Complexities of the Folk/Classical Binary: Dance and Hierarchies in Contemporary India

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I take immense pleasure in writing this foreword of the lecture titled "Complexities of Folk / Classical Binary: Dance and hierarchies in contemporary India' delivered by Dr. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who herself is an accomplished dancer. We are happy to publish this written version of the 2nd 'Dr. Pashupati Prasad Mahato Memorial Lecture' delivered online on 21 December, 2020. Dr. Pashupati Prasad Mahato was a champion for the cause of downtrodden and backward classes of people. He was engaged in a lifelong battle to bring justice to the marginal sections of the population and to establish their rights. As a professional anthropologist, he conducted theoretical studies among these people and propounded the concept of 'Nirbakization' the cultural memocide of the tribal and subaltern people. Dr. Mahato was also a singer, composer and performing artist. Thus, the title of the lecture could not have been more befitting than this which dealt with theoretical discourse on performative tradition. I would like to consider it a unique coincidence that the speaker of this lecture is a theoretician as an academic and a performer as a dancer.

There is considerable debate over the boundary where the folk ends and the classical culture begins. It seems quite obvious for a country like India where multiple traditions intermingle. Therefore, the discussion over the complexities of the binary between folk and classical traditions can be a potential subject of interrogation by the scholars. Dr. Sarkar Munsi has done this job very efficiently when she contextualises the whole discussion with reference to the dance and concomitant hierarchies. It becomes more significant because the present lecture which is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Pashupati Prasad Mahato, is on the Chhau dance of Purulia, on which Dr. Mahato has written profusely.

The present publication is the outcome of 2nd 'Dr. Pashupati Prasad Mahato Memorial Lecture' which was delivered online by Dr. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi on 21 December, 2020. The lecture was organised by Dr. Pashupati Prasad Mahato Memorial Committee, Kolkata in collaboration with Department of Sanskrit, Jadavpur University and Centre for Adivasi Studies and Museum, Vidyasagar University. The memorial lecture was held along with a national webinar on 'Folk Performance, State and Epidemic'. The present lecture was themed on performance and it dealt with the issues of complexities related to the binary between folk and classical. Although Dr. Sarkar Munsi has started her discussion by reviewing the dance studies in the context of pandemic times, yet she has taken her discussion to a much wider field in which she discusses facets of engagement between dance and other social and cultural phenomena. She finds dance as community knowledge embodied in articulation as well as identification. The next section which she brings in deals with the allotment of spaces for classical and folk dances. The flow of tradition and the nature of training take different forms in continuing the folk and classical genres of dances. There exists a kind a participation-presentation axiom which characterises the folk dances and its deep-seated entanglements within a particular community. However, it is interesting to see the delinking of classical dance tradition from any particular community. The idea of 'folk' gets complicated when it is transported to the proscenium for performing in the national or international stage. Now its adjusted configuration defies the simplistic delineation of the dance which used to be performed in community festival or in socio-religious ceremonies of the community. She has cited the example of 'Chhau' dance of Purulia, West Bengal in this regard. The situations become still more complex when the external agencies like Sangeet Natak Academy (SNA) or UNESCO come forward to play a decisive role in fixing the parameters for evaluating a dance tradition be it folk or tribal. Their position of power exerts an influence which further marginalises the tribal or folk dancers. Dr. Sarkar, Munsi takes us to an intellectual journey that unravels several intricate layers of 'life of dance' in India. This discussion also lends voices to the marginalised and speaks for their cultural rights which serves to be one of the principal domains of activity of the scholar activist and performer in the memory of whom the present lecture is dedicated.