Circus: India
History
Briefly
Nisha PR, April 26, 2023: The Times of India
“The jumping devil of India!,” exclaimed Hitler after watching Kannan Bombayo’s astounding acrobatic feat known as rope dance in a Berlin show. Just like Jesse Owens, another historical moment that demolished the Nazi Fuhrer’s fantasy of Aryan supremacy.
The fascinating aspect of this transnational history is that like Kannan, there were hundreds of men, children and women from subaltern castes and communities from India crossing continents to work in European and American circuses of early 20th century. These amazing acrobats were products of circus kalari sin north Malabar by Keeleri Kunhikannan, the circus guru and his disciples MK Raman and Mannan. Gemini Sankaran, the famous circus entrepreneur who passed away on Monday, began his acrobatic career in MK Raman’s kalari. While most first-generation women artistes told me they were sent to the tents by their parents out of poverty, later generations of women acrobats I interviewed across India said they chose circus out of love. All these women were polyglots, a splendid gift of the peripatetic life: they switch easily from Malayalam to Hindi to Bengali to Marathi and some to English, Arabic and Nepali.
These women were always eager to share their stories with me: places they visited, people they met, make-up kits in vogue they acquired, the professional skills they mastered including performance with ferocious wild animals. Many found love beyond barriers of caste, race and nationalities and found ‘homes’ in faraway places.
There were two fateful state interventions for the Indian circus industry. The ban on some wild animals the Centre initiated in 1991 was the first one. The legal battle lasted for nearly a decade and then hundreds of animals were seized from circuses and their trainers lost livelihoods overnight. The poor animals caught up in the hollow human discourses of kindness and compassion ‘rehabilitated’ in cramped zoos soon perished. Interestingly, elephant was one of the first species banned from Pakistani circuses. Since elephants were ‘traditionally’ part of the exhibition and performance in temples and religious festivals, the pachyderm did not make it into the initial ban lists in India.
Next on the benevolence chart were young humans. In 2011, Supreme Court banned the training and performance of children below 18 years, directing government to conduct simultaneous raids in all circus companies to ‘liberate’ the children.
Children have figured prominently in the history of physical training in the circus: they exclusively performed items like high wire, boneless, seesaw acrobat, China plate. Childhood cannot be treated as a romantic universal category and must be construed within the context of regional economies and social inequalities.
What does it mean to be a child in Asia, Africa or South America with caste, gender, race, labour and intricate livelihood questions that complicate these lives? Could we judge these lives within the simple binary of cruelty and emancipation?
Social circus and contemporary circus have gained popularity as a ‘new’ form of circus in Australia and Europe from 1960s. Unlike traditional tented circuses, they perform in public parks and street corners. They seldom use animals and often mix digital technology with poetry and theatre.
Social circus is being chosen by numerous youngsters in Latin America and Africa as a professional option to work in international companies in Europe and North America.
Unfortunately, Indian circus remains ‘traditional’ in both content and form resulting in its impending demise. Refashioning with contemporary ideas can attract old and new spectators alike. When the global contemporary circus, Cirque du Soleil came to Delhi and Mumbai, almost all their shows were houseful.
In many cities circus tents stand banished to the outskirts. For instance, until the 1990s circuses used to tent in the Red Fort ground in Delhi but were gradually moved to faraway Shalimar Bagh. Any fairground should be visible in orderto draw spectators. Let me conclude with a quote from Malayalam book Circus (1961) by late Kandambulli Balan, writer and circus manager:
“In just 42 hours an iron fence with a 2,000-foot diameter and the canvass city within it shall be dismantled, transported to a destination 100 miles away and reset. And to add to this, 150 animals including 20 elephants, 500 people and 1,000 ton of equipment! The last one to fold is the big tent which is 50-feet high, 2000-metre canvas spread over six large iron poles. . . the steel ropes would be carefully loosened and the tent will come undone like a gigantic parachute. Next morning the school kids would stand looking at that empty ground with their mouths agape. ”
Nisha PR is the author of Jumbos and Jumping Devils: A Social History of Indian Circus
See also
Circus: India
