Telugu Culture

Popular Performance and Social Change in Indian Society

Report on a research project- Simon Charsley

Simon Charsley has taught at the University of Glasgow in Scotland since 1968. He has carried out research in Uganda and in Scotland as well as in India. He began his research in India with studies of sericulture, the raw silk industry of Mysore (Karnataka) and more widely. These led into research on Scheduled Caste entrepreneurship. Subsequently he shifted his main interests to Andhra Pradesh for a study, starting in 2001, of popular performing artists and their significance for their society. His books include Culture & Sericulture (London: Academic Press 1982), Rites of Marrying: the Wedding Industry in Scotland (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1991), and, with G.K. Karanth, Challenging Untouchability: Dalit Initiative and Experience from Karnataka (New Delhi: Sage, New Delhi 1998).

Over the short period of 15 months in 2001-02 the immense wealth of performing traditions displayed in Andhra Pradesh was reviewed. The project focused on the performers and the contributions they make through their arts to their society. Performing traditions here are deep rooted but neither unchanging nor isolated. Rich legacies of performance descend from the courts of two major Hindu kingdoms, the Kakatiyas in the north of the region in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and Vijayanagara in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as from the periods of Muslim and British rule in the centuries since. From the ports of the east coast, streams of culture, religion and learning flowed out to South East Asia. In the contemporary world performing traditions meet with both changed conditions and new influences from elsewhere in India and beyond. This review of them was funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, UK (Project no. R000239063), and supported by the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad and by the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

Traditions encountered ranged from some of the most ancient recorded to some so recent as to have escaped previous notice by scholars. Amongst the ancient are shadow puppetry, bardic storytelling and group dancing. Individual temple and court dancing reappear in forms of Indian classical dance. Yakshaganam and pagati veshalu, costumed performance genres combining acting, dialogue, singing and dancing, display clear links with traditions going back to ancient Sanskrit theatre. Padyanatakam and Surabhi build on the Parsi theatre of the nineteenth century. All draw audiences and performers largely from the ordinary people of villages and towns. Only classical dance appeals mainly to the urban middle classes. All share the great epic traditions of Mahabharata and Ramayana as the main source of their stories, with more local historical epics and puranas also drawn upon. Some performers and genres are already patronised by government and temple committees organising national, state and local festivals. Tourism is only now beginning to be extensively developed in the state, so it is to local rather than tourist interests that these performing arts have to date played. Over forty different kinds were directly encountered even in the limited experience of the project; many more are known.

Pagati veshalu: village doorstep performance, E. Godavari District, (AP), 2002

At the other end of the spectrum to these ancient forms are social drama, record dance and crime drama. Social drama was popularised in the early twentieth century as an activity of clubs for western-educated young men. It followed the naturalistic Western model of the straight play in excluding the music, song and dance of earlier forms, and it addressed progressive social issues, chiefly those to do with family, marriage and the position of women in the society. It continues, often focused on regional competitions for productions of one-act plays. Quite separately and more common in village society, displays and competitions of ‘record dance’ were built on the example of films and the heroes, music and dancing for them. These often offended respectability and have tended to be suppressed. They have been largely replaced in the popular amateur performing of the most progressive areas by 'crime drama', combining recorded film music and live dance with social drama. In areas where Communist parties are strong, a politically-linked enthusiasm for performing arts is found. This has brought into the picture theatrical training for village youth and experimental productions on global themes such as environmental threats and the impact of IT and globalisation on people’s lives. The performing scene is in Andhra Pradesh is truly rich and diverse. 

Jamba puranam: Jambava, the caste ancestor, in village performance by Chindu Madigas of the caste myth, Nalgonda District, AP, 2003

Gender and caste are major factors shaping genres and participation in their performance. Kuchipudi, the main classical dance in this state, provides a key example. It was transformed in the twentieth century from a Brahman all-male art of the older multi-media style to a specialised dance form admitting women and people of other caste origins for the first time as it moved out to the cities of India. Women came to the fore, playing male roles at least as commonly as males played female. This development was studied in a variety of contexts and a dance essay exemplifying the interplay between changing performers and changing artistic forms was created by Dr Aruna Bhikshu, a director and choreographer who was an adviser to the project. See also Parikatha for further details. 

Kuchipudi classical dance: quotation from ‘Bhakta Prahlada’ yakshaganam, from ‘Parikatha’, a ballet by Dr Aruna Bhikshu for the ESRC project, Telugu University Auditorium, Hyderabad, 2002

Female performance outside domestic contexts has been morally problematic in this society, at least since the early twentieth century. For most genres performance is either limited entirely to men, in which case the playing of female roles by males is a highly appreciated skill, or a few professional actress/dancers are brought in to perform with the men and are stigmatised by many for doing so. Surabhi touring theatre is one striking exception. Dating from the late 19th century and with a lavish use of Western stage crafts of the period to perform Indian traditional narratives, here entire families tour and perform together, virtually from birth to death. Women performers have been protected from the stigmatising tendency of the outside world by separation. Recently, however, girls of Surabhi families have begun to be exposed to problems as they have progressed through school and college and had to deal with other students' knowledge of their stage interaction with males. Apart from classical dance and Surabhi, women have been active in providing backing for leading male performers in some bardic forms, in recent times training for and performing harikatha, a religious genre, as well as in the Communist-promoted and initially propagandist burrakatha. The cultural wings of Communist parties have been the main force offering encouragement for women to perform. There are also traditional genres specifically for women. These are to be found mainly in domestic, marriage, work group and occasional ritual contexts.

Surabhi: ‘Balanagamma’ in Hyderabad (AP), 2001

Caste and performance are mutually relevant in two main ways. Numerous small castes have particular kinds of performance as their livelihood specialism. Some of them provide performances exclusively for other larger castes, often in the form of caste myths, which explicitly formulate the importance, and distinctiveness of that caste for its own members. This is a feature most evident in Telangana, the region of Andhra Pradesh where Muslim rule from the 14th to the 20th centuries left much of a pre-British caste order in place. The project studied this particularly for the Dalit, formerly Untouchable, leather-working caste, heavily stigmatised in many contexts but with a galaxy of minor castes performing their status-boosting, Brahman-challenging caste myth for them.    

Significances of performance for society and the way it can throw light on both the past and changing present begin therefore to emerge. The project has provided promising grounding for further research already under way and planned.  Anyone interested in its further progress is invited to get in touch with its former director, Dr Simon Charsley at the University of Glasgow: s.r.charsley@socsci.gla.ac.uk

14 September 2004

Please send articles on any aspect of Overseas Telugu Diaspora and Telugu Culture in general to us and we will publish them here

Back