Shakti, Eroticism, and the Sacred in Sharira

Tian Jiayuan

[Abstract] The paper discusses how Shakti (the female principle) as the primary principle of the cosmos in Sharira posited by Chandralekha reinvents the significance of repetition in Sharira and subverts the explicit dualism in the Brahmanical and ascetic Hindu tradition by returning to the body.At the level of methodology, this paper uses two sets of theory as the framework of analysis for the interpretation of Sharira.

[Keywords] Shakti, body, sexuality, sensuality, spirituality, Sharira

In the ascetic tradition of Hinduism, female sexuality is a menace to male ascetics for several reasons.The most obvious one is that the desire for a woman can distract a male ascetic from his celibate engagements.In the patrilineal brahmanical tradition, anotherparampara(tradition) of Hinduism,jāti(caste) is determined by birth.As Sanjukta Gupta remarks, “A man needs a wife to beget children to perpetuate hisjātiandkula(lineage).” He therefore needs to be certain of his own paternity.In order to maintain the stability of a class structure designed to favour male dominance, women’s sexuality is required to be transformed from the destructive and intimidating state to a potentially beneficial force for society.From

Manu Dharma?āstratoMahābhārata, female figures are either objectified as sexual beings whose body is a rich source of sexual fantasy and stimulation for male ascetics or deified as goddesses in company with the male gods.1In Hinduism, fire is not only the emblem of the sacred god Agni, but also of continuity.It also represents the domestic space like the kitchen, within which women are constrained, as well as the ordeal of examining a female’s loyalty.InRāmāyana, another Sanskrit myth, Sita comes through the ordeal of fire to testify that she is truly chaste and faithful to her consort.This ideal of women endorsed by Hindu scriptures, epics and myths, moreover, has been reinforced by the Hindu ritualPativrata—— usually practiced regularly by married women as a device to discipline their desire —— through which women’s unruly sexuality is domesticated.

Wendy Doninger once pointed out that in Hinduism eroticism and asceticism have historically co-existed.［1］The tension between the two paths —— the sensual, erotic, violent, and materialistic path of worldliness and the spiritual, meditative, transcendental, nomadic, self-denial path of renunciation —— was sometimes expressed as the balance between bourgeois householders and homeless seekers.［1］The tension remained in the Tantras, a large body of texts composed between about 650 and 1800 CE.In the Tantras, all the taboos of conventional Hinduism, such as drinking wine, menstrual bleeding, eating meat, inter-coursing with forbidden women, are violated.［1］But other Tantras insisted that the ritual actions cannot be taken literally, but symbolically.No matter which approach the Tantric rituals adopt, both are built on the conditions that women cannot be independent and autonomous without a male partner or without the endorsement of a Hindu guru while “the Tantra has allowed women a broad range of responses to domestic norms, from conformity to rejection of domesticity as an import arena of female religious expression.”［2］

Inspired by Tantric powerShakti(female consciousness and energy) but also holding a very suspicious attitude towards the brahmanical ideology at the same time, Chandralekha was not content with the way Indian women have been idealized and spiritualized by Indian nationalists and revivalists.By employing the deviant and rebellious Tantrism and the awakening ofshakti, the “counter-system”, nay, a permanent counterculture within the Indic civilization［3］, Chandralekha challenged the imagery of what the ideal woman was.Sharira, the final dance production of which was premiered in March 2001, at TATA Theatre, NCPA in Mumbai, embodied and crystalized her quest for primacy and supremacy of female principle, before her decease in 2006.As a witness to the “performance”2ofSharira, I was drawn into the sophisticated and profound representation of becoming of body and gender role of two performers —— Tishani Doshi and Shaji John at Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Center, New Delhi, on 29 Nov.2015 and 15 July 2016 respectively.

The name of the pieceSharira, which denotes “body” in Sanskrit, is hyphenated by the two most important components: “fire” and “desire.” In the performance ofSharira, the prototype of goddess is not based on the chaste Sita or Parvati narrated in the Sanskrit traditionRāmāyanaandMahābhārata.The whole repertoire is divided into three sections.The first scene is the female performer Doshi staging a solo of creation of the world for twenty minutes.The scene of creation is then followed by the intervention of a Kalaripayattu kick by a male performer John, the exploration of each other and the reinterpretation of the competitive duo.In the third section, the cooperation of two bodies gradually formulated the shape of Ardhanarishwara —— the Indian mythic composite of Hindu god Shiva and his consort Parvati.This figure, however, does not represent the mythic figure in the traditional sense.The juxtaposition of half god and half goddess in left-right composition was rearranged to respond to her claim ofShaktias the primal energy.In the scene of becoming Ardhanarishwara, the visual composition of left-and-right is transformed into above and below by whichshakti, the female force, ascends as an autonomous energy without being subjugated to the male order； whereas in the traditional iconography of Ardhanarishwara, the role of female obtains a secondary figure as the male’s consort.In the following paragraphs I will elaborate on the implications of the three main scenes ofSharira.

l.The female principle is primal according to our culture, our texts and our religious authority.lt is primal because of the entire creation.By creation, l do not mean procreation, or giving birth to children.l mean the entirety of creation, like the entire vegetation, the nature and everything.Everything comes from the female principle.3

The termshakticomes from Sanskrit.The root “Shak-”, “to have power to effect”, with a suffix “-ktin”, indicates the female gender.In general, the term refers to power, strength, or energy.Chandralekha acknowledged in several interviews that she was inspired by the very rare Tantric textSaundarya Lahari(Wave of Beauty) by Adi Shankara and further posited Shakti as the primary force in the creation of the universe.But how can one awake this female energy if the power that was intended to empower her body, her presence, and her consciousness, has been domesticated by male orders for centuries? Chandralekha questioned the nature of being a woman in a conversation, “Would you give up your sensuality to live in a male world?”［4］InSharira, Chandralekha arranged Doshi as the first and only figure on the stage.Unlike dancers in classical dance performing the mudras and abhinayas, figures are deemed redundant for Chandralekha, Doshi as a yoga practitioner staged her performance in excruciating silence accompanied by a recital from the Gundecha Brothers.On the stage, Doshi was characterized by her single presence.Her face looked down on the floor.Her hands and legs were lifted gradually as if the formation of the cosmos, where the predominant energy —— the female force —— was conducted solely on her own.The strengthened and intensified core of her pelvis supported the Axis Mundi of the cosmos in which the non-homogeneous are bounced off from the constructed space.She folds, stretches, and looks back toward her toes and the soles of her feet with compassionate glances.It is almost as if she enjoys germinating her body parts on her own.At that moment her body is not used for the purpose of reproduction and procreation, but for the naissance of herself and her awareness.Another symbol that indicates the manifestation ofShaktiis the inverted triangle framed by the folding of her whole body to the fullest.Her full presence ascends in response to the pulsatingshakti.This connection of femininity and space is shown further by slowing down the movement of her folding, unfolding, intensifying, and loosening.The texture of her body movement is so satiated with the lightness of air that the weight of her physical stubborn body seems to be forgotten by the audience.

The female principle was gradually manifested through Doshi’s slow, stable but pulsating body movements.However, Chandralekha does not want to deliver the traditional image of a good mother whose function is to maintain the lineage of her husband in Indian society.As a feminist, Chandralekha clearly understands the burden and stereotype imposed upon women.On one hand, the imagery “jagat janani” (World Mother) sung by the Gundecha Brothers was brought forth to the audience； on the other hand, she empowered the female body on the stage with a ferocious, devouring, and sexually saturated femininity that has been traditionally silenced and prohibited to enter the scope of an idealized motherhood.Sudhir once observed that the theme of bad mother in all societies includes attributes such as aggression and sexual desires.In Indian society, a good mother has been produced and eulogized while its counterpart, the bad one, has been described as an abjection that is excluded by the collective.

Thus, underlying the conscious ideal of womanly purity, innocence, and fidelity, and interwoven with the unconscious beliefin a safeguarding maternal beneficence is a secret conviction among many Hindu men that the female principle is really the opposite: treacherous, lustful and rampant with an insatiable, contaminating sexuality.This dark imagery breaks through in the saying: “Fire is never satisfied with fuel, the ocean is never filled by the rivers, death is never satisfied by living beings and women are never satisfied with men.”［20］

In Indian society, women who do not follow the rule of reproduction are often questioned by the majority and even treated with malevolent violence.

Chandralekha’s claim is that it is the primacy of femininity and sensuality of women that decides the creation of organic creatures in the beginning.This can be regarded as western-minded or feminist by some critics in the circle of conventional rasikas, or people with a similar taste.In the first section ofSharira, Doshi indulged in the re-creation of self as cosmos.It opposes the law that was set up by the ancient Hindu textRig Veda, which says “...in the beginning was man.” After that, her journey of transformation was followed by the intrusion of a male presence.Shaji John jumped into the space of her straddled legs.4After the quick and active intervention, John immediately squatted and succumbed to the female presence with his back to the audience.The erotic interaction took place between them without hastening to orgasm.Crawling towards her crotch like a soldier, he acted as if he was worshipping the pelvic congestion.As John delved into the depth between her thighs and slid out from within, Doshi responded to his demand by stretching her legs further.At this moment the male seemed to be dominated by her erected presence as he tried to emerge from her pelvis.The inverted role of a dominant male and a submissive female “shocked a middle-class audience comfortable with female subjugation to the male.”［5］The active and dominant female figure with the male being under the control of her shakti astounds the audience because the duet’s physical contact exceeds the idealized bounds between men and women.［5］

After the first failure —— not being able to be subject to the female presence —— he re-evaluated the way to access her body by crawling back farther.As a biological male he now slowly stood upside down, or used the yogasana (yoga position) or headstand to compete with the manifestation ofshaktiin her body.One can see that she diluted the intensity of her upper-body and enlarged her lower-part to respond to the upside down erection of the male.Gradually the flirtation between the heterosexual duet became rivalry as their bodies dance upwards with their heads downward.The scene of “double phallus”［6］on the stage switched to the scene of original genesis when Doshi started to sense every inch of her body in the beginning.Instead of being single on the single, John and Doshi now circulated together.It seems that at that phase they both found a way to cooperate and that they both partook in the creation of the universe without the burden of child-bearing, which is imposed by the society of male order.The interplays of the presence and absence of their desires and pleasures and the competition and cooperation between the duo’s corporeality served the purpose of self-realization and mutual exploration of physicality and sensuality.It is what Katrak has observed: “sway as if giving pleasure to each other, equal partners in this physicality and as if enabling each to come to orgasm together and/or separately.”［6］They play.They tease.The pleasure and competitions between the two bodies are envisioned by duplicating each other’s movement.

One point to be noted in the second part ofSharirais that the duet of Doshi and John gradually becomes jouissance of her auto-eroticism on the stage, though her dance movement is constantly followed by John’s kalaripayattu and yoga.

It turned out, however, that for Doshi as a female dancer who explicitly lifts and circles her thighs and legs in the air, her parted legs and crotch space leading to her womb became the space that enabled the male partner to jump, slide, and submerge.These erotic and sensual activities on the stage are not compliant with the social norms and religious dharma where females must be submissive and obedient and her sexuality is solely for the purpose of reproduction.The scene of parted legs that is normally intended for giving birth opens the space of life for her self-enjoyment on the one hand, and the space of death for men on the other, as the strength of Shaji John who was entering the space with a dominant Kalaripayattu kick was gradually weakened during the duet of competition to a degree that he almost dissolved in her parted pelvis.

Based on research on myths and ancient culture by Erich Neumann and his own clinical cases, psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar articulated the ambivalence of imagery related to the female womb:

As Erich Neumann has shown in an analysis of myths and ancient culture, and as clinical reports have demonstrated in contemporary society, a generative, nurturing and compassionate femininity has always had its counterpoint in demanding, destroying and devouring the maternal image.And, in unconscious fantasy, the vagina as the passage between being and non-being is not only perceived as a source of life and equated with emergence into light, but also shunned as the forbidding dark hole, the entrance into the depths of a death womb which takes life back into itself.［20］

The fantasy of milking or dissolving in a woman’s secret part also causes the dread of becoming sexually less aggressive.Kakar said:

The anxiety aroused by the prospect of encountering female sexuality is also evident in the mildly phobic attitude towards sexually mature women in many parts of India ...The fantasy world of Hindu men is replete with the figures of older women whose appetites debilitate a man’s sexuality, whose erotic practices include, for example, vaginal suction, “milking the penis.” These fantastic women recall the Hindu son’s primitive dread of the maternal sexuality that drains, devours and sucks dry.［20］

InSharira, the erotic and sexual play between the female and the male is not based on the premise of procreation, but self-realisation and mutual exploration of femininity and sensuality.For Chandralekha, Skanda, the offspring of god Shiva and goddess Shakti, is not in the horizon of creation of life.Giving birth to children, rearing, and all other functions that are related to family values in Indian Society cannot be regarded as the primary concern of the female principle as they exclude the possibility of becoming a third out of two individuals.Her beliefin the female principle is also visible in her strategy of weakening male dominance and strengthening the femininity that has been resided in male and female.By excavating the depth of structure of Hindu culture where dichotomy is predominant, the discourse of a male and a female with the outcome of three will be possible to be cracked.She turned to Ardhanarishwara, the mythic figure of half Shiva and half Pavarti, in order to rediscover the hidden female principle within men and reconfigure the morphology of it.

In the final episode, the concept of Ardhanarishwara —— half man and half woman in oneness —— was the main theme to be challenged.As the music tempo transits into harsh and repetitive mantras chanting, both dancers faced each other, pelvis-to-pelvis, with a slow but steady pulsation of their lower parts.Then they lifted their pelvises in response to the desire to become Ardhanarishwara.As Shaji squatted firmly in the center of the stage, Shaji lifts Tishani, her legs and her face down seen between his two legs.Such a haunting image, as Sunil Kothari depicted, was so powerful that the impression on the traditional sculptures of Ardhanarishvara was driven away.

In Indian iconography, Ardhanarishvara is presented as ?iva and ?akti.In Puranic versions of androgyny or two-in-one creation myths, ?iva as Ardhanarishvara is seen variously paired in anthropomorphic and emblematic representations alongside with the female principle, or?akti, usually identified as Parvati or Uma.［7］The placement of ?iva on the right and Parvati on the left corresponds to the theological presumption of the Brahmans, as Raju Kalidos shows, that the left-hand position is associated with “something low,” “not worthy of being accorded a commendable status of equality,” “weakness,” “frailty,” “baseness and degradation,” and so on.［7］The female principle is often subdued and contained in this two-in-one image by the secondary status assigned to it.Wendy Doniger even pointed out in her workWomen, Androgyne, and Other Mythical Beasts(1980) that “whether in iconic or aniconic form, the androgyne motifin Indian tradition does not always represent ‘a(chǎn) symbol of perfect union.’”［1］For Doniger, the image conveys mostly a sense of “non-equality” and “primary maleness”［1］.The primary maleness of the form of the androgyne, as Doniger suggests, “may represent not only the androcentrism of the religious context but also a deeper feeling of imbalance, a male’s need to correct his own incompleteness by assimilating to himself the form of the female”［1］.More importantly, not only these early androgynous mythic structures provide the primary prototypes in the eventual promulgation of a system of homologues that gradually build upon the increasing brahmanical ritualisation, but also culturally constructed the system of gender meanings.［7］

In these myths of Ardhanarishvara, “it is typically the male-identified god (e.g., ?iva) who became the divine Ardhanarishvara”［7］and who leads her to the reinterpretation of the mythological figure and its placement in the composition.Chandralekha relinquished the way of transposing as it is the emblem of duality which manipulates the thoughts and activities of human beings within Indo-European society and culture.With regard to the characteristics of duality, sociologist Robert Hertz once observed the polarity of right hand and left hand:

There is a striking contrast in the words which in most Indo-European languages designate the two sides.While there is a single term for “right” which extends over a very wide area and shows great stability, the idea of ‘left’ is expressed by a number of distinct terms, which are less widely spread and seem destined to disappear constantly in the face of new words.［8］

In the Indo-European area, the community forms a closed circle at the centre of which is the altar, the Ark of the Covenant, where the gods descend and from which divine aid radiates.Order and harmony reign within the enclosure, while outside it extends a vast night, limitless and lawless, full of impure germs and traversed by chaotic forces.On the periphery of the sacred space the worshippers make a ritual circuit round the divine centre, their right shoulders turned towards it ...The right is the inside, the finite, assured, well-being, and peace；the left is the outside, the infinite, hostile, and the perpetual menace of evil.［8］

The female principle as the first and primacy of the cosmos in Chandralekha’s philosophy cannot be compromised or degenerated to be equal between the two.The convention of brahmanical right-left composition of the god-goddess pair has to be dismantled in a fundamental sense.In the third scene ofSharira, the traditional imagery of god on the right hand and goddess on the left hand is inverted into the up-down mode in which Doshi’s head descends into John’s two legs.Doshi as the embodiment of Shakti is “descending on ?iva’s head.”［9］In a personal interview with Ananya, Chandralekha spoke of the importance of evoking feminine aspects within the male:

The man prays to God to reveal the feminine in him so that he can be the undifferentiated, undivided being.He prays to God to take away the maleness from him so he can be prakriti, realize the principle of nature in himself.5

For Chandralekha, the aim of becoming Ardhanarishvara is becoming one with no continuity of three.From the separate two individuals to the undifferentiated and undivided one, it is necessary to let the germinated feminine force within males as the One in the context of modern India —— the nation-state, the family, the collective community.This has been envisaged as Bharata Mata (Mother India) who is empowered by her male progeny.Theshaktithat has been domesticated within another nationalist image —— the ideal Hindu joint family —— has to be set free from the shackles and handcuffs of child-bearing and nurturing, concepts that have become the only social justification for women’s lives.

Their “becoming” resides in the fact that their porous bodies render the escape of sensuality, sexuality and femininity in the bodies impossible.To return to Ardhanarishwara, one entails the performance of femininity in male in which “becoming”, and not “being”, is focused by performers6who gradually manifested the idea during the process of interacting, exploring, challenging, and subverting the social, cultural, and gender norms of Indian society.This imagery of Ardhanarishwara, or Sahaja, is an active movement of femininity springing from masculinity.

ll.Reconsidering repetition of movements as variations

As we have already seen, the notion that time is non-linear and cyclical makes little sense if the cycling is based on the mode of prototype and repetition that is mechanically operated.The myth of origin in Indian classical dance is imbued with the eternal origins of its creator Bharat and god/goddess.However, the question how one faces the natural disasters and the human suffering throughout history cannot be answered.As Chandralekha recalled in her first public dance recital in 1952, this tension between the lullaby of “Mathura Nagarilo, depicting the river Yamuna and abundance of water” and the cruel fact of “a drought and long queues of people standing on the cracked earth and waiting for water with little tins in hand” thrusted Chandralekha into the paradox of life.Under the myth of cyclic time, the purpose of all human action and activities is reckoned to be futile.Romila Thapar said:

There is an eternal cyclic repetition of time, so huge in concept that human activities become minuscule and insignificant in comparison.Cyclic time is continuous, without a beginning or an end.The cycle returns with unchanging regularity and in an unchanging form.This amounts to a refusal of history, for no event can be particular or unique and all events are liable to be repeated in the next cycle.Such a sense of time, based on what has been called an orgy of figures, can only support the philosophic notion of the world being illusory.［10］

The pursuit of the origin is eulogized by nationalists and fascists as the ultimate truth in time.In the history of modern India before and after Independence, as well as in Nazi Germany propagated by Adolf Hitler, the origin of race was traced back to “the Aryan” through which the modern, progressive and homogeneous nation-state would be able to be established.With regard to the origin, Foucault, on the basis of Nietzsche, questions the fallacy of origin in a quite sarcastic way:

“The origin always precedes the fall.It comes before the body, before the world and the time; it is associated with the gods, and its story is always sung as a theogony.”［11］

How does one dismantle the myth that the body escapes the influence of history? For Chandralekha, the one and only approach is the body “full of complexes, full of stratifications of time, stratifications of value systems, of judgments, of dos and don’ts, behavioural modes”.［12］As the descendant of classical dance, Chandralekha used her body to crack the superstitions of origin and beauty within her own parampara and probe the historic residues inscribed on it.“The body manifests the stigmata of past experience and also gives rise to desires, failings, and errors”［11］.As Foucault put it, body is the site of forces.It is “molded by a great many distinct regimes； it is broken down by the rhythms of work, rest, and holidays； it is poisoned by food or values, through eating habits or moral laws.”［11］In the body, the traces of becoming are projected out as the inner histories of growing up.Hair growth and fall, saliva secretion, the constant proliferation of cells in the bottom layer of stratum corneum with the counter-movement of shedding of damaged ones.They are also receivers of stimuli, visible and invisible, internal and external.We wake up.We fart.We eat and sleep.We use hand gestures but do not shake our butts.We hug but do not kiss.All events happening in the body have their own histories, causes and effects.

Chandralekha is convinced that time is non-linear and cyclical.The implication of cyclical nature of time, however, is not elaborated by her.In addition, the stance of positing a non-Western concept of time, as she did, is not able to respond to the question: in what condition the body is domesticated as a classical dancer is subjugated to the ideology of origin and its repetition of time and of dancing a “timeless” body.If time is based on the mode of a prototype and its repetition that is mechanically operated, it is solely another homogeneous idea of time as the repetition of the myth of origin has fallen into the same category of mechanical reproduction that she criticised vehemently.In other words, the homogeneous repetition is just another synonym for representation in which the origin as the central referent and the signified are fixed in the univocal and unambiguous relationship, and repetition is the way of going back in order to represent the origin.Within this systematisation through representation, all these dance forms preserved and promoted by State organisations to be annually presented as euphoric spectacles of government creativity are precarious, as their direct references to life are more or less truncated.［13］

Foucault said, “The body is the inscribed surface of events.” The challenge posited by the body to the history is its mobility within, it stirs the surface of the status of subjects regarded to be inert and immobile and intervenes the composition of body and mind.In the theology of traditional history, the body is looked upon from afar, or awaiting to be announced to be the barrier to the transcendental due to its transience and unreliability.The history put forward by the body is “effective” because the “distances and heights” built by metaphysicians are shortened to the things nearest to history, that is the body.［11］Chandralekha has no fear of looking down.She is aware of the fact that the body is a site of historic events.The body receives emotions and materials external to itself and responds with its corporeality.The history in the body is the “effective” history dealing with the existential situation in everyday life, disturbing what was previously considered immobile, and showing the heterogeneity of what was imaged consistent with itself.［11］This heterogeneity in the body is amorphous, as it changes form, texture, and structure.

What is the relationship between the action or movement and the executant? While ordinary movements of life are done in seconds, one after another, without further observation or insight, I as the agent lose the chance to reflect upon their cause and effect.As a way of re-experiencing and re-sensing the complete process of psychophysical training, repetition is utilized by coaching masters of different religious traditions to activate the awareness towards the base of daily activities.The repetition of action, which is seemingly fixed and homogeneous, can also lead to uncertainty and heterogeneity.To take breathing as an instance, it is an activity and phenomena of daily life.One does live a life with or without being aware of its connection to life and to its surroundings.This event, however, is repeatedly operated by yoga and meditation masters to sense its inhalation and exhalation from outward to inward and vice versa.The flow of air travelled into the nostrils or into the mouth, and went down to the back of the throat and into the windpipe, or trachea.From there the flow goes into the left and right lungs.Some religious coaches also ask the advanced initiates to try to guide the flow to the abdomen, or Sacral Chakra, in yoga terminology.The repetition of the same process of inhalation and exhalation gives nuance to how the senses are to be activated and how the self as a changing entity is tied to the environment where one resides.The routine of breathing is, by way of repetition, investigated deliberately and deconstructed to be air particles in the air travelling inside and outside the human body.

The act of repetition, as we notice in various religious traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and so on), is designed to make devotees or practitioners understand the nature of change, vulnerability and the impermanence of the body, which is based on the provision of duality of the material and the spiritual world.That is to say, the aim of repetition is not the fulfillment of the physical world replete with Dukkha (bad formations or suffering) but the overcoming of it and the reaching of the transcendental beyond.The ascetic stand against body is opposing to the scenes of body Chandralekha delivered deliberately.In the first scene ofSharira, the mode of repetitive movement of the female dancer is involved with the re-creation and re-affirmation of her flesh and its sensuality domesticated in Indian culture and society where the sexuality, sensuality and physicality of women are used for the continuity of patrilineal generation and the fortification of the father-oriented edifice.While she was doing the yogalike movement, she cast her eyes over her feet as if this is the first time for her to see through the shape and the texture of them.The autonomy of her body was reassured by the repetition of pushing her feet towards her face and looking into them, staring at them, caressing them, and sniffing them.The reaffirmation of the senses of her body drives away the conviction in Hindu asceticism that among the genres of the mortal body, the female kama (body) is the most dangerous due to its nature and threat to a male-dominated community.

The body also constructs resistance through heterogeneous repetition.Doshi’s repetition movement is involved not only with her refinding the corporeality and sensuality lost in the grand discourse of nationalist reperception of “heavenly” and “timeless” dancing bodies, but also with the fertilization of the female body and female sexuality.In the former case, the physical presence of women is frozen and spiritualised in the noble origin of the past while in the latter, it is self-castrated within the Indian nationalist discourse of female sexuality.Unlike the homogeneous repetition, the heterogeneous one entails the subject living in the three aspects of its temporal situation.As far as time is concerned, the subject ‘I’ is in the ‘living present’, looking back to the past from which the prototype as the driving force gives expectancy to ‘I’.In the case of a particular experience like this, ‘I’ as a mundane being might be faced with the possibility of being struck down by the superior order of religious asceticism or of reaching the archetype by breaking through the physical limitation.The third possibility is that while in face of the remote origin, ‘I’ as a mortal living being reinterpret the genesis of origin by fighting against infinity with the body.Without a doubt,Sharirabelongs to the third one.The female principle posited as the primary one in the universe by Chandralekha is not a transcendental ideal to which ‘I’ am enforced to fit.On the contrary, it is played out through the female body that is submerged into the river of history.The act of repetition inSharirais a process of embodiment through which her intentionality (“I want to ...”) triggers the act of understanding and exploring her lower parts.Each repetition is a new creation that posits “effective” history dealing with events in terms of their most unique characteristics, their most acute manifestation.［11］

lll.The body as a sacred site of sexuality, sensuality and spirituality

Chandralekha’s return to the body is not to create a new dance form, but to reinterpret the contemporaneity of the body by means of de-structuring, of re-structuring, of synthesis.［14］Her resistance to certainty and hegemony can be traced back as far back as to August 1982 due to the suspicious activities of the organisation Skill, cofounded by her and Sadanand Menon with the assistance of Dashrath Patel, a designer and visual artist.As a result, she and Mr.Menon were charged with sedition and asked to present themselves in front of a magistrate every night.［15］Later, the Indian government started to sponsor massive cultural exchange initiates around the world known as the “India Festival Abroad”, in response to the waves of globalisation.Classical dance as the emblem of the spirit of ancient India was pushed onto the global stage.These two forces of homogenization —— one being the many acts of censorship in the post-Emergency period (1980s), bringing India to the point of what Salman Rushdie describes as a “cultural emergency”； the other being the demand to expose to the wave of globalisation —— formulated her stand of resistance against the violence of homogenisation.

Instead of learning western techniques and forms, she insisted on the indigenous knowledge and corporeal traditions that have never been thought through by classical dancers.On the one hand she delved into the depth of the tradition itself, seeking inwardly to disclose its contemporaneity and the camouflaged significance of what is taken for granted within Hindu culture.On the other, she attacked the brahmanical notions of high-caste culture and the fossilized tradition as a whole.Her tactics of wielding a double-edged sword leak to a great degree the way she regards the definition of the sacred.In a conversation, she talked about the value of the undifferentiated state of Ardhanarishvara, while denouncing asceticism and suggesting the elimination of the god and goddess on the stage of dance in another paper:

There are more questions: how to understand dance as a language in its own right, self-sufficient and with a vocabulary of its own —— so as to free it from the tedious god/goddess narratives and staged religiosity, to give it a secular space of its own.［16］

The concept of Ardhanarishvara and the concept of sahaja is to become one, undivided, undifferentiated, human.［4］

Chandralekha’s quest for totality should not be reduced to a single unit that is in any way consistent and homogeneous.For her, the totality has its specific dimension in the cosmological sense and the quest for it does not denote the necessity of de-heterogeneity and selfsacrificing.Her perspective on the heterogeneity of totality is reflected on her critique on classical dance.She pointed out in 2003 the “spectacular scenes, archaic social values, faked religiosity, idealisation leading to mortification of the form, numbing sentimentality, literalism, verbalism, dependence on sahitya (literature), mystification and dollification, perpetuation of anti-women values.” She also criticised the unresponsive attitude of classical dance to the drastic social, cultural, political and environmental changes that have happened in India over the last four decades.［9］In contrast to the totality constructed by Indian nationalists and her contemporaries as the “centre” where classical dance is in the service of timelessness and eternality, her position of totality intervened dances within the scope of history, saving them from the constraint of religious, ascetic and revivalist pedagogy.

The category of the sacred in Brahmanism and its revival movement in the history of modern India has been referred to as the Vedic texts, on which the norms of behaviours are built, along with the gods/goddesses of the culture.The authority of them and the concerned male perspective is fixed on the altar at any cost.As a result, the idea that the sacred is regarded as the origin of the transcendental beyond the human being and this world fails one to put his/her face on the issue of selfovercoming or of self-transformation and to search for the power of self.How do those who are excluded from the centre and are marginalised as a minority respond or react to the petrified relation between him/her and the centre? Is it to accept the discourse and the explanations put forward by the privileged (male/high caste) and justify the oppression and struggling upon them by the names “Dharma”, “Samsara” and “Nirvana”? Or is it to campaign against the hegemony residing in the centre of tradition by appealing for daily life experience and the special event of individual’s past and living present? Moreover, how will those desacralising subjects of human and social science deal with the fate of people in the modern era and understand the meaning of new constellations appearing in their life, such as capitalism and religious commodification?

In Chandralekha’s thought, there are two main threats causing the alienation of the body.One is the pale body in classical Indian dance unwilling to reconsider the power relation between the subject and center, the other is the negative impact of industrialisation and materialisation during modernisation, such as pollution and the division of the body and the universe.The body as the direct victim of these two levels of alienation, however, is capable of reintegrating itself to the totality with the flows and liquids that have seemingly perished but in fact are still struggling within the body.Sudhir Kakar once said:

The Hindu body, portrayed in relevant cultural texts, predominantly in imagery from the vegetable kingdom, is much more intimately connected with the cosmos than the clearly etched Western body which is sharply differentiated from the rest of the objects in the universe.The Hindu body image stresses an unremitting interchange taking place with the environment, simultaneously accompanied by ceaseless change within the body.［21］

Kakar’s division of the Hindu and the Western body is based upon the fact that the clinical samples who suffered from ill-health and came for professional scientific psychoanalytic help have an individuality that is embedded in and expressed by terms from the Hindu cultural universe［21］, in which gods and spirits, community and family, food and drink, personal habits and character, all seem to be somehow intimately involved in the maintenance of health［21］.If Kakar’s assertion of the multiplicity of the Hindu body still holds true in contemporary India, I would say the relentless interchange between the body and the environment, to Chandralekha’s insistence on the body’s potentials, entails the crucial fact of death which seemingly terminates life itself.

Among the various body genres in Hinduism and the consumer society in India, Chandralekha’s quest for body is unique.For the former three categories, countering the reality of and dread of “death” is the driving force to elaborate the body skills and techniques in the three domains.Asceticism propagates the beyond as the divine by regulating and discipling the corporeal desires while brahmanical (high caste/class) nationalism advocates women as the bearers of building up the third out of the heterosexual marriage, which is a way of sustaining the continuity of male lineages.In the post-modern and globalised world, the ways of sensing the body has been reinvested with post-capitalistic mesmerising phrases such as “Invest in your beauty” “Stay young forever” that will eventually lead to consumption, motivated by the dread of aging, physical decay, forgetfulness, and the final death.All the three genres are indulged in overcoming the nature of the body that only lives once.This once-experience of the body is rendered to be changing and temporary in Asceticism, awaiting to be united by a bigger and more eternal One that is regarded as spiritual and hence sacred, whereas the one-timeexperience is restrained in Indian nationalism to be taken over by the third offspring between heterosexual marriage.In the popular entertainment of contemporary India, the fear of death is transformed into the desires for consuming the fabrication of a myth of rejuvenating aging bodies which can be reverted by plastic surgery and investment in costly beauty products.By contrast, Chandralekha’s quest for the co-existence of the 3 S’s (sexuality, sensuality, and spirituality) starts from and ends in the body.For her, this palace is filled with diverse life activities and invisible energies that can be evoked while faced by threats of pollution, violence and injury.The body does not seek another shelter imposed by the external (the beyond, the protection of the ideal Hindu joint family, and golden house of cosmetics) as it is one in itself.Before succumbing to the eternal law of death, its potentials to reintegrate into natural/ cosmological rhythm and to regenerate itself from the wounds by violence are ready to be evoked at all times.After being terminated by death, the body is decomposed into a part of nature, into particles and atoms that go into the cycling pace of life.By law of life and death, body is no longer the representation of eternality, as the imageries of body in classical Indian dance, but a vivid constellation of the past, the present, and the future co-existed simultaneously.The journey of body is determined by the process of becoming of the organic nuances of breathing, muscle movements, the hidden currents in the pre- and post-movements and the amalgamation of them.

Dhrupad, in the tradition of Hindustani music, is used for the invocation of bhakti for deities like Shiva.The characteristic of most Dhrupad singing or songs is “with the intention of cultic performance as part of a sonic liturgy.”［17］With the accompaniment of the vocals of the Gundecha Brothers, I as a witness of this event, was drawn into the depth of the sonic effects and the involuntary disclosure of dreams, nights, flesh and bodies.Contrary to the musical notes in Bharatanatyam“—— theadavus—— as the dance units which contain the alphabet and grammar of the dance and point towards the strength and speed especially of footwork in the execution of the characteristic fast rhythms of the dance, the recital of alap musicks dancers”［18］bodies through the detour of descending into the unconscious externalized as a wrapped and coiled flesh and in later performance as a womb, then ascending as her evoked shakti is embodied as a flying bird.

The event of becoming Ardhanarishwara entails the evoking of his femininity —— his shakti within himself.As a biological male who is conscious of his male identity, his shakti is not self-evident as it is also faced with suppression and regulation that are imposed by his social/cultural/gender norms.In the third scene, the figure of Ardhanarishwara is no longer a deity depicted in Puranas.It is a human-to-become.The activity of shakti in his body has been rejected by the patriarchal system in Indian society.It is now erupting in him, demanding his conscious recognition.As the slow and stable recitals in the beginning transits into fast rhythm like mandras, the event of becoming undifferentiated mesmerises the audience with the birth of a new man in the embodiment of femininity.

lV.Conclusion: critical examination of Hindu parampara in Sharira

Questioning the given institution of heterosexual marriage, patriarchal and brahmanical ideology of women’s dependence on men, the imposed duty of the procreation of son, and the enterprise of deification and fossilization of body in the classical Indian dance, Chandralekha deployed a new constellation of meaning regarding gender, sexuality, sensuality and spirituality by choreographingshaktias the primal principle with the organic integration of yoga and Kalaripayattu.While some critics attacked her focus on the body as the syndrome of Western influence and a support of Western ideology, her approaches to the body line and the permeability and porousness of Indian performing arts have won her the sharpness of her critique.In any case, the controversies and debates she stirred up paved the way for contemporary dance in India to intervene with the Indian tradition, to interrogate the constructed ideology and hegemony within it, to reconfigure the contour of the whole body and to cross the boundary between different forms of performing arts of subcontinent.Leela Venkataraman commented on Chandralekha’s interpretation that “the danger in taking up a confrontationist stance against clichés is that this may itself become a cliché”.This, however, also takes on the risk of viewing the fire burning across the river without being involved in Chandralekha’s radical stance of “transforming and not renouncing this world［19］,”a statement inspired by the Tantric.

[Notes]

1 Even in the twentieth century it is still common to hear that Indian women need protection, not independence.In 2017 the yogi Adityanath, the newly elected Chief Minister (CM) in Uttar Pradesh claimed that women should always be protected by her father in her childhood, husband in adulthood, son in old age.Her power should be channelised by this.See https://goo.gl/9r7WJK.

2 The very word “performance” seems to be offensive for Chandralekha as she rejected being watched as a women and a dancer with a proportioned waist and bosom as a Hindi film actress (TOI Dec 8, 1996).However, I still choose the word for two reasons.First, nothing can escape the renaming and branding of modern capitalism.Even the movement and exercise appealling for the slowing down of pace of life style, such as yoga and slow diet in the West, are automatically and unavoidably involved with the swirling of machanism of modern consumption.Second, in the context of modern proscenium stage, the public space like Stein Auditorium is designed for the participation of audience to watch what is happening on the stage.

3 The documentary is directed by Ein Lall (New Delhi: PSBT, 2003).C.f.https://goo.gl/KCn2u1.

4 According to the recorded version uploaded by Olivier Barot on Youtube, Shaji John jumped and dived into the space of her parted pelvis.In the live performance of Sharira in 2016, however, John broke into the space by the kick of Kalarippayatu, the martial art form from Kerala.C.f.https://goo.gl/5zVwds.

5 Ananya Chatterjea’s personal communication with Chandralekha in 2000, c.f.Ananya Chatterjea,Butting out(Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, c2004), 307.

6 Ibid.