Rukmini Devi Arundale

Rukmini Devi Arundale, who was born on February 29, 1904, and died on February 24, 1986, was an Indian theosophist, Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer, and animal rights, campaigner.

She was the first woman to be nominated for election to India’s upper body of parliament, the Rajya Sabha. The foremost proponent of bringing back Bharatanatyam from the original “sadhir” style performed by the Devadasis temple dancers, she also sought to revive traditional Indian arts and crafts. She promoted Bharata Natyam, a kind of dance that was viewed as obscene. To make Sadhir acceptable to upper-caste elites in India and the British morality of the time, she “sanitised” and eliminated the innate sensuality of the character. India Today’s list of the “100 People Who Shaped India” includes Rukmini Devi. In 1956, she received the Padma Bhushan, and in 1967, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship.

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About Rukmini Devi Arundale

Early life

On February 29, 1904, in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, Rukmini Devi was born into a brahmin household. Her mother Seshammal loved music, and her father Neelakanta Shastri worked as an engineer for the Public Works Department. The family regularly moved, and he had transferrable work. In 1901, he was first introduced to the Theosophical Society. Nilakanta Sri Ram, her brother, later rose to the position of Theosophical Society President. Neelakanta Shastri, a devotee of Dr. Annie Besant and a major proponent of the Theosophical Movement, retired to Adyar in Chennai and built a house there close to the Theosophical Society Adyar’s headquarters. She became good friends with Dr. George Arundale, a well-known British theosophist who was also the principal of the Central Hindu College in Varanasi and a close colleague of Annie Besant. To the surprise of the then-conservative society, they were married in 1920 when she was 16 and he was 42, making them both 26 years older. After getting married, she embarked on a globe tour where she met other theosophists and became friends with James Cousins, a poet, and Maria Montessori, a teacher. She was elected president of the World Federation of Young Theosophists in 1925 after serving as president of the All-India Federation of Young Theosophists since 1923.

The Arundale couple met when the renowned Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova came to Bombay in 1928 to perform. They later travelled on the same ship to Australia, where she was scheduled to perform next. Over the course of the voyage, their friendship grew, and soon Rukmini Devi began taking dance lessons from one of Anna’s top solo dancers, Cleo Nordi. Later, at Anna’s urging, Rukmini Devi shifted her focus to reviving ancient Indian dancing styles that had fallen out of favour and devoted the remainder of her life to doing so.

Later Years

In April 1952 and again in 1956, Rukmini Devi received nominations to serve in the Council of States (Rajya Sabha) of the Indian Parliament. She was Rajya Sabha’s first nomination for an Indian woman. She took a keen interest in animal welfare, was involved with several humanitarian organisations, and, as a Rajya Sabha member, contributed to the passage of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and the subsequent establishment of the Animal Welfare Board of India, which she presided over in 1962. Until her death in 1986, she remained a member of the board. She put in a lot of effort to encourage vegetarianism in the nation. From 1955 until her death, she served as the International Vegetarian Union’s vice president for 31 years. She declined Morarji Desai’s invitation to recommend her for the position of President of India in 1977. The “Kalamkari Center” (pencraft) was established in 1978 at Kalakshetra to revive the traditional textile printing art of India. She promoted natural dyeing and weaving at Kalakshetra with the help of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. She passed away in Chennai on February 24, 1986.

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Revivalism

She witnessed a performance of the dance style known as the Sadhir for the first time in 1933 at the Madras Music Academy’s Annual Conference. Later, she received instruction from Mylapore Gowri Amma before eventually learning it from “Pandanallur Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai” with the aid of E Krishna Iyer. Rukmini Devi performed in front of an audience for the first time in 1935 at the Diamond Jubilee Convention of the Theosophical Society. Kalakshetra Academy in Besant Nagar, Chennai. She and her husband founded Kalakshetra, an academy of dance and music based on the traditional Indian Gurukul system, in Adyar, Chennai, in January 1936.  She witnessed a performance of the dance style known as the Sadhir for the first time in 1933 at the Madras Music Academy’s Annual Conference. Later, she received instruction from Mylapore Gowri Amma before eventually learning it from “Pandanallur Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai” with the aid of E Krishna Iyer. Rukmini Devi performed in front of an audience for the first time in 1935 during the Theosophical Society’s Diamond Jubilee Convention. She and her husband founded Kalakshetra, an academy of dance and music based on the traditional Indian Gurukul system, in Adyar, Chennai, in January 1936. The academy moved to Tiruvanmiyur in Chennai in 1962 and is now a deemed university under the Kalakshetra Foundation. It is housed in a new 100 -acre (0.40 square kilometre) campus.

Radha Burnier, Sarada Hoffman, Anjali Mehr, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Sanjukta Panigrahi, C. V. Chandrasekhar, Yamini Krishnamurthy, and Leela Samson are a few of its well-known graduates. The Indian classical dance style of Bharatanatyam, which was formerly known as sadhir, owes its current name to E Krishna Iyer and Rukmini Devi Arundale. They were crucial in modernising and popularising the Pandanallur style of Bharatanatyam and removing the unnecessary sringaar and erotic elements that were the dance’s legacy of its Devadasi association in the past. She soon introduced musical instruments like the violin, set and lighting design features, creative outfits, and jewellery influenced by temple artworks, changing the fundamental nature of dance. Rukmini Devi contacted renowned scholars for motivation and classical musicians and artists for partnership, much like her teacher had done for her productions. The outcome was the creation of several of the first dance dramas premised on Indian epics like the Ramayana by Valmiki and the Gita Govinda by Jayadeva. Famous dance plays like “Sita Swayamvaram,” “Sri Rama Vanagamanam,” “Paduka Pattabhishekam,” and “Sabari Moksham” come first, then “Kutrala Kuruvanji,” “Ramayana,” “Kumara Sambhavam,” “Gita Govindam,” and “Usha Parinayam”. Once Dr. George Arundale decided to invite Dr. Maria Montessori to begin teaching in the “Besant Theosophical High School” in 1939, the first Montessori-based schools were founded in India. Later, the “Besant Arundale Senior Secondary School,” “The College of Fine Arts,” “The Besant Theosophical High School,” “The Maria Montessori School for Children,” “The Craft Education and Research Center,” and “The U V Swaminatha Iyer Library” were also established within the Kalakshetra campus.

Legacy of Rukmini Devi Arundale

The Indian Parliament designated the Kalakshetra Foundation as an “Institute of National Importance” under a law that was passed in January 1994. On February 29, 2004, Kalakshetra and other locations around the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of her birth with lectures, seminars, and festivals. Old students from all across India and the world came together on campus for a special event where they sang and performed. A picture exhibition on her life debuted at the Lalit Kala Gallery in New Delhi on February 29 as well. On the same day, former president APJ Abdul Kalam also issued a photo biography with a foreword written by the ex-president R Venkataraman. In 2016, Google created a doodle in memory of Rukmini Devi on the occasion of her 112th birthday. Later that month, the Kalakshetra Foundation, which was celebrating its 80th anniversary, presented a festival of music and dance titled “Remembering Rukmini Devi”. She was also highlighted by Google in the 2017 International Women’s Day Google Doodle.

Awards and Honours

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