Ancient Farmers\' Dances Threatened With Extinction

As globalization and urbanization push cultural change across India, many ancient art forms are dying out from lack of interest and funding.

Purulia Chhau, a form of masked dance performed by farmers in West Bengal to celebrate the harvest season, is one. A farmers' dance, Chhau is held during the three-month spring festival of Chaitra Parva to thank the gods for a good harvest before the next agricultural cycle.

Chhau, a vigorous masked dance with acrobatic and martial elements, performed to the beat of tribal drums, is at risk of becoming extinct. In the last five years, the number of Purulia Chhau troupes has dropped from 300 to 100 in West Bengal, due to a lack of funding and performance opportunities, as well as changing lifestyles in the region.

“India's tangible heritage, such as i ts monuments, paintings, artefacts, can be safeguarded within the four walls of museums,” said Shubha Srinivasan, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation Mumbai who is working to preserve India's declining local dance forms. “But intangible cultural heritage, such as performing arts or oral traditions, are harder to preserve or measure,” she said. “They are a way of life, really.”

Courtesy of Shubha Srinivasan.A Purulia Chhau performer in West Bengal.

In her recent book “Masked Identities: Safeguarding India's Intangible Cultural Heritage,” Ms. Srinivasan explores the Chhau dance form as well as Kutiyattam, a 2,000-year-old Sanskrit thea ter drama with origins in Kerala. She traveled across the country to write the book, meeting artists in West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa.

Besides Purulia Chhau, which comes from the Purulia district of West Bengal, other forms of the dance include Seraikella Chhau, from Jharkhand, and Mayurbhanj Chhau, from Orissa.

Chhau dancers enact Indian mythological stories from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas and the Rig Veda, focusing on the lesser-known subplots in these ancient tales. The dancers, typically males ranging in age from 9 to 65, wear intricately painted masks that depict different mythological characters, taking on the identity of the character as they dance.

The masks for Purulia Chhau are intricate and colorful, handmade by families that have been in the business for generations. They come from the village of Charida in West Bengal, where there are there are said to be 25 families of mask makers. Each mask maker has his ow n trademark, meaning no two masks are alike.

“Masks are such an integral part of the way of life in these parts,” Ms. Srinivasan said. “They define their agricultural cycles, their identities, their sense of belonging to the community.”

Elements of Chhau have changed to keep up with the times. The dances have become faster and more acrobatic, costumes jazzier and masks more dramatic. Older masters of the art complain that the dance has lost some of its subtlety in adapting to a younger generation influenced by popular media.

But the greatest threat to the dance is the dancers' economic reality, Ms. Srinivasan said.

“Purulia is one of the most impoverished parts of the country,” she said. “Families here cannot remember a time when they were not in the cycle of debt.”

Each year, farmers either tak e a loan or sell paddy to fund Chhau performances. A dancer makes about 120 rupees per performance, but by the end of the season he finds himself in debt again, she said.

The Indian government should do more to preserve and fund these art forms, Ms. Srinivasan said.

In 2003, India ratified a Unesco convention for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, but the government has yet to introduce any legislation for preserving art forms like Chhau. Ms. Srinivasan said China spends about $9 million on Peking Opera alone, the same amount India spends on preserving all of the art forms of the Northeast. She said China also has a television channel dedicated to traditional art forms, broadening their appeal to a younger generation.

What the dancers of Chhau lack in funding and infrastructure, they make up for in passion, Ms. Srinivasan said. Kirod Singh Munda, a 55-year-old Chhau dancer quoted in her book, finds it hard to imagine a time when the dance will not be a part of his community's life.

“Even if food is there or not, our house may need renovation, but the tradition of dancing Chhau cannot stop or become extinct, or we will become empty soulless people,” he said.