Mallika Sarabhai: ‘There won’t be any gender or caste discrimination in Kalamandalam’

Mallika Sarabhai is the new chancellor of Kerala Kalamandalam.

Artist, performer and activist, Mallika Sarabhai, 69, recently stepped into her new role as chancellor of Kerala’s globally-renowned cultural and educational institution, the 93-year-old Kerala Kalamandalam at Vallathol Nagar, about 30 km from Thrissur. The Ahmedabad-based Sarabhai, who shares an emotional connection with the southern state through her late Kerala-born mother Mrinalini Sarabhai, was appointed by the state government in early December, weeks after Governor Arif Mohammad Khan was removed as chancellor.

Sarabhai, who has decades of experience in leading the 74-year-old Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, founded by her parents Mrinalini Sarabhai and Vikram Sarabhai in 1949, has got going from Day One, throwing out dress rules for girl students, making the campus gender equal, and planning new Bachelor of Arts programmes in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi and master’s courses in dance anthropology, physiology of dance and psychology of performance. Soon there will be a new student’s council, a culture conclave and a research department in the humanities so that the arts can become a language for change. In an exclusive interview, Sarabhai speaks about her appointment, her family’s connection with Kerala and the winds of change that have started blowing on the famous campus. Edited excerpts:

Kerala Kalamandalam, Thrissur district. Short-term courses, BA programmes in Mohiniyattam and Kuchipudi are in the offing.

Your appointment came after the controversial removal of the state Governor as chancellor. Were you apprised of the circumstances that necessitated a new chancellor for Kerala Kalamandalam?

I was aware of the controversy with at Kalamandalam and with the chancellor. Sometime in early December, when I was in the middle of the final rehearsals for a production, I received a phone call. There were five missed calls from a senior friend in the CPM (Kerala’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist). The appointment was not only completely out of my imagination but also out of my zone. Surprised, but I was also very delighted. Over the last decade or two, I have been hearing of the issues at Kalamandalam, that the quality wasn’t as good as it used to be. But it’s an organisation that has always had a lot of sanctity for me. So, the possibility of being able to use my experience of running the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, being a performer myself, and straddling the current century with something that is ancient, is a huge challenge. And I’m very excited by it. The very choice of somebody like me, who is very outspoken, seen as somebody who shakes up things, I think I know what I am expected to do.

You have a connection with Kerala through your mother, Mrinalini Sarabhai, who would have been proud of this moment.

Well, I’m sure Papa (Vikram Sarabhai) as well. Papa has a strong connection with Kerala. People would always ask him why did you choose Thumba (near Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala) as the place for the rocket launch (India’s first). And, I think, he deeply connected with Kerala. And that connection might have predated his meeting Amma or might not have. I’m not sure whether he fell in love with Amma or then fell in love with Kerala or the other way around. So, yes, I’m sure both of them are delighted.

When did you first visit Kalamandalam? Any memories from the time there and in Kerala with your mother?

I remember going there as a child when we would visit our tharavadu (ancestral home) in Kerala and Amma would stop at Kalamandalam. But my longest association with anybody from Kalamandalam was in 1978 when then external affairs minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee asked my mother to put together a group of dancers to go and soften China’s view of India before diplomatic relations could be re-established. A group from Kalamandalam, with Kalamandalam Gopi as the lead dancer, travelled with us for six weeks. That is when I interacted with artists from Kalamandalam the most for a sustained period because we were sharing performances every evening.

What were your initial thoughts about your new role, a first as university chancellor, at a time when there is serious gender inequality in leadership in top educational institutions in the country? In Kerala, there’s been a crisis of thought leadership after the controversial incidents of caste discrimination and mismanagement, respectively, at two of Kerala’s important art institutions, the KR Narayanan National Institute of Visual Science and Arts in Kottayam and Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

I think both the caste and the gender issues are extremely bad just now. It’s ironic that this year is the centenary of the Vaikom Satyagraha and we’re still battling caste. I think one thing I was very clear about is that there will not be any gender or caste discrimination in Kalamandalam. I hope the fact that I’m being interviewed, that I’m talking about this all the time, will influence, in some small way, the other institutions as well. I know that (filmmaker) Saeed Akhtar Mirza has taken over (as chairman of the KR Narayanan Institute) and, I think, he feels equally strongly about this. And we are already talking of collaborating on several issues, I have met with Satchi sir (poet K Satchidanandan) and I’m wanting to collaborate with him as well. And I think a very different worldview needs to be brought in, but it can only be brought in by example. I think intersectionality, working together rather than competitively, and working with integrity, where there is no question of nepotism or corruption or gender bias or caste bias, is a very important role model that needs to be held up so that change can be brought. And if I am a tiny part of that, then I will be extremely happy. But I certainly am going to do all of that in Kalamandalam. In both my vice-chancellor Prof. MV Narayanan and my registrar Rajeshkumar P, I have an amazing team that feels the same way.

One of the first things I did at the Kalamandalam was to talk to every single section of people at the institute because they wanted to understand what their future would be and the issues at hand. So much gender-discrimination issues came up from the girl students. My aim is to make the place gender-equal. There are issues with that as well, because I think neither the young men nor the young women have been taught to treat each other in a gender-neutral way, as human beings instead of as boy and girl, and that sexual exploitation is possible. They are at an age when their hormones are raging. How does one teach them to be safe, to not get involved sexually when they don’t really understand what that is? There are a lot of issues, but we have to start by giving them freedom while teaching them what a good and a bad look is, what a good and a bad touch is.

The new chancellor has vowed to end gender and caste discrimination on the campus.

What are your plans in bringing intellectual enquiry and curiosity in artistic and academic practice?

One of the things that is completely lacking in India is a lobby that lobbies for culture. There’s no cultural lobby, there are individual artistes who suck up to the government and get grants and land. But there is no serious lobby because we work in silos. I might think of myself only as a dancer rather than as a cultural person, but I need to think of myself as a cultural person. I have suggested we organise a culture conclave where we break silos and start a discussion on culture, rather than only on film or dance or literature. And I think Kerala Kalamandalam is very much the right place to lead this.

We also want to start a separate research department in the humanities, looking at the anthropology and history of dance, not only dance as a performing art but at all the cross-connections. With that, the university’s intellectual capital will increase and it can help increase the same in the country. I also want to see if there is a group of senior students and professors who are interested in breaking this idea that a performer is only meant to perform on stage, and to see whether the arts can be taken as a language for change, working with different groups of people, for women’s empowerment or health or education. This is what Darpana has been doing for so many years. We treat our art as a language for change, rather than only as a skill of performance. This needs to be brought into Kalamandalam. This will also help many graduates find work in other avenues, in creating that language of change in society, beyond just as performers.

Are you introducing any new programmes and courses?

We are starting bachelor’s in Arts courses in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi. Bharatanatyam doesn’t exist at Kalamandalam except as a minor subject right now. We want to start a new department that will look at the research and academic side of performance. It will have several humanities subjects at the master’s level. The government has to sanction those courses. We are bringing in India’s experts on sound and light to see how we can completely change the way sound and light is at the Koothambalam (theatre) and we want to create new black box studio spaces in a new wing being readied by June. We are also in the process of getting 10 acre of land adjacent to Kalamandalam to develop as a sustainable architectural model so that we can showcase physically what our belief system is.

How is the conversation on the campus going?

I’ve been going to Kalamandalam every month and having conversations, we’re trying to change systems, trying to get efficient people in. Because it went from a diploma to a degree course (after Kalamandalam was granted Deemed-to-be University), a lot of people’s designations changed without efficiency levels changing. There are many who are not capable of the designations that they hold. We have a huge human power shortage of efficient people to actually take forward what is planned and that is something we need to do. Also, the number of designated posts that get the correct salary is far less than what we require. We are working on to see it become a state university, which the Chief Minister and the Minister of Culture have promised will happen very soon, and that we get the correct number of designated posts. We are extremely short on efficient staff.

There was also an issue of salary non-payment of the staff?

The salary scale is going to be a hassle. Fundraising is very much on my agenda, but we need to get something sorted at home in Kalamandalam before I can start fundraising. I think Kerala is being starved of funds anyway and we are just a part of the financial crisis. We came to a point where I had to intervene and say unless salaries are paid immediately, we’ll have to shut down Kalamandalam because there’s no funds even to buy food for the hostel. That was how bad and serious the condition was. Luckily, unlike in Gujarat, and unlike at the Centre, the Kerala ministry is open to receiving my calls and listening to me. I feel a great sense of liberation working in Kerala. It’s only since I started working at Kalamandalam in January that I realised how isolated I feel working in Gujarat, where not even an IAS officer dares to take a call from me. It’s been like that for 20-odd years. It started with small things being closed off for me and it’s become a total ban for many years now. No one gets used to operating like that, but then it becomes second nature, and it’s a horrible second nature.

Mallika Sarabhai believes in the arts as a language for change in the society.

What are some of the other issues at the Kalamandalam?

There’s a funny issue in Kalamandalam right now, which is that men are not coming to learn Kathakali. We need to throw a larger net to men outside of Kerala, without that the course is going to become an all-women’s category with only the men as musicians. I think there are so many very strong male dancers in the Northeast, but they have never considered Kalamandalam as a possibility. That is where we have to first start. We are also going to start shorter term courses, shorter appreciation courses, and will be looking at students from Africa and Asia at large for those.

The immediate thing that we are doing is that we need to institute at Kalamandalam such facilities, monetarily and in conduct, where tourists can come in. I’m insisting the staff and students learn English, like I’m learning Malayalam, because English-speaking people can communicate and open up our world.

Have the students’ demands been met?

The girl students told me about how much gender discrimination there is. Horrified, I spoke with both the registrar and the vice-chancellor to see if we needed to change the rules or whether it was just patriarchy playing out over nearly a century at the institute. We changed a lot of the ridiculous rules and restrictions that were placed on the girls, such as they couldn’t go to the canteen earlier, couldn’t stay out of the hostel after 6 pm, couldn’t go out into the city, etc. We changed all of that right in the beginning, along with their dress code. I brought in self-defence teaching for the girls.

One of the things that will change is that we want to bring in an elected students’ council so that there is a student voice that is regularly raising the students’ issues that need addressing. A day each week, the students will be shown feature films on dance forms, dancers, artists, and other art forms. Some of the older people in Kalamandalam have encouraged that. I asked the students, what do you do at 4 am that you cannot do at, say, 6 am? Earlier when there was no electricity, children went to bed at 8 pm, and hence wake up at 4 in the morning, but that’s not true of today, so, why are children being deprived of sleep, which is necessary for cognitive development.  So, we have readjusted the timetables because the academic teachers complained that children dose off in the class.

A Kalamandalam bachelor’s of Arts degree should be able to provide students completely different jobs if they so want, or a Kalamandalam senior secondary student should be able to go study Psychology, but if they remain uneducated in academics, they’re never going to be able to do any of those. We are changing some fundamental things like that. I want to talk to our Ayurveda doctors about the validity of the foot massage that is given to men, but not to women. I would like a physiotherapist to come and actually teach both women and men what the correct massage clinically is for dancing, the spine included. To also introduce yoga, which works wonders for dancers, but also for non-dancers. There are many things in tradition which need to be incorporated in our life just like the many things that need to be thrown out. We threw out Sati a hundred years ago, because it’s wrong. Casteism and the caste system is another wrong. Tradition is not something that is locked up in time. It is something that happens every day, something we create, we have to separate the wheat from chaff. There will, of course, be resistance.

Tell us about the role of classical art in connecting with other cultures today, in the times when there’s a frightening uneasiness about certain communities’ inability to co-exist with the ‘other’?

Bringing together cultural intellectuals to think in terms of this is very important, because there is, at the moment, like I said, no cross-cultural platform. This can be within and without India. We have been extremely Euro- and white-centric, primarily because the funding comes from that. But we have just so much to share with Africa, for instance, and with other Asian countries, that we need to build bridges there, because we share so much more of a cultural heritage. I first came to realise this very strongly when I was doing The Mahabharata (1985) by Peter Brook. I found that much of what I was talking to the group about, such as inherent respect and reverence for certain things, was understood immediately by the other Asians and Africans, and the Europeans just could not understand. Whenever Indian artistes were travelling through France, Peter would insist that they come and either interact with the Mahabharata group, or perform for the Mahabharata group in a very informal setting in our theatre. I remember the Dagar Brothers had come to sing. We were all sitting on the floor around them and several of the Europeans stuck their feet out. I pointed out that it’s a sign of great disrespect, for us, the arts are very much part of our spiritual journey. Our view needs to go from the West towards Africa and Asia, we have a lot in common and we can share many of our own insights to find a way of throwing light onto a very fractured world, because the fracturing is not only in India. In India, we are seeing a dismantling of so much that we believed was integral to a democratic plural nation. We need to think about it very seriously.