The phantom of history: figurations of the dancing body and the ‘Sitara Devi problem’ of Indian cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper is an attempt to reimagine the function of the dancing body of Sitara Devi in the topography of Hindi popular films from the 1930s to 1950s. A legendary Kathak dancer, Sitara Devi started performing in films during her teens, and essayed multiple roles as an actor, singer and dancer. Her film career was on high tide during late ‘30s and ‘40s as she acted in a number of films including those which transpired through her collaborations and associations with celebrated filmmakers such as Mehboob Khan, K. Asif and Nazir Ahmed Khan. While most of her films have not survived in their material form, historical readings of Indian cinemas have also – broadly speaking – circumvented the question of dancing bodies, and the import of Sitara Devi’s star-persona in films. My enquiry, therefore, concerns film historiography and I use the gender lens to refocus the debates on cinema onto matters of women, performance, and on/off-screen figurations, and the films in which Sitara Devi played decisive roles fuel such explorations. I consider Ashish Rajadhyaksha’s article on Indian Filmography, which defines the work of the ‘filmographer’ as a ‘Sitara Devi Problem’, as a point of departure, and discuss her surviving films, alongside Saadat Hasan Manto’s landmark writing, Stars from Another Sky, to arrive at the larger ‘problem’ of historical analyses. I remap Sitara Devi’s presence in the texts, and her absences in film discourses, to rethink film histories.