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Devadasis, anti-dance movement, colonial ban, and the decline

Some colonial Indologists and modern authors have argued that Bharatanatyam is a descendant of an ancient Devadasi (lit. ' servant girls of Devas ') culture, suggesting a historical origin back to between 300 BCE and 300 CE. Modern scholars have questioned this theory for lack of any direct textual or archeological evidence. Historic sculptures and texts do describe and project dancing girls, as well as temple quarters dedicated to women, but they do not state them to be courtesans and prostitutes as alleged by early colonial Indologists. According to Davesh Soneji, a critical examination of evidence suggests that courtesan dancing is a phenomenon of the modern era, beginning in the late 16th or the 17th century of the Nayaka period of Tamil Nadu. According to James Lochtefeld, classical dance remained exclusive to Hindu temples through the 19th century, only in the 20th century appearing on stage outside the temples. Further, the Thanjavur Maratha kingdom patronized classical dance.

With the arrival of the East India Company in the 18th century, and British colonial rule in the 19th, classical Indian dance forms were ridiculed and discouraged, and these performance arts declined. Christian missionaries and British officials presented " nautch girls " of north India (Kathak) and "devadasis" of south India (Bharatanatyam) 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" in 1892. The anti-dance camp accused the dance form as a front for prostitution, while revivalists questioned the constructed colonial histories.

In 1910, the Madras Presidency of the British Empire banned temple dancing, and with it the classical dance tradition in Hindu temples.

The banning of temple dancing stemmed from the 1892 anti-dance movement and new, liberal colonial perspectives. What the English imagined nineteenth-century modernity to be did not include what they regarded Bharatanatyam to be, which they regarded as indecent. Coming from a deep orientalist perspective, the morality of people who performed Bharatanatyam was called into question. Accusations of prostitution were thrown around. Some women from traditionally performing communities were used as a way to showcase obscenity. New reforms disregarded local issues like production of the arts for the sake of liberalism and felt able to impose disruptive reforms that reshaped lives at all levels and subjected people to new standards. Colonial reforms were largely unsympathetic to local traditions, and dismissive of the industry surrounding producing art. The adoption of Anglo-Indian laws that imposed certain restrictions and regulations on certain expressions of sexuality, and more so regulations on bodies and sex in general, which in turn affected traditional dance practices. Temple dancing became caught in a web of multiple political agendas, hoping to bend this burgeoning morality issue to suit their cause. Colonial denunciations of the practice of temple dancing were caught up in liberal ideals of bringing modernity to India, where modernity was tied to Anglo-Protestant moral ideas about how bodies are viewed and how sexuality was presented.