Devadasis, Bharatnatyam and The Theosophical Society

By January 3, 1932, when Mylapore Gowri was presented [a concert] as part of the December Music Festival at a pandal behind Ripon Buildings, the crowd was more. It increased further successively on January 1, 1933, when the Kalyani Daughters performed again and on August 26 the same year when Balasaraswathi was featured.

The first of these took place on March 15, 1931, featuring Rajalakshmi and Jeevaratnam, the daughters of Tiruvalaputtur Kalyani and therefore billed as Kalyani Daughters. This performance was at Gana Mandir, Thambu Chetty Street, a portion of what is now known as Rama Rau Buildings and named after Dr. U. Rama Rau, founder president of the Music Academy. The attendance was small, largely because people feared witnessing dance.

How the Sadri dance of the Devadasis (temple prostitutes) became classical Bharatnatyam in 1935.
Devadasis were girls (age 7-36) "dedicated" to worship and service of a deity or a temple for the rest of her life.  The Devadasi were trained in music and dance, and a veneer of religion covers prostitution and the supply of concubines to wealthy men.

The dance and music of the Devadasi's were erotic and considered vulgar. This style of dance was called sathirattam and left to nautch girls with no connotations of culture.

In around 1920 the wheels of motion for were setting in place.  Rukmini Devi at the age of 16 married 42 year old George Sydney Arundale who came from England at the invitation of Annie Besant to help with the educational programmes and other activities of the Theosophical Society in India.

Rukmini Devi born  29 February 1904 was the daughter Neelakanta Sastri and of  an upper class Brahmin family in Madurai. Neelakanta Sastri had come under the influence of Theosophical Society and its leader Annie Besant. Rukmini Devi came to the notice of Annie Besant, who saw in her the possible making of a World Mother, just as in J. Krishnamurti she had seen a World Teacher.  Within the Theosophical Rukmini Devi studied Greek dancing , acted in plays including Malini, a play by Rabindranath Tagore.

With George Arundale, Rukmini Devi travelled the world and was exposed to the finest of the arts - theatre, music, painting, sculpture, opera and ballet. She learnt classical western ballet  from the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova.  Anna Pavolova persuaded Rukmini Devi to study the dance form practiced by women of the devadasi class, who were considered prostitutes, and a stigma attached to their art.

In 1933 after watching a performance by two Devadasi dancers, Rukmini Devi started learning privately the dance from Mylapore Gowri Amma, a well-known devadasi. This created storm and protest from conservative society specially at the time an anti-nautch movement was on against the revival of Sadir, the dances of the devadasis.

The rest is History as they say.  Rukmini Devi renamed Sadir the dance of the devadasis to Bharatnatyam, popularized the dance form and made it acceptable to  all.  The first presentation of the Bharatnatyam was in 1935 during the Diamond Jubilee Convention of The Theosophical Society
Rukmini Devi went on to establish the Kalākshetra dance academy.


Update from Vijay
Coming to think of it, that might be a narrowl perspective. The drive to move the dance from the devadasis to modern world (not supported by temples, and no “prostitute” connotations) was driven by social reformers from 1900s to 1930s.

“That is when (~1931) E. Krishna Iyer, the secretary of the Music Academy, took steps to showcase what South Indian classical dance really stood for.

By the time Varalakshmi and her sister Saranayaki danced on December 28, 1933, once again behind the Ripon Buildings, the crowd was huge. Billed as the granddaughters of Kumbakonam Gowri (Gowri Ammal), they were part of a larger troupe of cousins, the others being Bhanumati, Sulochana and Pattu. It was universally agreed that Varalakshmi was the best of the lot. She later paired with Bhanumati and was repeatedly featured at the Academy on December 31, 1934 and in 1936 as evinced from the surviving brochure. Somewhere during this journey to present the art to the public, the dance rechristened itself as Bharata Natyam. This was probably in 1932 when we first see this term being used to refer to what was earlier termed variously as Nautch/Sadir/Dasi Attam.

Much later, the Music Academy would take credit for coining Bharata Natyam as would others but a resolution to name dance this way does not survive in the Academy archives. Suffice it to say that by the time Varalakshmi and Bhanumati danced on December 27, 1936, it was firmly termed a Programme of Bharata Natyam.

Where did this happen? Those were years when the Congress Party organised a Khadi and Swadeshi Exhibition and put up a music festival to attract crowds. In 1936, the Music Academy was the official partner for entertainment and held its programmes on General Patters Road, of all places, on the site where the Congress Party headquarters Satyamurti Bhawan now stands.

Note that almost all of the above were daughters of Devadasis. {In India, having daughters named as daughters of mothers (no father mentioned, is often an indication of devadasi birth. Madurai Shanmugavadivu Subbalakshmi is the most famous example} Thus, there was a push to move the children of Devadasis away from temples and prostitution, and into dance for nearly 15 years. All of which culminated in “Madras abolition of Devadasi act” 1947.



Thanks to Vijay and Bharotshontan's comments which made this write up possible.
http://www.brownpundits.com/2018/09/20/coloniser-alert-cultural-appropriation-attack/


https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/21/devadasi-india-sex-work-religion
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/rukmini-devi-arundale-5490.phphttp://www.narthaki.com/info/profiles/profil44.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devadasi
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/dance/The-birth-of-Bharatanatyam/article16834047.ece


Sex, Death and the Gods is a film about the devadasi system shown on BBC4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I78sW1iKs0k

Sivalingam Sivanathan named a White House Champion of Change

Sivalingam Sivanathan,  Professor of Physics and Director, Microphysics Laboratory at UIC  has been named a White House Champion of Change .  He is a graduate of the University of Peradeniya (1980) and also  Faculty Adviser  of the Sri Lankan Graduate Student Association at University of Illinois at Chicago (SLGSA).

University of Illinois Press Release

Sivalingam Sivananthan, Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been named a White House Champion of Change. He was presented with the honor at a ceremony this morning at the White House.

Sivananthan’s work with a semiconductor material, mercury cadmium telluride or MCT, is at the heart of night vision technology and made the raid that took down Osama Bin Laden on a moonless night possible. Developing “technology that protects our protectors” has given him the opportunity to give back to his adopted country, said Sivananthan.

 Sivananthan is the founder of the high-tech, Bell-Labs-styled incubator, Sivananthan Laboratories, Inc. in Bolingbrook, Ill. The Laboratories’ focus is on infared technology, radiation detection, materials research and biosensors.

Because, at its most fundamental, MCT technology is about transforming light into electricity, Sivananthan is also leading an effort to develop next-generation solar power. To that end, he helped found InSPIRE (the non-profit Institute for Solar Photovoltaic Innovation, Research, and Edu-training), whose mission is training Illinois’s workforce and exciting Illinois undergraduate and high school students to create a renewable energy and solar eco-system in Illinois.

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Agni Putri: Tessy Thomas Project Director of the Agni-V missile

Tessy Thomas is the first woman scientist to head a missile project in India. An expert of solid system propellants which is used in Agni missile, Dr. Tessy Thomas earlier has worked as Assistant Project Director in the successful launch of India's longest range nuclear capable Agni III Inter Ballistic missile

The tranquil backwaters of Alappuzha, advertised as the perfect setting to lazily watch houseboats that glide past, is the home town of DRDO project director Tessy Thomas, who guided a team of scientists to successfully test Agni-V, the fiercest weapon in India's armour.

Other Indian Nuclear Program Notables

•  Homi Bhabha, a Parsi
• Vikram Sarabhai, a Jain
• Abdul Kalam, a Muslim (Also 11th President)
• Tessy Thomas, a Kerala Christian

Excerpt from IndiaTimes

A rare woman in a male bastion, the 48-year-old was hooked on to science and mathematics from school days, especially wonder-struck at the rocket launches from Thumba on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram.

"The world of missiles opened up for me after I happened to be picked as one of 10 youngsters from around the country for a DRDO programme in 1985," Thomas told ET in a telephone interview, while awaiting a flight from Bhubaneswar after being the toast of the nation earlier in the day.

Right after she landed in DRDO, everything just happened, she says. And that includes a stint as faculty for guided missiles for DRDO in Pune, and having former President APJ Abdul Kalam as her director.

Her own career went ballistic, when she headed the Agni-IV team as project director for vehicles and mission, and was project director (mission) for the more sophisticated Agni V launch.

What does she have to say about a country which has women defence mission directors and, at the same time, rampant female infanticide? "Science shows no gender discrimination, and in that sense offers hope to a society where discrimination is practised.

Here in DRDO, we have a good example of a number of women scientists, who try and balance work and family," she says. Her husband Saroj Kumar Patel is a naval officer based in Mumbai, and son Tejas - named after India's light combat jet - is completing his engineering in Vellore.

Thomas would ideally like to unwind with a game of badminton and some cooking, but "that hasn't happened over the past two years", thanks to the latest editions of the Agni missile programme.

Now that Agni-V has been successfully test launched, would she care more for the trajectory of the shuttle cock? "Well, I now have my sights on the multiple independent re-entry vehicle," says the multi-tasking scientist.

Back home in Alappuzha, where her mother stays, the land phone rings incessantly after Tessy Thomas' contribution to India's pride at Wheeler Island. Yet, she may not get time to relax and have a backwater cruise one of these days.

Bob Marleys father

Norval Sinclair Marley was Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley's father. Norval Marley was born in Jamaica to Albert Thomas Marley, an English man from Sussex, and Ellen Broomfield a coloured Jamaican. The Marleys considered themselves as descendants of Syrian Jews who had emigrated to England and from there to Jamaica.

Norval Marley in his later life was an overseer in Jamaican plantations. One of his lovers was 18-year-old gospel singer Cedella Booker. Their son, Robert Nesta Marley, was born in 1945 and spent his formative years living in considerable poverty in the slums of Jamaica. Norval Marley did not stay long after Bob Marley but gave some financial support. When Bob Marley was 28 and his mother 28 Norval Marley died. Mother and son then moved to Kingston and settled in a corrugated-iron shack in a street with open sewers in the Trenchtown area, one of the roughest parts of the capital.

Excerpts from the Daily Mail Article

In the Kingston slums, Marley was confronted in the starkest terms with the reality of his mixed parentage.
He was taunted mercilessly by his peers for standing out from the crowd. Indeed, he longed so much to fit in that, as his 65-year-old widow Rita has recently revealed, he used to black his face with boot polish. She says he even married her when he was 21 and she 19 —because, unlike him, she was completely black.
But family and friends, speaking out for the first time in the new film, reveal that because Bob was so single-minded about his career those close to him were often neglected.
His daughter Cedella, named after Bob’s mother, seems during conversations in the film to be quite bewildered at having to share her father with so many fans across the globe — not to mention his ten other children, many of them  illegitimate and the result of the many affairs he conducted during his marriage.
Marley had at least seven mistresses, including 1976 Jamaican Miss World Cindy Breakspeare.
The women themselves say he was so shy that they made all the  running. Several even fell pregnant by him at the same time: this year, three of his sons by different women will all turn 40.
His daughter Cedella is 44, a successful businesswoman with three children who lives in Miami.

Zola Rajapakse: World’s Toughest Trucker on Discovery

Zola Rajapakse has been selected to be one of the competitors in the World’s Toughest Trucker competition, which will be shown on the Discovery Channel.
Zola, is an Old Royalist, one of the brothers in Eric Rajapakse Opticians family. Zola currently lives and runs a Trucking company in Arizona . More bio details available here.

https://www.mohavedailynews.com/news/local/is-bullhead-city-man-world-s-toughest-trucker/article_729083e1-648a-5ed5-b49f-4eed6060537a.html

Airplay times and clips from the series

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/worlds-toughest-trucker/


At 131st Royal Thomian; March 2010

Galle Fort Cliff Diver

A Galle Fort Cliff Diver.