Dancer, critic and collector Mohan Khokar’s treasure trove is a precious mix of books and other dance artefacts. Son, artiste and curator Ashish Khokar tells Sumati Mehrishi it is meant for the people of India

A copy of The Pioneer and other dailies was a thing he wanted before his morning cuppa. Mohan Khokar, the renowned dancer, dance critic, collector and historian would then carefully go through all the newspapers marking neatly — articles, reviews and stories that revolved around the Indian dance scene and artistes — as his wife, the Bharatanatyam exponent MK Saroja would spend a typical Indian household morning being a “regular parent”, swapping other roles she played deftly.

Khokar would then call out to one of his children, usually Nandan, who never really showed immense interest in learning dance — to cut the marked pieces of writing with a pair of scissors. Nandan was expected to be extremely neat at his job. Nandan Khokar, a scientist by profession, says, “I could never be callous. He would be very finicky about the edges of the press cuttings. It did not matter to him if reviews or reports on the same event appeared in different newspapers. He would read all.”

According to Nandan and Ashish, when the house was not flooded with the most popular power -packed artistes and dance troupes as guests, there would be a new entrant to the huge collection of dance memorabilia, letters and books — from the most unexpected quarters of the fraternity — regularly. History visited the Khokars everyday, lingering on like a fond obstinate guest. A Century of Indian Dance: 1901-2000, The Mohan Khokar Dance Collection — an exhibition at the Visual Art Gallery serving as a reference point for all major milestones and trends that took place in Indian dance in the last 100 years — is only a part of the history that the Khokars have been preserving and protecting for years. 

The event, inaugurated by patron, scholar and President of ICCR Dr Karan Singh, was expected to be a success. Fortunately, it turned out to be more than that, with many of the country’s top artistes from the dance fraternity joining the festivities, showing solidarity to this cause with gusto, paying their tribute to Mohan Khokar and his collection at the event which also highlighted the traditional and modern costumes in an impromptu performance by Daksha Sheth, Uttara Coorlawala, Satyanarayan Raju, Payal Ramchandani, Probal Gupta, Shashidharan Nair and artistes from the Yakshakala Academy, Bengaluru and the Bharatiya Kala Kendra.

Mohan Khokar’s children inherited the love for performing arts from the parents but Ashish surpassed the rest. He was trained in Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Kuchipudi and western ballet. Ashish chose to take the collection to the people. He says, “We were used to being in a house cluttered with dance curious, crammed with paper cuttings, book stacks, posters, brochures, banners, masks, gramophone records, video tapes, inventory, paintings, etchings, drawings, handbills and numerous knick knacks. We never stayed in huge houses. The space was always very beautifully crammed.”

On a day when Ashish Khokar could have been extremely cheerful, elated, beaming over the fact that he lived his father’s dream — of taking Indian dance history to the masses — he seemed slightly content, wearily remembering the struggle that has gone into putting all this together and fairly sarcastic owing to the fact that he was trying to display the collection while Mohan Khokar was living but failed miserably. He says, “Government agencies were not very supportive. I wasted time in sending proposals, rewriting and resending the proposals. My father died in 1999 and I struggled more,” adding, “This table with the rarest of books on Indian dance and brochures designed by Satyajit Ray collected by my father, donated and gifted by performers from around the world cost more than `50 lakh. I would be a rich man if I sold this to an agency in Europe or the US. But I wanted it all to remain in India.”

In the collection are depictions of Nataraja, the Lord of dance in plastic, bronze, wood and paper. There are pictures of the Devadasis taken by Guru Muthukumaran Pillai. A copy of the Census of India, 1891, which has details highlighted on the presence of dancers and musicians; pictures of American pioneers Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn; pictures of Uday Shankar, among many others, with Italian “sisters” Adelaide and Sokie; and of Kalanidhi Narayan, the young Brahmin girl who was among the first from the community to take up Bharatanatyam professionally. There are letters exchanged between artistes in the pre-Independence era discussing projects and dates; handbills, photos, diaries and posters from Tanjore; posters and pictures from Kalakshetra; pictures of dancing couples, modern ballets, sketches and drawings.

Why were the organisations refusing to exhibit the collection? “Because of politics. It’s unfortunate how people treat history in this country. The ICCR has been very helpful. But I have been made to struggle over the years. One thing is for sure. I am not selling this outside India. I would prefer to burn it with a matchstick instead,” adds a visibly disappointed Ashish Khokar.

Ironically, the collection failed to find takers — at the Jawahar Lal Nehru University (its concerned wing, the Department for Arts and Aesthetics) and the Indra Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, a premiere institution for Asian arts in the Capital. This, in spite of the fact that the Mohan Khokar Dance Collection is hailed as India’s single largest holding by Lincoln Centre, New York; The Dance Museum, Stockholm and UNESCO’S Dance Council, Paris. Khokar collected over 1,00,000 photographs, 50,000 performance brochures and around 25,000 press clips.

The Khokars, however, found a sensitive sympathiser in the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), an organisation that went beyond its role to support the exhibition. At the opening, ICCR DG Suresh K Goel released the 200 paged catalogue of historical and educational materials with rarest of pictures of dancers and copies of letters, press clippings etc. He says, “We are extremely proud to have exhibited this historical collection. It’s a fact that the exhibition really had no takers. Not even in the US. We plan to take part of the collection to a few European countries for exhibitions.”

Pandit Birju Maharaj whose rare picture is featured in the brochure, credited Mohan Khokar for “successfully documenting the voluminous changes” in the katha vachan, the narration in Kathak. 

Leela Samson, chairperson, Sangeet Natak Akademi, felt the exhibition would help the layman connect with the classical arts if perceived and watched in the correct way. She said, “People should watch it in a systematic way, during a long leisurely visit to understand the documentation better. The press clippings throw a vast study of the way our dance forms have been performed and undergone changes over the century.” 

Yamini Krishanmurthi, guru Raja Radha Reddy, Kaushalya Reddy, Singhajit Singh, Kanak Rele, Madhavi Mudgal, Pratibha Prahlad, Shovana Narain, Jayant Kastuar and Uttara Coorlawala were other artistes present at the occasion.

Aditi Mangaldas frolicked, surprising her peers with images and anecdotes she remembers from performances and they don’t, like seeing a picture of Saswati Sen “performing in a fur coat at a concert in the West.” Daksha Sheth remembered how Mohan Khokar would visit her with the feisty performer Ram Gopal at her residence in the 1980s in Kerala, as Isha Sharvani would crawl around them.

Was being wife to a critic difficult for MK Saroja? “Yes. But he was a man of principles. He never wrote anything about her or her performance. There were artistes who would come home so often, great friends to my parents and the next day they would be criticised in reviews,” laughs Nandan Khokar.