dancing into oblivion

Beyond the stereotypical “vulgar song and dance,” “fun and play,” “bawdy lavani (folk song) performance,” and the “rural disorderly spectacle,” tamasha (travelling folk theatre), the significant performance art of Maharashtra, is best understood through the analytical matrix of caste and class inequities, mobility, migration, and everyday survival. The Dalit tamasha legend, Vithabai Narayangavkar sang a famous Lavani in the 1960s:

laaj dhara pavana janachi manachi
potasathi nachatey mee parva kunachi
dava dola jhakun khunavu naka ho asa tumhi hinavu naka
aathavan dete mee tarnya panachi
potasathi nachatey mee parva kunachi

(O guest, be respectful of others as well as of yourself.

I dance to feed myself, do hell with what society thinks of me

Do not wink at me, Do not make lewd gestures.

I provide you with the nostalgia of youth

I dance to feed myself, do hell with what society thinks of me)

Tamashgirs (artiste, also troupe leader) like Vithabai and her daughter Mangalatai (this series features performers from her troupe) interpreted their stigmatised lives in tamasha as a ritual of “rough music” and cruelty, and sharply ridiculed the mixed upper-and-lower-caste male audience. Moreover, both women productively used their practice of popular song and dance to express their social and economic anxieties, turmoils of tamasha labour, life and livelihood, as well as to record their resistance and resilience against private and public patriarchy.

: Mangalatai, a rare and powerful Dalit professional Tamashgir repeatedly deployed the “obscene” and the “erotic” as a survival strategy, continuously contested, and purposefully negotiated with her family, community and public politics to work for income generation. Her life, as well as that of numerous artistes, has attracted little attention from scholars and activists alike. Although Mangalatai gradually asserted her power, paradoxically, she was, at the same time, powerless – vulnerable and continually caught in viciously exploiting and empowering circles.

: Traditionally, although the troupes consisted of people of Hindu and Muslim religion and also within that of several sects, including the brahmins, the lower and upper castes crystallised certain practices of caste-communities in a feudal context and constructed tamasha as a lower-caste folk art. The tamashgirs are dependent for their survival on this performing art. They lack economic and social resources and are at the mercy of the audience and contractors/managers akin to the bar dancers in the western world. Tamasha artistes’ first lessons of education were the dance and song training they received from their parents or family. In the process, the tamasha stage itself transformed into a school on which parents like school teachers disciplined children and instilled the pedagogy and body politics of the song and dance ritual.

: Like classical artistes, tamasha artistes also spend long hours in learning and rehearsals. Mangalatai also learned to dance, sing, perform a variety of skits and engage in a confident and bold manner with the mixed-caste of male audience. Tamasgirs’ everyday sustenance depended on their negotiation with patriarchy through an excessive performance of the obscene, erotic and exotic. Although agents of the colonial and post-colonial Maharashtra state and upper and lower caste women and men sought to sanitise Maharashtrian society, the performers underscore the necessity of “obscene,” erotic excess.

: Tamasha is a highly stigmatised occupation due to the potential for sexual abuse by men clients. The travelling life of a tamasha dancer is insecure and unstable, oppressed by the intersecting matrix of caste and gender; however, the caravan was always on the move. Tamasha provided many generations of women and men artistes a business, an economic capital, as well as ancestral lineage, an identity so to speak, which is their social and cultural capital acquired and cultivated over the years.

: Not only Mangalatai and her family, but other families comprising 150-200 women and men depended on Mangalatai for their daily survival. Mangalatai also underscored that tamasha was not for minting money, but to serve the various (especially sensual) needs of the larger public. To serve the audience and to earn their living, the artistes often had to give up their own requirements.

: Traditionally, tamasha is a despised and lowly occupation, and women have to struggle constantly to generate income for their family, preserve their honour within and without the Dalit community, and enhance their social status. The informal economy of tamasha continues to be a degraded form of performance that stigmatises artistes and has at the same time provided possibilities and power, however limited, to some women.