The can of worms that was opened by the sexual harassment allegations at Kalakshetra Foundation continues to brim over as more people speak out about the culture of body shaming, casteism, colourism, and harassment that its students and alumni have undergone. While some justify the colourism and body shaming in the castings of dance events by the Foundation by saying that certain characters are to be portrayed by people of certain physical features, this only reveals the flawed perception that has its roots in caste discrimination.
TNM spoke to students, faculty, and alumni, who revealed a larger culture of harassment on campus along the lines of gender, body type, skin colour, and food habits. They said that physical features decide what role a student is given in recitals, that many forms of body shaming are practised on campus, and those who consume meat are treated with revulsion. All of them feared backlash, and hence spoke on the condition of anonymity. The experiences recounted by each of them indicate one factor underpinning all the above issues — caste.
The allegations are not against one or two individuals alone; the entire institution, including faculty members who were supporting students in the recent protests, have allegedly contributed to the creation of this toxic culture.
Several persons recounted how Kalakshetra favours students with physical features that are conventionally considered attractive — tall, thin, and creamy-complexioned. An alumna of the Rukmini Devi College of Fine Arts (RDCFA) told TNM that body shaming is very prevalent in the college, with students being routinely shamed if they do not fit an ‘ideal’ size. RDCFA is where Hari Padman, accused in the sexual harassment case, taught as an assistant professor of dance. It also employed the three other accused, Sanjit Lal, Sai Krishnan, and Sreenath, as repertory members — dancers who were part of the foundation’s performances.
“All through first-year, a teacher told me that my bum is too heavy, that I should reduce it. Dancers who looked like me or were ‘bigger’ got only those roles that were part of the chorus,” the alumna alleged. Students who were heavier than what's conventionally considered 'thin' got more instructions on weight-loss exercises than on their dancing techniques, she alleged. "No matter how good a dancer you are, you also have to be a certain size and comply with everything the staff say," she said.
The discrimination persists even while casting dancers for the dance dramas that Kalakshetra performs. Coveted roles, like that of Sita in Ramayana, are often given to female students who are thin and creamy-complexioned. “Sita is the uttama nayika (ideal heroine) according to the Natyashastra, an ancient Sanskrit treatise on performing arts, who always looks to Rama for approval," the Kalakshetra alumna explained. "On the other hand, a dancer given the role of Surpanakha, who is considered adhama nayika (an inferior woman), would be brown-skinned and not thin. Even if the dancer chosen isn't heavier than average, the dance movements that are prescribed to them will indicate a larger body. The categorisation itself is casteist,” the alumna said.
Writing about such casting of women in Scroll.in, dancer and writer Nrithya Pillai said, “Iterations of this kind of ideal womanhood through music and dance have been used to uphold the twin institutions of patriarchy and caste.”
A current RDCFA student who spoke to TNM said she was chosen as a ‘flower girl’ for the felicitation of Kalakshetra founder Rukimini Devi’s memorial during a cultural event. But a senior management official who saw her — a brown-skinned and fat woman — berated the teacher in-charge for picking this student as a 'flower girl'. "The teacher practically dragged me away from where I was standing,” she recollected.
The constant scrutiny of women students’ bodies extended beyond the classroom to their hostels and even to their lives outside campus, sources alleged. “After a mass food poisoning outbreak, the senior management official visited the hostel, where she scolded a sick student for wearing a pair of shorts. How does a student’s choice of clothes inside their hostel room affect the director?” one faculty member asked.
The harassment does not stop with a few senior teachers, as allegations have been made against teachers who were standing with the protesting students also. An intern at Kalakshetra, who will be referred to as Person X in this story, said on a social media platform that her family’s ties with the accused Hari Padman were misinterpreted by other faculty members to spread rumours against her. Asserting that she is not a victim of abuse, Person X said that she had to face constant harassment due to the teacher’s misunderstanding. According to Person X, she used to visit Hari Padman’s house to give after-school lessons to his son. This, she said, while speaking on a Twitter spaces session, led to one of the teachers starting a rumour that she was having an affair with Hari Padman. She alleged that this in turn started a rumour within the college, eventually leading to a former Kalakshetra director calling her a “victim” and “mistress” on a Facebook post last December. “No one gave a thought to what my life will be like in Kalakshetra. When a former director names me in public, the students are bound to believe it,” she said.
One alumna who spoke to TNM agreed that moral policing is done by several teachers on campus, even for the students’ choice of clothes outside the campus. She further added that sexuality is constantly policed. “After my kutcheri performance, a teacher told me off saying that the Abhinaya aspect, the eroticism in my piece, was too much. The College’s idea of showing eroticism is being coy and demure,” she said.
The senior management official’s disregard for those students who are not conventionally beautiful can be seen as an extension of her Brahmin identity, which she takes pride in, sources alleged. “She flaunts her wealth and the Brahmin Tamil that she speaks. It is extremely intimidating for non-Brahmins,” a faculty member told TNM. The management official, one of the faculty members said, is intent on knowing the caste of everyone at Kalakshetra. All this is in an institution under the Union government, financed with public money.
Kalakshetra Foundation was recognised as an Institute of National Importance by an Act of Parliament in 1993, and is now an autonomous body under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. The Ministry of Education provides a list of institutions of National Importance, of which Kalakshetra is one. However, the Foundation is not bound by the regulations of University Grants Commission (UGC), as it falls under the purview of the Ministry of Culture.
This means that UGC’s Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Regulations are not enforceable in Kalakshetra. The regulations forbid discrimination on the grounds of caste, creed, religion, language, ethnicity, gender, disability of access to education of any type or at any level,” and further prohibit, “the imposing of conditions on any student or group of students which are incompatible with human dignity.”
Kalakshetra’s senior management officials have also been accused of policing food habits, especially the consumption of meat. Even those who are Brahmin are castigated if they eat meat, another faculty member told TNM. “When the senior management official found out that I cook and eat meat at home, she exclaimed, ‘But you are Brahmin!’ and said that the thought of eating meat is revolting to her.” The same faculty member also said that despite Kalakshetra being a government-run institution, students are not allowed to bring meat to campus. “At the canteen and hostel mess, only vegetarian food is served. A student who once brought biriyani was shouted at and made to throw it away,” she said.
The alumna and the two faculty members maintained that the power equation inside Kalakshetra is extremely skewed. Calling the management authoritarian, a faculty member said, “If you are someone who speaks up, your life will be made difficult. Most people there are entirely dependent on the salary they draw from Kalakshetra and are scared to speak up. There is an atmosphere of fear inside campus.”
Another faculty member said, “People like Hari Padman survived for so long by becoming indispensable to the management. He was in turn given immense power and they turned a blind eye to the abuse. The repertory staff (which the three other accused were part of) were brought in by Hari Padman.” However, the rot in Kalakshetra’s systems runs deeper than just senior management officials and their favourites, the revelations of Person X indicate.
The ongoing controversy started in December of last year, with the Foundation's former director Leela Samson commenting on Facebook that multiple students in Kalakshetra were subjected to sexual harassment. In the post, she had reportedly mentioned a woman student’s name and said that she was the ‘mistress’ of a faculty member. Soon after this, the student also filed a complaint against Leela Samson at the National Commission for Women, for which the hearing is pending.
In the Twitter spaces session, Person X recalled an incident that happened on January 3 this year, when a lecture was delivered by advocate BS Ajeetha, the external member of the institution’s Internal Committee (IC) who recently resigned. She alleged that during the lecture, a tutor asked a question based on former director Leela Samson's Facebook post, hinting that the survivor had an “illicit relationship” with Hari Padman.
“A teacher told the assembled students that [Hari Padman] is a sexual harasser and that I am his victim. She should have shown the courtesy to ask me if it was true. She said that she wanted women to be safe inside Kalakshetra. I was a woman in Kalakshetra who was framed as a victim. She did not care about my feelings,” Person X said.
She said that it made things really difficult for her on campus. “The teacher could have said that it was wrong of the former director to mention my name,” Person X said.
Until a few years back, Kalakshetra admitted class 10 graduates to its four-year undergraduate course, a practice that was stopped under the directorship of Leela Samson (2005-12). The admission criteria was then updated to class 12 graduates. This meant that until recently, a diploma graduate would often legally be a minor.
The power differential between students and teachers is further widened by the fact that famous artists teach at the institute, Kalakshetra staffers told TNM. The institution’s insistence on maintaining the ‘sanctity’ of the guru-shishya relationship, and the resultant imbalance in power, made it impossible for students to voice their concerns or objections. This has severely affected the functioning of the IC also.
TNM spoke to advocate Ajeetha, who recently stepped down from Kalakshetra’s IC stating that she was “disturbed by the recent happenings in [the] institution and the response of the administration to the issues.” When asked about the IC dismissing two of the four complaints filed by male students, Ajeetha said, “The male students’ complaints should have been taken seriously by the administration. The IC has to gain the confidence of the students. They might have been aware of the IC, but not had the confidence to file complaints. It is the current student protests that gave them the confidence."
The power differential also made IC hearings difficult and traumatising for students. Person X, while speaking at the same Twitter spaces session, said that the IC hearing she attended caused her severe distress. She alleged that a teacher, who is one the faculty members currently supporting the protesting students, asked explicit questions about her and Hari Padman. “Instead of supporting me, she harassed me. Even as a management official and the advocate tried to comfort me, the teacher kept harassing me with multiple questions,” she said.
Person X also alleged that the teacher asked her a question linking her with Hari Padman’s 14-year-old son. “When the inquiry concluded, I thought everything would be alright. But it became worse. I was told that the proceedings of the inquiry will be confidential, but the opposite happened. From the next day, no teacher or student would speak to me. I was cornered, harassed, and became depressed. I had spoken to the IC about many teachers who harassed me. I suspect that the teacher in the IC later told someone,” she said.
In a community like that of Kalakshetra, such ostracisation can be brutal, as singer and entrepreneur Chinmayi Sripada explained while recently speaking about the inherent toxicity in the guru-shishya system. She stated, “It is a very small group — everyone knows everyone else. Responding to complaints of abuse with references to 'Bhakti', 'Discipline', 'Obedience' is simply gaslighting and subversion of how powerful the gurus and their clan are,” she said. “I have grown up listening to all the open secrets, it was just the way it was. So this entire whitewashing is a big joke,” Chinmayi said.
As someone who has lived and observed the “guru-shishya parampara” most of her life, Chinmayi said she was aware of the power wielded by “gurus, sabhas, and sabha secretaries.” Further, speaking about how normalised abuse is in such situations, she said, ”Male gurus putting thaalam (rhythm) on female students’ thighs or going close to the groin is not new. Dance make-up 'doyens' molesting is not new. If you speak up, you'll be erased.”
I have lived and observed the Guru Sishya parampara most of my life.
— Chinmayi Sripaada (@Chinmayi) April 3, 2023
I know the power equation Gurus, Sabhas, Sabha Secretaries wield. It is a VERY Small group; everyone knows everyone else. Classical musicians also had powerful, well connected patrons.
Dancer and writer Nrithya Pillai also questioned the guru-shishya system. “What’s this sacrosanct guru shishya parampara ? What of the power dynamics when men from Sudra castes were teaching women from oppressor caste locations ? You can see this lovely dynamic in @sangeetnatak videos featuring elite bharathanatyam dancers with their nattuvanar “gurus”,” she said on Twitter.
What’s this sacrosanct guru sishya parampara ? What of the power dynamics when men from Sudra castes were teaching women from oppressor caste locations ? You can see this lovely dynamic in @sangeetnatak videos featuring elite bharathanatyam dancers with their nattuvanar “gurus”
— Nrithya (@nrithyapillai) March 31, 2023
The Vedic guru-sishya system is also inherently casteist, as it was never accessible to everyone irrespective of their caste and gender. It systematically excluded people from the marginalised castes.
Recalling that a main component of learning at Kalakshetra was jaathi hasta, an RDFCA alumna explained what it meant. Hasta mudras or hand gestures are a primary component of Bharatanatyam used to depict a person or a scene. “Jaathi hasta describes the dance gestures for each varna in the caste hierarchy. The Brahmana hasta, involving a series of hand movements to indicate the dancer wearing a ‘sacred’ thread, the alumni told TNM, was one of the most commonly used hastas. “If the song refers to a poet, the character would be indicated using the Brahmana hasta. Any character who is educated is referred to using the Brahmana hasta. For any indication of servility, the Shudra hasta is used,” she explained.
“Kshyatriyas are indicated as rulers, Vaishyas are depicted with a gesture of carrying measuring scales, and a fifth hasta called Rakshasa (demon) is shown by big teeth. There is no hasta to indicate Avarnas,” the alumna elaborated. A curriculum and faculty that pander to the hierarchies laid out by Varnashrama Dharma has also allowed Hindutva ideology to be propagated in the campus.