POORVI BELLUR

Part I: The disruption of the ‘archive’ in its historiography

The ‘Performing Resistance’ project, dedicated to investigating the crucial role played by performers and artists in preserving and magnifying urban histories in Mumbai today, was produced out of Columbia University’s Dalit Bombay Initiative, and a close reading of Ramachandra Babaji More’s words.

R.B. More’s words were a window into this Dalit Bombay, and an archive of broader processes of community transformation and the politicization of Dalits as urban workers in the early twentieth century. His writings made visible the physical organization of space around labor and caste, and the presence of subaltern histories at every turn. More occupied a unique subject-position as the bridge between the Communist left, and the anti-caste movement. More’s autobiography, and his biography as relayed by his son, Satyendra More, provide a firsthand window into the politics of urban space in 20th century Bombay

Seeing Bombay/Mumbai through the words of R.B. More is a fascinating challenge to the historical conundrum of archival absence or textual misreading. Narratives about Dalit life in Bombay appear in More’s autobiography through descriptions of spaces hitherto little explored, or documented, especially through histories of performance such as theatre, and songs of protest and persistence that are passed down generations. Wandana Sonalkar’s translation of More’s autobiography is revelatory of More’s own Bombay, a spatial and cultural entity emerging from the places of cultural production he frequented. When describing his early life in the city, More leads the reader into these cultural spaces.

This excerpt of Sonalkar’s translation is a window into how performance and artistic expression was a constitutive element of More’s Dalit identity, and had been so his entire life. To simply characterize his later participation in cultural production as a means towards a political goal would be a grave misrepresentation.

In addition to outlining the geographical span and dynamism of Bombay’s Dalit cultural scene, More’s autobiography opens a discussion on the inextricable gender politics of these cultural spaces. In his description of the Batatyachi chawl theatre located in Bombay’s Safed Galli neighborhood, More includes the community of women sex workers located within and around the theatre community and that “All the chawls in that area were buzzing with prostitutes. Prostitutes lived in some of the rooms in Batatyachi Chawl and tamasha players and other people lived in the remaining rooms.”[2]  It is unsurprising that these communities were intimately familiar with one another, as the lines between them were often blurred and even nonexistent as many sex workers also practiced lavani as their own form of cultural expression. In her research, scholar Shailja Paik explores a particular case study of Mangalatai Bansode, a prominent tamsgir who lived and performed much after More’s time, but was nevertheless embroiled within the same nexus of caste and gender in her artistry as More’s own peers in Safed Galli. Paik describes how the lavani artist “potentially used the politics of lavani to challenge her powerless situation,'' a description that is reminiscent in many ways of how More and his peers navigated dissent through art.[3]

A telling example of this nexus emerges in an anecdote from More’s early life when his singing group was forced to sit outside the temple performing area, separate from the other performers. More describes the dehumanizing effect of this discrimination, but relates how the incident pushed him to document his experience within the arena of cultural politics. He writes of the overwhelming sense of empowerment the publication of his article brought with it; “In a week or so the whole story was published in Satya Prakash with the by-line ‘Ghamare’.  My friends brought a copy of that issue to me. When I saw what I had written printed in a newspaper for the first time in my life, I read it over and over again greedily.  This article bringing the injustice of untouchability to light was my first step in the world of journalism.”[4]

In addition to writing about his experiences within the community of Dalit performing artists in the city, More outlines the more direct relationship between his participation in theatre and his social activism, as the former was a source of both funding and publicity for the latter. Just how integral theatre was to the facilitation of anti-caste activism becomes clear in More’s narrative, as he describes the structure of an organization he participated in: “The Social Service League began its work by way of setting up a co-operative credit society at Elphinstone Road, a co-operative printing press and a co-operative theatre company.”[5] Ticket sales from these performances were dedicated to the organization of conferences and rallies. More’s cultural production did not exist in a vacuum. Indeed, More’s active involvement in and accounts of spaces and sites of performance are an integral part of his activism, supplementing and often intermingling with more traditional forms of dissent, including the production of text and occupation of public space. However, for More and others who inherited his legacy, these forms of performance and art were more than a vehicle for their activism. They were components of a rich and organic tradition and history that bound their community together, a tradition intimately tied to the self-actualization and manifestation of Dalit identity in a public arena that was often hostile.[6]

More’s autobiography was a deeply moving read, as it was a window into modes and spaces of cultural production I had been unaware of, despite having grown up in More’s city. The autobiography subverts traditional approaches within modern history of relying on written archival material such as census data, personal correspondences and official reports located in state or institutional archives.  Through the CU Dalit Bombay project, I sought to actively question the foundational role of the archive in the production of “legitimate” forms of history, following Saidiya Hartman’s assertion in her study of the American archive of slavery: “The archive is, in this case, a death sentence, a tomb, a display of the violated body, an inventory of property, a medical treatise on gonorrhea, a few lines about a whore’s life, an asterisk in the grand narrative of history. Given this, “it is doubtless impossible to ever grasp [these lives] again in themselves, as they might have been ‘in a free state.’”[7] Hartman wrestles with the impossibility of writing a history of slavery from the archive, in fear of replicating the “grammar of violence” through which these figures have been historically preserved. To a certain degree this sentiment rings true when it comes to assembling subaltern histories in South Asia or problematizing existing narratives about caste identities. However, to allow this apprehension to limit the production of Dalit histories would be to further silence the diverse community of performers, artists and activists working to voice these histories in Mumbai today.

Keen to learn more, I became interested in the archive of Dalit performance, and more specifically of song (shahiri/lokshahiri), forms such as Bhimgeet and Powwada, and the living histories of Dalit Bombay. This was the beginning of an intellectual journey that ultimately culminated in the Performing Resistance Project in the summer of 2017.

The “Performing Resistance” Project

“We are not here to entertain you. We are here to disturb you!” With this ringing proclamation of purpose, inspired by the stalwart lokshahir Sambhaji Bhagat, the Ambedkari jalsa launched into song in the small hall of the Nityanand Marg Municipal School in the suburban district of Andheri in Mumbai.

The performance often lasts hours into the night, with the skeleton of well-known compositions forming but the base of the performance and improvisation, musical dialogue, comedy and fiery speeches interspersing the familiar verses, thereby keeping the audience of regulars as engaged as the newcomers. While these songs are familiar to a close community of jalsa regulars, these are not songs that one can regularly hear on the radio. These are the songs of the Dalit resistance, a reminder to listeners of an untold history of oppression with a legacy that endures today across India.

The audience was seated on chairs as well as scattered over the floor and the performers were on a raised platform, however the fourth wall seemed to be non-existent in this performance as the artists questioned the audience and called out to them on the regular, and often received a fervent “Jai Bhim!” in response. The ensemble on stage was by no means a small one, with at least three to four singers clustered around each of the 4-5 microphones on stage, men and women alike dressed in a uniform of a kurta and a colored dupatta around the waist. They were accompanied by musicians on the harmonium, dholak, flute and tambourine.

The performance traced a revolutionary lineage tacking between the anticolonial radical, Bhagat Singh, Babasaheb Ambedkar and shahirs such as Annabhau Sathe and Wamandada Kardak, with the artists positioning themselves as a new generation of dissenters with a rich legacy behind them. The performance also combined an acute awareness of historical legacy with experiments in contemporary popular culture including an English song about American capitalist imperialism set to the strumming of a guitar, which was a somewhat strange shift from the Marathi folk song that preceded it.  It was clear that this style of performance was focused on content, with the music acting as a vehicle for a clear socio-political message.

This jalsa became the starting point for the “Performing Resistance” project, which celebrated  the history of Dalit performance as a mode of historical documentation and political agitation. The Godrej India Culture Lab hosted an evening of discussion and performance, entitled “Performing Resistance” on July 14th 2017. The event was  attended by over 500 audience members and widely reported on in mainstream newspapers (see here and here).

The event began with a panel began with a discussion featuring Ganesh Chandanshive, scholar of tamasha scholar and shahiri, Avatthi Ramaiah, Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Shilpa Kamble, activist and author of Nilya Dolyanchi Mulagi (Blue Eyed Girl). The discussion was moderated by Sunil Shanbag, theatre director and filmmaker. This was followed by a preview of the documentary Shahiri by Aashit Sable. However, the highlight of the event was ultimately a series of powerful musical performances by shahirs in the city, who navigate the evolution of Dalit resistance in many styles such as powada, qawwali and modern adaptations such as rock.

 The performing artists included Kabeer Shakya of Dhamma Wings, a rock band dedicated to social equality; the mother-son duo Nishant Shaikh and Keshar Jainoo Shaikh; and the Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch. The modern pioneer of shahiri, Sambhaji Bhagat, performed with this younger generation of shahirs, and created a dialogue with the audience about the current state of lokshahiri in Maharashtra and the position of these artists within the larger anticaste movement as well as their relationship with local as well as national government. The audience was witness to the history of protest and self-making as the artists interacted with the audience. The evening came to a close with the artists proclaiming solidarity with one another, and testifying to the increasing marginalization and stifling censorship they experience on a daily basis, as well as rising levels of violence against dissident voices. The performance was transformative for many people in the audience, who were introduced to an India that was quite different from the narratives of neoliberal progress peddled by mainstream newspapers daily.

 PART II: Tracing the history of Dalit resistance and identity politics in Maharashtra through musical performance

Traditions of performance and protest such as lokshahiri, or the Ambedkari jalsa arose in response to Upper Caste violence and the systematic erasure of history and culture, which has in turn resulted in a cultural resistance movement within Dalit communities in an effort to build cultural capital. A concept with roots in Marxist social theory and developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is evidently at work in the vast body of lokshahiri, much of which was written specifically for the movement with the rise of Ambedkar and his momentous conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism in 1956.

These archives of verses are full of devotional lyrics dedicated to Ambedkar and Buddha, delineating a Dalit Buddhist culture and selfhood as separate from the Hindu community within which there existed limited social mobility within caste hierarchy. In addition to cultural production functioning specifically to combat caste-based discrimination in varied social and economic sectors, it is evident that “caste-based cultural practices with their roots in the social and material conditions of the Dalits and Bahujans have long been marginalized by bourgeois forms of art and entertainment”, as Sharmila Rege noted. While it is clear that “music can foster collective identity and aid forms of mobilization… social movements are central to processes of cultural transformation”, it can be argued that the opposite is also equally valid: cultural transformation is a necessary and crucial force within social movements and even facilitates these movements as a unique mode of resistance [10]. This concept of cultural capital as being central to a community’s social mobility and empowerment continues to inspire activism against caste discrimination and violence, as emphasized by Dalit feminist author Shilpa Kamble.[6] Her novel “Nilya Dolyanchi Mulagi” explores how discovering Ambedkar and embracing the mission to build cultural capital changes the life of a young Dalit girl. Kamble acknowledges that her message is most strongly felt when it is through the medium of performance, in a way that cannot be replicated merely through text.[7]

Lokshahiri above all else is a Maharashtrian folk art, emergent from various forms of music and performance that preceded the anti-caste movement by several centuries. Mumbai University’s Professor Ganesh Chandanshive has witnessed the creation of the Lok Kala Academy, the only program in Mumbai dedicated to the preservation and propagation of Maharashtrian folk arts, many of which have been devalued and delegitimized as they have been traditionally practiced by Dalit communities. Through his academic and artistic work, Chandanshive has helped build a program dedicated to shahiri and its history at MU. “These folk arts belong to Bahujans, and I believe that their history must also be a part of syllabi. Here we teach tamasha, lavani, powada, but we are careful to make sure we do not propagate any social evils in the name of tradition” he explains.[8]

Of the forms listed by Chandanshive, lavani is a tradition that predates the modern anti-caste movement by two centuries, the earliest traceable lavani dating back to the 17th century. Performed largely by lower caste women for the fulfillment of male desire, erotic lavani is intertwined with a long history of the enslavement and sexual exploitation of lower caste women at the hands of the wealthy ruling class. It was this historical association of lavani with a lack of ‘respectability’ and Brahminical exploitation that led to the denouncing of these forms by Dalit political leaders like Phule and even Ambedkar, with the latter even refusing to refusal to “accept any financial grant from Pathe Bapurao - a famous vag performer of the period (a brahmin) on the grounds that the money was earned at the cost of lower caste women's dignity”. However instead of leading to a reformulation of these problematized forms, this drive for respectability to battle Brahmanical cultural hegemony led to a widespread exclusion of women from Dalit cultural practices. Unlike the problematized lavani that only began to receive recognition as a form of folk art by the latter half of the 20th century and more so recently, the powwada is a clear example of a form of folk art transforming into “the grounds on which conflicting social and cultural identities were worked out.”[9] Again this was a form that was practiced by bard communities including the Mahar, Mang and Gondhali communities of Maharashtra, in order to preserve Maratha history and heritage. These odes were often in praise of Maratha heroes, and under the rule of the Peshwas, were in praise of Brahmin rulers. It was only towards the end of the 19th century with the activism and leadership of Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890) that a large scale cultural transformation of these forms for the cause of anti caste mobilization began.

The power of performance as a tool of social mobilization emerged within the Maharashtrian urban anti-caste political context with Jyotirao Phule’s work in creating the Satyashodhak Samaj in 1873. This was an organization created specifically with the aim of spreading awareness and empowerment amongst lower caste communities, however the composition of the organization was diverse, and included ‘untouchables’ as well as Brahmins and Muslims. The Samaj soon expanded its reach beyond simply the urban populations of Pune and Mumbai, attracting rural laborer populations to its cause by 1890. The significance of the Samaj to the anti-caste movement of Maharashtra is unquestionable, as Phule and his work became a point of reference for Dalit political groups as well as cultural organizations throughout the 20th century. What made the Samaj uniquely successful in stimulating a large-scale socio-political mobilization that united urban and rural communities was the vehicle it used to facilitate education: musical performance. Phule himself recognized the power of vernacular music as a fast method of communicating the Samaj’s mission, as he himself became known for his compositions such as abhangs' and ‘mangalshtakas', the latter of which were often sung at weddings which was a significant statement against Brahmin dominated wedding rituals. Scholar Sharmila Rege’s extensive work on the powwada and its transformation at the turn of the 20th century explores Phule’s crucial role in this transformation. However, as Rege is quick to note, the rise of powwada as a mode of Dalit empowerment and education was accompanied by a deepening of the divide between ‘tamasagir/kalkaar' (folk-performer/artist)’ and the marginalizing of the erotic lavani under the stigma of ‘vulgarity’, revealing how lower caste women were devalued and robbed of artistic license even within their own communities.

The crux of the Dalit political movement and the linked process of cultural transformation was the rise of BR Ambedkar, not just as a leader but as a symbol of Dalit identity and upliftment, as well as a symbol of Buddhist spirituality.  It was in this period surrounding Ambedkar’s meteoric rise as a voice for liberation from the caste system, as well as his famed conversion in 1956 that resulted in the creation of an entirely new genre of music: bhimgeet. It was through this clear rejection of Hinduism that there was a mass effort to “repossess culture and self; to work out independent Dalit values and standards through independent cultural institutions.”[10]

Ambedkar Jayanti, the festival commemorating Ambedkar’s birth in April became an occasion for reinforcing history, through massive performances of music and theatre celebrating his work and his dedication to the Dalit community. Beginning largely in the 1930’s, these bodies of music incorporated elements of existing folk forms including Phule’s jalsa, and replaced the figures of Maratha warriors, kings and Hindu gods with Ambedkar and even Budddha. With the first generation of Ambedkari singers however came the slow degradation of existing cultural forms practiced by the lower caste Mahar community, including a form of musical theatre incorporating lavani called tamasha. By the 1940’s, the working class tamasha theatres of Bombay began to be shut down by the state, as it was argued that “prostitution was being practiced in the name of art.”[11]

The demise of tamasha can be traced even today in the city of Mumbai, as shown by former tamasha theatre owner Madhukar Nerale, who owns a hall in the heart of Byculla. He reminisces about a time when tamasha performances would take place late at night for working class audiences and comments “There are no more tamasha artists in Mumbai” for his old theatre is now mostly used for social events such as weddings.[18] While tamasha slowly became extinct within the urban context, the Ambedkari jalsa had become a fully formed cultural phenomenon by the 1930’s. Through comedy, dialogue and musical exposition, these jalsas attracted large audiences and strove to transmit the message of Ambedkar. One translation of a bhimgeet from this period reveals this sentiment:

Bhimraya, I touch your feet,

Give me the intellect to sing of your virtues.

In this world, except for you, we have no

saviour,

You are the true mother of the untouchables,

To emancipate the Dalits –

Give me the intellect to sing of your virtues[19]

It is clear from analyzing the lyrics of these compositions through the 40’s and the 50’s that the historical events and turning points in the anti-caste movement have all been reflected in these Ambedkari music compositions. There are compositions criticizing Mahatma Gandhi and the Poona Pact of 1932, as well as compositions regarding the significance of Ambedkar’s conversion in 1956. There are also compositions to describe the intersection of the movement with the Labour movement and Communist ideologies, such as Annabhau Sathe’s compositions for the Samyuktha Maharashtra movement for Maharastrian state identity in the 1950’s in praise of both Lenin and Babasaheb Ambedkar. Sathe’s commitment to leftist critique intermingled with his devotion to Ambedkarite ideals is reminiscent of R.B. Moré’s activism, not to mention their shared use of performance and theatre in the capacity of their activism.

Another prolific artist of this generation of shahirs is Shahir Amar Sheikh. “The shahiri of Amar Shaikh and Annabhau Sathe… they sang about the needs and troubles of the downtrodden, and their songs were for the entire country” remarks Nishant Shaikh, his grandson who is currently in the process of creating a memorial to his grandfather on a street named after him in the Saath Rasta neighborhood of Mumbai. Rege observes the power of the cultural transformation that was Ambedkar’s legacy as it continued after his death in 1956; “The palana (cradle songs) of Phule, Ambedkar, and Shahu became a popular genre with women and printed booklets of these songs priced between Rs. 2 and Rs. 5, are among the most popular items. The primary theme in the compositions of the second generation is the message of modernity; to provide quality of life for Dalits as also to legitimize Buddhist practices as modernist expressions.”[12]

Rege’s scholarship on the movement of cultural activism ends with an observation of a decline in jalsa culture post the 1960’s, after which the Dalit literature movement and radical political groups began to overshadow the impact of jalsa groups, despite the existence of a new generation of singers, who appropriated forms such as the qawwali to propagate Ambedkari thought and the revival of cassette culture in the 1980’s allowing for recordings of these genres to be made and popularized. However as Rege’s study ends there, it does not take into account the rising popularity of jalsa and musical performance amongst Dalit artists and activists over the course of the 90’s leading up to the present day. Revitalized by lokshahirs such as Sambhaji Bhagat, revolutionary music composer and ballad singer whose work was featured in the National Award winning film Court (2014), Shahiri itself has not been immune to the forces of globalization.

This is reflected in the popularity of a new genre of Ambedkarite pop/rock music. Kabeer Shakya, the lead singer and founder of the rock band Dhamma Wings describes his aversion to the label “Dalit musician” and claims his message is a universal one of justice and dignity that he doesn’t wish to restrict to any one community. Ever since their establishment in 2011, Dhamma Wings integrates western forms of rock and rap with Ambedkar’s philosophies in a way that is aimed at being accessible to urban youth, with their hit track ‘Jai Bhim Se’ garnering more than 70,000 views on YouTube. While Shakya has fully embraced the potential of modern social media, he has not forgotten the importance of history as a mode of empowerment. “I’ve written songs to sensitize SC communities about their own history, that they themselves are often unaware of” he says, referring to a project where Dhamma Wings performed songs about Koli (a Dalit fishing community present along the Western coast of India) history for local fishing communities.[21] In addition to modern reinterpretations of Ambedkari jalsa, Mumbai is home to multiple jalsa groups that continue to perform the powwadas, abhangs and kirtans composed by their predecessors. One such example is the Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch , who identify themselves as cultural activists, and travel beyond state borders organizing collectives for jalsa artists to perform music despite occasional skirmishes with government authorities and local police. Their lyrics are in no way passive, as they cry out in unison “We will fight, brother, we will fight”, as a reminder to their audiences that issues of caste oppression and discrimination are not things of the past. It is clear that traditions of musical resistance continue to facilitate the preservation of Dalit history and selfhood and can certainly be viewed as an archive of oral history that allows one to access subaltern voices otherwise missing from mainstream narratives of Maharashtrian history and identity.

 CONCLUSION: Where do we go from here?

With the popularity of films such as Patwardhan’s Jai Bhim Comrade (2011) and Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court (2014), it is easy to assume that the rich and complex history of Dalit cultural production and artistic activism has been well documented and explored. However, historians of modern South Asia and cultural figures alike have a responsibility to continue unearthing the complex ways in which both the Ambedkarite and Left movements engage with the performing arts, whether as an archive of their history or as a vehicle for demanding change today. Additionally, to completely conflate these political movements with the Dalit popular forms of music and theatre would be an erasure of the far longer history of these forms. There is also a general gap in scholarship when it comes to the exclusion of women from these histories, spaces, and cultural forms.  An excellent example of an effort at continued documentation of these cultural forms is being undertaken by the PARI (People’s Archive of Rural India), which has documented over a hundred thousand ‘grindmill’ songs, a tradition practised by rural women in Maharashtra that delves into their social and political identities. While such scholarship helps push against Hartman’s issue of the ‘impossibility’ of archiving Dalit experience, there is a far way still to go.

Poorvi Bellur is a PhD Student at the History Department, Princeton University. This essay was a part of her undergraduate program in Columbia University, written in 2018. Poorvi worked as a part of the Moré Project driven by Anupama Rao and her team: Sohini Chattopadhyay, Josue David Chavez and Anish Gawande. Finally, the Performing Resistance project would have been impossible without the support and guidance of the Godrej India Culture Lab team, led by Parmesh Shahani.

Additional notes not hyperlinked

[1] Dalit va Communist Calvalicha Sashakta Duva (Mumbai: Paryay Prakashan, 1st edition, 2003) trans. by Wandana Sonalkar and edited by Anupama Rao, pg.29

[2] Ibid. 29

[3] Paik, Shailaja. “Mangala Bansode and the Social Life of Tamasha: Caste, Sexuality, and Discrimination in Modern Maharashtra.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Journal 40, no. 1 (2017): 170–98. https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.2017.0008. Pg. 170

[4]  Dalit va Communist Calvalicha Sashakta Duva (Mumbai: Paryay Prakashan, 1st edition, 2003) trans. by Wandana Sonalkar and edited by Anupama Rao, pg.37

[5]  Dalit va Communist Calvalicha Sashakta Duva (Mumbai: Paryay Prakashan, 1st edition, 2003) trans. by Wandana Sonalkar and edited by Anupama Rao, Pg.50

[6] For a a detailed documentation of the role of performance in Dalit cultural history, please refer to the documentary ‘Jai Bhim Comrade’ (2011) directed and produced by Anand Patwardhan.

[7] Hartman, S. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 12, no. 2 (January 2008): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1215/-12-2-1.

[8] Interview with Dr. Ganesh Chandanshive, Mumbai University, 06/2017

[9] Joshi, Barbara R. Untouchable: Voices of the Dalit Liberation Movement. London: The minority rights Group, 1986. Pg.78

[10] Sharmila Rege. "Conceptualizing Popular Culture: 'Lavani' and 'Powada' in Maharashtra." Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 11 (2002): 1038-047. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4411876. Pg. 1043

[11] Interviewed by Poorvi Bellur 06/2017

[12] Rege, Sharmila. "Interrogating the Thesis of 'Irrational Deification'." Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 7 (2008): 16-20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40277605. Pg.17

[13] Rege, Sharmila. "Interrogating the Thesis of 'Irrational Deification'." Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 7 (2008): 16-20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40277605. Ibid. 17

[14] SC is used here as an abbrievation for the term ‘Scheduled Castes’, a legal designation first used by colonial authorities in 1935 to list Hindu lower caste communities in an appendage to the Government of India Act. In terms of its contemporary usage, it is still a legally applicable term in the context of statutory provisions, government programs and political lobbying. (Dushkin, 1967)