Canadian born Davesh Soneji is An Associate Professor and Graduate Chair in the Department of South Asia Studies at University of Pennsylvania. His main focus of work is to look for gender, class, caste, and colonialism in Indian Performing Arts especially Bharatanatyam and Carnatic Music. He was also a visiting faculty at Central University of Hyderabad India and at Le Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS), Paris. His recent work has been on Tamil Islamic Music and Tamil Catholic Music.
Davesh Soneji is part of the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective (SASAC) led by Hindu hater Audrey Truschke. As per SASAC, Hinduphobia doesn’t exist as it didn’t face the same hatred as Jews and Muslims and that Hindus faced no atrocities at the hands of Muslims and Christians. By labelling Hindutva as far-right, they gate keep Hindus and Hinduism and anyone who doesn’t fit into their description of Hindus is labelled, Hindutva. Hindutva is defined as “Hindu nationalism is a far-right political ideology of Hindu supremacy” according to the Reporting Guide on SASAC website.
SASAC launched an online resource for those targeted by Hindu nationalists/Hindutva called Hindutva Harassment Field Manual that “offers educational and practical resources for the targets, allies, students, and employers of those subjected to Hindu Right assaults.”
Ken Chitwood, a Lutheran theologian, pastor, and professor at the University of Bayreuth‘s Department of Religion, edited and produced a guide on Hindu nationalism for journalists. All members of the SASAC contributed to this guide, in which they describe Hindu nationalism as a “far-right political ideology of Hindu supremacy…Also known as Hindutva”. According to the guide Hindu nationalism/Hindutva’s core objective is to transform India, “a constitutionally secular state, into a Hindu Rashtra (nation) where some Indians will be more equal than others”.
In 2016 while talking to Hans India on the release of his book ‘Unfinished Gestures‘, Davesh Soneji says Bharatanaytam is secular dance form as Muslims too were involved in its development. “It is fundamentally secular and even Muslim artistes were involved its development. In the Kalavanthula families, Muslims were part of the Melams. So how is it religious? Let us reexamine the history, recognise what was wrong with it.” He further says as Bharatanatyam is steeped in religious allegory there is a danger that this dance form will be relegated to the religious realm. He says “When in today’s world, Hinduism refers essentially to the Hindu right, where is the space for this art form? The only space where something like Bharata Natyam can live; it has no relevance anywhere else. The art form styled its own history in the same language in the Hindutva mould.”
Speaking to Firstpost on Indian classical dance, Davesh Soenji says in the future Bharatanayam dancers will read more works of Periyar and Marxist. “I can only hope that dancers will finally read about things outside the field of dance itself, and try to connect with theories of the state, caste, gender, race, Orientalism, religious majoritarianism and the politics of Hindu nationalism. When your dance teacher tells you to read the Natyashastra, read Ambedkar, Periyar, Marx, or Edward Said instead – this is what will change the stagnated and socially sullied world of the arts, and move us forward.” He further says that Bharatanatyam needs to come out of enactment of Hindu gods and Goddess, Brahmanical rituals and Sanskrit stotras as it has become a “public staging of Hinduism for the masses”. Moving on to Karnatic Music, Davesh Soneji says “it was conceived and mobilised in the n first three decades of the twentieth-century in Madras.”
Speaking to Counterflows in 2021 “Conversation with Dr. Davesh Soneji – Lal̩itam Varn̩n̩am Asuram” on Bharatanatyam, Davesh Soneji says that today’s Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music world, is dominated by ultra-elite, ultra-cosmopolitan, Brahmins/upper caste women who have appropriated the art form from the Bahujan, Dalit, adivasi people and closed the space for the original practitioners. Talking about Periyar’s hatred for Brahmins, Soneji says “I think the fact that Periyar performed these radical acts was fundamentally unsettling for the upper-caste. It still remains that way. Itʼs one of the reasons why Periyar did spout anti-Brahmin vitriol, but at the same time, it is countered now by this reactionary vitriol.”
Davesh Soneji using Periyar’s takes on Ramayana says “Modern Tamil Nadu has a very long tradition of staging dissent with the Rāmāyana̩ tradition—Iʼm thinking of Periyarʼs take on the tradition. In 1930 he wrote a very interesting piece in Tamil called Rāmāyana̩ Pāttirankal,̩ or “The Characters of the Rāmāyana̩ ”, in which he turns normative tellings of the Rāma narrative on their head, by making Rāvana̩ , the anti-hero of the traditional Rāma narrative, into a Dravidian hero, and making Rāma, the hero, into an Aryan oppressor.” He further says that Ramayana is used both as Hindu fundamentalist force and as majoritarian politics in modern India. What readers need to know is that Periyar has a history of garlanding Hindu deities with sandals and slippers, burned his effigy and also called for genocide of Brahmins. On his opinion on a Bhaujan Bharatanatyam dancer accompanied by a Brahmin singer, Davesh Soneji says while this is nothing out of the ordinary in Bharatanatyam world, he wishes there was “foregrounding of the caste politics, of the histories, of thinking about these critically, of thinking about questions of equity, of thinking about reimagining these religious narratives, or even questioning why theyʼre there in the first place or why they hold hegemonic status.”
In 2024 Yales South Asian Studies Council organised a talk ledy by Davesh Soneji on “Occluded Muslim Histories of South Indian Rāga-Based Music” which looked at “the complex history of Islamic musical production in Tamil-speaking South India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” His talk focuses on how Carnatic music was moulded by upper-caste cultural nationalism and how it is still part of the communal majoritarianism in the region.
Davesh Soneji is not on a social media platform.
STOP HINDU HATE ADVOCACY NETWORK 