Temples and the culture of excluding performing artistes—from Yesudas to this Muslim dancer

Bharatanatyam dancer Mansiya, who was denied performance at a Kerala temple, insists she raised her disinvitation issue because she is asking a larger question.

Bharatanatyam dancer Mansiya | Facebook

When Bharatanatyam dancer Mansiya wrote on Facebook on 27 March about being disinvited from performing at the famous Koodalmanikyam Temple in Kerala’s Irinjalakuda, because she is not a Hindu, she didn’t realise she would go viral. But Mansiya had touched upon a sensitive nerve: that of religion running through the performing arts.

While the Vishwa Hindu Parishad immediately alleged a ploy by the Communist government in Kerala to villainise the Hindu community, a pro-CPI(M) cultural group condemned the temple for denying the dancer a stage.

On Monday, just 2km away from the temple she was originally supposed to perform at, Mansiya took to a more secular stage at Irinjalakuda Town Hall. “I believe we may not have to wait for long to enter into a period when art has no religion,” she told the audience. “Let more democratic-secular stages be formed for art in the state. Let us wait for the dawn of that era when the voice of the other will be music to one’s ears.”

But what happened with Mansiya isn’t an isolated incident. And it’s not even the first time this has happened to Mansiya herself — it struck her this time because of the harsh way it was communicated to her, she told ThePrint.

Another Bharatanatyam dancer — Soumya Sukumaran, who is Christian — revealed how she too had faced discrimination from the temple administration. Three other dancers also withdrew from the same festival scheduled to take place between 15 and 25 April. After her post went viral, Mansiya was invited to perform by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at all temples controlled by the VHP in Kerala — she declined.

“I was ostracised by one community for performing an art from another community. Now the other community is saying I can’t perform this art because I’m from another community. I’m caught in the middle for no fault of mine,” Mansiya said.

She added that she’s not religious, and dance isn’t about religion for her. “Dance is love. It’s a tool of love.”

Exclusion has been part of art

There’s a longer history of exclusion within the performing arts, which experts say stems from the Brahminic appropriation of artforms like Bharatanatyam.

“This notion about art being beyond religion and caste, is an idealistic one. It does not reflect the realities of their recent histories of appropriation. These notions only keep us away from having a nuanced understanding of the continuing exclusion that’s part of the arts,” said hereditary Bharatanatyam dancer and activist Nrithya Pillai, who has also written about this in the Economic and Political Weekly.

Bharatanatyam is rooted in dance performed by hereditary practitioners (referred today by the stigmatised term ‘Devadasis’) — but it was repackaged as a respectable dance form for dominant castes and the upper classes to perform. Over the years, the original practitioners have been marginalised to make space for a rigid structure that prioritises “artistic tradition” that is “devoid of vulgarity” — how famous Bharatanatyam dancer Rukmini Devi’s described the evolution of the dance form.

Today, the dance form may have become more accessible, but the policing seems to continue — just like in Mansiya’s case. “The irony is that it’s because of the temple and the hereditary dancers who practiced art for centuries within its precincts that you have something called Bharatanatyam today,” said Carnatic vocalist and writer T.M. Krishna.

But Pillai cautioned that practising Bharatanatyam dancers should be conscious of its aesthetics as well. Mansiya’s style of performance is rooted in the aesthetics of the reinvented Bharatanatyam and is not subversive, regardless of her religious identity. The reinvented aesthetic, Pillai said, is Brahminic. Performances tend to revolve around Hindu mythology, while also upholding dominant caste rituals and imitating unequal power structures.

“When a dance form like Bharatanatyam is extensively used as a vehicle for Hindutva, any practitioner who’s against that and is supportive of minorities – Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi, queer, religious minorities – needs to make sure that their art does not have the aesthetic and content that promotes this exclusionism,” she added.

Temples as a site: religious or cultural?

It’s not just the dance form — temples too have a history of exclusion. The most famous example is of Malayali Christian K.J. Yesudas, who has given voice to hundreds of Hindu hymns.

Yesudas was famously denied entry into the Guruvayur temple in Kerala. “It is possible even for insects to enter the temple, but not me,” he had reportedly said.

Kerala’s temples are governed by Devaswom Boards, which are state-led socio-religious trusts. They oversee temple assets and organise programs and religious activities. The state has five Devaswom boards that manage roughly 3,000 temples.

In the case of Yesudas, the then-Kerala minister for Devaswom, Kadakampally Surendran, had said that every temple has their own rules — and they can’t change overnight.  Both Mansiya and Soumya Sukumaran were denied a stage at the same temple: the famous Koodalmanikyam Temple in Kerala’s Irinjalakuda, managed by the Koodalmanikyam Devaswom board.

According to Bharatanatyam dancer Prathibha Prahlad, Bharatanatyam — like other classical Indian dance forms — is socio-aesthetic and embedded in the society which it sprung from. She told ThePrint that the outside area of temples where performances take place are cultural spaces, while the inner sanctorum is religious. “My view is that a temple cannot and should not host a qawwali but can host a Bharatanatyam performance by a non-Hindu,” she said.

“[The Devaswom board] have turned this into an art vs. religion debate which is ridiculous as, in the first place, our arts have a strong religious base,” added Prahlad.

Mansiya told ThePrint that the temple did not seem to be willing to see the democratic and accessible aspects of the dance form. “I didn’t have such strong viewpoints while I was learning the dance,” she said. But that changed when she began to experience ostracism from the Muslim community in Mallapuram, where her family is from, after her mother passed away.

“What’s happening in this temple is an extension of what’s happening in the social milieu of this art form. Parochiality cannot be given any place in culture and spirituality,” said T.M. Krishna. “Irrespective of whether she belongs to faith or no faith, she has more bhakti in her art than many who enter the premises of the temple,” he added.

Mansiya insists that she didn’t post about her disinvitation on Facebook for the sake of her career. She was asking a larger question.

“I told the temple that I didn’t want the stage if they didn’t want me. I just hope they think about why they denied me the stage.”

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)