Davesh Soneji, McGill University

“No More Nautches in Poodoocottah”:

Colonial Modernity, Memory and the Devadasi Dance Tradition of the

Viralimalai Murukan Temple

                                 Photograph: Cylla von Tiedemann

 R. Muttukkannammal, the last dedicated devadasi of the Murukan temple at Viralimalai in Pudukkottai     district, remembers dancing to English marching-band songs when the Maharaja of Pudukkottai would come to her temple.  Integrated into the catir kacceri or formal concert repertoire in the nineteenth century, these compositions were meant to be part of the courtly “rituals of display” of the Tanjavur and Pudukkottai Maharajas, and devadasi dance was a central visual marker of these spectacles. But by the 1930s, devadasi performances in both the temples and courts of Tamilnadu had become merely perfunctory as far as temple administrators, priests, zamindars, and audiences were concerned.  In Viralimalai, the “ritual-dance repertory” of the temple had disappeared by this time, and instead, only the catir kacceri was performed in the temple on festival days by Muttukkannammal.  Transmogrified by colonial modernity and the discursive contours of “social reform,” the performance culture and lifestyles of devadasis in the Pudukkottai and Tanjavur districts had become irrevocably divested of function or meaning. 

 In this paper I examine how shifts in the sites of devadasi performance can be read as indexes for the process of the community’s disenfranchisement in Tamilnadu from c. 1920-1955.  I suggest that the impact of social reform movements is felt very early in the devadasi communities of Tamil-speaking South India, accounting for the disappearance of “ritual dance” on the one hand, and the disappearance of patronage of courtly dance on the other.  Using ethnographic data and analyses of specific genres within the dance repertoire, this paper illustrates the innovative ways in which the devadasis of Viralimalai transformed and negotiated their identities in relation to the temple and court before, during, and after the implementation of the Anti-Devadasi Act of 1947.