A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (in a new adaptation by Tanika Gupta) by Year 1.2 Project Research - Brandon Lee Sears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282 Your research ensures that you build a shared, concrete, and detailed picture of time and place. Organise your research here including your lists of facts and questions. en-us 2021-01-28 20:36:26 UTC 2026-03-18 21:52:08 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/26f2.png 4. Questions about the immediate circumstances of the scene. BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536631 -Do the kids recognise Das? 
-Is he identified as a danger to the family by Niru? Is that why she calls for the kids to go back inside? 
-Is he being menacing?
-Is Niru scared of him right away or does she start off confident in her ability to tell him away? 
-Where do they fall on the political spectrum? 
-Has she changed her world views since marrying an English man?
-Is Das in immediate danger if he loses his job/does not get his money back? 
-Since when has he felt this way about Niru and his past interaction with her? ]]> 2021-01-28 20:36:26 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536631 About the Playwright BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536634 > Tanika Gupta was born (1963) in London to immigrants from Calcutta.
> Gupta graduated from Oxford University with a Modern History degree.
> Gupta worked for an Asian women's refuge in Manchester
>Over the past 20 years Tanika Gupta has
written over 20 stage plays that have
been produced in major theatres across
the UK. 
>Tanika Gupta is related to Dinesh Gupta, an Indian revolutionary against the British Rule in India
>Tanika's mother (Gairika Gupta) was a classically trained dancer, and her father (Tapan Gupta) was a singer.
Tanika and her husband David Archer have three children together: Nandini, Malini and Niharika Gupta.]]> 2021-01-28 20:36:26 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536634 1. Facts about what exists and has happened before the action of the play (first scene) begins. BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536640
>Set in 1879, Calcutta - a pivotal moment in the struggle for Indian independence from the British Raj. 

>India was still recovering from the Great Famine (1876-1878) which caused the death of 5.5 million Indians.

>The famine was due to a number of factors including intense drought, crop failure and the British Government's continued export of grain to England (320,000 tonnes over two years) in the face of the starving population.

>India and its population suffered appalling exploitation for over 100 years since the arrival of the East India Company (1600-1858) and there was now an increasing number of British who were beginning to question the role and purpose of the British Empire in India.

>The British Government shut down the East India Company in 1858 and the Raj was established. Clear rules came into being regarding marriage for British men serving in Indian. Marriage to an Indian woman was scandalous and marriages to Anglo-Indians heavily frowned upon. ]]> 2021-01-28 20:36:26 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536640 3. Facts about the immediate circumstances of the scene. BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536642
>Tom Helmer got Krishna Lahiri a job in the tax office
>Das’s job at the tax office is in trouble
>Niru’s children are playing hide and seek with her
>Someone left their gate open 
>Niru’s Husband left home 
> It’s Christmas Eve 
>Mrs Lahiri arrived in Calcutta and has just been employed by Niru's husband 
>It is Christmas Eve
>Mrs Lahiri lost her husband]]> 2021-01-28 20:36:26 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536642 2. Questions about what exists and has happened before the action of the scene begins. BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536646 How old are Niru's children? 
How long has Das wanted to have this conversation?
 What trouble has Das been in? 
What previous interactions have they had? 
What did Baba die of? 
How long has Niru owed 
money?
What was Niru's relationship like with her Dad? 
What is it like with her husband? 
How long have Das an Niru known each other?]]> 2021-01-28 20:36:26 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536646 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536648 2021-01-28 20:36:26 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1138536648 Surendranath Banerjee BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1145615305 Gupta's clearest intervention in Ibsen's original text takes the form of a debate between Tom Helmer and Dr Rank in which Rank states his disgust at The British Colonialist treatment of its Indian subjects. He criticises the Empire's cruelty and applauds political leader and founder of 'The Bengali' newspaper, Surendranath Banerjee. Banerjee was nicknamed 'Surrender Not Banerjee' by the British due to his popular speeches condemning racial discrimination by British Officials and his promotion of a United India. In 1883, Bannerjee heralded the birth of the Indian National Congress, and, in turn, influenced the next generation of Indian Nationalists.]]> 2021-01-31 15:16:23 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1145615305 Shakuntala by Raja Ravi Varma c.1870 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150361576 Raja Ravi Varma is considered among the greatest painters in the history of Indian art. This epic painting by Raja Ravi Varma, depicts Shakuntula, an important character of Mahabharata, pretending to remove a thorn from her foot, while actually looking for her husband/lover, Dushyantha, while her friends call her bluff. Shakuntula is wearing a Kasta sari.

A sari is a women's garment from the Indian subcontinent that consists of an unstitched drape varying from 4.5 to 9 metres in length and 600 to 1,200 millimetres in breadth that is typically wrapped around the waist, with one end draped over the shoulder, partly baring the midriff.]]> 2021-02-01 18:41:50 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150361576 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150412040 2021-02-01 18:51:24 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150412040 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150436659 2021-02-01 18:56:12 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150436659 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150448705 2021-02-01 18:58:36 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150448705 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150465682 2021-02-01 19:01:55 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150465682 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150493318 2021-02-01 19:07:17 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1150493318 The White Male Gaze BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1152505285 Until the last decades of the East India Company (1600–1858), most British men in India
spent part of their careers living with at least one Indian or Eurasian woman. A member of
administration was as likely to have a ‘bibi’ or native mistress as a household handyman
in Calcutta, though the ‘bibi’ was very much more than a mistress. 

Richard Burton, who spent seven years as an officer in India in the 1840s, lauded his first mistress as a nurse, a housekeeper and a teacher ‘not only [of] Hindostani grammar, but the [ways] of native life’
too; furthermore she knew how to keep ‘the servants in order’. In later years he recalled
that the erotic skills of Indian women were so superior to those of British men that no ‘bibi’
had ever been able to truly love her master. 

In this era it was acceptable for women from Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies to be objectified. These ‘exotic’ women were depicted in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective, presenting and representing them as rare sexual objects for the pleasure of the white male viewer. Their ‘otherness’ was enforced as they were dressed up to dance, sing, entertain and please their colonial masters however they were bid.]]> 2021-02-02 08:42:38 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1152505285 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1152524168 2021-02-02 08:47:46 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1152524168 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1152542087 2021-02-02 08:52:48 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1152542087 Food and Diet culture clash during Colonial Rule BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153354304 From David Arnold, historian, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, "Initially, the British were "exotic" outsiders who could learn to survive in an unfamiliar environment from the natives." British doctors frequently thought gorging meat and drink as unsuited to India's hot and humid climate.

Indians, on the other hand, looked on with horror at the British pork and beef. Francis Buchanan Hamilton, a physician, says that the British diet reduced them in Indian eyes "to the lowest dregs of Hindu impurity".

Because of repeated famine in the late 18th century, the British were interested in new food plants which might help ward off starvation and human misery. But they were also perplexed by the quantity and quality of food to be provided.

During the Madras famine of 1876-78, there was a heated exchange on this issue between W R Cornish, the Sanitary Commissioner for Madras, and Sir Richard Temple, the Government of India's Special Advisor. In 1874, Temple stated that a diet of one pound of grain was enough to sustain life and the government could not be expected to do more. Cornish argued that this diet was not sufficient and needed to be supplemented by other foodstuff. Cornish rightly linked inadequate food to ill health. The Cornish-Temple debate was about physical wasting and state responsibility -- it was not about malnutrition as a perennial problem.]]> 2021-02-02 12:51:55 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153354304 FOOD AND DIET BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153366506 Bengali cuisine is one of the finest blends of non-vegetarian and vegetarian dishes. Bengal is known as the land of 'Maach aar Bhaat’ which means ‘fish and rice'. The wide varieties of Bengal Cuisine in festivals, occasions and seasons are integral part of Bengali Culture - literature, songs, paintings, movies have a nostalgic appeal . The Bengali cuisine has an unique feature being an assimilation of the best of the world gastronomy and Indian diverse cookery. Rasogolla and sweets of Bengal are world famous. Jalebis are made by deep-frying maida flour batter in pretzel or circular shapes, which are then soaked in sugar syrup. ]]> 2021-02-02 12:55:31 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153366506 Colonial Heritage Buildings in Kolkata BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153427203 2021-02-02 13:11:53 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153427203 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153443450 2021-02-02 13:15:51 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153443450 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153444107 2021-02-02 13:16:01 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153444107 link to music written in 1870s BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153444372 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=995045597609258]]> 2021-02-02 13:16:05 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153444372 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153463024 2021-02-02 13:20:38 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153463024 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153477544 The British living in the Indian sub-continent continued to
wear the same clothes and attire as worn in England. They may have adapted the fabrics slightly wearing cooler cottons
and linens, but, on the most part they upheld the fashions as a point of principal.]]> 2021-02-02 13:23:58 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153477544 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153488530 2021-02-02 13:26:36 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153488530 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153495235 2021-02-02 13:28:06 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153495235 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153584444 The Reverend Jennings arrives in India on a mission

In 1852 the Reverend John Jennings  arrived in Delhi in 1852 on a mission to convert as many people as he could to Christianity. He was just one of many Christian evangelicals who had come to India in the years since the 1820s to convert Indians to Christianity.

In 1813 the East India Act forced the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) to allow missionaries into India which before they had not. Two years later the first of many societies, the Church Missionary Society, established a presence in India which was to lead to an influx of missionaries. Like many of his contemporaries, Jennings combined his job of administering to the English community in Delhi with doing what he could to convert Indians to Christianity.

 There should be no compromise with false religions

Jennings believed that the British should be doing what they could to conquer the sub-continent for Anglicanism and the one true God.  In Calcutta the Reverend Edmunds believed that the Company should use its position to bring about the conversion of India to a Christian country.  In Peshawar, Herbert Edwards believed that the Empire had been given to Britain because of the virtues of English Protestantism. 

He wrote: 'The Giver of Empires is indeed God and He gave the Empire to Britain because England had made the greatest efforts to preserve the Christian religion in its purest apostolic form'.]]> 2021-02-02 13:46:55 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153584444 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153594553 2021-02-02 13:48:56 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153594553 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153691390 2021-02-02 14:07:23 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153691390 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153718250 2021-02-02 14:12:07 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153718250 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153732954 2021-02-02 14:14:47 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153732954 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153751535 2021-02-02 14:18:02 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153751535 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153769863 2021-02-02 14:21:04 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153769863 LYRIC HAMMERSMITH BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153783035 Tanika Gupta's adaptation of A Doll's House on at the Lyrics Hammersmith in 2019. Directed by Rachel O'Riordan and starring Anjana Vasan and Elliot Cowan as the leads.]]> 2021-02-02 14:23:18 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153783035 Adaptation of an old play BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153798782 Tanika Gupta's adaptation of A Doll's House contrasts the original which was at the same time but in a completely different setting. The original was written and performed in the same year at the Royal theatre in Denmark, written by Norweigan playwright Henrik Ibsen. Tanika Gupta said she was "enlightened by the story of an empowering woman in what was typically a mans world" and rewrote the play about Calcutta.]]> 2021-02-02 14:25:48 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153798782 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153919017 2021-02-02 14:45:20 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153919017 Anglo-Indian Relationships leading up to this time BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153981220 The wills of East India Company officials, now in the India Office library, clearly show that in the 1780s, more than one-third of the British men in India were leaving all their possessions to one or more Indian wives, or to Anglo-Indian children - a degree of cross-cultural mixing which has never made it into the history books. It suggests that the India of the East India Company was an infinitely more culturally, racially and religiously mixed place than modern Britain can even dream of being.

In the more loving relationships of this period, Indian wives often retired with their husbands to England. 
Many of these 'mixed-blood children'  who resulted from these marriages/relationships  had been quietly and successfully absorbed into the British establishment, some even attaining high office: Lord Liverpool, the early-19th-century prime minister, was of Anglo-Indian descent.

Much, however, depended on skin colour. As a Calcutta agent wrote to Warren Hastings, the governor-general of India, when discussing what to do with his Anglo-Indian step-grandchildren: "The two eldest - [who] are almost as fair as European children - should be sent to Europe. I could have made no distinction between the children if the youngest was of a complexion that could possibly escape detection; but as I daily see the injurious consequences resulting from bringing up certain [darker-skinned] native children at home, it has become a question in my own mind how far I should confer a service in recommending the third child" to proceed to England. It was decided, in the end, that the "dark" child should stay in India, while the others were shipped to Britain.]]> 2021-02-02 14:55:26 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1153981220 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154042423 Before British colonialism, those who would now be defined as Hindu existed without one collective identity and certainly did not possess a unified collective religious identity. The group now defined as Hindu can be said to have existed only because it was a group independent of Islam, Christianity or Judaism, although not internally coherent. The lack of religious coherence within the Hindu group is demonstrated by the fact that they did not view Islam in religious terms.]]> 2021-02-02 15:05:13 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154042423 Review by Michael Billington BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154081530 Tanika Gupta has transposed Ibsen’s seminal play to 1879 Calcutta and the result is multilayered, massively intelligent and moving. In Gupta’s version, colonial politics are inescapably intertwined with an inflexible patriarchy and, although I have the odd caveat, Rachel O’Riordan’s production gets the Lyric’s new regime off to a rousing start.]]> 2021-02-02 15:11:17 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154081530 Review by Sarah Crompton BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154092605 "It's a supremely smart switch. Setting the play in 1879, the year it was written, Gupta allows its new Kolkata setting to add a layer of racial domination to its examination of patriarchy and its effects. Ibsen was always about society as well as the individual and here the social structures that pinion Niru in her place are graphically and brilliantly realised."]]> 2021-02-02 15:13:03 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154092605 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154169421 2021-02-02 15:25:04 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154169421 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154172827 2021-02-02 15:25:34 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154172827 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154194947 2021-02-02 15:29:01 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154194947 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154196320 2021-02-02 15:29:13 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1154196320 Hinduism BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157396523 Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world dating 5,000 years. It is followed by over 1.5 billion people today making it the third largest religion. There were no founders because Hinduism was formed as a way of life (dharma). Hindus was the name given to people who live around the Indus Valley. The term 'Hinduism' was only coined in the 19th Century. It was called Sanatana Dharma (the Eternal Law). 

7 Core Beliefs:
1. PARAMATAMA: Universal soul, the source of all reality
2. ATMAN: Immortal individual soul
3. KARMA: the moral law of cause and effect
4. MOKSHA: Release from pattern of Life and Death
5. VEDAS: Hindu Scriptures
6. CYCLE OF TIME: No beginning or end
7. DHARMA: Balance of nature through peace and discipline]]> 2021-02-03 07:54:20 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157396523 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157435081 2021-02-03 08:05:15 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157435081 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157439590 Tanika Gupta speaking about her play 'The Empress' which is set in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, when Rani Das and Abdul Karim step ashore onto London's Tilbury Docks after a long voyage from India.

The play blends the true story of Queen Victoria's relationship with her servant and 'Munshi' (teacher) Abdul Karim, with the experiences of Indian ayahs who came to Britain during the 19th century.

Born in India in 1863, Abdul Karim was selected to be a servant to Queen Victoria. He was brought to England and presented to the Queen by the Viceroy of India. He continued to serve the Queen throughout the final 15 years of her reign, quickly becoming a favourite of hers, which caused friction amongst her other attendants. Ayahs were Indian nannies largely employed by English families living in India to care for their children. From as early as the 1700s, many accompanied their employers back to Britain for personal and financial reasons.

 It played in the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from 11 April to 4 May 2013.
]]> 2021-02-03 08:06:32 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157439590 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157517580 2021-02-03 08:27:15 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157517580 Kathak BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157518493 Kathak is one of the eight major forms of Indian Classical Dance. The origin of Kathak is traditionally attributed to the traveling bards of ancient northern India known as Kathakars or storytellers. The term Kathak is derived from the Vedic Sanskrit word Katha which means "story", and Kathakar which means "the one who tells a story", or "to do with stories".

Wandering Kathakars communicated stories from the great epics and ancient mythology through dance, songs and music. Kathak dancers tell various stories through their hand movements and extensive footwork, their body movements and flexibility but most importantly through their facial expressions. ]]> 2021-02-03 08:27:30 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157518493 During the British Raj Era BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157529271 With the spread of colonial British rule in 19th-century India, Kathak along with all other classical dance forms were discouraged and it severely declined. This was in part the result of the Victorian morality of sexual repressiveness along with Anglican missionaries who criticized Hinduism. Reverend James Long, for example, proposed that Kathak dancers should forget ancient Indian tales and Hindu legends, and substitute them with European legends and Christian tales. Missionaries recorded their frustration in Church Missionary Review when they saw Hindu audiences applaud and shout "Ram, Ram" during Kathak performances.

The seductive gestures and facial expressions during Kathak performances in Temples and family occasions were caricatured in The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood, published at the start of the 20th century, as evidence of "harlots, debased erotic culture, slavery to idols and priests" tradition, and Christian missionaries demanded that this must be stopped, launching the "anti-dance movement" or "anti-nautch movement" in 1892.

Officials and newspapers dehumanized the Kathak dancers and the sources of patronage were pressured to stop supporting the Kathak performing girls. 
Not only did missionaries and colonial officials ridicule the Kathak dancers, Indian men who had been educated in colonial Britain and had adapted to Victorian prudery joined the criticism, states Margaret Walker, possibly because they had lost their cultural connection, no longer understood the underlying spiritual themes behind the dance, and assumed this was one of the "social ills, immoral and backward elements" in their heritage that they must stamp out. However, the Hindu families continued their private tutoring and kept the Kathak art alive as an oral tradition. Kathak teachers also shifted to training boys to preserve the tradition, as most of the 20th-century ridicule had been directed at Kathak "nautch girls".]]> 2021-02-03 08:30:24 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157529271 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157542355 2021-02-03 08:33:59 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157542355 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157551721 The Kathak dance is a pivotal moment in the play. As Niru prepares to perform this ritual temple dance for a party of British colonialists she is objectified and sexualised by Tom. The dance is not only symbolic of his orientalist fantasy of Niru and the power imbalance in their relationship, but it also embodies her fraught emotional state, loss of control and ultimately her loss of identity.]]> 2021-02-03 08:36:19 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157551721 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157584178 2021-02-03 08:45:01 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1157584178 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1158085735 2021-02-03 11:05:11 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1158085735 BrandonLeeSears https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1158095881 Niru's children are named Peter and Bob, and will take Tom Helmer's surname.]]> 2021-02-03 11:08:10 UTC https://padlet.com/brandonleesears/18l4zi0ck38um282/wish/1158095881