Some Rise as Others Fall: Illegitimacy in Indian Dance

Abstract

No reason not to be frank: I love this book. Like the process of making ghee, which involves boiling butter until it “clarifies,” the richness of this book can be boiled down to a clear, even simple, argument that is nevertheless powerful enough to reframe the historical study of Indian dance from the colonial period to the present day. The argument is this: The anointing of certain performing arts, and those who would perform them, as “legitimate” conveyors of Indian culture simultaneously cast out others. A zone of exclusion was thereby created into which all-too-precipitously fell any arts and artists not invited to the classicizing, sanitizing, and entextualizing party. This highly generative heuristic model gives readers the opportunity to contemplate the possibility of a flip side to the well-documented historical processes of reform that created, and indeed continue to create, cultural products charged with symbolizing the Indian nation. In the author's own words, “The model presents the official and the illicit dimensions of India's performing arts as two sides of the same coin.”