Mrinalini Sarabhai, who died last Thursday at 97, was often compared to her contemporary, Dame Margot Fonteyn, for her divine dancing. But she was that rarest of rare artistes who transcended her excellence in the art form of her choice to leave a lasting imprint on the aesthetics of the entire society. Indian classical dancing evolved and flourished under the patronage of temples or courts of local potentates. Men and women both performed, but while men attained eminence as gurus or ustaads, women had to bear the brunt of being treated as devdasis or courtesans, not a position of esteem, and something to which no person of respectable birth or upbringing would aspire. That mould was broken in the early twentieth century, when Rukmini Devi Arundale, born into a prominent Brahmin family of the then Madras aristocracy and married to a British theosophist chose not only to perform Bharatnatyam publicly, but also espoused the cause of the devdasis and established the famed Kalakshetram at Adyar. A galaxy of women dancers blazed the sky of performing arts in India thereafter, including her own students Yamini Krishnamurthy and Leela Samson, and others such as Sitara Devi, Kumudini Lakhia, Kanak Rele, the Jhaveri Sisters, Sanjukta Panigrahi, Shovana Narayan and closer to the present times, Mallika Sarabhai, Aditi Mangaldas and Malavika Sarukkai.
Mrinalini Sarabhai was a supernova among these stars. Like Rukmini Devi, she belonged to a prominent Madras family, being the second daughter of the lawyer Subbarama Swaminathan and his wife Ammu, a Congress leader in her own right. Captain Lakshmi Sahgal of the Azad Hind Fauj was her older sister. She married Vikram Sarabhai, the heir to Ahmedabad's leading business house and a renowned physicist, who pioneered the Indian space programme. She received training in Bharatanatyam and Kathakali, a sort of maternal inheritance. Her public recitals made it easier for younger women of middle-class families to study and perform on stage. If the daughter-in-law of the first family of Ahmedabad could dance before outsiders, surely others could do so as well, went the argument. She travelled the world and charmed the audiences and critics alike. All through her life, she ran an elegant salon in Ahmedabad.
Though Sarabhai had studied at Shantiniketan, she carried forward the tradition of Kalakshetram by establishing the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts. Like the Adyar institution, Darpana espoused not just dance in all its forms but also music, drama, painting and writing. Sarabhai encouraged experiments in multiple formats, such as narrating Indian epics as ballets. In that sense, she must be considered the muse for Peter Brook's stage interpretation of the Mahabharata (1985), incidentally the opus in which her daughter Mallika Sarabhai was the star performer.
Her long career brought her honours too numerous to list, but what was more significant was that she continued to mentor countless young artistes well into her nineties. That frail woman in a chair at the annual Vikram Sarabhai Festival and scores of Darpana workshops was always the dominant figure. Along the way, she got involved with various cultural institutions as an advisor or trustee. She also found time to write on concerns dearest to her and an endearing autobiography. Ahmedabad of the last century had a flourishing mercantile culture, but its merchant princes also made major contributions to matters cultural and civilisational, much like the Medicis of Florence. Mrinalini Sarabhai was the best exemplar of this: the benefactress and patron saint, as well as a performer nonpareil, a true Renaissance woman.
