South Indian Dancers on Exhibition in Paris: 1902, 1906 and 1926

South Indian Dancers on Exhibition in Paris: 1902, 1906 and 1926 By Donovan Roebert The Jardin d’Acclimatation is a 19-hectare amusement park in the Bois du Boulogne in Paris. It was opened in 1860 as the Jardin Zoologique d’Acclimatation with the purpose of acclimatizing exotic animal species to European climate conditions. From 1877, under the directorship of Albert Geoffroy Saint-Hillaire, it turned its attention to the so-called ethnological sciences, and began to exhibit people of all races, mainly from territories under colonial rule. Saint-Hillaire had got the notion of this kind of ‘exhibition of peoples’ (Völkerschauen) from the Hagenbeck family, Carl and his younger half-brothers, Gustav and John. The brothers, who had started out as zoo-keepers and traders in exotic animals, became interested in the exhibition of ‘exotic peoples’ after seeing the great success of these shows in the P.T. Barnum circuses, which regularly exhibited ‘savages’ and other human curiosities together with their usual circus animal acts and other typical entertainments. The Jardin d’Acclimatation, following this lead, and ostensibly in the cause of the popularization of ‘scientific’ knowledge, staged thirty-three such exhibitions of human beings between 1877 and 1931. These included exhibitions of Eskimos, Hottentots, Ashanti, Senegalese, and Somalis. There can be no doubt that these shows were highly profitable, attracting as they did millions of paying visitors, and the profit motive was obviously of more importance than the so-called scientific one. In 1902, 1906 and 1926, the Jardin concentrated on India in the shows it presented on its grounds. These exhibitions involved the construction of fake Indian villages, together with pavilions for performances, orientalist copies of Indian temples, huts for housing, and work-spaces for artisans, all open for inspection by the visiting public. The number of Indian artisans and performers ranged from around fifty to one hundred and fifty people, including women and children, who were housed on the premises. In all of these exhibitions, dancers constituted a large part of the attraction, performing on open-air stages in specially devised spectacular sets that included spaces and equipment for such performers as jugglers, acrobats, snake-charmers and tight-rope walkers. The atmosphere was that of a greatly enlarged outdoor circus. The poster for the ‘Les Malabares’ exhibition in 1902, focuses attention on the dancer: Figure 1: Poster for the ‘Les Malabares’ exhibition by G. Smith. 1902. (Jardin d’Acclimatation). The dancers were thus seen as only one aspect of a larger grouping of simultaneously staged performances, and this arrangement is also seen in the way in which these performers were brought out to France from India. This was a process that involved networks and consortiums, in which the Hagenbeck brothers and their contacts played a central part. Carl Hagenbeck himself had been working in association with the Jardin since the 1870s, and there can be little doubt that his expertise was called on for the 1902 ‘Les Malabares’ extravaganza. The organizational network naturally extended to India itself, and one of its key figures, at least as far as France was concerned, was Motilal Nehru, father of Jawaharlal, later Prime Minister of India. Nehru, a barrister in Allahabad, was heavily invested in the export of performers to France. He specialized, in his own words, in the provision of ‘parties of Indians consisting of performers, musicians, acrobats and artizans (sic)’. Among the performers in which he dealt were dancers, who were recruited from Tanjore by a Madras physician named R. Krishnaswami. There were legal difficulties and consequent shenanigans involved in the procurement and transportation of performers. This was because they fell under the laws of the British colonial government in India, which had an office for dealing with travel of Indian workers to Europe. This office of the Protector of Emigrants was held by J.Walsh, and it had strict guidelines for treatment of Indians going abroad for work, including clauses that guaranteed housing, remuneration and eventual repatriation. These laws, however, were devised for the case of manual labourers, and there was confusion as to whether performing artists fell under this category. Nehru himself had fallen foul of these authorities and had to take extraordinary measures to get his troupe of performers, including dancers, to the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. Documents show that he held more than a third of the capital belonging to a consortium of investors for this event. At one stage during this fierce trade in human exports for exhibitions in Europe, the trafficking became so fraught and shady that Sri Lanka was used as an interim base from which to move the performers onward to Europe. This and other loopholes used by the networks became such an irritant that the British colonial office put a warrant out for Carl Hagenbeck’s arrest should he appear on Indian soil. It was in this context of money-making, circuses, zoos, popular spectacle and pseudo-science that dancers were brought from Tanjore (and probably from Madras) to entertain the crowds in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. Figure 2: Two dancers with accompanists at the ‘Les Malabares’ Exhibition, 1902. (Jardin d’Acclimatation). The Jardin itself, in order at least to seem to be staging these spectacles for scientific purposes, made the performers and artisans available for study by certain ethnologists. From the 1902 ‘Malabares’ event there exists a rather chilling ‘study’ of racial features compiled by the ethnologist Dr Adolphe Bloch, who styled himself a ‘racialist anthropologist’. His pseudo-scientific study of the Indian contingent includes descriptions of their noses, lips, hair and skin, with remarks on pigmentation, sizes of the organs and so on. By inviting studies of this discreditable kind – based on false Darwinist racial premises – the Jardin was able to keep up the appearance, in the midst of the circus atmosphere, of being an institution devoted to the study of species, whether animal, plant or human. The dancers, even as part of the larger spectacle, attracted much public attention, as can be seen in the report by Le Chenil of August 14, 1902: ‘The Jardin d’Acclimatation, continuing its series of ethnographic expositions … presents a caravan of very high interest composed of fifty Malabars (men, women, children, acrobats, sorcerers, artisans, musicians etc.) ‘Through these ethnographic expositions, on which the Jardin d’Acclimatation holds something like a monopoly, the public is able to encounter and get to know the most diverse and rare types of the human species … ‘The great lawns of the garden, where the Malabares are encamped, has been excellently transformed into an Indian village, with original huts … here, the national stew is being cooked … there, a grave teacher gives lessons to the children in the rudimentary beauties of the Malabarese language … nearby, is a street where jugglers, acrobats and prestidigitators execute their marvellous tricks … ‘Let us hasten to see the young and beautiful dancers, executing, to the soft sounds of a bizarre flute, their languid and capricious dances. Their coiffure, formed like a helmet, sparkles with gemstones. On the flexible neck, on the pretty hands, on the childlike feet, shining, in light and neat movements of mimicry, either lively or sleepy, jewels of silver or gold of a singular form. Flutes, castanets and drums die out in a sort of harmonious sigh, the dance ceases and one looks about again …’ Figure 3: Four dancers at the ‘Les Malabares’ exhibition, 1902. (Jardin d’Acclimatation). La Presse, on September 22, 1902, reports on the visit of Mozaffar ad-Din, the Shah of Persia, to the Jardin, where he was especially attracted to the dancers: ‘The Shah attended the dance of the Malabares, a spectacle in which he was particularly interested. On his departure he had ten francs sent to the head of that troupe …’ Of course these were not ‘Malabar’ dancers, any more than most or even all of the Indians employed by the exhibition came from the Malabar coast. They were mostly South Indians from Tamil Nadu where the networks for exporting performers and artisans were efficiently in place and experienced in their trade. This kind of misidentification and carelessness as to real origins forms part of the weirdly deceptive essence of the whole financing, form and function of these zoos and circuses in their guise as public edutainment and exemplars for professional ethnologists. It was all smoke and mirrors. In its article of September 6, 1902, La France Illustrée has a photograph of two dancers (bayadères) having their meal in the Jardin, mentioning that their regular repast is a stew of mutton and rice: Figure 4: ‘The Malabares at the Jardin d’Acclimatation’, La France Illustrée, Sept. 6. 1902. (Collection Clemens Radauer). About the dancers themselves, the article records the following: ‘Their dancers are truly very pretty, resembling bronzes. They dance the classical dance of the singer-poets, the body immobile, the bare feet working so perfectly together that they seem glued to one another, the superb arms laden with heavy bracelets and extended to the front … The charming, adorned head moving from right to left and from left to right seems somehow out of kilter because it does not revolve at the same time as the black eyes which follow it, always deep and lustrous …’ Figure 5: Dancers on display with males and children. (Jardin d’Acclimatation). This photograph gives us a good idea of the age-range of people brought from India for these exhibitions. We are looking at what are probably two dancers doubling, in the period when they are not performing, as show-pieces of family life in India. This is the kind of tableau that would have been presented to visitors, together with the circus-like performances, while they meandered through the grounds. Records show that participants from India were brought out to France under certain legal guidelines and on the basis of reciprocally signed contracts, which made provision for their security, keep and remuneration. These were likely to have been adhered to by the management of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, but there are many documented cases where Indian performers were simply abandoned by their impresarios and had to be rescued and repatriated at government expense. In the case of more ‘official’ events, such as this one, European managers were assigned to take care of the groups under their supervision, to see to it that contractual terms were not breached, and to ensure that their charges remained on the premises and did not venture out into the city, into whose precincts they were only allowed under the same supervision. From the pictorial point of view, the Jardin’s exhibitions gave rise to a postcard and memento industry that must in itself have been quite lucrative. These photographs were also made into stereoscopic plates that could be viewed at home and in subsequent lectures on the events. Figure 6: One half of a stereoscopic plate showing a dancer at the 1902 exhibition. (Collection Clemens Radauer). One final photograph from the 1902 exhibition, though it is hazy, gives us some idea of the kind of spectacle-environment in which the dancers were expected to perform: Figure 7: Detail of a photograph in the collection of Clemens Radauer. The dancers are performing on a covered stage, while in the background a tight-rope walker crosses the scene behind them. In other photographs we see the dancers at the foot of a raised acrobatic apparatus with acrobats performing their antics far above them. The dance, in other words, was not viewed by the organizers as an entertainment sufficient in itself, though the public seems always to have distinguished the dancers particularly from the other performers. This confluence of zoo, circus and pseudo-science was a huge financial success and was therefore bound to lead to another staging of more or less the same event, but under a different name. The second Indian project was realized by the Jardin in 1906 under the catchy title ‘Caravane Indienne’. Figure 8: Dancers and accompanists at the ‘Caravane Indienne’ exhibition, 1906. (Unknown original source). The thing was really not much more than a repeat of the 1902 formula, a fact perhaps recognized by the reporter for Le Progrès, whose article of August 18, 1906, repeats verbatim the account of the dancers given by Le Chenil in 1902, but adds this extra paragraph: ‘In summary, their dance recalls that of the dancers who accompanied King Sisowath to Paris, and those Parisians who did not have the opportunity to applaud the dancers of Cambodia will be able to gain an idea of the Cambodian dancers by watching the dancers of the Indian caravan at the Jardin d’Acclimatation.’ Figure 9: The same group of dancers in different posture. (Jardin d’Acclimatation). When again in 1926 the Jardin attempted to repeat the Indian ethnological theme in an extravaganza involving 150 Indians, this time called the Village Hindou, but including the usual acrobats, jugglers, prestidigitators, snake-charmers, dancers and various artisans, the exercise fell flat, and although the show still turned a profit, it was clear that a large portion of the public was no longer fascinated by it. An article from the communist newspaper, L’Humanité, offered the headline A Hindu Village at the Jardin d’Acclimatation … Or Another Mode of Exploiting Colonial Workers. The article went on: ‘There is the same insipid music, the same loincloths, made of metres of red, yellow or brightly coloured percale, the same rings in noses and ears; the skins are bronze instead of black, but that is the only difference offered to our sight … this spectacle which lasts for barely an hour is hardly worth the trouble of mentioning … ‘Under what conditions have these Hindus been engaged? It is difficult to know the truth. Their manager assures us, half in English and half in French, that he has ENGAGED these artists from different parts of British India, that he has signed with each one of them a contract granting housing, food and an appreciable salary … but he remains vague as to the precise terms … discouraged, we try to interrogate one of the Indians … and are able to establish that their costs have been defrayed but that their remuneration is poor, that they are cold, that they are not allowed to leave the grounds, that they regret their sojourn in France, in spite of the faded finery in which they are bedecked. We have perfectly understood that the matter did amuse them for some days but that they are now tired of the spectacle they are making of themselves, with the rabble arriving to contemplate them as if they were curious animals …’ Figure 10: Dancers at the ‘Village Hindou’ exhibition, 1926. (Detail of a photograph from the Jardin d’Acclimatation). Other articles referring to the exhibition do so in a tired spirit of boredom, criticizing the repetitiveness, banality and lack of proper preparations on the part of the Jardin. An article in L’Illustration of April 24, 1926, begins with the sardonic remark ‘Here it comes again … an exhibition that recalls an alphabet of images and living illustrations for The Swiss Family Robinson‘ and goes on to enumerate the tricks of the acrobats and illusionists with the air of something encountered once too often. The dancers are not even mentioned. This is probably one reason why the 1926 event did not generate many photographic images. The public had grown tired of these spectacles of India and other exotic lands, and the stage-managed shows themselves would grind to a halt by 1931. With regard to the dancers, it is well to remember that they were facing other problems in the India to which they must return. The anti-nautch movement had been gathering steam since its reformist inception in 1892. By 1901 the first lengthy harangue on the subject of social purity had been written by R.V. Naidu and included in the volume on social reform edited by C.Y. Chintamani, with a special negative emphasis on the ‘nautch girls’. Since those beginnings many new voices had been added to the clamour, including those of important figures within the devadasi community itself. In 1927, a year after the last exhibition of dancers in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi would bring her anti-devadasi bill to the Madras legislative assembly. The dealing in dancers by circus promoters in Europe such as the Hagenbeck family and their collaborators in India could only have added to the general perception of the degradation of their art. Many Europeans themselves had begun to feel that these ‘human zoos’ were a demeaning spectacle. The Russian novelist, Boris Pasternak, recalled how they sickened and appalled him. There is a little known work of art by the German lithographer, Paul Gangolf, that seems to me to sum up the essential pain of these events. Gangolf was present at the Village Hindou exhibition in 1926 and made the following emotionally charged sketch of it: Figure 11: ‘Village Hindou’ by Paul Gangolf, 1926. (National Galleries of Scotland). The dancers occupy the foreground of this sad and disfiguring representation. The whole elicits a sense of macabre dehumanization. We are invited not to look at people living their normal lives or working at their arts, but at mechanized human creatures and other animals trapped in a bizarre parade of display. The sense conveyed is of a kind of frenzy or insanity. The ethnological extravaganza is portrayed as a mode of futile enslavement. Notes: For a brief but detailed history of human exhibitions see Luis A. Sanchez, Human Zoos or Ethnic Shows? Essence and Contingency in Living Ethnological Exhibitions, Culture and History Digital Journal 2 (2), December 2013. For information on networks, consortiums and modes of operation involved in staging human exhibitions see John Zubrzycki, Empire of Enchantment. The Story of Indian Magic, Oxford University Press, 2018. (esp. pp. 185-191). For references to Tanjore dancers, the Hagenbeck brothers etc. see Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: the Birth of the Modern Zoo, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. (esp. p. 128). For a list of exhibitions at the Jardin d’Acclimatation, and other related records, see Jean-Michel Bergougniou and Remi Clignet, ‘Villages Noirs’ et autres visiteurs africaines et malgaches en France et en Europe (1870-1940), Editions Karthala, 2001. For other general information on human exhibitions in relation to the domain of circus showmanship see Anirban Ghosh, Circus in Colonial India, Dissertation at Ludwig Maximilian’s University, Munich, 2014. (esp. ch. 3). For details of Adolphe Bloch’s pseudo-scientific paper on the ‘Malabares’ in the Jardin d’Acclimatation in 1902 see Adolphe Bloch, Quelques remarques sur l’anthropologie des Indous exhibés au Jardin d’Acclimatation, Bulletins de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris, Tome 3, 1902. My own translations of passages from various French newspapers are made from original articles found at the archives of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Original French readings from L’Humanité and L’Illustration (1926) are found at Robert Livigue’s blog, MA PRAVDA A MOI, in the article, Zoo Humain ou Cirque?, March 31, 2018. End.