Abstract
The performing body at ‘play’ during the popular Hindu Gujarati festival Navratri is investigated here. Reading closely embodied practices as manifested in YouTube footage, images from a personal archive, the play Strictly dandia (Bhuchar and Landon-Smith 2003), as well as fieldwork data, Parmar explores how dance movement and sartorial preference during Navratri reveal expressions of cultural identity. By investigating the dress and folk dances of dandiya-raas and garba, Parmar reflects upon India’s positioning as (imaginary) homeland within the diasporic dance space, later complicating this positionality, to expose the enactment of a competing regional identity of ‘Gujaratiness’. This sense of being Gujarati in twenty-first-century Britain, and not just merely Indian, emerges as a crucial identity facet. Later Parmar demonstrates how identity is dynamically reworked on the dance floor by a younger generation of Navratri participants. She too explores the desire to protect culture, vis-à-vis that which is written by the body and performed in the public space.
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Notes
- 1.
Falcone (2013) does engages with a sense of Gujaratiness as manifested during garba dance, though her work is centred on ‘new dance form’ in ‘collegiate American garba-rass’, and membership of garba dance teams. Gilbertson (2012) makes reference to a sense of Gujaratiness in her work; though she pursues ‘narratives of Indianness rather than Gujaratiness’ (160). Bobbio (2012) also offers some study on the notion of a ‘subnational’ identity; however, this is in relation to politicised Gujarati identity within India itself, framed by economic development and Hindu extremism.
- 2.
14–16 October 2010, 29 September 2011 and 2 October 2011.
- 3.
Set in Amritsar, India, the garba scene is tangential to this study.
- 4.
Sangat, http://www.sangat.org.uk/home.html [accessed 5 June 2018].
- 5.
The original archive is held at the Sangat Advice Centre, Sancroft Road, Harrow, HA3 7NS.
- 6.
Watford Hindu Group, http://www.watfordhindugroup.org.uk [accessed 4 June 2018].
- 7.
Tim Ingold (2014) emphatically contends that the term is overused; however, Alpa Shah asserts the ‘potentially revolutionary praxis’ of participant observation (2017, 47), arguing that ‘participant observation is not merely a method of anthropology but is a form of production of knowledge through being an action. It is thus praxis, the process by which theory is dialectically produced and realised in action’ (48). Though my methods depart from Shah’s observations in places, I draw upon a mixed methodology, which includes participant observation. I outline some of the difficulties of the ethnographic practice, as well as a comment on the insider-outsider positionality, in the course of this chapter.
- 8.
I conducted two University of Leeds Ethical Reviews and attended relevant training sessions on participant observation methodology and ethics.
- 9.
For example, Hyder’s Brimful of Asia: Negotiating ethnicity on the UK music scene (2004) focuses solely on the South Asian music industry in Britain, rather than lyrics or dance. Here, conversely, I offer analysis of dance, as a participant in this form of aesthetic practice, over music-centric analysis.
- 10.
In his second edition, Turner acknowledges that more research on the body now exists, but highlights the emphasis on discourses of gender, desire and labour that generate a lacuna in a discussion on movement itself.
- 11.
However, in the course of this chapter the assumption about the religiosity of Navratri and the idea that culture and tradition remain static both become unsettled.
- 12.
These are also Hindi words, which are Sanskrit derived and hence explicable across North Indian languages.
- 13.
David (2005, 133) discusses the ‘Gujaratiness’ of Navratri. Also see Vatsyayan (1976, 202).
- 14.
In the past, in India, this centrepiece was often a clay vase or pitcher that is said to have symbolised the womb. Interestingly, this symbolism has been lost, a testimony to the clash of the sacred and profane I discuss in the conclusion of this chapter. See Vatsyayan (1976, 193) for a description of garba in India.
- 15.
Murtis are sacred representations of deities. See Fig. 3.1 for examples of Navratri Murtis. I explain the significance of the verb ‘play’ in this context within this section.
- 16.
Vatsyayan (1976, 203) describes how in the past in India dandiya dances often involved a ‘solo dance with [a male player’s] own sticks’, as well as collective dance. Generally, however, in the diaspora, the formation is of two lines facing each other and interactive dance.
- 17.
This experience might culminate in spiritual possession. Burghart (1987, 43) comments upon how ‘the Gujarati castes from East Africa [have a] predisposition to becom[ing] possessed’ particularly during Navratri. David (2005,139–40) also acknowledges the stories of Krishna and his gopis, which the dances of Navratri might symbolise.
- 18.
Huizinga (1970) is a significant text on ‘play’. The critic thinks through play as entangled with society and culture, contending that play has a place in sacred performance (33) and that ‘dancing is a particular and particularly perfect form of playing’ (189).
- 19.
David (2005, 136–7) comments on the deficiency of information on these events and suggests that this is a deliberate strategy to limit the attendance of ‘outsiders’ at these festivities. This sense of secrecy does indeed complement my later readings, entitled ‘covert culture’.
- 20.
For further debates around bhangra and discussions of its early occurrence in Britain, see also: Sharma, Hutnyk and Sharma (1996); Banerji and Baumann (1990). See Vatsyayan (1976) for a discussion of the roots of Bhangra in India.
- 21.
Vatsyayan (1976, 126) describes the bhangra style as ‘an abrupt jerky movement of the shoulders and a hop-step: this followed by many vigorous movements of the whole body and the raising of the hands to the shoulders or above the head level’.
- 22.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnWDKdMrBeE [accessed 4 June 2018].
- 23.
Fudhri or chakri involves two individuals joining both hands, facing each other and spinning round at speed.
- 24.
I again witnessed the Macarena during my fieldwork in 2011.
- 25.
Knott (2000, 95–6) outlines the sources of cultural and religious knowledge for the generation who ‘have little or no link to India’: festivals, stories, TV, videos, devotional music, periodicals and so on.
- 26.
Like the Mochi caste, Lohanas are another grouping, who are prolific in the double diaspora.
- 27.
I would argue that these fixations are linked to the ‘traditionalist’ outlook of the twice migrant, that Bhachu (1985) describes, and I have discussed in my previous chapter.
- 28.
David (2005, 20, 31) discusses the performance of kathak in Britain. She describes an event where the dance form was displayed for the mayor and the local GMTV (146), as well as the diplomas in the dance (150).
- 29.
See Chakravorty (2008), in particular chapter two that charts this renegotiation of classical dance.
- 30.
To return briefly to the discourse centred around bhangra; it is interesting how this Punjabi dance has been absorbed into the national narrative of Indianness through nationalisation, whereas in India itself the dances of garba and dandiya remain regionally specific dances to Gujarat. The questions of why this might be and how this might be remain to be answered; however, these enquiries are beyond the scope of this work. See Roy (2010) for a further discussion of bhangra and its evolution.
- 31.
Saris are long pieces of untailored material wrapped around the body in various styles. Lehengas are an embroidered blouse and long skirt combination, coupled with a scarf. Punjabi suits are a combination of trousers and a long tunic, also known as salwar-kameez.
- 32.
Kurtas are long loose tunics worn with matching trousers, commonly associated with the subcontinent. Raghuram (2003, 76) too makes this observation regarding gendered dress in the British Indian diaspora.
- 33.
Here I refer to Saussure’s (1960) widely acknowledged structuralist theory of the sign.
- 34.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rc8OEshJ_0 [accessed 5 June 2018].
- 35.
The dupatta is the scarf that accompanies most lehengas and Punjabi suits.
- 36.
Lynton (2002, 15) clearly illustrates these and other styles.
- 37.
The lehenga is akin to the ghagra and chaniya choli. All three have a similar configuration of three pieces, and though the terms had their own meaning historically (the ghagra and chaniya choli have regional associations, and are often traditional, simple and everyday wear), now the designations are often used interchangeably.
- 38.
It is worth noting that in The book of secrets it is Rita, an Indian East Africa now moved to London, who insists upon the burial of the past. There are, however, her predecessors in East Africa who choose to hide their secrets too, for example, Pipa.
- 39.
The archival nature of Western epistemology is delineated in my previous chapter on culinary practices. Shusterman (1995, 216) underlines the nature of the academy which is ‘locked in the written’. His work in this text also highlights the capacity dance embodies, and furthermore, like this work has specified in its introduction and second chapter, he advocates a methodology of non-competitiveness. Shusterman denies the hierarchies dividing highbrow art and popular art, bridging this gap in his considerations.
- 40.
Indeed, Vatsyayan (1976, 21) too recognises that regional artistic traditions bear ‘testimony as much to a flourishing, collective, participative tribal-rural culture as to a highly esoteric, closed sophisticated culture’. He explains ‘the two go hand in hand reinforcing and supplementing each other, rather than mutually negating each other’.
- 41.
Madison Moore explores everyday practices of resistance and protest through an exploration of the queer eccentric politicised aesthetics of ‘Fabulousness’. He too interprets the way ‘bodies become the site of artistic expression and creativity’, which ‘allows people forced to the margins [by race, ethnicity and sexuality] to assert themselves’ (2018, 44).
- 42.
For example, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003) met with such criticism on the publication of the text. See: Ali’s Brick Lane upsets community, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3287413.stm [accessed 20 June 2018]. Ali also met with opposition during the film adaption.
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Parmar, M. (2019). The Performing Body of Navratri: Dancing Dandiya, Dressing to Impress. In: Reading Cultural Representations of the Double Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18083-6_3
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