultural clout in the previous generations. But the controversy has not been that the musician is from a privileged, connected family. It is that his art has long been aligned to the ideals of social leaders like EV Ramaswamy who decried Hinduism and its gods. So, a whole host of senior musicians and artists decried the award and withdrew from the music event scheduled in December this year. Why would I connect these two supposedly unrelated incidents? It is to draw back focus to what art actually means in India..The fact that the elderly lady could authoritatively adjust a classical dancer’s pose, simply stems from the fact that the former has been long seeing the sculptures of the temples. She worships and prays and falls at the altar of the goddess - the Goddess herself who is both the pinnacle and bestower of creative forces. Temples to this day have sculptures of all kinds which intertwine the human elements of society and the divinity of the Universe. Further, it is in the halls of the temples that classical dance and music flourished in the earlier days. Before they moved to the courts of kings and the concert halls of modern India, all art forms belonged to the temple courtyards.Art was always seen as a medium to seek. To find god in movement, rhythm and stone. The average Indian, whether trained in any art form or not, has an eye for art. The average Hindu household is already accustomed to chanting, temple visits and other customary traditions of celebration, which include some form of music and dance. Art belongs to the commoners. Art is everyone’s right of expression and seeking. To dissociate art from religion, or its genesis and practice from religion, is suicidal. Both for the art form and the artists. While ‘reformative’ movements and artists have tried to ‘secularise’ the art forms and take it to the masses, it already belongs there. It is the masses who carved the temples, it is the masses who flocked the sabhas and it is the masses who sing and dance everyday (albeit not for an artist fee). While the custodians and gatekeepers of classical music and dance may set caste and class barriers, no one can deny the average Indian from seeing and seeking god through song and dance.It is this spirit which will truly bring a renaissance of art in India. Just as how it was the Bhakti movement in the past which gave us thousands of music and dance systems, which we now immerse ourselves in. God is in the heart of every individual; hence, art too is in the heart of our culture.