The photographs show us a graceful woman, draped elegantly in a flowing saree, her eyes wide yet calm, her body languid and restful—almost as if she were completely unaware of the camera. This is how it must be, one assumes, for a woman accustomed to having everyone’s gaze upon her, as a stage performer. For her, the proscenium was nothing but an extension of herself.
Rukmini Devi Arundale, a colossus in the world of Indian classical dance, wore her accomplishments lightly and with a sanguine grace that came through in her photographs. She was much more than just a dancer and choreographer as many think of her today. She was, in fact, the person instrumental in the revival and reinvention of the Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam (taking away from it the stigma of being perceived as a dance performed only by devadasis), a Theosophist and an animal welfare activist. She was also the first woman in India to be nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha. She could have also been the president of India, as she was almost nominated by Morarji Desai. This was an offer she turned down to focus on her work in dance and animal welfare. It wasn’t an easy journey by any standards, but are journeys that change how a nation perceives an art ever easy? There were battles to be fought and won, and she took them on indefatigably.
On 29 February 1904, a baby girl was born into a Brahmin family in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. They named her Rukmini. Her father, A. Neelakanta Sastri of Thiruvisanallur, was an engineer with the Public Works Department as well as a respected Sanskrit scholar and follower of Buddha. Her mother, Srimati Seshammal, was from a highly cultured family of Thiruvaiyar, and a music lover.1 The family moved homes frequently, because of her father’s constant transfers owing to his job. In 1901, her father was introduced to the Theosophical Society. His brother, Neelakanta Sri Ram, later went on to become the president of the society. Neelakanta Sastri himself became a follower of Dr Annie Besant, even moving to Madras (now Chennai) after he retired to build a home close to the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Adyar.
The couple introduced their children to texts like the Valmiki Ramayana, which their father read to them in Sanskrit every evening. The girls were trained in music, and according to her younger sister, Visalakshi, Rukmini was a good student of music. Their home in Adyar was called Buddha Vilas, in keeping with her father’s fascination with Buddhist philosophy. Rukmini wrote about her parents, saying, ‘I have had the fortune of having the most understanding and loving parents. No discipline was imposed on us, but traditional values and correct behaviour we learnt automatically by watching them… Father was…very forward thinking and disliked many of the narrow prejudices, the caste distinctions, animal sacrifices, etc. which were part of our religion in those days.’
Dr Annie Besant and the Theosophical Society became a part of young Rukmini’s life. Barely 14, she signed up to volunteer in the Theosophical Society, and began attending lectures conducted by eminent speakers both from within India and abroad. She also began working with the villagers in the villages near Madras to teach them hygiene and to spread awareness about stopping animal sacrifice.
Theosophical thought went on to have a profound influence on her. She explored concepts not just in philosophy, but also around art and culture, and in what later proved to be seminal in her life—music and dance. She met her future husband, George Arundale, at the Theosophical Society as well. He was much older, a close associate of Annie Besant, and later went on to become the principal of the Central Hindu School, Banaras (now Varanasi).
In 1920, she shocked the conservative society she lived in by marrying George. She was barely 16 and he was 42 at the time, an age gap that was considered scandalous even in those times. She wrote of her husband, saying that he had a great sense of humour. She also spoke of how he always had a group of admirers surrounding him. Her mother used to affectionately call him ‘Krishna’ and she was ‘Yasoda’. Owing to this closeness, her parents were not too opposed when he proposed marriage to Rukmini. Her mother was worried about the public outcry but supported them wholeheartedly. For her mother, only the support of Annie Besant mattered and they had that.
Annie Besant advised her mother to allow the couple to get married, and so on 27 April 1920, George Sydney Arundale and Rukmini Devi were married in a civil ceremony in Bombay (now Mumbai), far away from the hullabaloo their decision had created in the conservative social circles of Madras. Years later, in 1936, she spoke of marriage, saying, ‘The real spirit of marriage is an ideal. We must each live according to our own ideal.
The wedding ceremony was conducted by Alladi Mahadeva Sastri and, by doing so, Rukmini Devi became the first well-known Brahmin lady to break caste by marring a foreigner.
The fallout from this marriage was immense. The rigid Brahmin community in Madras ostracized her and her family. But the support of the Theosophists and the Indian public was strong. The couple integrated back into society in due course. They lived their lives as they always had. She continued to follow the traditions and customs she was taught and ate the food she had grown up with. He educated her in English, as well as the manners, customs, arts and philosophy of the Western world.
The couple lived for a while in Bombay and then moved to Indore, where Maharaja Holkar made George the minister of education in what was then a princely state.6 The couple eventually returned to Adyar to help Annie Besant with the work of the Theosophical Society. During this time, cultural and social icons like Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu and Leopold Stokowski visited the Theosophical Society. J. Krishnamurti, a student of George Arundale, was named World Teacher by the Theosophical Society.
George was a prominent Theosophist. He was also a respected name and a member of the Society for the Promotion of National Education. In 1926, he was made the general secretary of the Australian Section, and in 1928 he was appointed to the same position in India. The couple travelled to the United States (US) for the dedication of the new headquarters building in 1927, and back again in 1929 for the Third World Congress in Chicago as speakers.
Rukmini was appointed the president of the All-India Federation of Young Theosophists in 1923 and as the president of the World Federation of Young Theosophists in 1925. They became members of the American Theosophical Society on 5 September 1929 and were charter members of the Wheaton Olcott Lodge. They were part of the International Theosophical Centre in Naarden, the Netherlands from 1930 to 1934, where George was the head of the society. In 1934, he became the president of the Theosophical Society. Rukmini succeeded him, and remained the head till her death in 1986. Though she was based in India, she ensured she visited the centre at least once a year. George passed away in 1945. At the time, Rukmini was only 39.
She was a member of the General Council, the international governing body of the Theosophical Society, and was on the society’s executive committee. She was invited to lecture at conferences and gatherings around the world. In 1952, she was the guest of honour at the annual convention of the Theosophical Society in America, and toured across the US in that same trip. That year, she was also invited to inaugurate the new lodge in Saigon, Vietnam.
In the course of her marriage, her travel with her husband on his extensive lecture tours brought her in contact with Theosophists from around the world. She established friendships with the likes of pathbreaking educationist Maria Montessori and the poet James Cousins. A meeting that changed the course of her life was with the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. In 1924, on their trip to England, George and Rukmini had gone to Covent Garden to see a performance by the famous ballerina. Some years later, when they were travelling to Australia, they found that Pavlova was travelling on the same ship as them.7 This was the start of a great friendship and a cross cultural influence, with Rukmini Devi beginning to learn dance from Cleo Nordi, one of the solo dancers in Pavlova’s troupe. To quote her on her friendship with Pavlova:
Later on in 1929, Dr Arundale was sent on Theosophical work to Singapore, Java and Australia and to my delight I found that Anna Pavlova was travelling on the same route. She was dancing in every city we visited and I took different members of the Society with me when I went to her dance. […]The entire company was with her as also the hundreds of birds that she kept as pets.
This excerpt from Kiran Manral’s ‘Rising 2.0: 20 More Women Who Changed India’ has been published with permission from the Rupa publication.