Panel Organizers:

Dr Lidia Guzy- Free University, Berlin, Germany
Dr Uwe Skoda - Free University, Berlin, Germany

Power of Performance - Performance of Power. Towards an understanding of Performance and Politics
The panel aims to discuss the interrelation of performance and politics in South Asia. The nexus between state and stage performance, ritualised politics and political rituals will be analysed in their local configurations. The performance of politicians in election campaigns, dance and music as identity markers of nations in general and of Indian regions or union states in the process of creation in particular will be examined. The ways in which music (for instance national hymns), performative art or traditional folklore embody political power and cultural identity shall be highlighted from historical as well as contemporary perspectives. Special emphasis is given to questions how dance, music and performative speech become symbols of politics of ethnicity.

Ulrich Demmer, LMU, Department of Anthropology, Munich, Germany
Contested Modernities in the Tribal Zone: The State, Subaltern Discourse und the Power of Performance in a Adivasi Region of South India

The paper is concerned with the often tense relationships between the state and
Adivasi or subaltern "tribal" people in the Nilgiri region of South India. I will talk about how, political but also religious performances, notions of modernity, of the state and of moral sociality are made public and how they constitute domains of postcolonial  "political authenticity" (S. Ortner), i.e. complex relations of resistance, collaboration et al.. In short I will with how politics is made with performances.

Lidia Guzy, Free University of Berlin, Institute for Religious Studies, Berlin, Germany
Performing the Power of the Goddess

Performances of sound demonstrate the power of religious and socio-political performances in Western Orissa. Here, a musical performance has in many context a sacral meaning and always displays the socio-cultural value and knowledge system.  The paper investigates the traditional forms of music with its various forms of religious worship and its socio-cultural implications in Western Orissa. The sound of instrumental village orchestras (ganda baja) expresses the local concepts of speeches of different goddesses. Music itself is also strongly interconnected with the socio-cultural hierarchy of the cast system. The paper investigates the paradoxical relationship between the power of religious performance on the one hand and the lack of power of its mostly subaltern performers on the other hand.

Dick Kooiman, Vrije Universiteit, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsHarnessing Ceremonial for Political Security: an Indian princely state on the verge of extinction

This contribution to the panel will focus on the power of publicly performed ceremonial to serve political ends. The case studied will be the princely state of Travancore which, like many other Indian princely rulers, found itself in a precarious position on the eve of Independence (1947). The main argument is that Travancore's ruling dynasty, threatened by the prospect of political extinction, tended to invoke the power of public ceremonial to strengthen their family's sense of security and to ensure their states a place on the future political map of India. Gun salutes, armorial bearings and seating arrangements at durbars were very prominent among these ceremonial honours and will be the main subject of this analysis.

Hans-Martin Kunz, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Department for
Anthropology, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg, Germany
Consuming Theatre: The Economics and Politics of Jatra in West Bengal

Still often described as a kind of travelling folk theatre and neglected by the academia and the Kolkata middle class alike, the Jatra - which has underwent tremendous changes over the last 100 years - forms nowadays one of the biggest and most powerful cultural industries in West Bengal reaching several crores of people with its social-political plays. If "Hitler, Lenin and Subhash" formed some of the biggest hits in the 1970s, It's nowadays "The all-destroying Tsunami" or "America burns" as well as plays on domestic violence against women, the dowry-problem, development work, internet pornography etc. This paper will analyse how Jatra not only forms a specific Bengali mass medium but conceives itself as an "education of the masses" which brings the global to the local and delivers interpretations of national and international political events as well as social messages to the Bengali villages. At the same time Jatra achieves through its references to Bengali poetry, music and the region's political history to create a unique Bengali identity based on certain moral and political perceptions which differentiate the Bengali masses from the Biharis, the Mumbaivallas and Bidesis, or even the "rotten" Kolkata middle class.

The paper is based on data collected by the author in five months of field-research from 2005-2006 on Jatra in West Bengal.

Cristiana Natali, Department of Linguistic and Oriental Studies, University of Bologna, Italy
New Gestures for a New Nation. Bharata Natyam Style and the Making of Tamil Eelam

The movement known as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) struggles for a separate state in the northern and eastern territories of Sri Lanka. In the course of the civil war, and also in the present time, after the starting of peace talking, a great effort has been displayed by LTTE to commemorate the dead fighters, the Maaveerar (lit. "Great Heroes"), who are considered as the founders of the future nation. Both in the LTTE-controlled areas in Sri Lanka and in the countries of the Tamil Diaspora people honour the Maaveerar in crowded public ceremonies. These ceremonies are characterized by a large recourse to dance, and in particularly to a South Indian dance style called Bharata Natyam.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the way in which Bharata Natyam embodies Sri Lankan Tamil cultural identity. If generally, as Anne-Marie Gaston points out, «Bharata Natyam today appears to be pursued largely as a means of affirming Indian (Hindu) identity», in the context of the Sri Lankan civil war such a dance assumes a new and probably most important symbolical meaning. In fact, in order to narrate the events of the civil war by dancing, Tamils have adapted and transformed the classical gestures of Bharata Natyam and have created new choreographies in which they stage sufferings, fighting, and victories of civilians and cadres. Choreographies are not performed by professional dancers, but by children and adults trained by dance teachers. Bharata Natyam is so much regarded as an essential ingredient of Tamil identity that its learning is considered, together with the mother tongue, absolutely necessary for Diaspora children.
This paper draws upon findings of fieldwork I carried out from 2000 to the present time in Sri Lanka and among the Tamil Diaspora in Italy, France (Paris), and Canada (Montreal).

Shreeyash Palshikar, The University of Chicago, London, United Kingdom
Performative Politics and the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement

The Samyukta Maharashtra movement that forced the Congress to form the state of Maharashtra in 1960, deployed a wide variety of popular media in its mobilizational efforts.  Folk song genres such as the martial powada and erotic lavani sung by shahirs, combined with folk drama performances that drew on tamasha and nautanki traditions, were a mainstay of the large Samyukta Maharashtra rallies organized during the 1950s.  These rallies also included performative speeches.  One of the most popular speakers at these rallies was the multi-talented Marathi poet, playwright, screenwriter, satirist and journalist P. K. Atre.  This paper will investigate Samyukta Maharashtra rallies as forms of political performance.  It will examine excerpts from the speeches of Atre and others along with political songs and poetry in an attempt to understand why these media were so effective at mobilizing large numbers of people during the Samyukta Maharashtra era.
Drawing on interviews with people who participated in, attended, and organized some of these rallies, the entire rally will be considered as political performance, from the staging areas such as Shivaji park in Dadar, Mumbai, to the opening music, to the main speeches.  Many of the practices popularized during the Samyukta Maharashtra movement are now carried on by the Shiv Sena and these connections will also be considered. The aim is to understand how the leaders of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement used performance as a political tool.  This will provide insights into the continuing uses of similar performance strategies in contemporary Mumbai.  

Satu Ranta-Tyrkko, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
Tribals as victims of the power game: Politics and politicians in Natya Chetana's play Boli (Sacrifice).

Natya Chetana (in English Theatre for Awareness) is an Orissan theatre group founded in 1986 in the state capital Bhubaneswar by a group of local drama students. Since then, the group has made more than 50 plays, and developed its own social and political agenda. The language of the plays is Oriya, the official language of the state. Natya Chetanya's plays deal with local topics and their aim is to make people think, to raise questions and even discomfort rather than to offer any solutions. The length and style of the plays is designed according to the audience. In rural areas the group tours by bicycles and makes short (around 30 minute) plays with simple setups. In towns and cities, the performances last 1.5 -2.5 hours and can be performed at auditoriums, roof tops, on a stage built outside, or other suitable spaces.

In my presentation I would like to portray and analyse the group's play Boli (Sacrifice) that was performed on a tour around Orissa in November 2001. My presentation is based on my ongoing PhD work on the group, for which I have collected most of the data on a field work period in 2001-2002. I was myself involved in the play process from beginning till end, from choosing the actors to final evaluation after the performances were over.

Uwe Skoda, Free University of Berlin, Institute for Ethnology, Berlin, Germany
Coming Out of the Palace. The Performance of the Bamra Royal Family during the elections 2004

The paper draws on the election campaign of the Raja of Bamra and his wife. It will focus on the style of campaigning during the filing of nominations, while going round the villages playing election songs and specifically on the last day of campaigning - supposed to be a door-to-door-campaign -, when not only the Raja left the palace to tour the constituency, but also the Rani Sahiba "coming out" to the public and creating considerable excitement in town.
It will be argued that royalty is many places such as Bamra far from being on the verge of extinction, but rather it is reinforced in the political process, though certain changes and concessions have to be made, the Rani "coming out of the palace" is certainly one of them. Political performances like campaigning combined with public feasts are required to maintain a central position for royalty in the absence of or rather the considerable reduction of state sponsored rituals.

Sebastian Schwecke, MA, Institute of Political Science, Department of International Relations, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
The Limitations of 'Performative' Politics in Political Mobilisation: A Study of the BJP in Aligarh

With the eclipse of the electoral utility of the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - at least at the national level of Indian politics- from the mid-1990s onwards gradually moved towards a political mobilisation of middle class voters by championing economic liberalisation policies. At the same time, the party remained to a large degree dependent on the continued motivation of its cadres as well as those of its sister organisations in the Sangh Parivar, whose capacity to effectively carry out political campaigns continues to form one of the party's biggest advantages over its main rivals. The BJP's central leadership employed a strategy of periodically taking recourse to symbolic acts and 'performative' politics in order to balance the divergent expectations regarding the 'substance' of its policies between its cadres and its middle class (and particularly metropolitan middle class) support base among voters and civil society.

This paper will discuss the limitations of this strategy of 'performative' politics in achieving its main goal mainly with regard to the strategy's repercussions among the BJP's cadres and thus on its long term utility as a tool for balancing divergent interests within a political organisation. The study is based primarily on the perceptions of the party's cadres, as evident from interviews conducted by the author as part of an ongoing research project on the BJP in Aligarh city, Uttar Pradesh.