Contemporary South Asia

ISSN: 0958-4935 (Print) 1469-364X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccsa20

Illicit worlds of Indian dance: cultures of exclusion

Debanjali Biswas

To cite this article: Debanjali Biswas (2014) Illicit worlds of Indian dance: cultures of exclusion,
Contemporary South Asia, 22:4, 433-434, DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2014.965488

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2014.965488

Published online: 16 Dec 2014.

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Download by: [King's College London] Date: 11 May 2017, At: 04:41
 Book reviews 433

Illicit worlds of Indian dance: cultures of exclusion, by Anna Morcom, London, Hurst,
2013, xii + 286 pp., ISBN 978-1-84904-6

In Illicit worlds of Indian dance, Anna Morcom begins her book by outlining the dynamics
through which the dances and the performers were excluded. In the colonial period, an
arena of illicit performing arts was created and an overarching axis of exclusion was
brought in by default as the livelihoods of female hereditary performers were assailed
and reformed (31). She refers to the line of transactional sex work as one such domain
of exclusion, with or without the involvement of dance (31). She investigates the
changed patterns of vernacular performance traditions, labour and identity across selected
communities and the stigma which drove them to lead excluded lives (Chapter 2). The
author familiarises her readers with transgendered erotic performers (Chapters 3 and 6),
Bollywood dancers (Chapter 4) and dancers in Mumbai bars (Chapter 5) and suggests a
connection with the female hereditary performing communities in post-independent
India. Although Morcom rightly grounds herself in an ethnomusicological approach,
some more attention towards dance historiography of India would have rendered the
book more insightful, especially for uninitiated readers.
Morcom argues that the illicit realm of performing arts is a product of inappropriate
and fixed classifications made in colonial modern India that have been reiterated in the
post-colonial period, with rigid boundaries constricting the visibility and identity of
many performance forms. She examines exclusionary forces, or the practical, moral
and legal restrictions, that continue to weigh upon performers in the guise of ‘more sex
work, less performing, an increasingly marginalised social status and increasing social
stigma’ (41). The work in turn traces the axis of inclusion/exclusion and the legitimate
and illicit topography of performing arts in contemporary India. Moving beyond the
known histories of devadasi (temple-dancer) and tawaif (courtesan) traditions, the
author briefly inspects the occupation, genealogy, identity and social mobility of heredi-
tary performing communities, such as Nat, Bedia, Kanjar, Kolhati, Deredar, and the
context of stigmatisation of such performers (Chapter 2). An in-depth account of
female impersonators and transgendered performers is also an attempt to analytically
counter patriarchy and its hierarchical gender binaries. Definitions from masculinity
studies, history and texts from Persio-Urdu and Tamil traditions vividly accomplish the
presence of erotic male performers in India, which resonates in present day kothi (femin-
ised male) performing culture. Local and national cultural identities have long been
inscribed on the female dancing body while simultaneously blurring the presence and par-
ticipation of transgendered performers. Patronage, social organisation and public recog-
nition in kothi performances have become as important as the politicised identity of this
sexual minority. In the light of two recent rulings which re-criminalised same-sex
relationships (under Section 377 of Indian Penal Code) and recognised transsexuals/trans-
gendered people as ‘third-gender’, respectively, this account is invaluable as it imbricates
the past and present of these marginalised communities. Further research on the training
processes and migration practices of these performers will deepen our understanding of
the trajectories of exclusion.
The chapter on Mumbai dance bars is as relevant. Dancing in bars has long been sus-
pected of having close ties with prostitution and trafficking – a reason cited in 2005 for
banning bar girls from performing. The performers were deemed ‘not free enough to
have free will’ towards maintaining an economically stable but ambiguous line of work
(151). Campaigning for such dancing to gain legitimacy has been undertaken by 75,000
women workers wishing to reclaim employment. The ban was revoked in 2013, soon
434 Book reviews

after the publication of the book under review, which leaves this complex narrative of exclu-
sion at an unforeseen turn.
In Chapter 4, Morcom suggests that the site of Bollywood is one associated with post-
liberalisation India, the Indian diaspora, changes in media and the globalisation and com-
mercialisation characteristic of late capitalism (118), making this site a widely recognised
zone of inclusion and respectability for dancing members of the middle class. Dancing to
songs from Hindi cinema, the author claims, is an unabashed celebration of body, endorse-
ment of fame and embrace of personal merriment. While teaching Bollywood dances was
narrated to the author as a profession of substance, seriousness and selfless seva (service)
the revolution can only be mapped in metropolises, like in the model of Shiamak Davar’s
Institute of Performing Arts (121–125). The perpetual presence of Bollywood within
middle-class cultural arenas and ostracising of the female dancer/entertainer outside the
‘cultural’ arena of Bollywood only recounts the hypocrisy of embourgeiosement.
The author proposes an ever-changing relationship between the art and the artiste. The
book reconsiders processes of marginalisation and subjectivity-formation, while probing
the complexities of nationalism, skilled labour and politics of performance, making this
an asset to scholars of dance studies, gender and sexuality studies and South Asian
anthropology. This account has been amassed painstakingly over several years through
ethnographic fieldwork conducted mainly in Delhi, Lucknow, Balliya and Mumbai and
represents communities from parts of north and west India. Although she largely remains
silent on public/erotic/female and transgendered performers from the east, northeast and
south of the country, Morcom sensitively pieces together histories of those dancers who
slipped through previous ethno-historic narratives of dance in India.

Debanjali Biswas
King’s College London, UK
[email protected]
© 2014, Debanjali Biswas
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2014.965488

Pool of life: the autobiography of a Punjabi agony aunt, by Kailash Puri and Eleanor
Nesbitt, Eastbourne, Sussex Academic Press, 2013, 192 pp., ISBN 978-1-84519-602-8

Pool of Life, based on the life story of Punjabi Sikh writer and journalist Kailash Puri and
co-authored by Dr Eleanor Nesbitt, narrates in rich detail Puri’s childhood and marriage in
undivided India (in the Punjab region), followed by two experiences of living in England:
the first to accompany her husband when he was studying (during the Second World War),
and the second, settling permanently as a family with three children.
Those who study or have lived in South Asia will appreciate the first chapters, which are
devoted to the rhythm and texture of daily life in colonial Punjab. Although Puri’s child-
hood is happy and comfortable, growing up as a dutiful daughter carries with it a series
of gendered restrictions. When describing Punjabi festivals and traditions, she relates
how girls learn, via the celebration Navan Purana (‘new and old’), to honour male ances-
tors, current male members of the family, and future male descendants, rendering grand-
mothers, mothers, and daughters invisible, and implicitly, communicating their low
value. Although Puri acknowledges the exclusionary nature of this celebration, and how
daughters learned their transient and vulnerable position in their birth families this way,