The term ‘sringara’ in dance has
had many meanings, definitions and connotations over the years. It has
sometimes meant ‘love’, and at other times, it has meant ‘sensuality’, ‘sexuality’
and even ‘erotica’. It is a term in dance that has been historically redefined
and often pitted against ‘bhakti’ or devotion. I argue that ‘sringara’ is not
one or the other of the above terms, but all
of them.
Before the onset of colonialism,
which brought with it, an extremely Victorian idea of femininity and female
sexuality – ‘sringara’ could freely define itself as all of the above. Whether it
was the temples of Khajuraho, the Kamasutra or the devadasis that performed dance in temples – they all embodied this
expansive fluid definition of ‘sringara’. According
to scholar Susan L. Schwartz, before colonialism, India was home to ‘some of
the most erotic art the world had ever seen’. But this erotic art was equally
about devotion, sensuality and love. After all, the Kamasutra is above all, a
book about making love. Similarly,
the Khajuraho temples, erotic sculptures aside, are built for in devotion to
deities such as Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, Vahana, Surya and so on. Finally, the devadasis too, it appears, did not make
a distinction between love, sensuality, sexuality and devotion.
Due to several factors, this
definition of sringara slowly became
narrower, more codified and more rigid. It is incorrect to blame the entire
change of mindset on the colonizers, but it is nevertheless important to
recognize the monumental role they played in creating these divisions between
love, sex and devotion.
The ‘sexual implications of the
dancing body’ did not exist in India until western influence and sensibility
pervaded the Indian mind, says Schwartz. The Victorian ideas of sexuality and
womanhood changed the perceptions of sensuality and erotica and thus created
the divisions within Indian dance between sexuality, love and devotion.
According to Susan Reed, another dance scholar, local dances were viewed by the
colonizers as ‘excessively erotic’ – the ‘love’ aspect of local dances, as well
their inherently devotional nature were ignored. The seeds were sown for the
redefining of the term ‘sringara’, which until now encompassed love, devotion
and sexuality quite comfortably.
Post-colonial nationalists in
India were provoked into responding to this portrayal of the native as sexually
unrestrained and barbaric. But instead of fighting this view, they changed their
own perceptions of Indian dance by appropriating the colonist conception.
Therefore, they spoke about the need to ‘reform’ and ‘rescue’ Indian dance. The
Devadasis, who became tainted with
the labels ‘sexual’ and ‘erotic’, were slowly extradited from their own
traditions, and a kind of ‘bhakti’ that distinguished itself from the
Devadasi’s ‘sringara’ came into focus.
Some revivalists found the sringara of the devadasis to be very low
sringara, unworthy of being performed
by a respectable woman. They saw their goal as replacing sringara with bhakti.
Those that were descendents of the traditional practitioners, however, felt
that sringara was the supreme emotion.
According to Balasaraswati, “no other emotion is capable of better reflecting
the mystical union of the human with the divine”. For her, sringara was union, sensuality, love and devotion – all at once. Indeed, it
was a union of sensuality, love and devotion.
To conclude, it appears that
until quite recently, sringara encompassed
love, sexuality and devotion. Sringara
encapsulated bhakti, which was not
separate from it. And while some of the reasons for making this distinction
were possibly a way to let the dance form thrive in a world where it was
condemned to possible extinction, it is nevertheless important to recognize
that there was a time when sringara
meant love, erotica and devotion
simultaneously.
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