Rukmini Devi Arundale (née Shastri; 29 February 1904 – 24 February 1986) was an Indian theosophist, dancer and choreographer of the Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam, and an activist for animal welfare.
She was the first woman in Indian history to be nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India. The most important revivalist of Bharatanatyam from its original 'sadhir' style prevalent amongst the temple dancers, the Devadasis, she also worked for the re-establishment of traditional Indian arts and crafts.
She espoused the cause of Bharata Natyam which was considered a vulgar art. She 'sanitised' and removed the inherent eroticism of Sadhir to make it palatable to Indian upper-caste elites and the British morality of the era.
Rukmini Devi features in India Todays list of '100 People Who Shaped India'. She was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1956, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1967.
Biography
Early life and marriage
Rukmini Devi was born in a brahmin family on 29 February 1904 in Madurai of Tamilnadu. Her father, Neelakanta Shastri, was an engineer with the Public Works Department and a scholar, and her mother Seshammal was a music enthusiast. He had a transferable job and the family moved frequently. He was introduced to the Theosophical Society in 1901. Her brother, Nilakanta Sri Ram, later became the President of the Theosophical Society. Deeply influenced by the Theosophical Movement as a follower of Dr Annie Besant, Neelakanta Shastri moved to Adyar, Chennai after retirement, where he built his home near the headquarters of the Theosophical Society Adyar. It was here that young Rukmini was exposed to not just theosophical thought, but also to new ideas on culture, theatre, music, and dance. Her meeting with the prominent British theosophist Dr George Arundale—a close associate of Annie Besant and later the principal of the Central Hindu College in Varanasi—led to her building a lasting bond with him.
They married in 1920 when she turned 16 and he was 26 years her senior at 42, much to the shock of the then conservative society. After marriage, she traveled around the world, meeting fellow theosophists and also forging friendships with the educator Maria Montessori, and the poet James Cousins. In 1923, she became the President of the All-India Federation of Young Theosophists, and the President of the World Federation of Young Theosophists in 1925.
In 1928, the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova visited Bombay and the Arundale couple went to her performance, and later happened to travel on the same ship as her, to Australia where she was to perform next; over the course of the journey their friendship grew, and soon Rukmini Devi started learning dance from one of Anna's leading solo dancers, Cleo Nordi. It was later, at the behest of Anna, that Rukmini Devi turned her attention to discovering traditional Indian dance forms which had fallen to disrepute, and dedicated the rest of her life to their revival.
Revivalism
In 1933, at the Annual Conference of Madras Music Academy, she saw for the first time, a performance of the dance form called the Sadhir. Later she learnt the dance from Mylapore Gowri Amma and finally with the help of E Krishna Iyer from 'Pandanallur Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai'. In 1935, Rukmini Devi gave her first public performance at the 'Diamond Jubilee Convention of the Theosophical Society.
In January 1936, she along with her husband, established Kalakshetra, an academy of dance and music, built around the ancient Indian Gurukul system, at Adyar, at Chennai. Today the academy is a deemed university under the Kalakshetra Foundation and is situated in its new in campus in Tiruvanmiyur, Chennai, where it shifted, in 1962. Amongst its noted students are Radha Burnier, Sarada Hoffman, Anjali Mehr, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Sanjukta Panigrahi, C V Chandrasekhar, Yamini Krishnamurthy and Leela Samson.