Cultural exchange between France and India

There will be film festivals including Rithwik Ghatak in Marseille in July, Satyajit Ray at the Musée Guimet and Bollywood next year. As well as Rajastani puppet shows, there will be traditional music concerts (such as the santoor with the Soporis), celebrations of Indian cuisine, yoga, ayurveda (a sort of way-of-life science based on Vedic culture), dance and an exhibition of the literary master Rabindranath Tagore and his paintings.

The Namaste France jamboree officially kicked off with a show at the auditorium of the Quai Branly museum in Paris where the Other Masters of India: the art of the Adivasis exhibition began last month.

Given the success of the exhibition, it was no surprise that the launch event stayed with the anthropological theme with a series of “tribal” dances researched and performed by the Darpana Company, led by Mallika Sarabhai of Draupadi fame from Peter Brook’s Mahabharata, which toured from 1985-1989.

“It’s very important for us to represent the ‘autochthonous’ peoples of India,” she remarks.

However it wasn’t all about art and entertainment - one dance is performed in the state of Gujarat to accompany child marriages, which the commentary tells us, still go on in some parts of India. Sadly, the presence of two small children on stage, apparently to ram the point home, as well as being extremely cute, made more than one spectator in the packed hall in Paris culturally uncomfortable.

Sarabhai defends showing the children on stage, saying that her aim is to draw attention to this practice, not to wantonly shock. For her, the message is that child marriages are reprehensible and children should be at school, especially girls, their lives should not mapped out virtually from birth.

“When this happens in real life, the children are usually much younger than the ones on stage [who were primary school age]. They are only a few months old and in their mother’s arms.”

That being said, going by the applause at the end of the show, many people in the audience particularly appreciated the colourful and exotic costumes, head-dresses, rhythms and jumps before they rushed off to grab their samosas and gulab jamun.

Sarabhai and her company zipped in and out of Paris, in the space of less than 24 hours, nevertheless Namaste France continues well into 2011. It will even leave its mark on the French overseas department of Guadeloupe.

“It also serves to make a modern-day bridge”, says Namrata Kumar, one of the lynchpins of the entire programme, between mainland France and its former colonies in the Caribbean Ocean, where Indians often landed up after volunteering as indentured labour in the mid-nineteenth century.

Namaste France adds to a bumper year for fans of Indian culture in France. There is a special season at the Théâtre des Abbesses annex of the Théâtre de la Ville, which goes on until 15th May, featuring puppets from the Kerala kuchipudi dance by Shantala Shivalingappa, kathak by Akram Khan, contemporary dance by Padmini Chettur and thumri vocals by Subhra Guha. Plus, Indian dance and ritual art in the annual Festival de l’Imaginaire organised by the Maison des Cultures du Monde, ending on 25th April.

Cultural relations between France and India need to move on, as business relations have already shown.

“They’re not as good as they should be. These events aim to reach French people wherever they are,” said the chair of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Karan Singh, on his recent visit to Paris to launch Namaste France in mid-April.

That being so, he also said that Paris and New Delhi would finally agree to open an Indian culture centre in the French capital very soon, although there’s no fixed date at the time of writing.