INDU MITHA ....TEACHING BHARATNATYAM DANCE IN PAKISTAN

                                                                                 

INDU MITHA (Born 1929)

 “Dance is a feeling and a beautiful sensation that springs from the soul. Can you stop it? We danced our way under the shadows of so many threats. We danced with curtains pulled and lights switched off.”

Says Indu Mitha, the only Bharatanatyam dancer in Pakistan who single-handedly ensured the survival of this form of dance in that country. Indu Mitha, Bharatanatyam dance and Pakistan. Sounds strange. Appears not true! You raise your eyebrows. And she danced under candlelight when the then government under General Zia ul Haq acted with a heavy hand against artists in the fields of music, classical dance and cinema. And during those days, poet Faiz had to move out and live in exile.

Art in itself is a celebration of human existence. It is a river that brings greenery and life. You have a choice: make this planet a desert and suffer, or bring life and greenery and live happily. When classical dance became a victim of government repression in that country, Guru Jaykar Ganshyam and his wife Neelima closed their Karachi-based classical dancing school. They left Pakistan in 1980. Guru Ganshyam taught dance to Sheema Kirmani, the renowned Pakistani classical dancer. Sheema heads her dance and theatre troupe Tehrik e Niswan (Women's Movement). She enthrals her audience with Kathak, Odissi or Bharatanatyam, performed even to the poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. You feel thrilled to see her dancing to “Intesaab”, a poem that Faiz had dedicated to rickshawallahs, clerks, toiling workers and weeping mothers of his country. Pakistani dancers have deconstructed dance in that country to suit its cultural ethos and shape it into a creative form that resonates with local audiences. Sheema Kirmani, Farha Yasmeen Sheikh, Amna Mawaz, Farrukh Darbar, Munawar Chao and so many others are well-known names in classical dance in that country presently.

Then we also know about Maharaj Ghulam Hussain Kathak (1905 to 2001) of Pakistan, who taught Kathak to some renowned dancers of Pakistan like Nahid Siddiqui, Fasih Ur Rehman and Nighat Chowdhary. Maharaj Ghulam Hussain was trained by Achhan Maharaj, father of Lachhu Maharaj of India.

Indu Ji  lives in Islamabad. She has an old attachment to Lahore, where her father, Prof. Gyanesh Chandra Chatterjee, taught Philosophy at Government Degree College. After the Partition riots broke out in Lahore, this Bengali Christian family moved to Delhi in 1947. She learnt Bharatanatyam in Delhi, in the Kalakshetra style, from a disciple of Rukmini Devi. She fell in love with Abu Baker Mitha (Memon) from Bombay and married him much against the wishes of her family. When her husband moved to Pakistan in the early 1950s, she also joined him. Abu Baker joined the Pakistan Army and rose to become a Major General. He was bumped out by the then rulers after Pakistan's defeat in the 1971 war with India. He died in 2000.

 Indu Ji is the great-granddaughter of the priest of Kalibari Temple of Kolkata who converted to Christianity. She did an MA (Philosophy) from Delhi University in 1951, and taught at the Government College for Women, Rawalpindi after moving to Pakistan.

 She also learnt dance and music from Guru Jayakar Ganshyam when her husband was posted at Karachi. After her marriage, she visited India and stayed for about one year here on an ICCR scholarship, during which period she trained herself in Odissi. Back in Pakistan, she took upon herself the challenge to train women and girls in Bharatanatyam and Odissi. To suit Pakistan's cultural ethos, she did some minor modifications in these dances. Her efforts from the beginning were to modify the mythological content of the dances so that they became stories about ordinary human beings that do not clash with the religious beliefs of audiences or even students. The only dance that she has performed and taught without interpreting is “Natanam Adinaar”, the dance of Shiva, “Because when my girls go abroad and pursue dance, the Indian girls should not think they have not learnt the real Bharatanatyam.”

I quote from Maneesha Tikekar's book “An Indian's Sojourn in Pakistan: Across the Wagah Border”

“One day I saw Indu ji’s disciples performing at Islamabad Club auditorium. The small auditorium was jam-packed. Latecomers had no place to enter. It appeared that the entire elite of Islamabad were at the auditorium. Fashionable women had found a rare opportunity to air their sarees. Indu ji’s disciples performed pure dance forms like ALLARIPU, JATISWARAM, TILLANA and VARANAM. The whole ambience was dance and music. I wondered if I were in Shanmukhnandan Hall, Mumbai, or in Islamabad. It was a unique opportunity to witness ARANGETRAM in Pakistan. I felt surprised that they did not mention Krishna by name; instead, they mentioned Maakhan chor. According to Indu ji, she has to make hundreds of compromises to keep Bharatanatyam alive in Pakistan. This is true. Though public dance performances are not banned currently in Pakistan, it is a challenge to keep dance alive. For this, Sheema Kirmani uses Urdu, Persian and English poetry in her Odissi performances. She also uses Sufi poetry for GEET GOVINDAM and RADHA KRISHNA.”

“I believe that Bharatanatyam has a future the world over and will also survive in Pakistan,” she says optimistically.

Tehreem Mitha, her daughter, is also a trained Bharatanatyam and Odissi dancer. Tehreem moved to the USA and set up her own Bharatanatyam Dance Academy known as TMDA.

 

(Avtar Mota)

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.