How americans saved indian art
Newly emigrated Indians observe how American Indians are loyal to rituals and practices that even native Indians are no longer following. These American Indians are desperately trying to hold onto particular aspects of a country they have long left due to economic insecurity and social pressure, trying to bubble wrap the heaviness of their past to have some stabilizing force to put into their suitcase of travels.
NRI's (Non-Resident Indians) seem to never forgive themselves for leaving India. They spend money, send gifts, bring gifts, buy land, visit, invest in businesses, and see the movies, listen to the songs, tie the rakhis, wear the clothes but they still feel guilty. They do not admit they are happy that they left. It is hard to admit that being an Indian in America is more rewarding than being an Indian in India.
American Indians seek the approval of native Indians while native Indians continue to slander American Indians for gentrifying their culture when actually the American diaspora’s accumulation of capital and dispersion of capital into the stagnant desi economy is what is saving and scaling what would have otherwise been India’s cultural collapse.
Living in America since I was 4, of course I went to India in search of my own native affirmation. I went looking for the authentic version of dance that I thought I was missing out on. The grass is always greener phenomenon. My dance teachers in India charged two different prices for dance classes 50$ for a foreign student and 1,200 rupees which is about 13$ for an Indian student. This is a normal, domestic v. foreign charge. But the cost was very dear to me. Even though my parents were the ones paying the fiat currency, I was paying with my dignity. What would these dance teachers do if there were no American students to charge thrice the price?
The only thing I ended up learning while studying dance in India was how to have an imposter syndrome. I developed a disgust for the same art form that I had once venerated and fought hard to go study in its original context. A context that I thought still existed. The dogma around studying classical indian art is as much smoke and mirrors as is the fashion industry. People describe it as being difficult and impossible, but they never explain how the huge population in india who couldn’t possibly all be rich, were doing it. These young dancers are written off by the diaspora public as getting help from their families. As if the whole industry is only well bred nepotism but this is untrue and incorrect. Sagarasangamam is real. There are as many classical artists in India as there are because they choose the craft and learn to live below their means. They earn their education rather than buying it from teachers who offer their knowledge as penance for being good at what they do. Most importantly, the dance industry being the derivative of the devadasi caste, is another affirmation of how nepotism in this industry is not something to be proud of. It’s the adoption and the purchasing of the knowledge by Brahmins that has distorted our perception. It’s a reminder that anyone can learn the artform as long as you are willing to let go of worldly comforts. It is not money or who you know that can get you there, its the utter surrender to the tantric pursuit of worshipping the god in oneself through physical tonsure that gets you there.
Whether it’s a 300 rupee Poonam saree or a 2,000 rupee Kalamkari dance saree from Shanti tailors, you are still going to sweat in it. Real sponsors know that. Real musicians know it and real priests feel it. Ask the white kids at Kalakshetra, ask Prabhishna from Kerala, whose mother is a tailor and father is a worker in Dubai. Ask Harinie Jeevitha.
The Kutchipudi Art Academy in Chennai has plaques listing donors with the amounts they have donated proudly written in lakhs. All the names were unremarkable, but the ellipses followed by United States had the largest sums written next to them. I found it enlightening that they displayed these names and numbers so honestly and without shame in such a historic cultural institution where they clearly took great pains to preserve the original setting and sanctity of the space. There was an aura of genuine appreciation from these plaques, as a reminder that they as an institution did not care where you were from because they celebrate support for the arts irrespective of what your country of residence is and where your values and life decisions have taken you. A genuine validation that supporting the sadhana brings you closer to relinquishing these humane categorizations, even if it is only for a 10-minute Thillana, you invested your worldly income for a transcendental purpose.
I went to a ceremony where Harinie Jeevitha was being presented with an award. The presenting member, spoke about how he hopes that Jeevitha, who became the lead performer of her dance academy, who has written a book about dance, who is preserving and enriching the Melattur philosophy school of Bharatanatyam, as he continued to hold her award, he said that he hopes this 28 year old girl, doesn't get married to an American software engineer and moves away to the US. The audacity of a man with a hole in his sock on a stage he could never hold, presenting an award to one of the best Bharatanatyam dancers in the world. If we can applaud Indians for practicing tech in America why do we consider Indian dance practitioners in America as diluted versions of the real thing? This is the depressing state of the travelling Indian's self-humiliation.
It's the Sellouts who end up investing back into their own heritage the most. The guilt of leaving drives them to do the most good. Like a jellyfish stuck to the achilles of a doberman, once the americans overcome the irreparable damage of ripping themselves away from the only thing they have ever known, then literally being called an Alien on travel documentation, certified and adjudicated by the United States government just to lose your appetite because you couldn’t join your old classmates for the school reunion because you used up all your PTO on your daughter’s dance recitals. These individuals whose self-worth is connected to their American passport, they come to realize that geographic location is a small part of what makes one Indian. Because the caste system is growing and thriving and the lowest ones on the pyramid are Americans.
Amongst the losses, these brown-colored Americans gain formidable strength once they heal from the dissolution of their identity. They know how to do things by themselves. They decide who they want to be generous to and they understand the value of comfort. They find an unimaginable calm in their solitude and to not have mentally undeveloped, anxiety-motivated community of minimally-educated elders around them; after a hard day, they have the privilege of struggling, knowing that they will not come home to people that will make them feel worse, they can be economically insecure in peace.
American Browns are on the cusp of their slavery mindset being overcome but the last rites are still to be taken.
The understanding is that, when economic insecurity leaves you, health stays with you. When the degree has been conferred, and the claps have been heard and the name has been pronounced incorrectly, the only thing one wants to do is come home.
It does not matter how many times the Draupadi vastrapaharan has been performed, because there will be yet another young girl who is going to do it poorly. The sahityam is meant to be imitated not embodied. We must not look away.
The investment rate of American Indians into the arts is a feat worthy of a momentous self-appraisal. We have built not just grocery franchises and software companies, but temples, whole ecosystems of art culture, hindu education, and self-hope conglomerates of yoga and spiritual ascension practices that are beyond quantitative appraisal. Whether you're a sellout or a devotee American Indians are on their way to become consequential aggregators of culture and India should step out of the way by letting their villains become their heroes.