235. Experiments with Living (with Mallika Sarabhai and Ramjee Chandran)

Mallika Sarabhai is a classical dancer and choreographer, actress, writer, and social activist known for her promotion of the arts as a vehicle for social change.

The daughter of renowned physicist Vikram Sarabhai and dancer and choreographer Mrinalini Sarabhai, she was brought up in a culturally and intellectually active family. She earned a B.A. in economics with honours from St. Xavier’s College, Ahmadabad, Gujarat, India, in 1972 and an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, also in Ahmadabad, in 1974. In 1976 she received a doctorate in organizational behaviour from Gujarat University.

Sarabhai became a performing artist while finishing her education and established a reputation as a film actress. She appeared in many Hindi- and Gujarati-language films, among the most memorable of which were Mutthi Bhar Chawal (1975), Himalay Se Ooncha (1975), Mena Gurjari (1975), Maniyaro (1980), and Katha (1983). She won a number of critics’ and government acting awards for her film work and also performed frequently on television. From 1984 to 1989 she toured the world with British director Peter Brook’s stage adaptation of the Mahabharata, in which she created the female lead role, Draupadi. She reprised the role in Brook’s 1989 filmed version of the epic.

Sarabhai was a leading exponent of the Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi dance forms. In 1977 she took over the leadership of the Ahmadabad-based performing arts academy Darpana, which her mother had established decades earlier, and led its dance troupe in festivals around the world. She used her choreography to focus on dance as a tool for social critique and change, and she expressed her particular interest in fostering women’s rights in compositions such as Shakti: The Power of Women, Sita’s Daughters, Itan Kahani, Aspiration, Ganga, and Surya. In her work she sought to convey statements against female infanticide, sexual abuse, and child marriage in a forthright manner, using gestures and movements from everyday life and from the martial arts of southern and northeastern India. She also used multimedia tools to incorporate sound and visual imagery in her works. Sarabhai received international acclaim and recognition for her dance compositions.

As a social activist, Sarabhai, both independently and through Darpana, worked with local governments and UNESCO to establish a number of educational projects on environmental problems, community health initiatives, and women’s issues. In 1997 she founded the Centre for Non-Violence Through the Arts, housed at the Darpana Academy, to encourage dialogue among artists and facilitate creative projects on the subject of nonviolence.

Sarabhai wrote a number of scripts for film, stage, and television productions and wrote weekly newspaper columns for The Times of India and Gujarat Mitra. She also served as editor of several publications. Her life and works were treated in the documentary films Pride of India (2002; produced by the Indian government’s Ministry of External Affairs) and Mallika Sarabhai (1999; directed by Aruna Raje Patil).