The award-wapsi controversy in India and the politics of dance

ABSTRACT In 2015, a coalition of artists in India launched a protest against the ruling establishment, returning their awards to the government in response to a series of attacks on minorities and dissident thinkers that had remained unacknowledged or insufficiently condemned by the state. Known as “Award Wapsi” (award return’ in Hindi), this was notably the first artist action of its kind in independent India, with artmakers from diverse domains participating in it. However, dancers were notably missing from the scene of this historic non-violent action. Those artists most invested in the idea of movement abandoned the protest movement. Moreover, this controversy elicited a fierce backlash, with a group of pro-government artists coordinating a counter-protest against their rebelling peers, with dancers represented among the ranks of those supporting the state. This paper considers the absence of dancers from oppositional organizing, and the presence of dancers in movements allied with the ruling regime, to think about the changing perceptions of political activism and the place of the artist in contemporary Indian society.