The role of a teacher, mentor or
Guru is a crucial one in any field. The teacher-student relationship is a
revered one the world over. Upon examining the meanings of and transformations
in dance pedagogy, the teacher-student relationship in India is invariably complex
and fascinating.
In traditional India, the Gurukul system laid out norms for the
relationship between the teacher and student. Students spent an extensive
amount of time with the guru. The gurus were traditionally the male
nattuvanars, and dance students dedicated more or less their entire time to
their art. They even learnt other art forms such as music to enhance their
understanding and practice of dance. Still, the transmission of privileged
knowledge required the student’s demonstration of worthiness. All in all, the
guru-shishya relationship remained peaceful as long as the guru had what Ananya
Chatterjea calls the ‘student’s unconditional surrender’. In Kumudini Lakhya’s
words, there was no room for questioning in the gurukul system.
Amongst the changes that began in
modern India with regard to the guru-shishya relationship, Rukmini Devi’s
example is noteworthy. After just a brief period of training with her guru,
Rukmini Devi performed her debut or Arangetram
in 1935, against her guru’s wishes. Moreover, the institutionalization of dance
education since the 1930s with the establishment of institutes like Kalakshetra
and Kathak Kendra, took away the role of the traditional gurus and therefore a
part of the gurukul system as well.
Further, with this institutionalization, the one-to-one method of dance
training more or less disintegrated. According to Mrinalini Sarabhai, by the
time independence dawned on India, the ‘teacher’ had replaced the ‘guru’.
T.G. Vaidyanathan argues that
when the harmony and symmetry of this guru-shishya relationship is broken – as
it often does in modern India – there is a crisis of identity and authority. I
believe this is so because the transition from tradition to modernity is
sketchy and incomplete.
On one hand, dancers in the
classical world today are still expected to surrender to their gurus and be
‘photocopies of their gurus’, as Kumudini Lakhya puts it. On the other hand,
the questioning atmosphere under which modern students grow and live makes this
deference to the guru seem strange, notes Leela Venkataraman. While the modern
guru is still seen as the ultimate imparter of knowledge, knowledge is often
held back from the student. One of the reasons for this, according to Leela
Samson, is that the current market forces can result in a guru and shishya
competing for the same space and funds. According to Anjana Rajan, a student
can even lose out on performance opportunities if they fall out of favour with
the guru. Finally, with dance institutions springing up all over the country,
students of dance are exposed to a sort of democratization of dance – they elect
to train in several dance vocabularies and with several teachers at a time. Yet,
dance institutions do not allow their students to train outside of their
academies, arguably restricting their learning potential; and despite being
taught by several teachers, the inevitable question of ‘Who is your Guru?’
continues to shape a dancer’s identity, says Stacey Prickett.
In India, the concept of
‘guru-shishya’ has survived despite all the modernizing mechanisms adapted in
dance pedagogy in India. But it has not survived entirely unscathed. The modern
guru-shishya relationship is, at the moment, an uncomfortable blend of the
traditional gurukul system, and the
modern (and sometimes western) teacher-student relationship. It is altered by
institutionalization, democratization and current market forces even as it
simultaneously tries to maintain the stark hierarchy and unquestioning
reverence that existed in the traditional gurukul
system. The modern guru-shishya phenomenon is yet to find its balance in the
constant renegotiation between tradition and modernity that Indian dance is
currently undergoing.
