Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the tension between subversive and non-subversive legend narration in the Kutiyattam Sanskrit theatre community. Focusing on a colonial-era legend still told today, it ethnographically considers breaks and continuities in subversive narrative meaning in a postcolonial context.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the tension between subversive and non-subversive legend narration in the Kutiyattam Sanskrit theatre community of Kerala, India. It focuses on the colonial-era legend of the Englishman and the dog, first published in 1909 and still widely told by artists today. Describing an encounter where an actor makes a fool of a British colonialist, the legend represents a living example of Indian folk commentary upon colonialism, hitherto only studied in colonial archives.

Exploring how the legend is told and interpreted by Kutiyattam artists today, this paper considers the following questions: How do artists interpret the legend, and what does this tell us about perceptions of British colonialism and/or artistry today? To what extent has there been a break in the subversive meaning of the legend in a postcolonial context? What can different versions reveal about both the way the past is imagined, and what lessons it may hold for the present? And, how does a past of exclusionary caste performance get mapped onto a heterogeneous present, and what may this reveal about possibilities for the future?