Editing Bharatanatyam (section)

===Devadasis, anti-dance movement, colonial ban, and the decline===
Some colonial [[Indologist]]s and modern authors have argued that Bharatanatyam is a descendant of an ancient ''[[Devadasi]]'' ({{Lit|servant girls of Devas}}) culture, suggesting a historical origin back to between 300 BCE and 300 CE.<ref name=soneji30/> Modern scholars have questioned this theory for lack of any direct textual or archeological evidence.<ref name=amritsri73/><ref name=leslieorr8/> Historic sculptures and texts do describe and project dancing girls, as well as temple quarters dedicated to women, but they do not state them to be courtesans and prostitutes as alleged by early colonial Indologists.<ref name=soneji30/> According to Davesh Soneji, a critical examination of evidence suggests that courtesan dancing is a phenomenon of the modern era, beginning in the late 16th or the 17th century of the [[Madurai Nayak dynasty|Nayaka period]] of Tamil Nadu.<ref name=soneji30>{{cite book|author=Davesh Soneji |title=Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=24uaoBjDKQgC |year=2011 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-76811-3 |pages=30–31 }}</ref> According to James Lochtefeld, classical dance remained exclusive to Hindu temples through the 19th century, only in the 20th century appearing on stage outside the temples.<ref name="Lochtefeld2002p103"/> Further, the [[Thanjavur Maratha kingdom]] patronized classical dance.<ref>{{cite news |title=Royal tribute to Thanjavur rulers |newspaper=The New Indian Express |date=2017 |url=https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/2017/dec/27/royal-tribute-to-thanjavur-rulers-1738354.html}}</ref>

[[File: Rukmini Devi.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Rukmini Devi Arundale]], pictured in 1940, proposed Bharatanatyam after Hindu temple dancing was banned by the British colonial government in 1910.]]

With the arrival of the [[East India Company]] in the 18th century, and British colonial rule in the 19th, classical Indian dance forms were ridiculed and discouraged, and these performance arts declined.<ref>{{cite book |author=Leslie C. Orr |title=Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F___xKcP8lMC |year=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-535672-4 |pages=11–13}}</ref> Christian missionaries and British officials presented "[[nautch girl]]s" of north India ([[Kathak]]) and "devadasis" of south India (Bharatanatyam) as evidence of "harlots, debased erotic culture, slavery to idols and priests" tradition, and Christian missionaries demanded that this must be stopped, launching the "anti-dance movement" in 1892.<ref name=marysnodgrass166>{{cite book |author=Mary Ellen Snodgrass |title=The Encyclopedia of World Folk Dance |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DMGpDAAAQBAJ |year=2016 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4422-5749-8 |pages=165–168 }}</ref><ref name="Ghuman2014p97">{{cite book|author=Nalini Ghuman |title=Resonances of the Raj: India in the English Musical Imagination, 1897-1947 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BkVZAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA97 |year=2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-931489-8 |pages=97 footnote 72 }}</ref><ref name="Walker2016p94">{{cite book |author=Margaret E. Walker |title=India's Kathak Dance in Historical Perspective |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nC83DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA94 |year=2016 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-11737-7 |pages=94–98 }}</ref> The anti-dance camp accused the dance form as a front for prostitution, while revivalists questioned the constructed colonial histories.<ref name=amritsri73>{{cite journal |title=The Hindu Temple-dancer: Prostitute or Nun? |author=Amrit Srinivasan |journal=The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology |volume=8| issue=1 |year =1983 |pages=73–99 |jstor=23816342}}</ref><ref name=leslieorr8>{{cite book |author=Leslie C. Orr |title=Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F___xKcP8lMC |year=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-535672-4|pages=5, 8–17}}</ref>

In 1910, the [[Madras Presidency]] of the [[British Raj|British Empire]] banned temple dancing, and with it the classical dance tradition in Hindu temples.<ref name=pallabinilan30>{{cite book |author1=Pallabi Chakravorty |author2=Nilanjana Gupta |title=Dance Matters: Performing India on Local and Global Stages |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KQly7wn0C5sC&pg=PA30 |year=2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-51612-2 |pages=30}}</ref>

The banning of temple dancing stemmed from the 1892 anti-dance movement and new, liberal colonial perspectives. What the English imagined nineteenth-century modernity to be did not include what they regarded Bharatanatyam to be, which they regarded as indecent.<ref name="Meduri">{{cite journal |author=Avanthi Meduri |year=2004 |title=Bharatanatyam as a Global Dance: Some Issues in Research, Teaching, and Practice |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20444589 |journal=Dance Research Journal |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=11–29|doi=10.2307/20444589 |jstor=20444589 |s2cid=144784756 }}</ref> Coming from a deep orientalist perspective, the morality of people who performed Bharatanatyam was called into question.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Thobani |first=Sitara |title=Indian classical dance and the making of Postcolonial National Identities: Dancing on Empire's stage |publisher=Routledge |year=2017}}</ref> Accusations of prostitution were thrown around. Some women from traditionally performing communities were used as a way to showcase obscenity.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Kannan |first=Rajalakshmi Nadadur |date=2019 |title=Colonial Material Collections and Representations of Devadasi Bodies in the Public Sphere in the Early 20th-Century South India |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27095513 |journal=Anthropos |volume=114 |issue=2 |pages=531–546 |doi=10.5771/0257-9774-2019-2-531 |jstor=27095513 |s2cid=214131186 |issn=0257-9774}}</ref> New reforms disregarded local issues like production of the arts for the sake of liberalism and felt able to impose disruptive reforms that reshaped lives at all levels and subjected people to new standards. Colonial reforms were largely unsympathetic to local traditions, and dismissive of the industry surrounding producing art.<ref name="Meduri" /> The adoption of Anglo-Indian laws that imposed certain restrictions and regulations on certain expressions of sexuality, and more so regulations on bodies and sex in general, which in turn affected traditional dance practices.<ref name=":2" /> Temple dancing became caught in a web of multiple political agendas, hoping to bend this burgeoning morality issue to suit their cause.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Ganesh |first=Swarnamalya |date=2015 |title=RENAMING "SADIR" AS BHARATANATYAM: What's in a Name? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26316557 |journal=India International Centre Quarterly |volume=42 |issue=2 |pages=116–125 |jstor=26316557 |issn=0376-9771}}</ref> Colonial denunciations of the practice of temple dancing were caught up in liberal ideals of bringing modernity to India, where modernity was tied to Anglo-Protestant moral ideas about how bodies are viewed and how sexuality was presented.<ref name=":2" />