The Kalyani Daughters, Memories from the Madras Music Academy

Donovan Roebert

The photograph of the Kalyani daughters, Rajalakshmi and Jeevaratnam, which was produced sometime between 1931 and 1933, is as well-known as it is usually unaccompanied by any documented insights into the lives and art of these sisters. The present brief article is an attempt to present some items of information that may help to bring into sharper focus their place as artists and individual personalities in the forced evolution of Bharata Natyam from the 1930s onwards.

Tiruvalaputtur Kalyani Ammal

Davesh Soneji

Biographical details for the sisters are sparse. They were the daughters of the famous Dasi Attam dancer Kalyani Ammal from Tiruvalaputtur, who was a ritual and secular dancer attached to the Ratnigiriswaran temple, where she also lived. It is said that she became the second spouse of Meenakshisundaram Pillai, and that Jeevaratnam was born of their union. I have not been able to find birth dates for either of the sisters, and there are no exact indications as to their ages when they performed for the Madras Music Academy (MMA) in 1931, and again in 1933.

Pandanallur Meenakshisundaram Pillai

The dates of the two performances are very interesting because they are both closely connected to seminal events which occurred in the dance economy in those years. The Kalyani daughters first performed for the MMA on 15 March, 1931, just a few months after Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi had successfully introduced the first formulation of her Anti-Devadasi (Prevention of Dedication) Bill in the Madras Legislative Council. The appearance of Rajalakshmi and Jeevaratnam on a public proscenium stage in the near aftermath of Reddi's first real legislative success must have been very irksome to her, and is said to have caused her much chagrin. It must therefore have taken real courage on the part of the sisters to havebraved the stage at all. So anxiety-ridden, indeed, was the whole affair that many stayed away from that performance for fear of incurring public censure.

The sisters performed again under the auspices of the MMA on 1 January, 1933. This must have been an even more nervous occasion for the two girls because this performance took place only some weeks after the public spat between Dr Reddi and E Krishna Iyer, in which Iyer had accused Reddi of using a sledgehammer instead of a razor in dealing with the delicate question of the devadasis and their dance. In fact, they were dancing just three days after the MMA had taken a unanimous decision, on 28 December, 1932, to go directly against Reddi's agenda by promoting the dance as a secular art.

Muthulakshmi Reddi

At this early period in the public resuscitation of the dance, the MMA was still of the opinion - as a pragmatic point of strategy - that one way forward for the soon-to-be-outlawed devadasis was to enable then to earn a living by public performances of their art. Two of the speakers, Dr Srinavasa Raghava Ayyangar and Dr S Krishnaswami Ayyanger, spoke respectively as follows:

The immediate task of art lovers should be to encourage the fine arts particularly among the reclaimed members of the Devadasi class, especially as their heredity in the art will be valuable. We should also support those who are interested in reclaiming the class by legislation and otherwise. The Devadasis might be induced to have regular married life and make an honourable living by the art.

And:

If you do not propose to give the present practitioners of this art an opportunity of attempting to make an earnest [probably ‘honest’] living, surely it would not be possible for them to retrace their steps without your help … I take it that the view of the majority assembled here is that we cannot begin under better auspices than by helping them towards this improvement.

The Kalyani Daughters: Rajalakshmi & Jeevaratnam

But this notion was by no means assured either of immediate acceptability or of eventual success because it did not - at least at that early stage - concur with the far more radical intentions envisaged for the devadasis by Dr Reddi and the complex arrangement of social, political, and cultural reform instances which supported her. In the view of these groups, the very idea of dance was so closely intertwined with the devadasi system that the art itself could no longer be countenanced in India, and should be banned not only from public but also from private venues.

We get some idea of the difficulty of practising dance in this recollection by Rukmini Devi Arundale, speaking in 1971:

Among the great dancers whom I have known, Gowri Amma was the first one whom I met. It was after seeing Meenakshisundaram Pillai's two disciples, Jeevaratnam and Rajalakshmi dance, that I decided to learn this art. I searched everywhere for a teacher, but as often happens, one searches everywhere except nearest to oneself. Many teachers were suggested to me, but I went to meet Gowri Amma in the home where she lived in Mylapore. My first lesson started with her as my teacher with the sabdam 'Sarasijakshulu'. After that I arranged for her to come to Adyar to my home to teach me. I was learning secretly at that time because a large number of people in the country were against the dance ...

Mylapore Gowri Ammal during an abhinaya demonstration

This statement of the reputational dangers of learning dance is confirmed by Dr M Madeswaran who writes that Dr Reddi met with Rukmini Devi's mother, Seshammal, to persuade her to stop her daughter from dancing. It is easy to imagine, then, the kind of pressure that must have been brought to bear on Kalyani Ammal, on Meenakshisundaram Pillai, the sisters'teacher, and on the girls themselves to prevent theirperforming in public.

Rukmini Devi with her mother: Seshammal

None of this in mentioned by E Krishna Iyer, writingabout the Kalyani daughters in 1933:

A combination of appreciable abhinaya and considerable foot work in adavujathis mark the art of the Kalyani daughters of Thiruvalaputhur. The daughters of a mother who was herself a noted artist, they had their training under Meenakshisundram of Pandanallur who has a hoary family tradition of greatness in this art and is by himself a man of great talents. They dance together and their performance is ordinarily called a double dance ... The simultaneous rendering of abhinaya and adavujathis by two persons together adds novelty and vivacity to the art though small but inevitable differences in personal characteristics may sometimes lead to a distraction of comparisons and contrasts. The two artists Rajalakshmi and Jeevaratnam are still in their youth and are nimble of feet; and the abhinaya is noteworthy particularly in the younger one. Of slender frame and dark brown complexion her lithe, graceful figure with ever smiling face, large eyes and expressive features mark out conspicuously the younger sister, Jeevaratnam; and her art arrests the attention of the audience from the outset. The stock of the two sisters may not be considerable or varied; but they try to be elaborate in what they know, especially in the pada varna. They invariably display much of variegated adavujathis in scintillating cascades and they are vivacious in effect, though at times they are carried to excess.

E Krishna Iyer

Iyer adds the sad footnote:

Since writing the above article originally in the 'Indian Express', the tragic news of the untimely death of Miss Jeevaratnam the younger of the two Kalyani daughters by smallpox in June '33 came to be known. It is a great pity that the cruel hand of death should have snatched away such a talented artist still in the bloom of youth and with a great future and the art of dancing is the poorer for her loss.

The tone of encouraging appreciation and of pathos in these two extracts is oddly belied by Iyer's introduction to his brief section on dance in Personalities in Present Day Music (1933) in which these passages occur. In the introduction itself he notes that:

By this time even purists and prudes would have been convinced of the intrinsic beauty of the art, howevermuch it may suffer by the medium by which it is represented ...

Personalities in Present Day Music (1933)

This negative allusion to the hereditary dancing class was already present in the 1932 public controversywith Reddi, in which Iyer had contended that:

… Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi would apply a sledge-hammer and see both a class of persons and their Art go lock, stock and barrel, after which alone – according to her – respectable ladies would think of touching the Art … For my part it is no question of Art at the expense of morality, or even positive encouragement of the present day nautch girls as a class and never a justification for the perpetuation of the Devadasi class as such. The heavens would not fall and morality would in no way be jeopardised if one or two cases of very good Art is reluctantly tolerated in exceptional instances – without the associated vice – as a matter of temporary evil necessity, pending the coming up of better persons.

And:

The fact of the matter is that the muses have to thrive somewhere. They could not and would not die. Nor can they thrive merely on the hopes and pious wishes of the reformers of the destructive type. They cannot breathe or live in a vacuum between the total abolition of the Devadasi class and the doubtful coming up of respectable ladies to take to them … The legacy of the art of Bharatanatyam is too precious a treasure to be destroyed or dimmed by the confusion of purpose and methods of overenthusiastic reformers with no proper perspective of Indian life and its amenities.

Rukmini Devi Arundel

Within a mere three years of these allusions to 'better persons' and 'the doubtful coming up of respectable ladies to take to them', Rukmini Devi would present her first performance for a select audience in the gardens of the Theosophical Society, no doubt without the general approval of the Society as a whole. As she recalled:

On the whole, I felt I had managed to convert the orthodox Madras crowd to my point of view. But it was not easy to win over some of the members of Theosophical society. Many who did not understand felt it was not at all the proper thing for the wife of the president to dance even though he supported and encouraged me ...

With the untimely death of Jeevaratnam, her sister Rajalakshmi seems to have withdrawn from public performances for the Music Academy. It is possible that she danced at least once with another 'star' among the young hereditary dancers, Varalakshmi, in the 1930s - but I am unable to confirm this.

The photograph of the Kalyani daughters occurs as a plate in Iyer's Personalities in Present Day Music, where it is attributed to Rao Saheb P Ramachandra Chetty, about whom I have been able to find no further information. Apart from the visual insight it gives us into the characters of the rather nervous-looking young dancing sisters, it is valuable for documenting the Sadir costume of the period and the general 'look' of the dancers as they would have been seen on the stage by the few persons brave enough to attend their performances.

My hope in having written this brief article is that Rajalakshmi and Jeevaratnam will now come more alive to readers, not only as the best of what had survived of the hereditary dance economy after decades of sustained attacks on its members by reformists and social purists, but as two courageous young girls who stand permanently as markers for the dogged survival of the art through the coming decades of hardship for their community in the period of the thriving of the 'better persons' and 'respectable ladies' who would take the art forward in a rather different way.

About the author:

Donovan Roebert is the author of several works of fiction and non-fiction. He has been engaged for some years in research into the textual and pictorial aspects of Indian dance history. His book, 'Essays on Classical Indian Dance' was published in 2021. His latest work on textual research will be published this year under the title, 'Western Texts on Indian Dance: An Illustrated Guide from 1298 to 1930'. He has also written two published novels based on the grammar of Odissi and Bharata Natyam. These are 'The Odissi Girl' and 'The Rose Girl of Dharamkot'. His ongoing research findings can be viewed at his blog, 'Aspects of Pictorial Indian Dance History.'

View of black [George] town, Madras,

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