A Refusal to be Historicized: An Ethnographic Encounter with Shabda-Nrityaartists at Kumbhari.

Abstract

The association of history with dances of India, itself is embedded in colonial modernity. It has been the classical dances which have featured both in practice and writing an unbroken historiography; whereas dances categorized as ‘folk’ ‘tribal’ ‘contemporary’ have been denied a nuanced complex history. At the same time dance-historians have argued how necessary for cultural studies to engage with illegitimate oppressed bodies while narrating their history. Simultaneously the subaltern and postcolonial studies scholars such as Veena Oldenburg, Dipesh Chakraborty have stated how necessary it is to analyze, rely on oral history, vernacular sources, and shift away from colonial documents that operate mostly in terms of legalities while elucidating the history of subaltern/ marginalized cultures. But what happens when the subaltern, the oppressed dancer himself, does not want to dwell in history? It does not at all mean that the dance form is devoid of history as other forms of evidence such as archaeological, textual, and oral narratives, confirm the existence of the dance form. This article presents an ethnographic encounter with Shabda-Nritya artists from Kumbhari village in India. It illustrates how in refusal to the version of history the nation wants and legitimates (such as precise dates, authorship), or historical anecdotes the ethnographer searches for, the doubly marginalized, Shabda artists’ exercise their agency. In illuminating their refusal, I argue how their denial to history and to be historicized can be perceived as a decolonial praxis for the future of Indian dance, and of writing its history.