Every alternate year, the Ministry of External Affairs awards 30 overseas Indians or organisations run by Non-Residents or Persons of Indian Origin, who have contributed to India’s causes or to the better understanding of India abroad. In this context, Kathak dancer-teacher-choreographer Malini Ranganthan from Nantes, France, was conferred the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBS Award) this year.
Malini moved to France about 35 years ago as a young bride of 24. As a textile designer from the Sir JJ School of Art, she got an opportunity to work in the Textile Museum in Lyon, the silk hub of France, curating the ‘India Year - Textile Exhibition’ with Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyaki. A disciple of Roshan Kumari (Jaipur gharana) and Damayanti Joshi (Lucknow gharana), she got opportunities to perform across Europe, including the inauguration of Royal Mughal Jewellery Exhibition at Sotheby’s.
She started teaching Kathak as a professor at the National Conservatory of Dance, Lyon and at the Merce Cunningham school of Dance. Interestingly, she could get by with English; her students indeed preferred it, so that they could practise their language skills. This idyllic situation lasted three years. She moved to Nantes in 1986, where no one spoke English. She was employed by the MCLA, Maison de la Culture de Loire Atlantique (State Council) to transmit Indian culture through Kathak and textile artefacts. There was however one hitch – the medium of instruction was French.
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Malini worked on her French while training more than 300 French aspirants over four years. In 1990, she presented 30 senior students in a two-hour performance titled ‘Prayas’ at the National Stage in Nantes, with costume and props made in house. Her affair with French continued as she went on to complete her M.Phil and Ph.D. Her doctoral thesis was on ‘Didactics in Cross Cultural Teaching as an Educational Science,’ qualifying as a Researcher-Professor in Humanities and Educational Science to MBA students in ISG, Nantes.
The Indian Embassy and the City Council made her the curator of cultural festivals. For 15 years she organised the India and Asia culture component of the ‘Summer Festival of Nantes,’ ‘Routes Indiennes’ International Festival in 1996, for which she invited folk, classsical and contemporary jazz musicians and dancers from India, and the last being ‘Namaste France’ Festival in 2016.
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In 1996, she founded ‘Bindi,’ a Centre for Indian Arts. Malini says she has about 150 students, all French, but for her daughter Darshini. She regularly presents new choreographies — in 2011, she presented ‘Parampara’ with presentations on the mother-daughter family parampara and the guru-sishya parampara. Her latest is ‘Birth of Ganga’ to be premiered mid-June in France.
After the ‘Pravasi Bharatiya Samman’ Award from the Government of India, she was honoured by the City of Nantes in May and by the Indian Embassy last week. What now? There is no hesitation. “I want to promote Indian culture. I also want to bring my French students to perform in Chennai and Mumbai! That would be the ultimate experience for them,” declares Malini.