This paper explores the theme of viraha and the persona of the virahini in the writings of Mahadevi Varma, a prominent Hindi woman writer of the mid twentieth century. Varma's poetry focuses on the persona of a virahini-a woman in love, solitary and ready to surrender herself to the intensity of her feelings for her lover. This emotional matrix has earned her the epithet of the 'modern Mira'. A careful exploration of the indomitable self of Varma's virahini not only marks her difference from the virahini of the Bhakti poets but also places the persona in the historical moment of India's anti-colonial struggle, particularly Gandhian nationalism. This connects to Varma's prose writings, which reflect upon various forms of longing and pain, focusing especially on feminine subjects in a colonised and patriarchal society. Here she records the stories of virahinis around her-the widows, child brides and abandoned women. In her essays and editorials, this pain and longing are transformed into logical and succinct arguments in favour of women and the need for social reform as a part of the movement for freedom. The article ends with deliberations on the persistent strains of viraha in Varma's writing as the discourse of women and social reform is circumscribed by the benign paternalism of Gandhian thought that celebrates and limits the feminine subject within the folds of domesticity and tradition-the very limits that Varma's virahini longs to overcome.
This paper examines the reconfiguration of the sensuous and spiritually charged image of the virahin & imacr;, tracing her transformation from early modern paintings of Rajasthan and the Pahari states to a morally idealised and hybridised figure painted by the artists of the Bengal School in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It begins with the visualisation of viraha (separation) experienced by the n & amacr;yik & amacr; (heroine) in early modern paintings based on texts such as Bh & amacr;gavata Pur & amacr;na and Rasama & ntilde;jar & imacr;, where separation is articulated as both an emotional and spiritual surrender. The essay further traces how the artists of Bengal School re-imagined the figure of virahin & imacr; by tempering her sensuality to present an austere and self-sacrificial figure who appealed to the nationalist ethos of colonial India striving for independence.
This article examines the star text of Bal Gandharva (1888-1967), the celebrated female impersonator of Marathi sangeet natak (musical theatre), as a critical site for the production and commodification of respectable Hindu femininity in colonial India. Through close readings of two iconic roles-Shakuntala in Sangeet Shakuntal and Sindhu in Ekach Pyala-it demonstrates how Gandharva's performances advanced the tenets of stridharma as the foundational moral grammar of respectable middle-class femininity. It further discusses how his theatrical embodiment extended into the marketplace through 'Gandharva Fashion', ultimately consolidating the archetype of the sugrahini (the idealised housewife) as a citizen-consumer. Drawing on theatre stills, promotional imagery, advertisements and periodicals, the article repositions Gandharva as modern India's first swadeshi star, whose performances offered visions of nationalist and consumerist utopias by marketing femininity as both moral virtue and consumable spectacle.
In Bharatanatyam recitals, the dancer takes on the central role of nayika (heroine), who pines and longs to be united with her nayaka (the Supreme Lord, who is usually God). In the end, whether she unites with her Lord or not is secondary, but the narrative highlights a spectrum of separation and longing (viraha). This paper brings to the fore a Malaysian Bharatanatyam performance, Saayujya & mldr; An Eternity of Longing, presented by a leading dance exponent, Ajith Bhaskar, to discuss the portrayal of the nayika and her viraha in the performance, but here, it is done purposefully to interrogate the ambiguous relationship between the Indian-Malaysian diaspora (the metaphorical nayika) and its homeland, India (the metaphorical nayaka). This paper explores the 'home-diaspora' connection through a historical and ethnographic writing, examining how Bharatanatyam emerged through the longing amongst Indian-Malaysians and the subsequent emergence of self-sustaining practices of Bharatanatyam in Malaysia.
This paper critically examines the gestures and gaze used by nachnis to resist stigma and dominant regimes of uniformity. Critical dance scholarship has highlighted how bodies are scripted through distinctive movements and why dancing bodies must be understood beyond the classical-folk binary. Drawing on cultural labour as an analytical framework, I show how performance and performer mutually shape one another through controlled gaze and sensuality, challenging the disciplinary regimes of caste, gender and sexuality that structure dance practices. The bodily gestures of dancing bodies, such as nachnis, question codified understandings of dance and exceed ideals of uniformity. This performance tradition emerges as an improvised practice deeply embedded in caste and gender relations. The nachni's sensuous movements sustain livelihood, negotiate stigma, engage with the male gaze and resist through a controlled gaze. Through the case of the nachni, I reconceptualise bodily gestures as a site of labour and embodied resistance.
