Bharatanatyam: Challenging conventional history - Part 1

History of Bharatanatyam today is trapped in an idealised and romanticised version of the past that does not stand the test of critical enquiry, says Davesh Soneji, an Associate professor of South Indian Religions at McGill University in Canada. For over twenty years now, this scholar has lived in and out of villages in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu researching female public performers in nineteenth and early twentieth century south India. Excerpts from an interview on the eve of the release of his latest book 'Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India'. Produced by Sruthi Krishnan