I return to my FB page, after more than three weeks of silence, to provide an update on my Talking Dance Video, which went live on July 30, 2020 and also to tell you the story of what happened to the Video, the project and to myself.

The Talking Dance Video, co-produced by Dr. Swarnamalya Ganesh and myself, was trolled by a graduate student, who I shall call KN to protect his identity. Although I do not know KN, he is an ally of Nrithya Pillai, a distinguished Bharatanatyam artist, belonging to the hereditary Isai Vellalar community of artists and also a friend of Dr Davesh Soneji, acclaimed author of Unfinished Gestures.

The trio are not just associates, but linked with each other through social media networks and specific forms of cultural and political allyship. Together and individually, the trio became involved in my cyber bullying and I became the target of an unprecedented level of hate speech, caricature and vitriol which was directed at me in the first week of August.

Despite this attempt to sabotage the launch event, the Talking Dance Video, has registered over 10k views, 107 reactions and 143, which is surprising given that neither Swarnamalya nor I have actively marketed the video in the aftermath of July 30.

I come forward now, and after the dust has settled, to tell you the story of the Talking Dance Video. I do this to provide a timeline for myself and also for my friends and students who are following this story. My story is interesting because it is complex and focuses attention on global dance networks and how these become invested with the power to make and unmake lives and reputations. This is how it my story unfolded…

The Story of My Talking Dance Video

On the morning of July 30, KN exchanged tweets with Nrithya Pillai and her supporters, and queried the title of the poster, ‘Can we talk, Swarnamalya? The title was perceived as a ‘gimmick,’ staged to conceal the Brahmin privilege of the speakers and deployed with cunning to intimidate Nrithya Pillai, who was not part of this conversation. Offended by this perceived gimmick, Nrithya Pillai and KN, resolved to call out this Brahmin privilege—captured in the poster title– and with view to cancel the Talking Dance Series.

KN and Nrithya Pillal discredited my many years of research as a postcolonial and decolonial dance historian by falsely asserting that no one had heard of me. This is fake news because all the collaborators in DS network, including Dr Soneji, Dr Hari Krishnan, Dr. Sri Vidya Natarajan, and Rex, know my work. All KN had to do was to ask. My bio is also in the Bharatanatyam Reader (2010), edited by Soneji in which I have an essay, and is acknowledged in Soneji’s Unfinished Gestures (2011). Alternatively, KN could have googled me to learn about the global, postcolonial South Asian Dance Masters that I had created in the UK, focused on cultural translation and imperial dance keywords. But KN did not care to do his homework.

To bring down the Talking Dance series, KN spliced the images and words of the live video, without permission, which is a violation of copyright law, caricatured and lampooned it on Twitter. KN’s commentary foregrounded my Brahmin ‘caste privilege,’ detected in my Tamil/British accent and labelled me as UK Mami. Since Swarnamalya and I were homogenized into the universal stereotype of the Mami, our intergenerational speech was not distinguished and the video became the ground for the generation of more than 10 caricatures, which circled around the thematic of our Brahmin Mami privilege.

Each single tweet from KN’s twitter handle reached 8000 people and was distributed to 800 followers, who could then share it with their followers. Caught up in his own game of tweeting and retweeting, KN did not stop to consider the negative impact these tweets would have on my life, my career, mental health and possibly my job. While I recognize that social media creates its own toxic world, I also know that my colleagues, who are active on these portals, use this tool judiciously and seek permission to share twitter tweets and FB posts so as to not inflict damage on lives and reputations.

Since KN had labelled me as UK Mami, Nrithya Pillai and her powerful network of Dalit activists and Bahujan allies began lampooning my name, the talk and the poster and produced three specific caricatures. Nrithya Pillai focused on my surname and caricatured this as “Medhuvada” and lampooned my talk in the metaphor of the Samosa, which I had invoked to allude to the multilingual diversity of Indian culture. The third lampoon focused on the title of the poster and asked if non-Brahmins can “fart on all things appropriated.”

I was distressed to receive this hate speech from Nrithya Pillai, who I have never met, but whose work I respect deeply. Yet I recognized that this verbal assault and caricature was not personal, but political and represents a struggle to claim voice, agency and representation.

Even as I was thinking through the political implications of hate speech, historical trauma, and my own desire/anxiety to speak about my postcolonial research in this fraught context, Swarnamalya posted her own bullying story on her FB page on the morning of August 3. I was not involved in this story and Swarnamalaya did not inform me of her intent to publish her story. Swarnamaly’s narrative was huge because it named Dr Soneji, B.M. Sundaram, Dr Hari Krishnan, Dr Sri Vidya Natarajan, and Rex as the ‘gang’ that had hounded her from 2013.

I was distressed to read this narrative because it involved Swarnamalya, Nrithya Pillai and Dr Soneji, a longstanding colleague, with whom I shared a professional relationship of solidarity going back to the late 1990s.

Towards Resolution

On August 6, I read Dr Soneji’s formal response to Swarnamalya’s allegation of bullying, which was posted on Nrithya Pillai’s FB wall, and retweeted by her to KN’s twitter account. Why was Dr Soneji posting his important refutation letter, not on his own FB page, but on Nrithya Pillai’s wall and why was this post then retweeted to KN’s twitter handle? I suddenly understood how this interlocked chain of cyber distribution operated: it travelled from Nrithya Pillai to Dr Soneji through the conduit of KN’s twitter account and was realized in the name of allyship and solidarity. I was dismayed. While I was able to forgive the irresponsible ‘Tweeting Twitters’ of KN, I was saddened to realize that Dr Soneji, my trusted colleague was actually a bystander and had done nothing to stop my cyber caricatures, which constitutes in legal terms, slander through public defamation. I felt betrayed.

On August 7, I wrote Dr Soneji, requested that KN be cautioned and asked that an apology be posted on his twitter handle as his reckless tweets had been dispersed widely and had inflicted huge reputational damage on me.

I also clarified that I did not wish to raise any complaint against KN as I had no desire to censor a genuine critique, nor to police online activities of a graduate student. I also did not want this single act of indiscretion to have a negative impact on KN’s career, which was just beginning.

Dr Soneji intervened immediately and KN’s twitter handle was brought down within a span of less than two days. But I have not received an apology, nor am I able to post the letters I wrote to Dr Soneji nor his responses on my FB page as I have not received Soneji’s permission to do this in the moment.

Addendum

Although my trolling had a short run of no more than eight days, it demoralized and created huge negative strain on my life. Yet the story itself is unfinished as the full impact to reputational damage and feeling will only be revealed in the future.

In closing, I must address two specific objections, raised in relation to the Talking Dance Video. The first relates to the poster title, ‘Can we talk, Swarnamalaya,?’ which was perceived by Nrithya Pillai and her allies as a gimmick staged to conceal my Brahmin privilege and absolve myself of the responsibility of having to deal with it publicly in the live video event.

KN, the expert tweeter, also faulted me for not disclosing my ancestral privilege, specifically, that I am the great granddaughter of the very famous Tanguturi T. Praskasam, the first chief minister of Madras and Andhra Pradesh, also known as Andhra Kesari. Since my grandfather was directly involved in the twentieth century revival of Bharatanatyam, it would have been appropriate to check my privilege at this place, which I failed to do, and this too was an unfortunate mistake.

Finally, I wish to apologize for any unintended hurt I may have caused to Nrithya Pillai, KN, Bahujan and Dalit viewers by not acknowledging my Brahmin privilege/positionality in the live event of the Talking Dance Video. I am ready and able to engage this question of Brahmin privilege in a public forum with Indian dance historians and leaders of the fraternity, which has been recently conflated with White racism and privilege. I think it would be useful for the Indian dance fraternity to sit down and have this difficult conversation about ‘Caste/privilege because it manifests as a global issue of our global dancing times. Caste/privilege is also a question that GN want to engage as a social justice issue of their times.

Can we talk about Caste/privilege in Indian Classical Dance History?

I do hope this will be possible …

Best regards
Dr Avanthi Meduri
First Post ‘From My Mothers Studio’
Copyright: Avanthi Meduri